oman could be
hired by the day who would do quite well enough for that.

There was no end to the fretting and grieving and complaining at the
stingy way in which they had to live. Lenz was often driven to the
verge of despair, and flew into such fits of passion as to be hardly
recognizable for the same man. Then he would bitterly repent of his
violence, and assume a different tone towards his wife, telling her he
was mortified to have the journeyman and apprentice see how they lived
together; and that, if she did not leave him in peace, he should have
to dismiss them both.

Annele laughed at the threats, which he was in no condition, as she
thought, to put into execution. He proved his sincerity, however, by
actually sending both apprentice and journeyman out of the house.

As long as Lenz's firm and quiet character had asserted itself, he
maintained a certain influence over Annele; but when he came to
fighting her on her own ground, which was, in itself, a confession of
defeat, she gained a complete mastery, daily upbraiding him with being
a do-little, who had turned his assistants out of the house from sheer
laziness, and whose good-nature was nothing but incapacity.

Instead of laughing at such absurd charges, Lenz brooded over them for
days together, as he sat at his work, and allowed them to assume
colossal proportions, long after they had faded from Annele's
recollection. Her isolated life began to seem to her like a rainy
Sunday in summer, when she had put on her holiday clothes, in the
reasonable expectation of enjoying herself, and having a merry time
with her friends, and found, instead, the road impassable, and herself
a prisoner at home. It shall not be so, I will not live in this way,
was the constant cry in her heart. She grew suspicious and irritable,
taking offence at every trifle, yet never confessed to her husband or
herself the true cause of her discontent.

Lenz was driven to seek comfort out of his own home. The fact of his
going abroad did not vex Annele so much as the manner of his doing it.
He hung about so long before leaving the house, and, after having gone,
would come back two and three times, as if he had forgotten something.
He could not bear to go away with feelings in his heart which made him
almost a stranger to himself. He hoped Annele would try to detain him,
or would at least speak a kind word to restore him to himself. In his
mother's lifetime, he never started on a long journey