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lamenting softly, childlike, in high, feeble tones, almost like a bird.
    I left him and went to tell the neighbors. They listened to me, asked no questions, shook my hand, and offered their help to our orphaned household. One of them went off to the monastery to fetch a priest. When I returned, I found a woman in our stable milking the cow.
    The reverend father appeared, as did almost all the women of the village, and everything went off punctually and correctly as if of its own accord. Even the coffin materialized without our having to lift a hand, and I could see clearly for the first time in my life how good it is, during difficult times, to be among one’s own people and to be one of a small, self-sufficient community. Perhaps I ought to have thought about this more deeply. For the next day, once the coffin had been blessed and lowered and the odd assemblage of woefully old-fashioned, bristly top hats—including my father’s—had disappeared each into its own box and cupboard, my father was seized with a fit of weakness. All at once he began feeling sorry for himself, bemoaning his misery in strange, largely Biblical, phrases, complaining to me that now that his wife was buried he would also lose his son. There was no stopping it. Startled, I listened and was on the point of promising him I would stay when—my lips were already parted—something very odd happened.
    Everything I had thought and desired and longed for since childhood appeared for a brief second before my mind’s eye. I saw great, beautiful tasks awaiting me, books I would read and books I would write. I heard the Föhn sweep by, and saw distant blissful lakes and shores bathed in southern lights and colors. I saw people with intelligent, cultured faces walking past; I saw elegantly beautiful women; I saw streets, mountain passes leading over the Alps, and trains hurrying from one country to the next—all this I beheld simultaneously, yet each part separately and distinctly. Behind all of it was the boundless spread of a clear horizon dotted with clouds. Learning, creating, seeing, voyaging—the abundance of life flared up in a fleeting silver gleam before my eyes. And once again, as in my boyhood, something trembled within me, a mighty, unconscious force straining toward the great distances of the world.
    I said nothing and let my father talk on, shaking my head every so often, waiting for his impetuousness to subside. This happened toward evening. Then I explained to him my irrevocable decision to study and to seek my future home in the realm of intellect—without, however, asking any support from him. He stopped cajoling at this point and looked at me pitifully, shaking his head. For he realized that I would go my own way from now on, and would soon be completely estranged from his way of life. As I write this, I can see my father exactly as he sat that evening in the chair by the window: his chiseled, shrewd peasant head motionless on the lean neck, his short hair beginning to turn gray, his severe and simple features betraying the struggle his tough masculinity was waging against grief and the onset of old age.
    Of these days a small but significant event remains to be told. One evening, about a week before my departure, my father put on his cap.
    â€œWhere are you off to?” I asked.
    â€œIs that any of your business?”
    â€œWell, you could tell me, if it’s not illegal.”
    Whereupon he laughed and called out: “No reason why you shouldn’t come along. You’re no child any more.” So we both went off to the tavern. A few farmers were sitting in front of a jug of Hallauer, two wagoners whom I did not know were drinking absinthe, and a tableful of young fellows were conducting a noisy session of a card game called jass.
    I was used to drinking an occasional glass of wine, but this was the first time I had entered a tavern without actually being thirsty. I knew from hearsay that