“Listen, Uli,” said the master, “you’re in a bad temper still, and I oughtn’t to have said anything to you.  But I’m sorry for you, for you’ve been a fine lad and used to be able to work.  For awhile I thought you’d turn out well, and I was glad.  But since you began this idling and night-running, you’ve become a different fellow.  You don’t care about anything any more; you’re a sorehead, and when I say the least word to you either sauce me or sulk for a week.  Go now, think it over, and if you’re not willing to change, then in God’s name leave me; I don’t want you any longer.  Give me your answer in a week.”

He’d soon have his mind made up, it wouldn’t take a week, Uli growled as he went out; but the master pretended not to hear.

When the master came out, his wife asked him as usual, “What did you say to him, and what did he say?”

“I couldn’t do anything with him,” answered the master.  “Uli is still in a bad temper, for he hasn’t slept off his spree yet; it would have been better to talk to him tomorrow or in the evening, after the natural seediness of ‘the day after’ had softened him up a little.  Now I’ve given him time to think it over, and shall wait and see what comes of it.”

Uli went out in bitter anger, as if the greatest injustice had been done him.  He flung the tools around as though everything was to go to smash in the one day, and he bawled at the cattle until the master ached in every bone.  But the latter forced himself to be calm, merely saying once, “Easy, easy!” With the other servants Uli had no dealings, but scowled at them too.  As the master had not reprimanded him before the others, he did not care to inform them of his disgrace, and because he did not make common cause with them he considered that they were on the master’s side and his enemies—­a state of mind quite in accord with that deeply truthful saying:  “He that is not for me is against me.”  So there was no one to put notions into his head, and he had no opportunity to swear that the devil or what-not might take him if he stayed here an hour after his time was up.

Little by little the wine and other spirits departed from him, and more and more sluggish grew his limbs; the previous tension yielded to an intolerable exhaustion, which affected not only body but mind.  And as every act of the exhausted body is hard and painful to perform, so every past and potential act seems to the exhausted spirit, which would fain weep over what it laughed at before; what formerly caused pleasure and joy now brings only grief and sorrow; the things but yesterday eagerly grasped now bring a craze that would tear the hair from its head, aye, even the whole head from its body.  When this mood envelops the soul it is irresistible, and over all a man’s thought and ideas it casts its sickly gleam.