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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Goose Man, by Jacob Wassermann
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Goose Man
+
+Author: Jacob Wassermann
+
+Release Date: May 6, 2008 [EBook #25345]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOOSE MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Markus Brenner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             The GOOSE MAN
+
+                          by JACOB WASSERMANN
+
+
+                               Author of
+                        "THE WORLD'S ILLUSION"
+
+                      _Authorized translation by_
+                         ALLEN W. PORTERFIELD
+
+
+                   [Illustration: Das Gaensemaennchen]
+
+
+                     GROSSET & DUNLAP ~ _Publishers_
+                         _by arrangement with_
+                       HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+                                 NOTE
+
+_The first chapter, "A Mother Seeks Her Son," and sections I and II of
+the second chapter, "Foes, Brothers, a Friend, and a Mask," were
+translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. The rest of the book has been translated
+by Allen W. Porterfield. The title, "The Goose Man" ("Das Gaensemaennchen"),
+refers to the famous statue of that name in Nuremberg._
+
+
+                          COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
+                   HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+
+                        PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+          A Mother Seeks Her Son                           1
+
+          Foes, Brothers, A Friend and a Mask             23
+
+          The Nero of To-day                              44
+
+          Inspector Jordan and His Children               65
+
+          Voices from Without and Voices from Within      97
+
+          In Memory of a Dream Figure                    123
+
+          Daniel and Gertrude                            153
+
+          The Glass Case Breaks                          178
+
+          Tres Faciunt Collegium                         204
+
+          Philippina Starts a Fire                       239
+
+          Eleanore                                       277
+
+          The Room with the Withered Flowers             323
+
+          The Promethean Symphony                        352
+
+          Dorothea                                       405
+
+          The Devil Leaves the House in Flames           435
+
+          But Aside, Who Is It?                          455
+
+
+
+
+                             THE GOOSE MAN
+
+
+
+
+                        A MOTHER SEEKS HER SON
+
+
+                                   I
+
+The landscape shows many shades of green; deep forests, mostly
+coniferous, extend from the valley of the Rednitz to that of the Tauber.
+Yet the villages lie in the midst of great circles of cultivated land,
+for the tillage of man is immemorial here. Around the many weirs the
+grass grows higher, so high often that you can see only the beaks of the
+droves of geese, and were it not for their cackle you might take these
+beaks to be strangely mobile flowers.
+
+The little town of Eschenbach lies quite flat on the plain. In it a
+fragment of the Middle Ages has survived, but no strangers know it,
+since hours of travel divide it from any railway. Ansbach is the nearest
+point in the great system of modern traffic; to get there you must use a
+stage-coach. And that is as true to-day as it was in the days when
+Gottfried Nothafft, the weaver, lived there.
+
+The town walls are overgrown with moss and ivy; the old drawbridges
+still cross the moats and take you through the round, ruined gates into
+the streets. The houses have bay-windows and far-projecting overhangs,
+and their interlacing beams look like the criss-cross of muscles on an
+anatomical chart.
+
+Concerning the poet who was once born here and who sang the song of
+Parsifal, all living memory has faded. Perhaps the fountains whisper of
+him by night; perhaps sometimes when the moon is up, his shadow hovers
+about the church or the town-hall. The men and women know nothing of him
+any more.
+
+The little house of the weaver, withdrawn by a short distance from the
+street, stood not far from the inn at the sign of the Ox. Three worn
+steps took you to its door, and six windows looked out upon the quiet
+square. It is strange to reflect that the spirit of modern
+industrialism hewed its destructive path even to this forgotten nook of
+the world.
+
+In 1849, at the time of Gottfried Nothafft's marriage--his wife, Marian,
+was one of the two Hoellriegel sisters of Nuremberg--he had still been
+able to earn a tolerable living. So the couple desired a child, but
+desired it for years in vain. Often, at the end of the day's work, when
+Gottfried sat on the bench in front of his house and smoked his pipe, he
+would say: "How good it would be if we had a son." Marian would fall
+silent and lower her eyes.
+
+As time passed, he stopped saying that, because he would not put the
+woman to shame. But his expression betrayed his desire all the more
+clearly.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+A day came on which his trade seemed to come to a halt. The weavers in
+all the land complained that they could not keep their old pace. It was
+as though a creeping paralysis had come upon them. The market prices
+suddenly dropped, and the character of the goods was changed.
+
+This took place toward the end of the eighteen hundred and fifties, when
+the new power looms were being introduced from America. No toil profited
+anything. The cheap product which the machines could furnish destroyed
+the sale of the hand-made weaves.
+
+At first Gottfried Nothafft refused to be cast down. Thus the wheel of a
+machine will run on for a space after the power has been cut off. But
+gradually his courage failed. His hair turned grey in a single winter,
+and at the age of forty-five he was a broken man.
+
+And just as poverty appeared threatening at their door, and the soul of
+Marian began to be stained by hatred, the longing of the couple was
+fulfilled, and the wife became pregnant in the tenth year of their
+marriage.
+
+The hatred which she nourished was directed against the power loom. In
+her dreams she saw the machine as a monster with thighs of steel, which
+screamed out its malignity and devoured the hearts of men. She was
+embittered by the injustice of a process which gave to impudence and
+sloth the product that had once come thoughtfully and naturally from the
+careful hands of men.
+
+One journeyman after another had to be discharged, and one hand-loom
+after another to be stored in the attic. On many days Marian would slip
+up the stairs and crouch for hours beside the looms, which had once been
+set in motion by a determinable and beneficent exertion and were like
+corpses now.
+
+Gottfried wandered across country, peddling the stock of goods he had on
+hand. Once on his return he brought with him a piece of machine-made
+cloth which a merchant of Noerdlingen had given him. "Look, Marian, see
+what sort of stuff it is," he said, and handed it to her. But Marian
+drew her hand away, and shuddered as though she had seen the booty of a
+murderer.
+
+After the birth of her boy she lost these morbid feelings; Gottfried on
+the other hand seemed to dwindle from month to month. Though he
+outlasted the years, there was no cheer left in him and he got no
+comfort even from his growing boy. When he had sold all his own wares,
+he took those of others, and dragged himself wearily in summer and
+winter from village to village.
+
+In spite of the scarcity that prevailed in the house, Marian was
+convinced that Gottfried had put by money, and certain hints which he
+threw out confirmed her in this hope. It was one of his peculiar views
+that it was better to leave his wife in the dark regarding the true
+state of their fortunes. As their circumstances grew worse, he became
+wholly silent on this point.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+On the square of the grain merchants in Nuremberg, Jason Philip
+Schimmelweis, the husband of Marian's sister, had his bookbinder's shop.
+
+Schimmelweis was a Westphalian. Hatred against the junkers and the
+priests had driven him to this Protestant city of the South, where from
+the beginning he had acquired the respect of people through his ready
+wit and speech. Theresa Hoellriegel had lodged in the house in which he
+opened his shop, and gained her living as a seamstress. He had thought
+that she had some money, but it had proved to be too little for his
+ambitious notions. When he discovered that, he treated Theresa as though
+she had cheated him.
+
+He held his trade in contempt, and was ambitious of greater things. He
+felt that he was called to be a bookseller; but he had no capital
+wherewith to realise this plan. So he sat morosely in his subterranean
+shop, pasted and folded and quarrelled with his lot, and in his hours of
+leisure read the writings of socialists and freethinkers.
+
+It was the Autumn in which the war against France was raging. On that
+very morning had come the news of the battle of Sedan. All the church
+bells were ringing.
+
+To the surprise of Jason Philip, Gottfried Nothafft stepped into his
+shop. His long, patriarchal beard and tall stature gave something
+venerable to his appearance, even though his face looked tired and his
+eyes were dull.
+
+"God bless you, brother," he said and held out his hand. "The fatherland
+has better luck than its citizens."
+
+Schimmelweis, who did not like the visits of kinsmen, returned the
+salutation with careful coolness. His features did not brighten until he
+heard that his brother-in-law was stopping at the Red Cock Inn. He asked
+what errand had brought Gottfried to the city.
+
+"I must have a talk with you," Nothafft replied.
+
+They entered a room behind the shop and sat down. Jason Philip's eyes
+harboured even now a definitely negative answer to any proposal that
+might cost him money or trouble. But he was to be agreeably
+disappointed.
+
+"I want to tell you, brother," Gottfried Nothafft said, "that I have put
+by three thousand taler during the nineteen years of my married life.
+And since I have the feeling that I am not long for this world, I have
+come to ask you to take charge of the money for Marian and the boy. It
+has been troublesome enough not to touch it in these evil times that
+have come. Marian knows nothing of it, and I don't want her to know. She
+is a weak woman, and women do not understand money nor the worth and
+dignity it has when it has been earned so bitterly hard. In some hour of
+difficulty she would begin to use it, and presently it would be gone.
+But I want to ease Daniel's entry into life, when his years of training
+and apprenticeship are over. He is twelve now. In another twelve years
+he will be, God willing, a man. You can help Marian with the interest,
+and all I ask of you is to be silent and to act a father's part toward
+the boy when I shall be no more."
+
+Jason Philip Schimmelweis arose. He was moved and wrung Gottfried
+Nothafft's hand. "You may rely upon me," he said, "as you would on the
+Bank of England."
+
+"I thought that would be your answer, brother, and that is why I came."
+
+He put down on the table three thousand taler in bank notes of the
+realm, and Jason Philip wrote out a receipt. Then he urged him to stay
+that night at his house. But Gottfried Nothafft said that he must
+return home to his wife and child, and that a single night in the noisy
+city had been enough for him.
+
+When they returned to the shop, they found Theresa sitting there. In her
+lap she held Philippina, her first-born, who was three years old. The
+child had a large head and homely features. Gottfried hardly stopped to
+answer his sister-in-law's questions. Later Theresa asked her husband
+what Gottfried's business had been. Jason Philip answered brusquely:
+"Nothing a woman would understand."
+
+Three days later Gottfried sent back the receipt. On the back of it he
+had written: "The paper is of no use; it might even betray my secret. I
+have your word and your hand. That is enough. With thanks for your
+friendship and your services, I am your faithful kinsman, Gottfried
+Nothafft."
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Before peace had been made with France, Gottfried lay down to die. He
+was buried in the little churchyard by the wall, and a cross was set
+upon his grave.
+
+Jason Philip and Theresa had come to the funeral, and stayed for three
+days. An examination of her inheritance showed, to Marian's
+consternation, that there were not twenty taler in the house, and what
+she saw ahead of her was a life of wretchedness and want. Jason Philip's
+counsel and his plan were a genuine consolation to her, and his
+declaration that he would stand by her to the best of his ability eased
+her heart.
+
+It was determined that she was to open a little shop, and Jason advanced
+her one hundred taler. All the while he had the air of a made man. He
+held his head high, and his fat little cheeks glowed with health. He was
+fond of drumming with his fingers on the window pane and of whistling.
