SECOND PART
I
[As this part opens, the unhappy Clara is describing her hurried
return to the same ill-fated abode at Mettingen. Hence kind
friends had borne her after the catastrophe of her brother
Wieland's "transformation." This was the crowning horror of all:
the morbid fanatic, prepared by gloomy anticipations of some
terrible sacrifice to be demanded in the name of religion, had
found himself goaded to blind fury, by a mysterious compelling
voice, to yield up to God the lives of his beloved wife and family;
and had done the awful deed!
Though chained in his madhouse, he persists in his delusion;
insists that it still remains for him to sacrifice his sister
Clara; and twice breaks away in wild efforts to find and destroy
her.]
I took an irregular path which led me to my own house. All was
vacant and forlorn. A small enclosure near which the path led was
the burying ground belonging to the family. This I was obliged to
pass. Once I had intended to enter it, and ponder on the emblems
and inscriptions which my uncle had caused to be made on the tombs
of Catharine and her children; but now my heart faltered as I
approached, and I hastened forward that distance might conceal it
from my view.
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