They had seated themselves in the shade at the edge of the wood, in order to carry on this important conversation quietly, but now Gotthold rose, hastily seized his travelling case and paint-box, which Jochen had laid on the grass beside him, warmly shook the hard brown hand of his companion, and entered the forest without casting another glance behind. Jochen looked after his retreating figure, then took his own little bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and began to ascend the moor, above whose topmost crest the roof of his father's smithy was just visible. CHAPTER VI. Gotthold hurried restlessly through the forest with hasty steps, as if he had not a moment to lose. But it was only the tumult of sore, sorrowful thoughts, that drove him on and would not leave him, any more than the swarm of flies which had entered the woods with him and hovered about his head, now rising, now falling, now lingering behind, now flitting on before. "To think that I must always hear it, everywhere, and from all tongues," he murmured, "as if I were responsible for it; as if it were a reproach to me that she is not happy! Happy! Who is? Perhaps the infallible people who can recite, their moral multiplication table forward and backward like this Wollnow, the wise, self-righteous Pharisee; or like good Jochen, to whom fifteen years more or less in his Stine is of no consequence, provided a good maintenance is guaranteed him. But on the other hand--am I happy? Are thousands and thousands of others, who have scarcely a greater fault than that they are men, men with hearts that feel and sympathize, suffer and compassionate? A curse upon compassion and sympathy! They make us the pitiful creatures we are. What are you rustling, venerable beeches, which for centuries have strewn your withered leaves each Autumn over the soil of this forest, only to shine forth again in Spring in the full beauty of your green foliage? What are you murmuring, little brook, as you carry your clear brown water to the sea as busily to-day as when I played upon your bank, a merry boy, and thought it a heroic deed to leap across you from shore to shore? Alas! in the rustling, the murmur, I hear the same song that the swallow sang yesterday, the song of the eternal youth of Nature, which is ever the same, always equally strong, equally beautiful; and of the transitoriness, the frailty of men, who prolong a sorrowful, yet greedy existence by fear and hope, eat this shadowy food until death, and yet are happiest while their hearts can still hope and fear, their hearts which can never again be filled if once emptied, or if they fill and throb once more, fill with contempt, throb with indignation, that they could ever have been so foolish as to beat anxiously in blended hope and fear. Well, I no longer hope, so I need not fear even the view that awaits me yonder."