+The tune he whistled was the Marseillaise, but that tune was not known
+in Eschenbach.
+
+Daniel observed carefully his uncle's lips, and whistled the tune after
+him. Jason Philip laughed so that his little belly quivered. Then he
+remembered that it was a house of mourning, and said: "What a boy!"
+
+But really he did not like the boy. "Our excellent Gottfried does not
+seem to have trained him carefully," he remarked once, when Daniel
+showed some childish recalcitrance. "The boy needs a strong hand."
+
+Daniel heard these words, and looked scornfully into his uncle's face.
+
+Sunday afternoon, when the coffee had been served, the Schimmelweis
+couple was ready to leave. But Daniel was not to be found. The wife of
+the inn-keeper called out across the road that she had seen him follow
+the organist to church. Marian ran to the church to fetch him. After a
+while she returned, and said to Jason Philip, who was waiting: "He's
+crouching in the organ loft, and I can't get him to move."
+
+"Can't get him to move?" Jason Philip started up, and his little red
+cheeks gleamed with rage. "What does that mean? How can you tolerate
+that?" And he himself proceeded to the church to get the disobedient
+child.
+
+As he was mounting the organ-loft he met the organist, who laughed and
+said: "I suppose you're looking for Daniel? He's still staring at the
+organ, as though my bit of playing had bewitched him."
+
+"I'll drive the witch-craft out of him," Jason Philip snarled.
+
+Daniel was crouching on the floor behind the organ, and did not stir at
+his uncle's call. He was so absorbed that the expression of his eyes
+made his uncle wonder whether the boy was really sane. He grasped
+Daniel's shoulder, and spoke in a tone of violent command: "Come home
+with me this minute!"
+
+Daniel looked up, awoke from his dream, and became aware of the
+indignant hiss of that alien voice. He tore himself away, and declared
+insolently that he would stay where he was. That enraged Jason Philip
+utterly, and he tried again to lay hands on the boy in order to drag him
+down by force. Daniel leapt back, and cried with a quivering voice:
+"Don't touch me!"
+
+Perhaps it was the silence of the nave that had an admonishing and
+terrifying effect on Jason Philip. Perhaps the extraordinary malignity
+and passion in the little fellow's face caused him to desist. At all
+events he turned around and went without another word.
+
+"The stage-coach is waiting. We'll be late!" his wife called out to him.
+
+He turned a sinister face to Marian. "You're bringing up a fine product,
+I must say. You'll have your own troubles with him."
+
+Marian's eyes fell. She was not unprepared for the reproach. She was
+herself frightened at the boy's savage obduracy, his self-centred
+insistence on his imaginings, his hardness and impatience and contempt
+of all restraint. It seemed to her as though fate had inspired the soul
+of her child with something of the foolish and torturing hatred which
+she had nursed during her pregnancy.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+Jason Philip Schimmelweis left the dark basement on the square, rented a
+shop near the bridge by the museum, and set up as a bookseller. Thus
+his old ambition was realised at last.
+
+He hired a shop-assistant, and Theresa sat all day at the till and
+learned to keep books.
+
+When she asked her husband what was the source of his capital, he
+answered that a friend who had great confidence in his ability had
+advanced him the money at a low rate of interest. He added that he had
+been pledged not to divulge the name of his friend.
+
+Theresa did not believe him. Her mind was full of dark forebodings. She
+brooded incessantly and grew to be watchful and suspicious. In secret
+she tried to ferret out the identity of this nameless friend, but came
+upon no trace. Now and then she tried to cross-question Jason Philip. On
+such occasions he would snarl at her malignantly. There was no talk of
+the return of the money or of the payment of interest on it, nor did the
+books show an entry of any sort. To rid herself of the anxieties that
+accompanied her through the years, it would have been necessary for
+Theresa to believe in helpful fairies. And she did not believe in them.
+
+Nature had given her neither gaiety nor gentleness; under the pressure
+of this insoluble mystery she became ill-tempered as a wife and moody as
+a mother.
+
+When there were no customers in the shop she would pick up books quite
+at random and read in them. Sometimes it was a novel dealing with crime,
+sometimes a garrulous tract dealing with secret vices. Such things were
+needed to attract a public that regarded the buying of books as a sinful
+waste. Without special pleasure, and with a morose sort of thirst for
+information, she read revelations of court life and the printed
+betrayals of all kinds of spies, adventurers, and rogues. Quite
+unconsciously she came to judge the world to which she had no real
+access according to these books which offered her as truth the issues of
+sick and pestilential minds.
+
+But as the years went on, and prosperity raised Jason Philip definitely
+into the merchant class, he abandoned the shadier side of his business.
+He was a man who knew his age and who unfurled his sails when he was
+sure of a favourable wind. He entrusted his ship more and more to the
+ever swelling current of the political parties of the proletariat, and
+hoped to find his profit where, in a half-hearted way, his convictions
+lay. He exhibited a rebel's front to the middle-classes, and held out a
+hand of unctuous fellowship to the toiler. He knew how to make his way!
+Many an insignificant shop-keeper had been known to exchange his musty
+rooms for a villa in the suburbs, to furnish it pretentiously, and to
+send his sons on trips abroad.
+
+In these days, too, the old imperial city awoke from its romantic
+slumber. Once the sublime churches, the lovely curves of the bridges,
+and the quaint gables of the houses had formed an artistic whole. Now
+they became mere remnants. Castle and walls and mighty towers were ruins
+of an age of dreams now fortunately past. Iron rails were laid on the
+streets and rusty chains with strangely shaped lanterns were removed
+from the opening of narrow streets. Factories and smoke-stacks
+surrounded the venerable and picturesque city as an iron frame might
+surround the work of some old master.
+
+"Modern man has got to have light and air," said Jason Philip
+Schimmelweis, and clinked the coins in his trousers pocket.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Daniel attended the _gymnasium_ at Ansbach. He was to complete the
+course of studies that would entitle him to the reduction of his
+military service to one year and then enter business. This had been
+agreed upon between Jason Philip and Marian.
+
+The boy's zeal for study was small. His teachers shook their heads.
+Their considerable experience of the world had never yet offered them a
+being so constituted. He listened more eagerly to the lowing of a herd
+of cows and to the twittering of the sparrows than to the best founded
+principles of grammatical science. Some of them thought him dull, others
+malicious. He passed from class to class with difficulty and solely by
+virtue of a marvellous faculty of guessing. At especially critical
+moments he was saved through the help and advocacy of the music-master
+Spindler.
+
+The families who gave the poor student his meals complained of his bad
+manners. The wife of Judge Hahn forbade him the house on account of his
+boorish answers. "Beggars must not be choosers," she had called out
+after him.
+
+Spindler was a man who asserted quite correctly that he had been meant
+for better things than wearing himself out in a provincial town. His
+white locks framed a face ennobled by the melancholy that speaks of lost
+ideals and illusions.
+
+One summer morning Spindler had risen with the sun and gone for a long
+walk in the country. When he reached the first barn of the village of
+Dautenwinden he saw a company of strolling musicians, who had played
+dance music the evening before and far into the night, and who were now
+shaking from their hair and garments the straw and chaff amid which they
+had slept. Above them, under the open gable of the barn, Daniel Nothafft
+was lying in the straw. With an absorbed and devout expression he was
+seeking to elicit a melody from a flute which one of the musicians had
+loaned him.
+
+Spindler stood still and looked up. The musicians laughed, but he did
+not share in their merriment. A long while passed before the unskilful
+player of the flute became aware of his teacher. Then he climbed down
+and tried to steal away with a shy greeting. Spindler stopped him. They
+walked on together, and Daniel confessed that he had not been able to
+tear himself away from the musicians since the preceding afternoon. The
+lad of fourteen was not able to express his feeling; but it seemed to
+him as though a higher power had forced him to breathe the same air at
+least with those who made music.
+
+From that day on and for three years Daniel visited Spindler twice a
+week, and was most thoroughly grounded in counterpoint and harmony. The
+hours thus spent were both consecrated and winged. Spindler found a
+peculiar happiness in nourishing a passion whose development struck him
+as a reward for his many years of toneless isolation. And though the
+desperateness of this passion, though the rebelliousness and aimless
+wildness which streamed to him not only from the character of his pupil
+but also from that pupil's first attempts at composition, gave him cause
+for anxiety, yet he hoped always to soothe the boy by pointing to the
+high and serene models and masters of his art.
+
+And so the time came in which Daniel was to earn his own bread.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Spindler journeyed to Eschenbach to confer with Marian Nothafft.
+
+The woman did not understand him. She felt tempted to laugh.
+
+Music had meant in her life the droning of a hurdy-gurdy, the singing
+of a club of men, the marching of a military band. Was her boy to wander
+from door to door and fiddle for pennies? Spindler seemed a mere madman
+to her. She pressed her hands together, and looked at him as at a man
+who was wasting trivial words on a tragic disaster. The music-master
+realised that his influence was as narrow as his world, and was forced
+to leave without accomplishing anything.
+
+Marian wrote a letter to Jason Philip Schimmelweis.
+
+One could almost see Jason Philip worrying his reddish brown beard with
+his nimble fingers and the scornful twinkling of his eyes; one could
+almost hear the sharp, northern inflection of his speech when his answer
+to Daniel arrived: "I expected nothing else of you than that it would be
+your dearest wish to be a wastrel. My dear boy, either you buckle under
+and make up your mind to become a decent member of society, or I leave
+you both to your own devices. There is no living in selling herrings and
+pepper, and so you will kindly imagine for yourself the fate of your
+mother, especially if a parasite like yourself clings to her."
+
+Daniel tore up the letter into innumerable bits and let them flutter out
+into the wind. His mother wept.
+
+Then he went out into the forest, wandered about till nightfall, and
+slept in the hollow of a tree.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+One might go on and tell the tale of continued rebellion, of angry words
+on both sides, of pleas and complaints and fruitless arguments, of
+bitter controversy and yet bitterer silence.
+
+Daniel fled and returned and let the slothful days glide by, stormed
+about in the vicinity, and lay in the high grass beside the pools or
+opened his window at night, cursing the silence and envying the clouds
+their speed.
+
+His mother followed him when he went to his little room and pressed her
+ear to the door, and then entered and saw the candle still lit, and went
+to his bed and was frightened at his gleaming eyes which grew sombre at
+her approach. Full of the memories of her early cares and fears for him,
+and thinking that the darkness and the sight of her weakness would
+prevail upon him, she pleaded and begged once more. And he looked up at
+her and something broke in his soul, and he promised to do as she
+demanded.
+
+So we see him next at the house of the leather merchant Hamecher in
+Ansbach. He sits on a bale of leather in the long, dismal passage way or
+on the cellar steps or in the store room, and dreams and dreams and
+dreams. And gradually the worthy Hamecher's indulgent surprise turned to
+blank astonishment and then to indignation, and at the end of six months
+he showed the useless fellow the door.
