d that it was his intention
to erect a manufactory of clocks at his own expense, and to settle in
this vicinity.

"I might sell my whole stock to him," thought Lenz, "and then I could
see with my own eyes, at last, how the world looks." But this idea of
leaving home only recurred to his mind as a remembrance of something
that he had wished once on a time, but long ago. He no longer felt any
inward impulse in the matter; and precisely because his uncle had
spread a report of his intention to travel, in order to constrain him
to do so, he felt perverse and unwilling to go. He once more took up
his father's file and looked at it intently, as if to say--"During his
whole life, the man who guided this file, with the exception of a short
absence in his early youth, remained stationary on this spot, and lived
happily. To be sure---- he married young, which is a different thing."

Usually Lenz sent his apprentice to the Foundry on the other side of
the hill, but to-day he went himself. When he returned, he did not sit
long at his work. It would be very wrong not to go to see Pilgrim.
Before noon he went down the hill, through the village, and across the
meadow to Pilgrim. His worthy comrade was seated at his easel,
painting. He rose--run his two hands through his long straight sandy
hair, and gave Lenz his right hand; who now told him what joy the
portrait had caused him, and how kind and thoughtful he considered his
friend in giving him so agreeable a surprise.

"Pooh!" said Pilgrim, carelessly plunging both hands into his wide
pockets. "I benefit myself by it. It is so desperately tiresome, year
after year, to paint our primitive village; the church, with its mitre
for a church tower, and so large a hole that a dial-plate might go into
it; and the mower with his scythe stands there always on the same spot
everlastingly; and the woman with the child going to meet him never
reaches him; the child stretches out its hands, but it never joins its
father; and the booby of a man stands there with his back to them, and
I have no notion what kind of face he has--and yet hundreds and
hundreds of times, I have been obliged to paint this confounded
landscape of verdigris hue. So it is: the world will always have the
same thing over and over again. I do believe I could paint the thing
blindfold, and yet I must go at it again and again. Now I have pleased
myself by painting your mother, though I no longer take portraits, for
I have no f