Chapters 13 and 14 Summary

Goldmund must again accustom himself to the difficulties of wandering, of living an instinctual life of motherly origin, away from cares of the mind, and in secret collusion with inevitable death. He struggles onward, years pass, and he lives as though there were nothing but love and hunger, although he longs to return to making art. He meets a young man named Robert, the son of an artisan, who had made a pilgrimage to Rome but found when he returned home a year later that he was not welcome, and has become a wanderer. The two travel together, and after they are chased away from a village one day, Goldmund enters an apparently empty hut where he discovers disfigured corpses. Robert surmises correctly that it is the plague. Goldmund studies the death-poses carefully, particularly that of a young boy who died...