+
+Once more Jason Philip condescended to grant his favour, and chose a new
+scene and new people for his nephew, if only to remove him from
+Spindler's baneful influence. At the mention of the city of Bayreuth no
+one became aware of Daniel's fiery ecstasy, for they had never heard of
+the name of Richard Wagner but always of the name of the wine merchant
+Maier. And so he came to Bayreuth, the Jerusalem of his yearning, and
+forced himself to an appearance of industry in order to remain in that
+spot where sun and air and earth and the very beasts and stones and
+refuse breathe that music of which Spindler had said that he himself had
+a profound presentiment of its nature but was too old to grasp and love
+it wholly.
+
+Daniel did his best to make himself useful. But in spite of himself he
+scrawled music notes on the invoices, roared strange melodies in lonely
+vaults, and let the contents of a whole keg of wine leak out, because in
+front of him, on the floor, lay the score of the English Suites.
+
+At a rehearsal he slipped into the Festival Playhouse, but was put out
+by a zealous watchman, and on this occasion made the acquaintance of
+Andreas Doederlein, who was a professor at the Nuremberg conservatory and
+a tireless apostle of the redeemer. Doederlein seemed not disinclined to
+understand and to help, and expressed a real delight at the deep,
+original enthusiasm and burning devotion of his protege. And Daniel,
+intoxicated by a rather vague and not at all binding promise of a
+scholarship at the conservatory, fled from Bayreuth by night, made his
+way on foot back to Eschenbach, threw himself at his mother's feet, and
+almost writhed there before her and begged and implored her, and in
+words almost wild sought to prevail on her to attempt to change the mind
+of Jason Philip. He tried to explain to her that his life and happiness,
+his very blood and heart were dedicated to this one thing. But she, who
+was once kindly, was now hard--hard as stone, cold as ice. She
+understood nothing, felt nothing, believed nothing, saw only the
+frightfulness, as she called it, of his incurable aberration.
+
+All these matters might have been related at length. But they are as
+inevitable in their character and sequence as the sparks and smoke that
+follow upon fire. They are quite determinable; they have often happened,
+and have always had the same final effect.
+
+What clung to Marian's soul was an immemorial prejudice against a
+gipsy's life and a stroller's fate. Her ancestors and her husband's had
+always earned their livelihood in the honest ways of a trade. She could
+not see what the free tuition at Doederlein's conservatory would avail
+Daniel, since he had nothing wherewithal to sustain life. He told her
+that Spindler had taught him how to play on the piano, that he would
+perfect his skill and so earn his sustenance. She shook her head. Then
+he spoke to her of the greatness of art, of the ecstasy which an artist
+could communicate and the immortality he might win, and that perhaps it
+would be granted him to create something unique and incomparable. But
+these words she thought mad and pretentious delusions, and smiled
+contemptuously. And at that his soul turned away from her, and she
+seemed a mother to him no more.
+
+When Jason Philip Schimmelweis learned what was afoot, he would not let
+the troublesome journey deter him, but appeared in Marian's shop like an
+avenging angel. Daniel feared him no longer, since he had given up
+hoping for anything from him. He laughed to himself at the sight of the
+stubby, short-necked man in his rage. Gleams of mockery and of cunning
+still played over the red cheeks of Jason Philip, for he had a very high
+opinion of himself, and did not think the windy follies of a boy of
+nineteen worthy of the whole weight of his personality.
+
+While he talked his little eyes sparkled, and his red, little tongue
+pushed away the recalcitrant hairs of his moustache from his voluble
+lips. Daniel stood by the door, leaning against the post, his arms
+folded across his chest, and regarded now his mother, who, dumb and
+suddenly old, sat in a corner of the sofa, now the oil portrait of his
+father on the opposite wall. A friend of Gottfried Nothafft's youth, a
+painter who had been long lost and forgotten like his other works, had
+once painted it. It showed a man of serious bearing, and brought to mind
+the princely guildsman of the Middle Ages. Seeing the picture at that
+moment enlightened Daniel as to the ancestral strain that had brought
+him to this mood and to this hour.
+
+And turning now once more to Jason Philip's face, he thought he
+perceived in it the restlessness of an evil conscience. It seemed to him
+that this man was not acting from conviction but from an antecedent
+determination. It seemed to him further that he was faced, not merely by
+this one man and his rage and its accidental causes, but by a whole
+world in arms that was pledged to enmity against him. He had no
+inclination now to await the end of Jason Philip's oratorical efforts,
+and left the room.
+
+Jason Philip grew pale. "Don't let us deceive ourselves, Marian," he
+said. "You have nursed a viper on your bosom."
+
+Daniel stood by the Wolfram fountain in the square, and let the purple
+of the setting sun shine upon him. Round about him the stones and the
+beams of the ancient houses glowed, and the maids who came with pails to
+fetch water at the fountain gazed with astonishment into the brimming
+radiance of the sky. At this hour his native town grew very dear to
+Daniel. When Jason Philip entered the square, at the corner of which the
+stage-coach was waiting, he did his best not to be seen by Daniel and
+avoided him in a wide semi-circle. But Daniel turned around and fastened
+his eyes on the man, who strode rapidly and gazed stubbornly aside.
+
+This thing too has happened before and will happen again. Nor is it
+amazing that the fugitive should turn and inspire terror in his pursuer.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+Daniel saw that he could not stay to be a burden to his mother with her
+small resources. She was poor and dependent on the judgment of a
+tyrannical kinsman. Mastering his passionate impulses, he forced himself
+to cool reflection and made a plan. He would have to work and earn so
+much money that after a year or more he would be able to go to Andreas
+Doederlein and remind him of his magnanimous offer. So he studied the
+advertisements in the papers and wrote letters of application. A printer
+in Mannheim wanted an assistant correspondent. Since he agreed to take
+the small wage offered, he was summoned to that city. Marian gave him
+his railway fare.
+
+He endured the torment for three months. Then it grew unbearable. For
+seven months he slaved for an architect in Stuttgart, next four months
+for the municipal bath in Baden-Baden, finally for six weeks in a
+cigarette factory in Kaiserslautern.
+
+He lived like a dog. In terror of having to spend money, he avoided all
+human intercourse. He was unspeakably lonely. Hunger and self-denial
+made him as lean as a rope. His cheeks grew hollow, his limbs trembled
+in their sockets. He patched his own clothes, and to save his shoes
+hammered curved bits of iron to the heels and toes. His aim sustained
+him; Andreas Doederlein beckoned in the distance.
+
+Every night he counted the sum he had saved so far. And when at last,
+after sixteen months of self-denial, he had a fortune of two hundred
+marks, he thought he could risk the fateful step. As he reckoned and
+according to his present standard of life, he thought that this money
+would last him five months. Within that period new sources might open.
+He had come to know many people and had experienced many circumstances,
+but in reality he had known no one and experienced nothing, for he had
+stood in the world like a lantern with a covered light. With an enormous
+expenditure of energy he had restrained his mind from its native
+activity. He had throttled it for the sake of its future. Hence his
+whole soul had now the temperature of a blast furnace.
+
+On his trip his fare was the accustomed one of dry bread and cheese. He
+had made a package of his few books and his music, and had despatched it
+in care of the railway station in Nuremberg. It was early spring. In
+fair weather he slept in the open. When it rained he took refuge in
+barns. A little bundle was his pillow and his ragged top-coat shielded
+him from frost. Not rarely farmers received him in kindly fashion and
+gave him a meal. Now and then a tramping apprentice joined him. But his
+silence did not invite companionship.
+
+Once in the neighbourhood of Kitzingen he came upon a high fenced park.
+Under a maple tree in the park sat a young girl in a white dress reading
+a book. A voice called: "Sylvia!" Thereupon the girl arose, and with
+unforgettable grace of movement walked deeper into the garden.
+
+And Daniel thought: Sylvia! A sound as though from a better world. He
+shuddered. Was it to be his lot to stand without a gate of life that
+gave everything to the eyes and nothing to the hands?
+
+
+                                   X
+
+He sought out Andreas Doederlein at once. He was told that the professor
+was not in town. Two weeks later he stood once more before the old
+house. He was told that the professor could not be seen to-day. He was
+discouraged. But out of loyalty to his cause he returned at the end of
+three days and was received.
+
+He entered an overheated room. The professor was sitting in an arm
+chair. On his knees was his little, eight-year-old daughter; in his
+right arm he held a large doll. The white tiles of the stove were
+adorned with pictured scenes from the Nibelungen legend; table and
+chairs were littered with music scores; the windows had leaded panes; in
+one corner there was a mass of artfully grouped objects--peacocks'
+feathers, gay-coloured silks, Chinese fans. This combination was known
+as a Makart bouquet, and represented the taste of the period.
+
+Doederlein put the little girl down and gave her her doll. Then he drew
+himself up to the fulness of his gigantic stature, a process that gave
+him obvious pleasure. His neck was so fat that his chin seemed to rest
+on a gelatinous mass.
+
+He seemed not to recall Daniel. Cues had to be given him to distinguish
+this among his crowded memories. He snapped his fingers. It was a sign
+that his mind had reached the desired place. "Ah, yes, yes, yes! To be
+sure, to be sure, my dear young man! But what do you suppose? Just now
+when all available space is as crowded as a street strewn with crumbs is
+crowded with sparrows. We might take the matter up again in autumn. Yes,
+in autumn something might be done."
+
+A pause, during which the great man gave inarticulate sounds of profound
+regret. And was the young man, after all, so sure of a genuine talent?
+Had he considered that art was becoming more and more an idling place
+for the immature and the shipwrecked? It was so difficult to tell the
+sheep from the goats. And finally, granting talent, how was the young
+man equipped in the matter of moral energy? There, indisputably, the
+core of the problem was to be sought. Or didn't he, perhaps, think so?
+
+As through a fog Daniel observed that the little girl had approached him
+and looked him over with a curiously cold and testing glance. Almost he
+was impelled to stretch out his hand and cover the eyes of the child,
+whose manner was uncanny to him through some ghostly presentiment.
+
+"I'm truly sorry that I can't give you a more encouraging outlook."
+Andreas Doederlein's voice was oily, and showed a conscious delight in
+its own sound. "But as I said, there's nothing to be done until autumn.
+Suppose you leave me your address. Put it down on this slip. No? Well,
+quite as you wish. Good-bye, young man, good-bye."
+
+Doederlein accompanied him to the door. Then he returned to his daughter,
+took her on his knee, picked up the doll, and said: "Human beings, my
+dear Dorothea, are a wretched set. If I were to compare them to sparrows
+on the road, I should be doing the sparrows but little honour. Heavens
+and earth! Wouldn't even write his name on a slip of paper. Felt hurt!
