a thousand
times over, I had no intention to offend you, and no doubt there is not
a word of truth in the report: when the days are long, people talk for
ever, and when they are short, they chatter all night too. I beg and
pray you will think no more of it, and forget what I said; I was so
glad to see you again, and now all my gladness is gone, and I shall be
quite unhappy for weeks to come--you were right, and the Landlady of
the 'Lion' too, in saying to Franzl that I was too stupid to be your
wife. Pray, pray, give me back my officious words."

She stretched out her hand to him, as if he could really place her
words in it again.

Lenz grasped her hand cordially, and assured her that so far from being
angry with her, he was most grateful for her kind welcome. He wished to
go away immediately, but Kathrine detained him, talking on at a great
rate, in the hope of making him forget her unlucky question, and when
at last he left the house, she called after him:--"Give my love to
Annele, and come together soon to see me."

Lenz pursued his way, wearing the hat he had borrowed; "I have a
regular beggar's hat on now;" said he, with a sad smile.

Kathrine's incautious speech pursued him no doubt in many other houses
as well as here: he was now an object of compassion. This idea tended
to soften his heart, but he would not give way to this weakness, saying
to himself, that it was his own fault for not being more callous.

His stick fell out of his hand at least a hundred times, and each time
that he bent down to pick it up, he could scarcely stand upright again.

Thus it is when a man goes along lost in thought; if his hands were
loose, he would drop them by the way. Collect your thoughts, Lenz!

He made a violent effort, and walked on briskly. The sun was now
shining warm and bright, the icicles hanging from the rocks, glittered
and dropped; the gay song, "Wandern, wandern," that he had sung so
often with his friends, recurred to his mind, but he dismissed it at
once; the man who once sung that in gaiety of heart, must have been a
very different man then.

The relations whom he went to visit were rejoiced to see him on his
arrival, and he recounted the adventure of his hat repeatedly, in order
to account for the shabby appearance it gave him, but when he saw that
his hat never seemed to have been remarked, he made no further allusion
to the subject; and yet precisely where they said nothing they inwardly
thought--"He