[Illustration:  THE DEATH OF KRIEMHILD From the Painting by Schnorr von Carolsfeld]

Even though the chest had found its way into the tiled stove during the last hard winter, when people were even forced to burn dried cakes of dung, there is still hidden away in the garret a rusty sickle which once went off to the fields, shining and merry, and stretched low at one swing of the arm a thousand golden-green stalks; and above it hangs the uncanny scythe which a farm-hand once ran into a long time ago, so that he cut off his nose—­it having hung too far down over the garret hatch, and he having mounted the ladder too quickly.  Beside them the mice are squeaking in the corners, a couple perhaps jump out of their holes and after executing a short dance creep back into them again; a little shiny white weasel is visible for a moment, lifting its clever little head and forepaws in the air, peering and sniffing; and the single sunbeam that enters through some hidden chink is so perfectly like a gold thread that one would like to wind it around one’s finger at once.

The cottage is not provided with a cellar but the burgher-house is, though not indeed on account of the wine but of the potatoes and turnips.  The poorer classes keep these out doors under a goodly pile of earth, which they raise above them in the autumn, and in winter, in time of hard frost, carefully cover over with straw or dung as well.

Now to reach the cellar is really much more difficult than to climb to the attic, but where is the child who does not know how to satisfy this longing too in one way or another!  He can go to the neighbors and hang on coaxingly to the maid’s apron when she goes down to get something, or can even watch for the moment when the door is left open by mistake, and venture down on his own account.  That is dangerous to be sure, for the door may be suddenly closed, and the sixteen-legged spiders, that crawl around the walls in the most hideous deformed shapes, as well as the trickling greenish water that gathers in the cavities intentionally left here and there, do not invite one to tarry long.  But what does it matter?  One has one’s throat after all, and whoever screams lustily will be heard sooner or later.  Now if the house itself suffices, under all circumstances, to make such an impression upon the child, how must the town strike him!  When he is taken along by mother or father for the first time, he surely does not start to walk through the tangle of streets without a feeling of astonishment, and it is still less likely that he reaches home again without experiencing a sensation of giddiness.  Nay, be perhaps brings back lasting typical conceptions of many objects, lasting in the sense that in after life they imperceptibly stretch and widen ad infinitum, but never allow themselves to be effaced; for the primitive impressions of things are indestructible and maintain themselves against all later ones, no matter how far these, in themselves, may surpass the