Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/43

 METROPOLIS Set in all the doors stood, copper-red, mysterious, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram. Then came a time which pulled down antiquities. Then the words were spoken: The house must die. But the house was stronger than the words, as it was stronger than tl~e centuries. With suddenly falling stones it slew those who Imd hands on its walls. It opened the floor under their leet, drag. ging them down into a shaft, of which no man had previously had any knowledge. It was as ·though the plague, which had formerly wandered in the wake of the red shoes o~ the magician, still crouched in the corners of the narrow house, springing out at men from behind, to seize them by the neck. They' died. and no doctor knew the illness. The house l"esisted its desh'uetion with so great a force that word of its malignity went out over the borders of the city, spreading far over the land, that, at last, there was no honest man to be found who would have ventured to make war against it. Yes, even the thieves and the rogues, who were promised remission of their sentence provided that they declared themselves ready to pull down the magician's house, preferred to go to the pillory, or even to the scaffold, rather than to enter within these spiteful walls, these latchless doors, which were sea,Ied with Solomon's seal. The little town around the cathedral became a large town and grew into Metropolis, and into the centre of the world. One day there came to the town a man from far away, who saw the house and said: «I want to have that." He was initiated into the story of the house. He did not smile. He stood by his resolution. He bought the house at a very low price, moved in at once and kept it unaltered. This man was called Rotwang. Few knew llim. Only Jok· Fredersen knew him very well. It would have been easier for him to have decided to fight out the quarrel about the cathedral with the sect of Gothics thaR the quarrel with Rotwang about the magician's house. There were in Metropolis, in this city of reasoned method.. ical hurry, very many who would rather have gon'e far out of their way than have passed by Rotwang's house. It hardly reached knee-high to the house-giants which stood

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