He crept about the house, the people went about their work, nobody heeded him. Through a window he saw the farmer in the distance mount and ride away: he had no further sight of the wife. He went out of the house and up the fields behind the farm. The clouds were hanging low over the valley, the whole world was dreary and heavy, and as desolate as the end of time. He did not know where to go, sat down on a stack of wood. He tried to imagine other weather, but it seemed to him as if this valley could only look as it did now. “And yet I was so happy here yesterday,” he said. He tried to recall Romana’s face, but could not, and at once gave up the attempt. “Such a thing could only happen to you,” he heard his father’s voice saying, as sharp and clear as if it were outside him. He stood up, took a few heavy steps, the voice said it again. “Why do I believe it myself?” he brooded, and with dragging feet he went slowly up the path; yet it was dreadful to him because he had been that way yesterday. Not that he had any thought of Romana: it was only the intolerably distinct feeling of yesterday, of the afternoon hour, which had been followed by the evening, the night, and this morning hour. “Why do I know myself that it had to happen to me?” he brooded on, looking up now and then at the wooded slopes beyond, with the mist lying about them, as a prisoner looks up at the walls of his cell.

Thus dully brooding he counted up his expenses for the four days’ journey from Vienna to Villach, which now seemed exorbitant, then the money for the second horse and the stolen sum. Then he worked out what was left from Austrian into Venetian money: in sequins it seemed scanty enough, but in doubloons so beggarly that he stopped and wondered whether to turn back or travel farther. In his present state of mind he would have turned back, but his parents would never have forgiven him, as so much money had been squandered for absolutely nothing. He seemed to feel as if his parents were not really concerned with him, and his happiness, but only with outward show and what people would say. The faces of friends and relations rose before him; among them some were malicious and bloated, some indifferent, some even kindly, but there was not one the sight of whom warmed his heart.

He thought of his grandfather Ferschengelder, who had been called Andreas, like him, and of how he had once tramped off from his father’s farm down the Danube towards Vienna with nothing but a silver groat tied up in his handkerchief, and of how he had risen to be an Imperial Lackey-in-Ordinary, with a title. He had been a handsome man, and Andreas had his stature, though none of his bearing. He remembered the taunt that he had nothing of his grandfather, who was the pride of the family, but that it was his Uncle Leopold that he took after. He too as a child had been cruel to animals, and had grown up to be a violent, unhappy wretch, who wasted his substance, could not maintain the honour of the family, and had brought nothing but grief and trouble on those who had had to do with him.

His Uncle Leopold’s thickset figure rose before him, his red face and bulging eyes. He saw him lying on his deathbed, the arms of the Ferschengelders on a wooden scutcheon at his feet. Through one door, flung open by a servant, came the childless, legitimate wife, a Della Spina by birth, with a handkerchief in her beautiful, high-born hand; through the other half-open door slipped in the other, illegitimate wife, the round-faced peasant woman with the pretty double chin, her six children holding hands behind her, and gazing timidly past their mother at their dead, noble father. And as is generally the way with those in sorrow and darkness, in memory Andreas envied the dead man.

Turning back to the farm he began again to reckon by how much the portion of the Ferschengelders had dwindled; he counted up how much of their present income had been sacrificed to his journey, and fell a prey to morbid imaginings. At the dinner-table he found his place set, but today, at the head of the table, the old, white-haired maid sat and served. Not only was the farmer absent, but his wife and Romana too. Andreas felt that he had always known it would be so; he felt that he would not see Romana again. He ate in silence, the servants talked to each other, but none let fall a word about the event of the night. It transpired that the farmer had ridden to Villach to speak to the magistrate. The steward, as he stood up, said to Andreas across the table that the farmer had left a message for him: the carrier might possibly not pass that way until the next day. In that case, Andreas would be so good as to stay on, and to excuse his absence.

It was a cheerless, still afternoon.