The door half open, he heard the maid singing, at first unintelligible, then came the words

           In this world no joy for me
           My sweet love is gone away.

Which struck him to the core, he almost fell apart hearing it. Madame Oberlin glanced over at him. He gathered up his courage, he could no longer remain silent, he had to bring it up. “Dearest Madame Oberlin, could you tell how that young lady is doing, whose fate weighs upon my heart like a hundredweight?” “But Herr Lenz, I know nothing of this.”

He fell silent again and paced rapidly up and down the room; then he began again: You see, I want to leave; God, you are the only people with whom I could bear to live, and yet — and yet, I have to leave, to go to her — but I cannot, I must not. — He was highly agitated and disappeared.

Toward evening Lenz returned; dusk was settling over the room; he sat down next to Madame Oberlin. You see, he began again, when she walked through the room that way, half-singing to herself, and every step of hers was music, there was so much joy in her, and this flowed over into me, I was always at ease when I watched her or when she leaned her head on me that way, and God! God — how long since I have felt at ease . . . Wholly a child; it was as if the world were too wide for her; she withdrew into herself, she sought out the tightest little spot in the entire house, and there she would sit, as if her entire happiness depended on this one small spot, and then I would feel the same way too; I could have played like a child back then. Now I feel so confined, so confined, you see, sometimes I feel as if my hands were hitting up against the sky; O I’m suffocating! Often it’s as if I feel a physical pain, here on my left side, in the arm I used to hold her with. Yet I can no longer picture her, the image escapes me, and this tortures me, only when my mind clears completely do I feel happy again. — He often spoke to Madame Oberlin about this on later occasions, but usually only in fragmentary sentences; she hardly knew how to answer, but it helped.

Meanwhile his religious torments persisted. The emptier, the colder, the deader he felt inside, the more he was driven to awaken a fiery passion within himself, he had memories of the times when everything used to well up in him, when all his emotions left him panting; and now so dead. He despaired of himself, then he threw himself down, wrung his hands, stirred everything up within himself; but dead! Dead! Then he implored God to send him a sign, he burrowed into himself, fasted, lay on the floor dreaming. On the third of February he heard a child had died in Fouday, he clung to this like an obsession. He retired to his room and fasted for a day. On the fourth he suddenly burst into Madame Oberlin’s room, he had smudged his face with ash and requested an old sack; she was taken by fright, he was given what he wanted. He draped himself in the sack like a penitent and set off in the direction of Fouday. The people in the valley were already used to him; he was the object of many odd tales. He entered the house where the child lay. People were calmly going about their business; they showed him a room, the child lay in a shift on a bed of straw on a wooden table.

Lenz shuddered when he touched the cold limbs and saw the half-open glassy eyes. The child seemed so forsaken and he himself so alone and isolated; he threw himself on the corpse; death terrified him, raw pain shot through him, these features, this quiet face were soon to rot away, he fell to his knees, he prayed with the full misery of despair that God send him a sign and bring the child back to life, he being so weak and wretched; then he burrowed deep into himself and tunneled all his willpower toward a single point and sat there for a long time, rigid. Then he got up and took the child’s hand and said loudly and firmly: Arise and walk! But the walls echoed back his voice so dispassionately they seemed to mock him, and the corpse remained cold. He fell to the ground, half out of his mind, then, driven back onto his feet, fled into the mountains. Clouds raced over the moon; now total darkness, now the elusive foggy landscape reappearing in the moonshine. He raced this way and that. A song of hell triumphant was in his breast. The wind roared like a chorus of Titans, he felt as if he could thrust a colossal fist up into the heavens and grab God and drag him down through his clouds; as if he could grind up the world between his teeth and spit it into the Creator’s face; he cursed, he blasphemed. He reached the ridge of the mountain, the uncertain light dilating down into the white masses of rocks, the sky a stupid blue eye and the silly moon just hanging there, ridiculous. Lenz had to laugh out loud, and as he laughed atheism crept over him and held him fast in its firm and quiet grasp.