+Well, well, well. What funny creatures men are. Wouldn't leave his name.
+Well, well."
+
+He hummed the Walhalla motif, and Dorothea, bending over her doll,
+coquettishly kissed the waxen face.
+
+Daniel, standing in front of the house, bit his lips like a man in a
+fever who does not want his teeth to rattle. Why, the depth of his soul
+asked him, why did you sit in their counting-houses and waste their
+time? Why did you crucify your body and bind my wings? Why were you deaf
+to me and desirous of gathering fruits where there are only stones? Why
+did you, like a coward, flee from your fate to their offices and
+ware-houses and iron safes and all their doleful business? For the sake
+of this hour? Poor fool!
+
+And he answered: "Never again, my soul, never again."
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+In the beginning Marian had received a letter from Daniel every now and
+then. These letters became rarer. During the second year he wrote only
+once--a few lines at Christmas.
+
+At the time when he was leaving his last place of employment he wrote
+her on a postcard that he was changing his residence again. But he did
+not tell her that he was going to Nuremberg. So spring passed and
+summer. Then her soul, which was wavering between fear and hope, was
+rudely jolted out of its dim state by a letter from Jason Philip.
+
+He wrote that Daniel was loafing about in Nuremberg. Quite by accident
+he had met him a few days before near the fair booths on Schuett Island.
+His appearance was indescribable. He had tried to question him, but
+Daniel had disappeared. What had brought him to the city he, Jason
+Philip, could not see. But he was willing to wager that at the bottom of
+it was some shady trick, for the fellow had not looked like one who
+earns an honest living. So he proposed to Marian that she should come to
+Nuremberg and help in a raid on the vagabond, in order to prevent the
+unblemished name he bore from being permanently disgraced before it was
+too late. As a contribution to her travelling expenses he enclosed five
+marks in stamps.
+
+Marian had received the letter at noon. She had at once locked up her
+house and shop. At two o'clock she had reached the station at Ansbach;
+at four she arrived in Nuremberg. Carrying her hand-bag, she asked her
+way to Plobenhof Street at every corner.
+
+Theresa sat at the cashier's desk. Her brown hair on her square
+peasant's skull was smoothly combed. Zwanziger, the freckled
+shop-assistant, was busy unpacking books. Theresa greeted her sister
+with apparent friendliness, but she did not leave her place. She
+stretched out her hand across the ink-stand, and observed Marian's
+shabby appearance--the worn shawl, the old-fashioned little cloth bonnet
+with its black velvet ribbands meeting in a bow under the chin.
+
+"Go upstairs for a bit," she said, "and let the children entertain you.
+Rieke will bring up your bag."
+
+"Where is your husband?" asked Marian.
+
+"At an electors' meeting," Theresa answered morosely. "They couldn't
+meet properly, according to him, if he isn't there."
+
+At that moment a man in a workingman's blouse entered the shop and began
+to talk to Theresa urgently in a soft but excited voice. "I bought the
+set of books and they're my property," said the man. "Suppose I did skip
+a payment. That's no reason to lose my property. I call that sharp
+practice, Frau Schimmelweis, that's what I call it."
+
+"What did Herr Wachsmuth buy of us?" Theresa turned to the
+shop-assistant.
+
+"Schlosser's 'History of the World,'" was the prompt answer.
+
+"Then you'd better read your contract," Theresa said to the workingman.
+"The terms are all fixed there."
+
+"That's sharp practice, Frau Schimmelweis, sharp practice," the man
+repeated, as though this phrase summed up all he could express in the
+way of withering condemnation. "A fellow like me wants to get on and
+wants to learn something. All right. So I think I'll buy me a book and
+get a step ahead in knowledge. So where do I go? To a party member, to
+Comrade Schimmelweis, thinking natural-like I'm safe in his hands. I pay
+sixty marks--hard earned money--for a history of the world, and manage
+to squeeze the payments out o' my wages, and then, all of a sudden, when
+half the price is paid, I'm to have my property taken from me without so
+much as a by your leave just because I'm two payments in arrears."
+
+"Read your contract," said Theresa. "Every point is stipulated."
+
+"No wonder people get rich," the man went on. His voice grew louder and
+louder, and he glanced angrily at Jason Philip, who at that moment
+rushed into the shop with his hat crushed and his trousers sprinkled
+with mud. "No wonder that people can buy houses and speculate in real
+estate. Yes, Schimmelweis, I call such things sharp practice, and I
+don't give a damn for your contract. Everybody knows by this time what
+kind of business is done here--more like a man-trap--and that these here
+instalments are just a scheme to squeeze the workingman dry. First you
+talk to him about education, and then you suck his blood. It's hell!"
+
+"Pull yourself together, Wachsmuth!" Jason Philip cried sternly.
+
+Wachsmuth picked up his cap, and slammed the shopdoor behind him.
+
+Marian Nothafft's eyes passed mechanically over the titles of a row of
+fiercely red pamphlets spread out on a table. She read: "The Battle that
+Decides," "Modern Slaveholders," "The Rights of the Poor," "Christianity
+and Capitalism," "The Crimes of the Bourgeoisie." Although these
+catch-words meant nothing to her, she felt in her heart once more her
+old, long forgotten hatred against machines.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+"Fetch me a sandwich, Theresa," Jason Philip commanded, "I'm hungry as a
+wolf."
+
+"Didn't you eat anything at the inn?" Theresa asked suspiciously.
+
+"I was at no such place." Jason Philip's eyes gleamed, and he shook his
+head like a lion.
+
+So Theresa went to fetch his sandwich. It was queer to observe how much
+distrust and contradiction she was able to express through the sloth of
+her movements. But her daughter Philippina was already hurrying down the
+stairs with the sandwich.
+
+At this moment Jason Philip became aware of his sister-in-law. "Ah,
+there you are, you shrinking flower," he said lightly, and held out his
+pudgy hand. "Theresa will put you up in the little room under the
+store-room. You have a pleasant view of the river there."
+
+Theresa handed him the bread. He sniffed at it, and frowned because it
+wasn't thickly enough buttered. But he had not the courage to complain.
+He bit into it, and, with full cheeks, turned once more to Marian.
+
+"Well, that son of yours has disappeared again. A nice situation.
+Shouldn't wonder if he ended in the penitentiary. The best thing would
+be to ship him off to America; but it isn't clear to me how we're to
+get hold of him at all. It was really premature to ask you to come."
+
+"If only I knew what he's living on," Marian whispered, with repressed
+anguish.
+
+Jason Philip indulged with broad psychical comfort in an anecdote: "I
+was reading the other day how a giraffe escaped from the Zoo. You've
+heard of giraffes. They are long-necked quadrupeds, very stupid and
+stubborn. The silly beast had run off into the woods, and the people
+didn't know how to capture it. Then the keeper hung the stable-lantern
+over his chest and a bundle of hay on his back, and at nightfall went
+into the woods. Scarcely had the giraffe noticed the gleam of the
+lantern when it came up in its curiosity. At once the man swung around.
+It smelled the hay, nibbled, and began to feed. Slowly the man went on,
+and the beast went on nibbling and feeding. First thing you know it was
+back in its cage. Now don't you think that when hunger begins to torment
+him, your Daniel could be tamed with a bit of hay too? It's worth your
+thinking about."
+
+Jason Philip laughed merrily, and Zwanziger grinned. His boss was a
+source of humour. At night, when he sat in his favourite tap-rooms over
+his beer, he would entertain his boon companions with the witticisms of
+Schimmelweis, and always won their applause.
+
+A lean old man with kid gloves and a top-hat entered the shop. It was
+growing dark, and he had peered carefully about before entering. He
+hurried up to Jason Philip, and said in a cracked falsetto: "How about
+the new publications? Anything very fine?" He rubbed his hands, and
+stared stupidly from under his thin, reddish lids. It was Count
+Schlemm-Nottheim, a cousin of the Baron von Auffenberg, the leader of
+the liberal party.
+
+"I'm entirely at your service, sir," said Jason Philip, holding himself
+as rigidly as a sergeant who is being addressed by a captain.
+
+He led the count to a corner of the shop, and opened a heavy oaken
+chest. This chest contained the pornographic publications forbidden by
+the state. They were sold quite secretly and only to very reliable
+persons.
+
+Jason Philip whispered, and the old count turned over the heap of books
+with avid fingers.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+Marian climbed up the steep, dark stairs, and rang the upstairs bell.
+She had to tell the maid who she was and even mention her name to the
+children. The latter laughed at her stiff, rural courtesy. Philippina,
+who was twelve, acted arrogantly and swung her hips when she walked. All
+three had their mother's square head and a cheesy complexion.
+
+The maid brought up the bag. Then Theresa came too and helped her sister
+unpack. With her acrid, unfeeling voice she asked many questions, but
+without waiting for an answer told the tale of marriage and births and
+deaths that had taken place in the city. She avoided Marian's eyes,
+because she was silently considering how long her sister's visit would
+last and to what expense it would put her.
+
+She did not mention Daniel, and her silence condemned him more
+completely than her husband's acrimonious speeches. She held firmly an
+almost religious doctrine of the complete obedience which children owe
+their parents, and doubted Marian's power to punish properly a breach of
+this sacred law.
+
+When Marian was left alone, she sat down by the window of the little
+room, and gazed sadly down at the river. Without any curl of waves the
+yellow water glided by and washed the walls of the houses on the other
+bank. She had a view of the Museum Bridge and another bridge, and the
+crowding of people on the bridges disquieted her.
+
+She walked through the streets, and stopped at the head of the Museum
+Bridge. She thought that every human being who lived in the town must
+pass by here sooner or later. Her attentive glance searched all faces,
+and where one escaped, she followed the figure as it melted into the
+dark. But as it grew later the people were fewer and fewer.
+
+At night she would lie awake, and listen to the dull echo of the feet of
+the last passerby. Next day from morning to twilight she would wander up
+and down the streets. What she saw weighed on her heart. The city people
+seemed to her like dumb animals, tormented and angry. The narrow streets
+stopped her breath; the hubbub deadened her senses.
+
+But she was never tired of seeking.
+
+On the fifth day she did not come home until ten o'clock. Theresa, who
+had gone to bed, sent her a plate of lentil soup. While she was avidly
+eating the soup she heard steps in the hall and a knock at the door.
+Jason Philip entered. "Come along at once," was all he said. But she
+understood. With trembling fingers she threw a shawl across her
+shoulders, since the October nights were growing cool, and followed him
+in silence.
+
+They went up hill to Adler Street, turned into it and then into a
+narrow, dark little alley at the right. A lantern hung above a door and
+on a green glass pane were inscribed the words: "The Vale of Tears." A
+greenish light suffused the stone stairs that led to the cellar, the
+kegs and the desolate room filled with chairs and benches. A sourish
+smell of wine arose from the place.
