private hands never had been so flourishing. Lenz was very proud of having prophesied this. He received much praise on this account, but Annele saw nothing remarkable in such a proof of his foresight: of course it is but natural that each should understand his own business, but one thing was quite certain, that the Techniker and the Doctor's son were fast making money, while the original clockmakers were thankful and content to remain in the old beaten path.
Annele frequently praised Pröbler now, who at least tried to make new discoveries.
Lenz, however, was quite engrossed with his work, and said to Annele: "When I think each morning I rise – you may work honestly to day, and your work will prosper and be completed, – I feel as if I had a sun in my heart that never set."
"You have a talent for preaching, you ought to have been a pastor," said Annele, leaving the room and privately thinking – "There, that's a hit at you; we are all to listen to him, but what any one else says is of no consequence at all; that was a capital hit at him."
It was not revenge, but pure forgetfulness, that made Lenz often, when Annele was relating some anecdote, start and say, as if just waking up, "Don't be angry, but I have not heard one word you have been saying, that beautiful melody is running in my head. I wish I could make it sound as it ought! How clever the way in which the key changes from sharps to flats!"
Annele smiled, but she did not soon forgive such absence of mind.
The pendulums continued to diverge still further.
Formerly, when Lenz used to come home from the brassfounder or the locksmith, or from any expedition, his mother used to sit by him while he was at dinner, and was interested in all he related; he enjoyed over again with her the very glass of wine he had drunk away from her, and the friendly greetings of those he had met during his absence. All that Lenz detailed seemed of consequence to his mother, because it had happened to her son. Now, when he came home, Annele had seldom time to sit down beside him, and when she did so, and he began to tell her his news, she would interrupt him, saying: "Oh! what does that signify to me? I don't care at all about it. Other people may live just as they please; they are not likely to give me any share of their good luck, and I'm sure I don't want to have anything to do with their misfortunes. Men impose on you famously by their pretensions to goodness; they have only to wind you up, and then you play a tune to each, just like your musical clocks."
Lenz laughed, for Pilgrim had once called him an eight day clock, because he was always so carefully dressed on Sundays.
He had no rest during the whole week, therefore the Sundays were even more precious to him than ever, and when the sun shone bright, he often exclaimed: "Thousands of men, God be praised, are enjoying this fine Sunday."
"You speak as if you were some guardian angel, and must think of all the world," said Annele, pettishly.
Lenz soon learned never to utter such thoughts aloud, and became quite perplexed as to what he should, and should not think. Once he proposed to go with Annele on a Sunday to a meeting of the Choral Society in a neighbouring village, or to take no one with them but Faller and his wife down the valley; but she said, angrily: – "You can go where you please, it does not signify to a man in what company he finds himself, but I am not going with you, I consider myself too good for such people. Faller and his wife are not the kind of society that suits me – but you can go yourself, I shall not try to prevent you."
Of course Lenz stayed away also, and was more morose than he ought to have been at home, or in the Lion.
Lenz never in his life had a card in his hand, or played a game at bowls; other men drive away their ill humour by these resources, and pass away their time. "I wish I took any pleasure in cards and bowls," said he; but he was not prepared for Annele's peevish answer: —
"A man has a good right to play at either, if he only returns with fresh vigour to his work; at all events that is better than to play with his work."
The pendulums were getting further apart than ever. Lenz sold the greater part of his store of clocks at good prices. The only work that made no great progress, was the one he had undertaken at the request of his father-in-law, and when Lenz could not resist sometimes complaining to his wife, that he failed in this or that, she tried to persuade him that he did not think enough of making money; people like to have their orders quickly attended to, so you ought to lose no time in getting the work out of hand, but you are so over particular. "You are a dreamer, but a dreamer in broad daylight. Wake up, for Heaven's sake, wake up!"
"God knows! I live anything but a peaceful life; my sleep can be no longer called sleep! Oh! if I could only sleep well and soundly for one single night again! I always feel nervous and excited now; it seems to me as if I were incessantly awake, and as if I never took off my clothes day or night."
Instead of bestowing sympathy on Lenz, and striving in his depressed mood to inspire him with fresh self-confidence, Annele endeavoured to prove to Lenz, that though he failed, she could show him how to succeed. If he accomplished a thing and could not resist calling out to her, "Do you hear what a pure bell-like tone that is?" she would reply: "I must tell you fairly, once for all, that I detest every kind of musical clock. I heard that piece played in Baden-Baden, it sounded very different there."
Lenz knew this already, and had even told Pilgrim so, but he felt much hurt at the way in which Annele said it, for in this manner she paralyzed all his powers for his business.
Annele, however, had a private fixed plan of her own in her head, and she considered herself quite justified in trying to carry it through. She felt that her best faculties were lying dormant, for she could not employ them in her small household. She wanted to earn something, and an Inn of her own was best adapted for that purpose.
She had formerly endeavoured to estrange Lenz from Pilgrim. Now she made Pilgrim her confederate; he had said it was a pity that she was not a landlady, for she would give a fresh impulse to the Lion, and every one thought the same. Her object was, that Pilgrim should assist in persuading Lenz to undertake the Lion inn; he might still pursue his art – when she wished to be amiable she called it an art, but when in bad humour a trade – either in the Lion, or on the Morgenhalde; indeed the latter would be best, for he would be quieter there, and many a one had his workshop further from his home, than the Morgenhalde was from the Lion.
When Pilgrim came now, Annele said to him, graciously: – "Pray light your pipe, I rather like the smell; I seem at home when people are smoking around me."
"You are certainly not at home here," thought Pilgrim, but he took care not to say so. Though Annele attacked Pilgrim on every side, she could not obtain his co-operation, and Lenz was obstinate and impervious to all flattery, and proof even against bursts of rage, in a way she never could have expected from him.
"You first wished to make me a pedlar, to sell watches," said he; "and then a manufacturer, and now landlord of the Lion; if I am to become so entirely different from my former self, what did you see in me to induce you to marry me?"
Annele evaded any reply, but she said, bitterly: – "You are as soft as butter to the whole world, but to me as hard as a pebble."
Lenz thought he was an experienced man, but Annele wished to make him one. She neither said to him, nor admitted to herself, that she thought herself the best fitted of the two to gain a livelihood, but she wept and complained that she was of no use, and pitied herself on that account. She said she only wished to act for the best; and what is it she wishes? to work, to increase their means, but Lenz will not hear of it.
Lenz told her that the garden was formerly very productive, she had better cultivate it; but she had no taste for gardening: – "Every plant grows just where it is placed, in peace and quiet, and requires no pressing or driving forwards. Make haste! it is far too slow an affair to watch what is growing and blossoming in time: three visits to the kitchen, and three to the cellar, and I have gained more profit than I would get from such a garden the whole summer; and an old woman, to whom we pay a trifle, is quite good enough to work in the garden."
Now there was no end to the worry, and complaints, and lamentations, that they must live so sparingly at home, Lenz was often in despair, and sometimes so incensed, that he seemed to have become quite another man. Then he was seized with a fit of repentance, and