be compared to the boy. And that the hours of
cloudless happiness they had had through him were not so numerous now
as formerly was quite natural. He was not the same little boy any
longer, who had taken his first bold run from that corner over there to
this sofa, and had clung to his father's legs rejoicing at his own
daring; that was all. He was now beginning to be an independent person,
a person with wishes of his own, no longer with those that had been
inculcated; he showed a will of his very own. Now he wanted this and
now he wanted that, and no longer what his teachers wanted. But was not
that natural? On the whole, when a child begins to go to school, what a
great many changes take place. One would have to make allowances, even
if one did not wish to have one's whole way of living influenced by it
first the parents, then the child.

The man felt how he gradually became calmer. A boy--what a
compound of wildness, roughness, unrestraint, ay, unmannerliness is
included in that word! And all, all who were now men had once been
boys.

His cigar went out; he had forgotten to smoke it. The man thought of
his own boyhood with a strangely gentle feeling not entirely free from
a faint longing. Let him only be honest: had he not also rushed about
and made a terrible noise, dirtied himself, got hot and torn his
trousers and been up to pranks, more than enough pranks?

Strange how he all at once remembered some of the severe lectures he
had had given him and the tears he had forced from his mother's eyes;
he also very clearly remembered the whipping he had once got for
telling a lie. His father had said at the time--all at once he seemed
to hear his voice, which had generally sounded anything but solemn, in
fact very commonplace, but which had then been ennobled by the gravity
of the situation, echo in the room: "Boy, I can forgive you everything
else except lies." Ah, it had been very uncomfortable that day in the
small office, where his father had leant against the high wooden desk
holding the stick behind his back. He had pushed the little cap he wore
on account of his baldness to one side in his agitation, his friendly
blue eyes had looked at him penetratingly, and at the same time
sadly.

"One can forgive everything except lies"--well, had the boy, had
Wolfgang told a lie? Certainly not. He had only been naughty, as the
best children are now and then.

The man felt ashamed of himself: and he, he had been so disple