+
+Beside the entrance there was a barred window. Beside it Jason Philip
+stopped, and beckoned Marian to join him.
+
+At the long tables below them sat a queer crowd. They were young men,
+but such as one never finds in ordinary houses and only very rarely in
+the streets. Want seemed to have driven them to huddle here, and the
+night to have lured them from their hiding places--shipwrecked creatures
+they seemed who had fled to a cavern on some deserted shore. They had
+absurdly gay cravats and sad, pallid faces, and the greenish light made
+them look altogether like corpses. It was long since a barber had
+touched their hair or a tailor their garb.
+
+A little aside from these sat two old fellows, habitual topers, not in
+the best circumstances themselves, yet rather astonished at this dreary
+Stygian crew. For they themselves at least received their weekly wage of
+a Saturday night, while those others had obviously for years not worked
+at all.
+
+But in a dusky corner sat one at a piano and struck the keys with a
+strange might. He had no score before him, but played from memory. The
+instrument moaned; the strings hummed pitifully; the pedals creaked; but
+the man who played was so bewitched by his music that he cared little
+for the inadequacy of its communication. Wild as the tumult of the
+playing sounded, the shrill and raging chords, the wild clamour of the
+treble, the driven triplets and seething tremolos of the bass, yet the
+deep emotion of the player, the ecstasy and world-estranged madness in
+which he was, lent the scene a melancholy and a solemnity which would
+have had its effect even without the greenish cellar and the cavernous
+pallor of the listeners.
+
+Marian had at once recognised the pianist as Daniel. She had to hold
+fast to the bars of the window and lean her knees against the
+wainscoting. It was not for nothing that Jason Philip was known as a
+thorough wag. The comparison to Daniel in the lion's den was too much
+for him. He whispered the words to Marian. But since the window was open
+and the music had first risen and then, at this moment, paused, his
+words penetrated to the people below, and several heads turned toward
+him. Marian was thoughtless. She believed that the piece had ended.
+Faintly and fearfully she cried: "Daniel!"
+
+Daniel leaped up, stared at her, saw Jason Philip's mocking face,
+hastened to the door, the steps, and was beside them.
+
+He stood in the doorway, and his lips began to form words. The unhappy
+boy, she thought, and it seemed to her as though power would be given
+her to press back to his heart the words she trembled to hear.
+
+It was in vain. The words were uttered. He did not wish to see his
+mother any more; he was content to live alone and for himself and to be
+free. He needed no one. He needed only to be free.
+
+Jason Philip hurled a glance of contempt at the blasphemous wretch, and
+drew Marian away with him. To the very corner of the alley they were
+accompanied by the excited voices of the people in the Vale of Tears.
+
+Next morning Marian returned to Eschenbach.
+
+
+
+
+                  FOES, BROTHERS, A FRIEND AND A MASK
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Daniel had rented a room of the brush-maker Hadebusch and his wife, who
+lived on Jacob's Square behind the church.
+
+It was March, and a sudden cold had set in; and Frau Hadebusch had a
+superstitious fear of coal, which she characterised as Devil's dung. At
+the back of the yard was the wood pile, and logs were brought in with
+which to feed the oven fires. But wood was dear, and had Daniel fed his
+little iron stove in the garret with such costly food, his monthly bill
+would have reached a fabulous height. He paid seven marks a month for
+his room and counted every penny so as not to shorten the period of his
+liberty by any needless expenditure.
+
+So he sat freezing over his books and scores until the first warmth of
+spring stole in through the windows. The books he borrowed from the
+library at the King's Gate, and paid six pfennigs a volume. Achim von
+Arnim and Jean Paul were his guides in those days: the one adorned the
+world of the senses for him, the other that of the soul.
+
+On the police department's identification blank Daniel had called
+himself a musician. Frau Hadebusch brought the paper into her living
+room, which, like all the rooms of the house, seemed built for dwarfs
+and reeked of limewater and lye. It was at the day's end, and in the
+room were assembled Herr Francke and Herr Benjamin Dorn, who lodged on
+the second floor, and Frau Hadebusch's son, who was weak-minded and
+crouched grinning beside the stove.
+
+Herr Francke was a town traveller for a cigar house, and was regarded as
+a good deal of a Don Juan by the female servants of the neighbourhood.
+Benjamin Dorn was a clerk in the Prudentia Life Insurance Company,
+belonged to a Methodist congregation, and was respected by all the
+respectable on account of his Christian walk and conversation.
+
+These gentlemen examined the document thoroughly and with frowns. Herr
+Francke gave it as his opinion that a musician who never made music
+could scarcely be regarded as one.
+
+"He's probably pawned his bass violin or bugle or whatever he was
+taught," he said contemptuously; "perhaps he can only beat a drum. Well,
+I can do that too if I have one."
+
+"Yes, you've got to have a drum to be a drummer," Benjamin Dorn
+remarked. "The question, however, is whether such a calling is in
+harmony with the principles of Christian modesty." He laid his finger on
+his nose, and added: "It is a question which, with all proper humility,
+all proper humility, you understand, I would answer in the negative."
+
+"He hasn't any relatives and no acquaintances at all," Frau Hadebusch
+wailed, and her voice sounded like the scraping of carrots on a grater;
+"and no employment and no prospects and no boots or clothes but what
+he's got on. In all my life I haven't had no such lodger."
+
+The blank fluttered to the floor, whence the weak-minded Hadebusch Jr.
+picked it up, rolled it in the shape of a bag, and applied that bag,
+trumpet-like, to his lips, a procedure which caused the document in
+question to be gradually soaked through and thus withdrawn from its
+official uses. Frau Hadebusch was too little concerned over the police
+regulations to take further thought of her duties as the keeper of a
+lodging house.
+
+Herr Francke drew from his pocket a pack of greasy cards and began to
+shuffle them. Frau Hadebusch giggled and it sounded like a witch
+rustling in the fire. The Methodist conquered his pious scruples, and
+placed his pfennigs on the table; the town-traveller turned up his
+sleeves as though he were about to wring a hen's neck.
+
+Before very long there arose a dissonant controversy, since Herr
+Francke's relations with the goddess of fortune were strained and
+violent. The old brush-maker poked his head in at the door and cursed;
+the weak-minded boy blew dreamily on his paper trumpet; and the company
+that had been so peacefully at one separated in violence and rage.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Daniel wandered up to the castle, along the walls, over the bridges and
+planks.
+
+It was his youth that caused him so to love the night that he forgot all
+men and seemed to himself to be alone on earth. It was his youth that
+delivered him up to things with such passion that he was able to weave
+the ghostly flowers of melodies about all that is visible--melodies that
+were so delicate, so eloquent, and so winged that no pen could ever
+record them. They vanished and died whenever he sought to capture them.
+
+But it was also his youth that fired his eyes with hatred when he saw
+the comfort of lit windows, and filled his heart with bitterness against
+the satisfied, the indifferent, the strangers, the eternal strangers who
+had no consciousness of him.
+
+He was so small and so great: small in the eyes of the world, great in
+his own estimation. When the tones burst from him like sparks from an
+anvil, he was a god. When he stood in the dark court behind the City
+Theatre waiting for the final chorus of "Fidelio" to penetrate the wall
+and reach his grateful ears, he was an outcast. Fountains of music
+rustled all about him. He looked into the eyes of the children and there
+was melody; he gazed up at the stars and there was harmony. He finally
+came to the point where there was no limit. His day was a waste place,
+his brain a parched field in the rain, his thoughts were birds of
+passage, his dreams a super-life.
+
+He lived on bread and fruit, treating himself only every third day to a
+warm meal in the inn at the sign of the White Tower. There he would sit
+and listen at times, unobserved, to the quite remarkable conversation of
+some young fellows. This awakened in him a longing for intercourse with
+congenial companions. But when the brethren of the Vale of Tears finally
+took him into their circle, he was like a Robinson Crusoe or a Selkirk
+who had been abducted from his island.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Benjamin Dorn was a compassionate individual. The desire to save a lost
+soul filled him with the courage to pay Daniel Nothafft a visit. He
+hobbled up the creaky steps with his club-foot, and knocked timidly at
+the door.
+
+"Can I be of service to you, Sir, in a Christian way?" he asked, after
+he had blown his nose.
+
+Daniel looked at him in amazement.
+
+"You know, I could help you in an unselfish, Christian way, to get a
+position. There is a great deal of work to be done down at the
+Prudentia. If I were to recommend you to Herr Zittel it certainly would
+not be in vain. Herr Zittel is head of the clerical department. I also
+stand in with Herr Diruf, and he is general agent. I come in contact
+nearly every day with Inspector Jordan, and Herr Jordan is a man of
+exceptional culture. His daughter Gertrude attended my Sunday-school
+class. She has received and still enjoys divine favour. If you were to
+entrust your case to me, you would be entering upon a righteous,
+wholesome career. I am always looking out for some one. To tell the
+truth, and not wishing to appear immodest, I was born that way."
+
+The man looked like a patchwork of qualmishness, tribulation, and
+unctuous piety, and his coat collar was badly frayed.
+
+"That's all right," replied Daniel; "don't you see that I am getting
+along quite well?"
+
+The pious life-insurance agent sighed and brushed a drop from the tip of
+his nose with the back of his hand. "My dear Sir," said he, "take to
+heart the words of Solomon: Pride goeth before a fall, but the humble in
+spirit obtain honour."
+
+"Yes, I'll take that to heart," said Daniel drily, and bent still lower
+over the score on which he was working.
+
+Benjamin Dorn sighed again, and limped out of the room. With his thumbs
+pointing straight to high heaven above, he said to Frau Hadebusch: "You
+know, Frau Hadebusch, I simply can't help it. I must lighten my heart in
+a Christian way. What do you think?"
+
+"Good heavens, what's he doing? What's he up to now?" sighed the old
+lady, as she shoved her broom under her arm.
+
+"As true as I stand here, the table is all covered with papers, and the
+papers are all covered with some kind of mysterious signs."
+
+Alarmed at the very thought of having a lodger up in the attic who was
+practising black magic, Frau Hadebusch sent her husband down to the
+district policeman. This enlightened official declared that the
+brush-maker was a gossip. Vexed at this unanticipated description of
+himself, the brush-maker went straightway to the inn at the sign of the
+Horse and got drunk, so drunk that Benjamin Dorn had to take him home.
+It was a beautiful moonlit night.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Not far from Hadebusch's was a little cafe known as The Paradise.
+Everything in it was diminutive, the proprietor, the waitress, the
+tables, the chairs and the portions. There the brethren from the Vale
+of Tears assembled to drag the gods down into the dust and destroy the
+universe in general.
