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Updated: June 7, 2025
Then he would cease to tyrannize over his handsome wife and to lead about by the nose, the ill-advised proletariat. A big humbug would end, and the air would be so much purer than before. Pratteler sighed, gritted his teeth and rapidly measured the idol with a look of distrust and hatred. After that, this beast should be disposed of what a relief that would be! Two scoundrels silenced.
One day a thunderbolt came down before his eyes. Höflinger took leave for three days and Victor was to remain alone with the idol and the wife. The long one had to take this trip in the interest of the workingmen's consumers' league which was now about to be realized. Pratteler spent half of each night on his wheel. He ate nothing and drank much.
Höflinger had stretched out his hand and balanced himself, breaking the force of the impact. Spiele was buried under her wheel, but her husband's weight did not fall on her. There was a moment of suspense, until Pratteler appeared to render assistance. With chalky pallor he bent over the victims of the mishap and began to work like a fireman.
Then the engineers approached and the heads vanished. Victor tended the idol and waited for Höflinger. When he came down the stairs, Pratteler counted his steps and listened to their sound. He thought he noticed that Höflinger was afraid. That filled him with radiant joy and with faith in his good conscience. The victim knew that it was doomed. Everything seemed to clear of itself.
After the last turn in the road the factory buildings came in sight. Pratteler saw a whole crowd of flues and chimneys in full activity. Behind the iron-works were the woods, almost entirely firs, with only a few beeches between. The water power of the brook which came tumbling out of the forest was used partly for the lighting plant, partly for the works themselves.
When workingmen greeted Höflinger, Pratteler responded with sombre mien, as if he were going to a battle. When they made a joke, his brow contracted in a frown. What was there to jest and laugh at, where they should rise in revolt against reaction? Everywhere he saw too much peaceful comfort. He was determined to infuse a new spirit into the life in this valley.
With such a longlegs one could do nothing; if he had a well-proportioned figure like Victor, it would be easier to get along with him. Pratteler had substituted sole-leather for the worn-out rubber on Höflinger's pedals, because it would last longer. Now it happened that he slipped on the hard and smooth surface.
It rang the bell and whistled; but there was a crunching noise. Höflinger listened and hastily threw back the lever; the disk made a sweeping movement. Silently he went up to the iron gallery. After a moment which seemed an hour to Victor, he came down again. His face was grave; his eyes sought Victor. "Did you do anything to the machine, Pratteler?" asked he with troubled mien.
Early in the morning the two workingmen rode together to the iron-works spreading out at the opening of a ravine about an hour from Höflinger's house. Pratteler wore "the long one's" trousers and coat. He had to turn back the sleeves in order to use his hands and the trouser-legs rested in many folds upon his open sandals.
Pratteler's hand had not groped its way toward this higher sense, so he employed it where the course of work goes on abstractly without a will of its own and a predestined process is watched by a soulless eye and served by a passionless grip. On the other hand, there survived in Pratteler something of the whimsical mood of that vanishing social type, the journeyman.
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