Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/133

 METROPOLIS Fredersen's machine~Tjtans crushed men as though they were dried up wood. She had screamed to God. He had not heard her. She felrto the ground and never got up again. Only head and hands retained their vitality in the paralysed body. But the strength of a legion blazed in her eyes. She opposed her son and the work of her son. But he did not let her alone; he forced her to him. When she angrily vowed she wished to live in her house-under the thatched roof, with its vault, the walnut tree-until her dying day,-he transplanted house and tree and gaily blossoming garden to the Hat roof of the stone house~gian~ which lay between the cathedral and the New Tower of Babel. The walnut tree ailed one year long; and then it beC81l)e green again. The garden blossomed, a wonder of beauty, about the house. When Joh Fredersen entered this .house he came from sleepless nights and evil days. He found his mother as he always fonnd her: sitting in the wide, soft chair by the open window, the dark rug over the now paralysed knees, the great Dible on the sloping table before her. in the beautiful old hands the delicate figured lace at which she was sewing; and, as ever, when he came to her. she silently laid aside the fine work and folded her hands firmly in her lap as though she must collect all her will and every thought for the few minutes which the great son spent with his mother. They did not sbake hands; they did not do that any more. "How are you, mother?" asked Joh Fredersen. She looked at him with eyes in which gleamed the strength of a heavenly legion. She asked: "What is it you want, Joh?" He sat down opposite her and laid his forehead in his hands. There was nobody in the great Metropolis, not anywhere else on earth who could have boasted ever having seen Joh Fredersen with sunken brow. "I need your advice, mother," he said, looking at the floor. The mother's eyes rested on his hair. "How shall I advise yon, Joh? You have taken a path along which I cannot follow you-not with my head. and cer-

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