+
+Daniel wended his way thither. He knew the liliputian room and the
+starved faces. He was personally acquainted with the painter who never
+painted, the writer who never wrote, the student who never studied, and
+the inventor who never invented anything. He knew all about the sculptor
+who squandered such talents as he may have had in tinkering with plaster
+casts, the actor who had been on a leave of absence for years, and the
+half dozen mendicant Philistines who came here day after day to have a
+good time in their own repelling fashion. He knew the young Baron von
+Auffenberg who had broken with his family for reasons that were clear to
+no one but himself. He knew Herr Carovius, who invariably played the
+role of the observer, and who sat there in a sort of mysterious fashion,
+smiling to himself a smile of languishing irony, and stroking his hand
+over his long hair, which was cut straight across at the back of his
+neck.
+
+He knew, ah, he knew by heart, the grease spots on the walls that had
+been rubbed in by the heads of the habitues, the indelible splotches on
+the tables, the hartshorn buttons on the proprietor's vest, and the
+smoke-coloured curtains draped about the tiny windows. The loud,
+boisterous talking, the daily repetition of the same hackneyed remarks,
+the anarchistic swashbuckling of the painter whom his comrades had
+dubbed Kropotkin--all of these were familiar stories to him. He knew the
+philosophic cynicism of the student who felt that he was the Socrates of
+the nineteenth century, and who looked back on twenty-five wasted
+semesters as on so many battles fought and won.
+
+The most interesting personage was Herr Carovius. He was a well-read
+man. That he knew a great deal about music was plain from many of his
+chance remarks. He was a brother-in-law of Andreas Doederlein, though he
+seemed to take anything but pride in the relationship. If any one
+mentioned Doederlein's name in his presence, he screwed up his face, and
+began to shuffle about uneasily on his chair. He was an unfathomable,
+impenetrable personality. Even if his years--he was forty-five--had not
+won for him a measure of esteem, the malicious and mordant scorn he
+heaped on his fellow-men would have done so. People said he had a good
+deal of money. If this was brought to his attention, he employed the
+most ghastly oaths in asserting his poverty. But since he had neither
+calling nor profession and spent his days in unqualified idleness, it
+was apparent that his assertions on this point were wholly unfounded,
+and this despite the virility of his unconventional language.
+
+"Say, tell me, who is that lanky quack there?" asked Herr Carovius,
+pointing to Daniel and looking at Schwalbe the sculptor. He had known
+Daniel for a long while, but every now and then it gave him a peculiar
+kind of pleasure to play the role of the newcomer.
+
+The sculptor looked at him indignantly.
+
+"That is a man who still has faith in himself," he remarked rather
+morosely. "He is a man who has bathed in the dragon blood of illusions,
+and has become as invulnerable as Young Siegfried. He is convinced that
+the people who sleep in the houses around this part of town dream of his
+future greatness, and have already placed an order with the green-grocer
+for his laurel wreath. He has not the faintest idea that the only thing
+that is sacred to them is their midday meal, that they are ready to
+drink their beer at the first stroke of the gong, and to yawn when the
+light appears on Mount Sinai. He is completely taken up with himself; he
+is sufficient unto himself; and he gathers honey. The bee will have its
+honey, and if it is unable to get it from the flowers, it buzzes about
+the dung heap. As is evidently the case here. _Prosit_ Nothafft," he
+said in conclusion, and lifted his glass to Daniel.
+
+Herr Carovius smiled in his usual languishing fashion. "Nothafft," he
+bleated, "Nothafft, Nothafft, that is a fine name, but not exactly one
+that is predestined to a niche in Walhalla. It strikes me as being
+rather more appropriate for the sign of a tailor. Good Lord! The bones
+the young people gnaw at to-day were covered with meat in my time."
+
+And then, clasping his glasses a bit firmer onto his nose, he riveted
+his blinking, squinting eyes on the door. Eberhard von Auffenberg,
+elegant, slender, and disgruntled, entered to find life where others
+were throwing it away.
+
+It was far into the night when the brethren went home. As they passed
+along through the streets they bellowed their nocturnal serenades at the
+windows of the otherwise peaceful houses.
+
+As the hilarious laughter and vocal rowdyism reached Daniel's ear, he
+detected from out of the hubbub a gentle voice in E-flat minor,
+accompanied by the inexorable eighth-notes sung with impressive vigour.
+Then the voice died away in a solemn E-flat major chord, and everything
+was as if sunk in the bottom of the sea.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+Toward the end of the summer, Philippina, Jason Philip's daughter, shot
+out the eye of her seven-year-old brother with a so-called bean-shooter.
+
+The children were playing in the yard. Willibald, the older boy, wanted
+the shooter. Philippina, who had not the slightest sense of humour,
+snatched it from his hands, placed the stone on the elastic band and let
+it fly with all her might. Little Marcus ran in front of it. It was all
+over in a jiffy. A heart-rending scream caused the frightened mother to
+leave the shop and run out into the yard. She found the child lying on
+the ground convulsed with pain. While Theresa carried the boy into the
+house, Jason Philip ran for the doctor. But it was too late; the eye was
+lost.
+
+Philippina hid. After considerable search her father found her under the
+cellar steps. He beat her so mercilessly that the neighbours had to come
+up and take him away.
+
+Little Marcus was Theresa's favourite child. She could not get over the
+accident. The obsession that had slumbered in her soul for years now
+became more persistent than ever: she began to brood over guilt in
+general and this case in particular.
+
+At times she would get up in the night, light a candle, and walk about
+the house in her stocking feet. She would look behind the stove and
+under the table, and then crouch down with her ear against the maid's
+door. She would examine the mouse-trap and if a mouse had been caught in
+it, she could not, try as she might, completely detach her own unrest
+from the mental disturbance of the little beast.
+
+One day Jason Philip was stopped on the street by a well-known
+cabinet-maker and asked whether he had any old furniture for sale. Jason
+Philip replied that he was not at all familiar with the contents of the
+attic and sent him to Theresa. Theresa recalled that there was an old
+desk up in the attic that had been standing there for years. She
+suggested that they might be willing to dispose of this for a few taler,
+and accompanied the man to the room where the worn-out furniture was
+stored.
+
+She opened the little wooden door. The cabinet-maker caught sight at
+once of the desk. It had only three legs and was just about ready to
+fall to pieces. "I can't make you an offer for that," said the
+cabinet-maker, and began to rap on it here and there, somewhat as a
+physician might sound a corpse. "The most I can offer you is twelve
+groschen."
+
+They haggled for a while, and finally agreed on sixteen. The man left at
+once, having promised to send one of his men up in the afternoon to get
+the desk. Theresa was already standing on the steps, when it occurred to
+her that it might be well to go through the drawers before letting the
+thing get out of the house: there might be some old documents in them.
+She went back up in the attic.
+
+In the dust of one of the drawers she found, sure enough, a bundle of
+papers, and among them the receipt which Gottfried Nothafft had sent
+back to Jason Philip ten years before. She read in the indistinct light
+the confidential words of the deceased. She saw that Jason Philip had
+received three thousand taler.
+
+After she had read this, she crumpled up the paper. Then she put it into
+her apron pocket and screamed out: "Be gone, Gottfried, be gone!"
+
+She went down stairs into the kitchen. There she took her place by the
+table and stirred a mixture of flour and eggs, as completely
+absent-minded as it is possible for one to become who spends her time in
+that part of the house. Rieke, the maid, became so alarmed at her
+behaviour that she made the sign of the cross.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+When the midday meal was over, the children left the table and prepared
+to go to school. Jason Philip lighted a cigar, and took the newspaper
+from his pocket.
+
+"Did you find anything for the second-hand furniture man?" he asked, as
+he puffed away.
+
+"I found something for him and something for myself," she said.
+
+"What do you mean? You found something for yourself?"
+
+"What do I mean? I mean just what I said. I have always known that there
+was something crooked about that money."
+
+"What money are you talking about? Listen, don't speak to me in riddles!
+When you have anything to say to me, say it. Do you understand?"
+
+"I mean Gottfried Nothafft's money, Jason Philip," said Theresa, almost
+in a whisper.
+
+Jason Philip bent over the table. "Then you have at last found the old
+receipt, have you?" he asked with wide-opened eyes. "Ahem! You have
+found the receipt that I've been looking for for years ...?"
+
+Theresa nodded. She took out a hairpin, and stuck it in a crust of
+bread. Jason Philip got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began
+to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off
+the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She
+made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was
+through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows
+protruding, planted himself before Theresa.
+
+"I suppose you think I am going to let you browbeat me," he began.
+"Well, my dear woman, you're mistaken. Listen! Are you angry at me
+because I have created for you and your children a dignified existence?
+Do you take it amiss of me for having kept your sister from going to the
+poor-house? You act as though I had won that much money at the county
+fair, or had squandered an equal amount at the same place. The truth is,
+Gottfried Nothafft entrusted me with three thousand taler. That's what
+he did; that's the truth. It was his intention to keep the whole affair
+from the chatter of women. And he willed that I should use this
+hard-earned capital in a productive way, and not give it to the culprit
+who would waste it in debauchery and worse if possible."
+
+"Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper," said Theresa, without looking up.
+"Things may go along all right for ten years, and that seems like a long
+time, but the vengeance of Heaven comes in the eleventh, as it has
+already come in the case of little Marcus."
+
+"Theresa--you're talking like a mad woman," said Jason Philip at the top
+of his voice. With that he picked up a chair, and threw it on the floor
+so violently that every cup, spoon, and plate in the room shook.
+
+Theresa turned her peasant face toward him without the shadow of a trace
+of fear. He was a trifle alarmed: "You'll have to be responsible, if you
+can, for any misfortune that visits us in the future." She spoke these
+words with a deep voice.
+
+"Do you think I am a bandit?" said Jason Philip. "Do you think I want to
+pocket the money? Don't you think that I am capable of anything better
+or higher than that? Or is ambition of any sort quite beyond your powers
+of comprehension?"
+
+"Well, what ambitions do you have?" asked Theresa in a tone of
+sullenness, her eyes in the meantime blinking.
+
+"Listen," Jason Philip continued, as he sat down on the chair he had so
+violently abused a minute before, and assumed the air of a teacher:
+"The culprit has got to submit, and that with good grace. He has got to
+fall on his knees before me. And he'll come to it. I have made some
+inquiries; I am on his tracks; and I know that he has just about reached
+the end of his rope. He'll come, depend upon it he'll come around, and
+when he does he will whine. Then I am going to take him into the
+business. In this way we will see whether it is humanly possible to make
+a useful man out of him. If I can, and if he sticks, I'll call him into
+the office, tell him the whole story, make everything as clear as day to
+him, and then offer to take him in as a partner in the firm. You have
+got to admit that he will be a made man if he becomes my partner. He
+will have sense enough himself to see this, and as sure as you are
+living, he will first kiss my hand and then eat out of it for the
+kindness I have shown him. And once this has all been put through, I
+will bind him to us more firmly than ever by having him marry
+Philippina."
