Old story, just before midnight, the clattering stagecoach nears—more dragged than drawn by the panting horses, the lash dancing about their sweat-drenched flanks having driven the beasts to a pace unconscionable on the miserable mud-covered roads—and on the sludgy pond of a village square the coach comes to a standstill like a roar falling silent. The traveling gentleman steps out, heedlessly tramping through the puddles in his boots, clearly in great haste, yet before turning to the inn he gazes at the sky. Prodigious black backward-looking clouds drift menacingly low, the village square, without a single light, is filled with cold wind, rain is imminent; the horses had barely halted when the coachman dozed off, slumped over on the coachbox. The inn door is locked, the windows armored with stout wooden shutters. The letters on the sign above the door are illegible; the gentleman sets down his little leather case in the doorway and pounds on one shutter with a gloved fist, but there is no reply. — Never, at this hour, would he dare to cry: Open up, open up, give me a bed for just this half a night, it’s almost midnight, the horses are exhausted, why, I was announced, and tomorrow I’m expected in the city, yes, I’m the long-awaited one, my bag is filled with ducats… no one would hear him. The gentleman puts his ear to the shutter, hammers at the wood with both fists, he hears the blows resound through the house, the empty house, no doors shut off the inner rooms and hold out the racket, they’ve been torn down, broken from the walls, no furniture in the abandoned house, the floors covered with rubble, the stairs caved in, the front door boarded up. Seized by icy pain, the gentleman hears the echo of his blows die away; as he looks back imploringly at the coachman, the clouds part, for one moment a moonbeam strikes the figure whose boldly outstretched arm rests on the rail of the coachbox; from the wide sleeve, clear to see, dangle the snow-white fingers of a skeletal hand. Never would the gentleman dare address that coachman, mindful of the grisly skull hidden by the dark hat. As the darkness returns, and the rain sets in, the gentleman feels his wet face, and abandoning all hope he thinks: Soon the last night of the old era will end, and the new…I’ll never reach it, although I was announced. And watching the plundered houses of this village recede, I’ll be left with my cold knowledge in this dying world, oh, knowing that I fell a few human words short of a goal I pursued for a century, knowing that the ears of those to come would profit from certain words of mine. But now the light to come will blaze with flowing blood, for their ears shall be cut off, their limbs broken, their hearts torn asunder, their bodies shall be burned to ash, and streets paved with ash shall take into the fire the bodies of those to come…and grasping this I see that the horses will never again be whipped on, the horses are turning to stone.