Now she saw clearly that she had chosen the wrong road. The scales had fallen from her eyes. What had she, the thoughtful weaver of cornflower-wreaths, to do with the conflict of tragic passions; she, the poetess of the famous Ode to the Mole that she found dead by the wayside, and to the May-bug that lay on its back, in a _dramatic_ club? A lyric club it ought to be; and to establish such a lyric club in open and explicit opposition to the dramatic club at Rector Clemens's house was the thought which, as the poetess sang in her own words, "was rushing through her soul like a mighty tempest in spring, calling forth a thousand germs irresistibly, and yet overthrowing everything in its path." Who could resist such inspiration? Surely not the author of the Fragments, who was filled with like ambition, and whose vanity had been most deeply offended by the conduct of the pedagogues. He became the first pupil of the prophetess. But a prophetess and one pupil make no congregation; and husband and wife, however clever they my be, do not make a club when they sit at the tea-table. The first condition of their success was, therefore, that prophetess and pupil should go forth as fishers of men; that is to say, of members of the new club. The task was not so easy. Professor Jager knew comparatively little of Grunwald society, which he had only seen at a distance when he was a poor student there. His wife, on the other hand, a native of the town, the seventh daughter of Superintendent Doctor Darkling, knew of course the society well; but the society knew her also as a bugbear of fright and disgust, on account of her eccentricities, long before Jager, then a candidate for holy orders, had courted her, and at last upon his appointment to the curacy of Fashwitz had carried her home under his lowly roof. Although the prophetess, therefore, stood at the shore and cast out her nets day after day, and from morning till night, she had as yet caught but few fish. This would have been extremely painful for a sensitive poetess if her favorite Oswald had not been among the few captives. His conduct on that evening had won him Primula's heart, a large slice of which he possessed already before, and to a certain degree also the heart of the Fragmentist. Both had urgently requested him not to forget the "hospitable friends of Argos in the plains of the Scamander," and Oswald had accepted the invitation in a fit of malicious curiosity. He had vied during the visit with the professor and the professor's wife in sarcasm against the pedagogues and their wives, and had at last, when Primula revealed to him her plan of a club, entered into her views with the greatest enthusiasm. He had promised to interest the surveyor, Mr. Albert Timm, whom everybody in Grunwald knew as a very clever man, for the plan, and the poetess had in reward for such a happy thought embraced him before the eyes of her husband.