+
+A wry smile disfigured Theresa's face. "I see, so, so," she said in a
+sing-song tone. "You will have him marry Philippina. I take it that you
+feel that she will be hard to marry, and that the man who does marry her
+will have his hands full. Well, that's not a bad idea."
+
+"In this way," continued Jason Philip, without detecting the scorn in
+Theresa's words, "the account between the culprit and myself will be
+settled. He will become a decent member of society, the money will
+remain in the family, and Philippina will be cared for."
+
+"And suppose he does not come; suppose he does not fall on his knees;
+suppose you have made a miscalculation. What then?" Whether Jason Philip
+himself believed what he had said Theresa could not determine. Nor had
+she the slightest desire to enlighten herself on this point. She did not
+look him in the face, but contented herself with letting her eyes rest
+on his hands.
+
+"Well--there will be time then to change my plans," said Jason Philip,
+in a tone of peeved vexation. "Leave it to me. I have turned the whole
+situation over in my mind; I have omitted not the slightest detail. I
+know men, and I have never made a mistake in judging them. _Mahlzeit!_"
+
+With that he went out.
+
+Theresa remained seated for a while, her arms folded across her breast.
+Then she got up, and walked over to the door that opened on to the
+court. Suddenly she stopped as if rooted to the sill: she caught sight
+of Philippina, who was then sitting by the window mending a pair of
+socks. On her face there was an expression of naivete that may be
+harmless in itself, but it was enough to arouse suspicion.
+
+"What's the matter with you, why didn't you go to school?" asked Theresa
+uneasily.
+
+"I couldn't; I had a headache," said Philippina curtly, and broke the
+thread as she gave a hasty jerk at the needle. Her dishevelled hair hung
+down over her forehead and quite concealed her face.
+
+Theresa was silent. Her gloom-laden eyes rested on the diligent fingers
+of Philippina. It was easy to suspect that the girl had heard everything
+Jason Philip had said, for he had such a loud voice. She could have done
+this without going to the trouble of listening at the door. Theresa was
+minded to give the girl a talking-to; but she controlled herself, and
+quietly withdrew.
+
+Philippina looked straight through her as she left. But she did not
+interrupt her work, and in a short while she could be heard humming a
+tune to herself. There was a challenge in her voice.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Daniel's money was about at an end. The new sources on which he had
+hoped to be able to draw were nowhere to be discovered. He defiantly
+closed the doors against care; and when fear showed its gloomy face, he
+shut up shop, and went out to drown his sorrows with the brethren of the
+Vale of Tears.
+
+Schwalbe, the sculptor, had made the acquaintance of Zingarella, then
+engaged in singing lascivious couplets at the Academy, and invited the
+fellows to join him.
+
+The Academy was a theatre of the lowest description. Smoking was, of
+course, permitted. When they arrived the performance was over. People
+were still sitting at many of the tables. Reeking as the auditorium was
+with the stench of stale beer, it left the impression of a dark, dank
+cavern.
+
+With an indifference that seemed to argue that Zingarella made no
+distinction between chairs and people, she took her seat between the
+sculptor and the writer. She laughed, and yet it was not laughter; she
+spoke, and her words were empty; she stretched out her hands, and the
+gesture was lifeless. She fixed her eyes on no one; she merely gazed
+about. She had a habit of shaking her bracelet in a way that aroused
+sympathy. And after making a lewd remark she would turn her head to one
+side, and thereby stagger even the most hardened frequenter of this
+sort of places. Her complexion had been ruined by rouge, but underneath
+the skin there was something that glimmered like water under thin ice.
+
+The former winsomeness of her lips was still traceable in the sorrowed
+curves of her now ravaged mouth.
+
+At times her restless eyes, seeking whom they might entangle, were fixed
+on Daniel, then sitting quite alone at the lower end of the table. In
+order to avoid the unpleasant sensation associated with the thought of
+going up to such a distinguished-looking person and making herself known
+to him, she would have been grateful had some one picked her up and
+thrown her bodily at his feet. There was an element of strangeness about
+him. Zingarella saw that he had had nothing to do with women of her
+kind. This tortured her; she gnashed her teeth.
+
+Daniel did not sense her hatred. As he looked into her face, marked with
+a life of transgression and already claimed by fate, he built up in his
+own soul a picture of inimitable chastity. He tried to see the playmate
+of a god. The curtain decorated with the distorted face of a harlequin,
+the acrobat and the dog trainer at the adjacent table, who were
+quarrelling over their money, the four half-grown gamblers directly
+behind him, the big fat woman who was lying stretched out on a bench
+with a red handkerchief over her face and trying to sleep, the writer
+who slandered other writers, the inventor who discoursed so volubly and
+incessantly on perpetual motion--to all of this he paid not the
+slightest bit of attention. For him it could just as well have been in
+the bottom of the sea. He got up and left.
+
+But as he saw the snow-covered streets before him and was unable to
+decide whether he should go home or not, Zingarella stepped up to him.
+"Come, be quick, before they see that we are together," she whispered.
+And thus they walked along like two fugitives, whose information
+concerning each other stops short with the certainty that both are poor
+and wretched and are making their way through a snow storm.
+
+"What is your name?" asked Daniel.
+
+"My name is Anna Siebert."
+
+The clock in the St. Lorenz Church struck three. The one up in the tower
+of St. Sebaldus corroborated this reckoning by also striking three and
+in much deeper tones.
+
+They came to an old house, and after floundering through a long, dark,
+ill-smelling passage way, entered a room in the basement. Anna Siebert
+lighted a lamp that had a red chimney. Gaudy garments of the soubrette
+hung on the wall. A big, grey cat lay on the table cover and purred.
+Anna Siebert took the cat in her arms and caressed it. Its name was
+Zephyr. It accompanied her wherever she went.
+
+Daniel threw himself on a chair and looked at the lamp. Zingarella,
+standing before the mirror, stroked the cat. Gazing distractedly into
+space, she remarked that the manager had discharged her because the
+public was no longer satisfied with her work.
+
+"Is this what you call the public?" asked Daniel, who never once took
+his eyes from the lamp, just as Anna Siebert kept hers rigidly fixed on
+the desolate distances of the mirror. "These fathers of families who
+side-step every now and then, these counter-jumpers, the mere looks of
+whom is enough to snatch your clothing from your body, this human filth
+at the sight of which God must conceal His face in shame--this is what
+you call the public?"
+
+"Well, however that may be," Anna Siebert continued in a colourless
+voice, "the manager rushed into my dressing room, threw the contract at
+my feet, and said I had swindled him. How on earth could I have swindled
+him? I am no prima donna and my agent had told him so. You can't expect
+a Patti on twenty marks a week. In Elberfeld I got twenty-five, and a
+year ago in Zuerich I even drew sixty. Now he comes to me and says he
+doesn't need to pay me anything. What am I to live off of? And you've
+got to live, haven't you, Zephyr," said Anna as she picked up the cat,
+pressed its warm fur to her cheek, and repeated, "You've got to live."
+
+She let her arms fall to her sides, the cat sprang on the floor, hunched
+up its back, wagged its tail, and purred. She then went up to Daniel,
+fell on her knees, and laid her head on his side. "I have reached the
+end," she murmured in a scarcely audible voice, "I am at the end of all
+things."
+
+The snow beat against the window panes. With an expression on his face
+as though his own thoughts were murdering each other, Daniel looked into
+the corner from which Zephyr's yellowish eyes were shining. The muscles
+of his face twitched like a fish on being taken from the hook.
+
+And as he cowered in this fashion, the poor girl pressed against his
+body, his shoulders lowered, past visions again arose from the depths of
+the sea. First he heard a ravishing arpeggio in A-flat major and above
+it, a majestic theme, commanding quiet, as it were, in sixteenth triads.
+The two blended, in _forte_, with a powerful chord of sevens. There was
+a struggling, a separating, a wandering on, and out of the subdued
+pianissimo there arose and floated in space a gentle voice in E-flat
+minor. O voice from the sea, O humanity on earth! The eighth note,
+unpitiable as ever in its elemental power, cut into the bass with the
+strength that moves and burrows as it advances, until it was caught up
+by the redeemed voice in E-flat major. And now everything suddenly
+became real. What had formerly been clouds and dreams, longing and
+wishing, at last took shape and form and stood before him. Indeed he
+himself became true, real, and conscious of his existence in a world of
+actualities.
+
+On his way home he covered his face with his hands, for the windows of
+the houses gaped at him like the hollow eyes of a demi-monde.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Zingarella could not imagine why the strange man had left. He seemed to
+be quite indifferent. Her heart beat with numerical accuracy, but there
+was no strength in the beats. The sole creature through which she was
+bound to the world was Zephyr.
+
+Night followed night, day followed day. Each was like the preceding. She
+spoke when people took enough trouble to speak to her. She laughed when
+they had the incomprehensible desire to hear laughter. To-day she
+wrapped this dress around her shivering body, to-morrow another. She
+waited for the time to come when she was to do something definite. She
+lay in bed and dreaded the darkness; she pondered on the injustice of
+the world; she thought of her own disgrace, and reflected on the need
+that surrounded her. It was too much for her to bear.
+
+A man would come, and at daylight he would leave and mingle with the
+rest of the people on the street. When she awoke she could no longer
+recall what he looked like. The landlady would bring in soup and meat.
+Then some one knocked at the door; but she did not open it. She had no
+desire to find out who it was. Perhaps it was the man who had been with
+her the night before; perhaps it was another.
+
+She had neither curiosity nor hope. Her soul had dissolved like a piece
+of salt in water. When she returned home on the third day she found
+Zephyr lying by the coal-scuttle dead. She knelt down, touched the cold
+fur, wrinkled her brow, shook her bracelet, and went out.
+
+It was getting along toward night, and the air was heavy with mist. She
+went first through lighted streets, and then turned into others that
+were not lighted. She passed through avenues of leafless trees, and
+walked across silent squares. The snow made walking difficult. When it
+was too deep, she was obliged to stop every now and then and take a deep
+breath.
+
+She reached the river at a point where the shore was quite flat and the
+water shallow. Without thinking for a moment, without a moment's
+hesitation, just as if she were blind, or as if she saw a bridge where
+there was none, she walked in.
+
+First she felt the water trickling into her shoes. Then she could feel
+her legs getting wet, as her clothes, soft, slippery, and ice-cold,
+clung to her body. Now her breast was under the water, and now her neck.
+She sank down, glided away, took one deep breath, smiled, and as she
+smiled she lost consciousness.
+
+The next day her body was washed up on the shore some distance beyond
+the city. It was taken to the morgue of the Rochus Cemetery.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+Schwalbe, the sculptor, was attending a funeral. His nephew had died,
+and was being buried in the same cemetery.
+
+As he passed by the morgue he caught sight of the body of a girl. After
+the child had been buried he went back to the morgue. A few people were
+standing near the body, one of whom said, "She was a singer down at the
+Academy."
