journeyman told of a young man in Triberg who had lately come home from
foreign parts and wanted to set up a manufactory of musical clocks in
the neighborhood.

I might sell out to him, thought Lenz, and be free to travel and see
the world. But the thought awoke no enthusiasm in him now; it was only
like the echo of what he had once desired. The very fact of his uncle's
having spread a report of his going, wishing thereby to compel him to
it, made him averse to the plan. He took his father's file once more in
his hand. The man who used this file, he thought, spent his life on
this spot, except for one short season of absence, and was happy. To be
sure he married young; that makes a difference.

Lenz's habit was, when he had business at the foundry on the other side
of the mountain, to send his apprentice. To-day he went himself, and
sat but a little while at his work after his return. Before the morning
hours were half over, he went down into the village and thence up the
meadow to Pilgrim's. His old friend was sitting at his easel, painting.
He got up, passed both hands through his long, lank, sandy hair, and
offered the right to Lenz, who began at once to thank him for the
joyful surprise his mother's picture had given him, as well as for his
friend's kindness in thinking of it.

"Pooh, pooh!" said Pilgrim, thrusting both his hands into his wide
leather breeches, "I did it for my own pleasure. It is desperately
stupid work painting that blessed village from one year's end to the
other; the same old church with the bishop's mitre for a steeple and a
hole to put the dial-plate in; the mower with his scythe, who never
budges a step; the mother and child always running towards each other
and never meeting; the baby, stretching out its little hands, and never
reaching its father; and that plaguy fellow with his back turned, who
never lets us see what sort of a face he has. Yet hundreds and hundreds
of times I am made to paint that staring grass-green thing because the
world must have what it has been used to. I could paint it with my eyes
shut, I do believe, and still am kept at it. For once in my life I have
done myself a pleasure, and painted your mother. It is my first and
last portrait; for I don't like the faces about here, and don't mean to
bore future generations with the sight of them. Your uncle was right
never to consent to have his picture taken. When a travelling artist
some time ago asked him to sit: 'No,'