He went to his classes, but with the laboratory completely run down, sometimes even the electric light didn't work, and that listless, stupid look on the faces of a handful of hungry students, or that wild look, and everywhere the word "revolution," there was certainly little incentive and less chance for successful inquiry into those whys and whences, the indulgence in which was gone with other luxuries. The great thing was to keep out of the cemetery or the streets or worse places of last despair, where the broken but undying went. It all seemed a nightmare from which he must awake, some tight and vicious circle out of which he must soon break. Yet this was the seventh year and all that he was, all that he had, those once sweet furnishings of his mind, those pleasant uses of his faculties were as worthless to himself and his family as diamonds to a man on the rack. The children got taller and thinner. Lilli was obviously too pretty to be out alone, unwatched. A terrible beast had lately followed her from the Singerstrasse to the Franzensplatz and then all the way home. Lilli hadn't quite known what he meant or wanted, but she had been desperately frightened and had trembled and wept in her mother's arms. There were, truly, devils prowling about, seeking whom they might devour, and Lilli, bright and beautiful, like a taper in the dull, grey streets, was one to catch their greedy eyes. Dark tales were whispered too, of hunger-mad mothers who sent their girl-children into the streets where such devils awaited them. Hunger,--dying of it,--made even mothers mad. Doctor Steier had told him unbelievable things of children in his clinic, things that the bare mention of had enveloped him in a thick, hot, pricking misery. Doctor Steier was not yet forty, but his eyes were deeply sunken and his hair gone white. They had once been colleagues at the University.... Lilli's beauty,--it made her father's heart both sad and glad.... But nobody was thinking of any of these things as Tante Ilde opened the package of "finest cakes." Stripped of its saucy, colored paper, it proved to contain twelve tiny, oblong, dry, sweetish biscuits. She gayly apportioned out two to each child. They were seized upon covetously, the very thought of sweets could awaken, in old and young, mad, selfish, exclusive longings. But Carli didn't want his and leaned his head heavily against his mother's breast. "Carli not hungry any more," he whispered. He hadn't eaten his rice either, though his mother had taken him on her knees and tried to coax him with little tricks and stories; the girls and Hansi had finally divided it into the most even portions possible.