Nothing interrupts the silence of abandonment anymore. Over the dark, aged tops of the trees the clouds expand and are reflected in the greenish-blue waters of the pond that shines like an abyss. And unmoving, as if sunken in mournful surrender the surface rests—day-in, day-out.

In the middle of the taciturn pond the palace rises up to the clouds with pointed, ramshackled towers and roofs. Weeds grow rampantly over the black, burst walls, and at the round, blind windows the sunlight recoils. In the gloomy, dark yards pigeons fly around and seek a hiding place in the chinks of the walls.

They always seem to fear something, because they fly timidly and scurry past the windows. Down there in the yard the fountain splashes quiet and fine. From the fountain basin the thirsty pigeons drink now and then.

Through the narrow, dusty hallways of the palace sometimes a musty whiff of fever streaks, so that the bats flutter up terrified. Otherwise nothing disturbs the deep rest.

But the bedrooms are dusty black. High and bleak and frosty and full of deceased objects. Through the blind windows sometimes a tiny light comes that is absorbed by the dark again. Here the past has died.

Here one day it stiffened into a single, distorted rose. In its unsubstantialness time passes carelessly.

And the silence of abandonment permeates everything.

No one is able to enter the park anymore. The branches of the trees are entangled a thousandfold, the whole park is nothing more than one gigantic organism.

And eternal night weighs under the vast roof of leaves. And deep silence! And the air is soaked with vapors of decay.

But sometimes the park awakes from heavy dreams. Then it floats out a remembrance to cool, starry nights, to deeply hidden, clandestine places, when it eavesdropped on feverish kisses and embraces, to summer nights, full of glowing splendor and glory, when the moon conjured up woozy images on the black ground, to people, who strolled with a graceful gallantry, full of rhythmic movements under its roof of leaves, who murmured sweet, kind words to each other with delicate, promising smiles.

And then the park sinks again into its death-sleep.

The shadows of blood-beeches and firs sway on the waters and from the pond’s depth a dull, sad mumbling comes.

Swans move through the shining floods, slowly, motionless, their slender necks stiffy upright. They move along! Around the deceased palace! Day-in, day-out!

Pale lilies stand at the edge of the pond among sharply colored grasses. And their shadows in the water are paler than they are.

And when they die away others come from the depths. And they are like small, dead woman-hands.

Large fish swim curiously around the pale flowers with rigid, glassy eyes, and then dive into the depth again—soundlessly!

And the silence of abandonment permeates everything.

And up there in a cracked tower the count sits. Day-in, day-out.

He looks after the clouds, which move over the tops of the trees, brightly and purely. He likes to view the sun glowing in the clouds in the evening when it sets. He listens to the noises in the heights: to the cry of a bird that flies past the tower or to the sounding roar of the wind when it sweeps around the palace.

He sees how the park sleeps, dull and heavy, and sees the swans gliding through the glittering floods—which swim around the palace. Day-in! Day-out!

And the waters shimmer greenish-blue. But the clouds that move over the palace reflect in the waters; and their shadows shine in the floods, radiant and pure, like themselves. The water lilies wave to him, like small, dead woman-hands, and rock in the quiet sounds of the wind, sadly dreamy.

On everything that surrounds him here dying, the poor count glances like a small, crazy child over whom a doom stands, and no longer has the strength to live, who dwindles like a morning shadow.

He listens to only the small, sad melody of his soul: the past!

When evening comes, he lights his old, sooted lamp and reads in huge, yellowed books about the past’s greatness and glory.

He reads with a fevered, resounding heart, until the present, where he does not belong sinks away. And the shadows of the past rise up—gigantic. And he lives the life, the superb, beautiful life of his fathers.

At nights, when the storm hunts around the tower, so that the walls creak in their bedrocks and birds shriek fearfully before his windows, the count is overcome with a nameless sadness.

Doom weighs on his centuries-old, exhausted soul.

And he presses his face to the window and looks into the night outside. And there everything appears to him vastly dreamlike, ghostly! And frightful. Through the palace he hears the storm race, as if it wanted to sweep all the dead things out and scatter them into the air.

But if the confused phantom of the night sinks away like a conjured shadow—again the silence of abandonment permeates everything.