"It is not true. It is not true!" he muttered. "You are jesting,
father?"
Strehla broke into a dreary laugh.
"It is true. Would you like to know what is true too? that the bread
you eat, and the meat you put in this pot, and the roof you have over
your heads, are none of them paid for, have been none of them paid
for, for months and months; if it had not been for your grandfather I
should have been in prison all summer and autumn, and he is out of
patience and will do no more now. There is no work to be had; the
masters go to younger men: they say I work ill; it may be so. Who can
keep his head above water with ten hungry children dragging him down?
When your mother lived it was different. Boy, you stare at me as if I
were a mad dog. You have made a god of yon china thing. Well--it goes,
goes to-morrow. Two hundred florins, that is something. It will keep
me out of prison for a little and with the spring things may turn--"
August stood like a creature paralysed. His eyes were wide open,
fastened on his father's with terror and incredulous horror; his face
had grown as white as his sister's; his chest heaved with tearless
sobs.
"It is not true! It is not true!" he echoed stupidly. It seemed to him
that the very skies must fall, and the earth perish, if they could
take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk of tearing down God's
sun out of the heavens.
"You will find it true," said his father, doggedly, and angered
because he was in his own soul bitterly ashamed to have bartered away
the heirloom and treasure of his race, and the comfort and healthgiver
of his young children.
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