deluge.
We children, starting up terrified, ran about screaming and clamoring.
Susanna herself lost her head, and her maid succeeded in closing the
shutters only when there was nothing more to be saved; and there needed
only the Egyptian darkness added to the flood which had already
overtaken us, to heighten the general terror and increase the prevailing
confusion. In the pauses between one thunderclap and the next Susanna
did indeed collect herself somewhat and tried to calm and comfort her
charges, who according to their age were either hanging on to her apron
or crouching by themselves with closed eyes in the corners of the room.
But suddenly a bluish flame of lightning flashed once more through the
cracks of the shutters and the words died on her lips, while the maid,
almost as frightened as the youngest child, howled and screamed out,
"The good God is angry!" When it was dark again in the room she added
with pedagogical moroseness, "You're all of you good for nothing,
anyhow!" These words, no matter how odious the mouth from which they
fell, made a deep impression on me; they forced me to look upward, above
myself and above everything which surrounded me, and kindled in me the
spark of religious emotion.

On my return from school to my father's house, I found there, too, the
horrors of devastation. Our pear-tree had lost not only its young fruit
but likewise all its beautiful leaves, and stood there bare as in
winter: what is more, a very fruitful plum-tree, which used to supply
not only ourselves but half the town besides, and, at the very least,
our fairly numerous kinsfolk, had even been despoiled of the richest of
its branches, and in its mutilation looked like a man with a broken arm.
Though my mother found a sorry comfort in the fact that our pig was now
supplied with dainty fare for a week, I could derive none at all from
it, and even the pieces of glass lying around in abundance--from which
the most excellent mirrors could be made in the easiest way in the world
by sticking them together with damp earth--offered scarcely any
compensation for the irrecoverably lost autumn pleasures. Now, however,
I understood all at once why my father always went to church on Sunday,
and, why I was never allowed to put on a clean shirt without saying:
"God's mercy upon us!" when I did so. I had learned to know the Lord of
Lords; his angry servants, thunder and lightning, hail and storm, had
opened wide the portals of my hea