"Withered leaves!" cried Blanden, "beneath their foliage they choke up every flower of spring that ventures forth into light; the arch enemy of our future is our past. Are we not like galley-slaves, who are seared with an ineffaceable brand? The spectral clatter of the chains accompanies us through life." "But most unfortunately it must just happen that now at this especial moment the verdict of the second court upon the leading ministers of that community should be given after a delay of many years. It was far, far milder than the verdict of the first court, but it brought the affair forward again. Public opinion was busied with it; even in our circle the discussion was renewed of that story, long since forgotten, which was suddenly served up again as freshly as champagne in ice. And, in the midst of this disturbance of the ghosts, fell our election day! That you were not present displeased many, although, under the circumstances, they considered it only natural. You had many votes, even Baron Fuchs voted for you; it was a daring deed, and evil tongues maintained that a matrimonial divorce hovered in the air; the Landrath, too, with his nearest dependants, stood upon your side. But you could not attain a majority; that voting against you was a sort of trial by ordeal, that declared the principal landowner in the neighbourhood to be excommunicated." "And thus I look upon it," cried Blanden. "All my hopes are destroyed! A domestic hearth, a busy, active life, political labour for the welfare of the Province for the honour of my name--all lies in ruin and ashes. Nothing else remains to me, save only to plough my acres, to bury myself in my forest loneliness, and even, like an outlaw, to shirk my neighbour's glance. Can I endure it? Or shall I venture forth again into a world of adventures from which an internal lack of contentment drove me back? Truly the old adage applies to me, that we are the forgers of our own destinies; but the forms into which they have once been wrought upon the anvil, are maintained for evermore, and when we would re-mould them the hammer becomes paralysed in our hands." Wegen sought to console his friend in a good-natured manner; he should stand firmly by Blanden in good and evil times--they, and those who held similar views, were still a considerable party; but Blanden hardly listened to those words of consolation; he relapsed into deep melancholy, so that Wegen deemed it best to leave him to his own thoughts. Blanden had all the sensation of having lost a decisive game upon the chess-board of life; the ashen-grey sky without, the unceasing drip of the rain, were in unison with the internal fatigue that had paralysed all his mental motives of incitement. Nothing now seemed worth wishing, worth struggling for; did not everything turn against him; he comprehended the Nirvana of the Buddhists.