one felt pure and innocent—so with trembling voice Diederich asked the policeman the time.
After so many fearful powers, to which he was subjected; his father, God, the ghost of the Castle and the police; after the chimney-sweep, who could slip him right up through the flue until he, too, was quite black, and the doctor, who could paint his throat and shake him when he cried—after all these powers, Diederich now fell under the sway of one even more terrible, which swallowed you up completely—the school. Diederich went there howling, and because he wanted to howl he could not give even the answers which he knew. Gradually he learnt how to exploit this tendency to cry whenever he had not learnt his lessons, for all his fears did not make him more industrious or less dreamy. And thus, until the teachers saw through the trick, he was able to avoid many of the evil consequences of his idleness. The first teacher who saw through it, at once earned his wholehearted respect. He suddenly stopped crying and gazed at him over the arm which he was holding bent in front of his face, full of timid devotion. He was always obedient and docile with the strict teachers. On the good-natured ones he played little tricks, which could with difficulty be proved against him and about which he did not boast. With much greater satisfaction he bragged of getting bad marks and great punishments. At table he would say: "To-day Herr Behnke flogged three of us again." And to the question: Whom? "I was one of them."
Diederich was so constituted that he was delighted to be long to an impersonal entity, to this immovable, inhumanly indifferent, mechanical organisation which was the college. He was proud of this power, this grim power, which he felt, is only through suffering. On the headmaster's birthday flowers were placed on the desk and the blackboard. Diederich actually decorated the cane.
In the course of the years two catastrophes, which befell the all-powerful, filled him with a holy and wonderful horror. An
