The Goose Man

and II of the second chapter, “Foes, Brothers, a Friend, and a Mask,” were translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. The rest of the book has been translated by Allen W. Porterfield. The title, “The Goose Man” (“Das Gänsemännchen”), refers to the famous statue of that name in Nuremberg. COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE A Mother Seeks Her Son 1 Foes, Brothers, A Friend and a Mask 23 The Nero of To-day 44 Inspector Jordan and His Children 65 Voices from Without and Voices from Within 97 In Memory of a Dream Figure 123 Daniel and Gertrude 153 The Glass Case Breaks 178 Tres Faciunt Collegium 204 Philippina Starts a Fire 239 Eleanore 277 The Room with the Withered Flowers 323 The Promethean Symphony 352 Dorothea 405 The Devil Leaves the House in Flames 435 But Aside, Who Is It? 455 THE GOOSE MAN A MOTHER SEEKS HER SON I The landscape shows many shades of green; deep forests, mostly coniferous, extend from the valley of the Rednitz to that of the Tauber. Yet the villages lie in the midst of great circles of cultivated land, for the tillage of man is immemorial here. Around the many weirs the grass grows higher, so high often that you can see only the beaks of the droves of geese, and were it not for their cackle you might take these beaks to be strangely mobile flowers. The little town of Eschenbach lies quite flat on the plain. In it a fragment of the Middle Ages has survived, but no strangers know it, since hours of travel divide it from any railway. Ansbach is the nearest point in the great system of modern traffic; to get there you must use a stage-coach. And that is as true to-day as it was in the days when Gottfried Nothafft, the weaver, lived there. The town walls are overgrown with moss and ivy; the old drawbridges still cross the moats and take you through the round, ruined gates into the streets. The houses have bay-windows and far-projecting overhangs, and their interlacing beams look like the criss-cross of muscles on an anatomical chart. Concerning the poet who was once born here and who sang the song of Parsifal, all living memory has faded. Perhaps the fountains whisper of him by night; perhaps sometimes when the moon is up,…