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Updated: May 31, 2025
Fausch had come to have a keen eye for people's bearing, and he knew that Cain was equally observant. While the trader was talking to him, a painful flush, from time to time, would pass over the young man's face, which was still as fair and smooth as when he was a boy. He was ashamed. And it was always so; whenever people stared at him he was overcome by this painful sense of shame.
Fausch was going to ask who told him about it, but Hallheimer immediately came into his head, and he began to wonder that the story of Cain and his name had not found its way to the mountain long ago. He did not answer the landlord, but gazed steadily into his glass, emptied it at one draught, muttered something which Simmen did not understand, and took himself off.
Every breath could be seen as it distended the delicate satiny cheeks and passed from the little mouth; and at every inward breath the lips parted like the calyx of a flower. Fausch looked at the child for a while, and for a moment it seemed as if the sight impressed him. He leaned forward involuntarily, as if in joyful surprise, but then a curious change took place in him.
But she lay awake a long time, wondering what the smith had come up for. Katharine might wonder as long as she chose. Fausch never betrayed by any word, what he had been looking for in the boy's room that night.
They knew of the smithy on their way, and used to give Stephen Fausch work. His best customers were the cattle and horse dealers, who used to travel to North Germany, and also southward toward Italy. They called the smithy their halfway house and always had Fausch attend to their wagons and their animals.
The sun had gone down behind the woods, and only the afterglow still lay over the road, but on the smith's heavy hand the tiny figure stood as if it were alive, in the infinitely pure light. The trader watched the smith raising and lowering his arm, as if the better to appreciate the beauty of the work of art. Then Fausch began to speak.
When they had eaten in silence, Ludwig rose, and forced out two or three words. "Now perhaps I may go now " and he took his blacksmith's cap from a chair near by. Stephen Fausch, the smith, did not hinder him. He too arose, picked up his ragged leather apron from the floor, and tied the stiff thing on. Meanwhile his brother stepped to the door.
His bedroom was above the blacksmith shop, and was as bare as all the old monastery had been; a hard bed, a chair and a table were the only furniture. Fausch sat on the bed, near the open window, from which he could see the lakes and the whole Alpine valley. At the supper table, an idea had come to Fausch, when Cain had spoken again of going away.
The doctor came near laughing. "You'll not think of doing such a foolish thing," said he to Fausch. The smith stood there with his hands in his pockets. He went back into the living room without answering. The doctor followed him. "Give up your folly! Don't make your wife anxious! As to the name it would not do at all, such a name," he said persuasively.
All the way over the long road from Waltheim the slander had followed them, which they had come so far to avoid. And this gossip and scandal could follow Cain through the whole world just as easily as it had come here. There was no avoiding it! And it is your fault, Stephen Fausch, that the boy must be pursued by scandal his whole life long. But ha ha, it is fair, perfectly fair!
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