+
+Schwalbe was struck by the pure and beautiful expression on the girl's
+face. He studied it long and with no little emotion. Then he went to the
+superintendent, and asked if he might take a death mask. The permission
+was given him, and in a few hours he returned with the necessary
+implements.
+
+When he removed the mask from the face, he held something truly
+wonderful in his hands. It showed the features of a sixteen-year-old
+girl, a face full at once of sweetness and melancholy, and, most
+charming of all, an angelic smile on the curved lips of this mouth of
+sorrow. It resembled the work of a renowned artist, so much so that the
+sculptor was suddenly seized with a burning desire to regain his lost
+art.
+
+He was nevertheless obliged within a week to sell the mask to the caster
+by whom he was employed in Pfannenschmied Street. Schwalbe needed ready
+money. The caster hung the mask by the door at the entrance to his shop.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+At the end of December Daniel found himself with not a cent of cash, so
+that he was obliged to sell his sole remaining treasure, the score of
+the Bach mass in B-minor. Spindler had presented it to him when he left,
+and now he had to take it to the second-hand dealer and part with it for
+a mere pittance.
+
+Unless he cared to lie in bed the whole day, he was obliged to walk the
+streets in order to keep warm. His poverty made it out of the question
+for him to go to any of the cafes, and so he was excluded from
+association with the brethren of the Vale of Tears. He had moreover
+taken a violent dislike to them.
+
+One evening he was standing out in front of the Church of AEgydius,
+listening to the organ that some one was playing. The icy wind blew
+through his thin clothing. When the concert was over he went down to the
+square, and leaned up against the wall of one of the houses. He was
+tremendously lonesome; he was lonely beyond words.
+
+Just then two men came along who wished to enter the very house against
+the wall of which he leaned. He was cold. One of these men was Benjamin
+Dorn, the other was Jordan. Benjamin Dorn spoke to him; Jordan stood by
+in silence, apparently quite appreciative of the condition in which the
+young man found himself, as he stood there in the cold and made
+unfriendly replies to the questions that were put to him. Jordan invited
+Daniel up to his room. Daniel, chilled to the very marrow of his bones,
+and able to visualise nothing but a warm stove, accepted the invitation.
+
+Thus Daniel came in contact with Jordan's family. He had three children:
+Gertrude, aged nineteen, Eleanore, aged sixteen, and Benno, fifteen
+years old and still a student at the _gymnasium_. His wife was dead.
+
+Gertrude was said to be a pietist. She went to church every day, and had
+an inclination toward the Catholic religion, a fact which gave Jordan,
+as an inveterate Protestant, no little worry. During the day she looked
+after the house; but as soon as she had everything in order, she would
+take her place by the quilting frame and work on crowns of thorns,
+hearts run through with swords, and languishing angels for a mission.
+There she would sit, hour after hour, with bowed head and knit.
+
+The first time Daniel saw her she had on a Nile green dress, fastened
+about her hips with a girdle of scales, while her wavy brown hair hung
+loose over her shoulders. It was in this make-up that he always saw her
+when he thought of her years after: Nile green dress, bowed head,
+sitting at the quilting frame, and quite unaware of his presence, a
+picture of unamiability, conscious or affected.
+
+Eleanore was entirely different. She was like a lamp carried through a
+dark room.
+
+For some time she had been employed in the offices of the Prudentia, for
+she wished to make her own living. So far as it was humanly possible to
+determine from her casual remarks, she thoroughly enjoyed her work. She
+liked to make out receipts for premiums, lick stamps, copy letters, and
+see so many people come in and go out. Stout old Diruf and lanky Zittel
+did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their
+efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise
+cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a
+short time her wonted buoyancy had returned.
+
+She seemed like a child, and yet she was every inch a woman. She
+insisted on wearing her little felt cap at a jaunty angle on her blond
+hair. When she entered the room, the atmosphere in it underwent a
+change; it was easier to breathe; it was fresher. People somehow
+disapproved of the fact that her eyes were so radiantly blue, and that
+her two rows of perfect white teeth were constantly shining from out
+between her soft, peach-like lips. They said she was light-hearted; they
+said she was a butterfly. Benjamin Dorn was of the opinion that she was
+a creature possessed of the devil of sensuality and finding her
+completest satisfaction in earthly finery and frippery. For some time
+there had been an affair of an intimate nature between her and Baron von
+Auffenberg. Just what it was no one knew precisely; the facts were not
+obtainable. But Benjamin Dorn, experienced ferreter that he was, could
+not see two people of different sexes together without imagining that he
+was an accomplice in the hereditary sin of human kind. And one day he
+caught Eleanore alone in the company of Baron von Auffenberg. From that
+day on she was, in his estimation, a lost soul.
+
+The fact concerning Eleanore was this: life never came very close to
+her. It comes right up to other people, strangles them, or drags them
+along with it. It kept its distance from Eleanore, for she lived in a
+glass case. If she had sorrow of any kind, if some painfully
+indeterminable sensation was gnawing at her soul, if the vulgarity and
+banality of a base and disjointed world came her way, the glass case in
+which she lived simply became more spacious than ever, and the things
+or thoughts that swarmed around it more and more incomprehensible.
+
+One can always laugh if one lives in a glass case. Even bad dreams
+remain on the outside. Even longing becomes nothing more than a purple
+breath which clouds the crystal from without, not from within.
+
+The people were quite right in saying that Jordan was bringing up his
+daughters like princesses. Both were far removed from the customary
+things of life: the one was translated to the realm of darkness, the
+other to that of light.
+
+Daniel saw both of them. They were just as strange to him as he to them.
+He saw the brother, too, a tall, glib, dapper youth. He saw the old
+house with its dilapidated stairs, its rooms filled with cumbersome,
+provincial furniture. He saw the alternating currents of life in this
+family: there was now rest, now unrest, now quiet, now storm. Life
+flowed out from the house, and then life, the same or of a different
+origin, flowed back in again. When he came, he talked with Jordan
+himself rather than with any one else; for he always knew when Jordan
+would be at home. They spoke in a free and easy fashion and about things
+in general. If their conversation could be characterised more fully, it
+might be said that Daniel was reserved and Jordan tactful. Gertrude sat
+by the table and attended to her needlework.
+
+Daniel came and warmed himself by the stove. If he was offered a
+sandwich or a cup of coffee he declined. If the offer was made with
+noticeable insistency, he shook his head and distorted the features of
+his face until he resembled an irritated ape. It was the peasant spirit
+of defiance in him that made him act this way. He nourished a measure of
+small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To
+temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying,
+he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he
+simply stayed away.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the
+ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to
+eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.
+
+Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to
+fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long
+overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in
+which an invalid from the Wasp's Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius
+Street were taking part.
+
+In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the
+barracks, was examined--and rejected because of a hollow chest.
+
+At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the
+hangman's bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were
+drifting about. But when he raised his distressed face a gigantic
+countenance became visible. The great vaulted arch of heaven was a
+countenance fearfully distorted by vengeance and scorn. Of escape from
+it there could be no thought. Within his soul everything became wrapped
+in darkness. Tones and pictures ran together, giving the disagreeably
+inarticulate impression that would be made by drawing a wet rag across a
+fresh, well-ordered creation.
+
+As he walked on, it seemed to him that the horror of the vision was
+diminishing. The countenance became smaller and more amiable. It was now
+not much larger than the facade of a church and what wrath remained
+seemed to be concentrated in the forehead. An old woman passed by,
+carrying apples in her apron. He trembled at the smell of them; but he
+did not reach out; he did not try to take a single one of them from her;
+he still held himself in control. By this time the entire vision was not
+much larger than the top of a tree, and in it were the traces of mercy.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were
+chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through
+Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the pavement.
+There was the vision: he caught sight of it in bodily form on the door
+jamb of the shop. He could not see that it was the mask of Zingarella.
+Of course not, for it was a transfigured face, and how could he have
+grasped a reality in his present state of mind? He looked from within
+out. The thing before him was a vision; it joined high heaven with the
+earth below; it was a promise. He could have thrown himself down on the
+street and wept, for it seemed to him that he was saved.
+
+The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the
+mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile
+playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being
+far removed from death and equally far removed from life--all this
+caused his feeling to swell into one of credulous devotion. His entire
+future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without
+a moment's hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop.
+
+Within he found a young man whom the caster addressed most respectfully
+as Dr. Benda, and who was about thirty years old. Dr. Benda was being
+shown a number of successful casts of a figure entitled "The Fountain of
+Virtue." It was quite a little while before the caster turned to Daniel
+and asked him what he wanted. In a somewhat rude voice and with an
+unsteady gesture, Daniel made it clear to him that he wished to buy the
+mask. The caster removed it from the door, laid it on the counter, and
+named his price. He looked at the shabby clothing of the newly arrived
+customer, concluded at once that the price, ten marks, would be more
+than he could afford, and turned again to Dr. Benda, so that Daniel
+might have time to make up his mind.
+
+The two conversed for quite a while. When the caster finally turned
+around, he was not a little surprised to see that Daniel was still
+standing at the counter. He stood there in fact with half closed eyes,
+his left hand lying on the face of the mask. The caster exchanged a
+somewhat dazed glance with Dr. Benda, who, in a moment of forewarning
+sympathy, grasped the situation perfectly in which the stranger found
+himself. Dr. Benda somehow understood, owing to his instinct for
+appreciation of unusual predicaments, the man's poverty, his isolation,
+and even the ardour of his wish. Subduing as well as he might the
+feeling of ordinary reserve, he stepped up to Daniel, and said to him
+calmly, quietly, seriously, and without the slightest trace of
+condescension: "If you will permit me to advance you the money for the
+mask, you will do me a substantial favor."
+
+Daniel gritted his teeth--just a little. His face turned to a greenish
+hue. But the face of his would-be friend, schooled in affairs of the
+spirit, showed a winning trace of human kindness. It conquered Daniel;
+it made him gentle. He submitted. Dr. Benda laid the money for the mask
+on the counter, and Daniel was as silent as the tomb.
+
+When they left the shop, Daniel held the mask under his arm so tightly
+that the paper wrapping was crushed, if the mask itself was not. The sad
+state of his clothing and his haggard appearance in general struck Dr.
+Benda at once and forcibly. He needed to ask but a few well chosen
+questions to get at the underlying cause of this misery, physical and
+spiritual, in human form. He pretended that he had not lunched and
+invited Daniel to be his guest at the inn at the sign of the Grape.
+
+Daniel felt that his soul had suddenly been unlocked by a magic key. At
+last--he had ears and could hear, eyes and could see. It seemed to him
+that he had come up to earth from out of some lightless, subterranean
+cavern. And when they separated he had a friend.
+
+
+
+
+                          THE NERO OF TO-DAY
+
+
+                                   I
+
+The spectacle of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the
+roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr
+Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to
+associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human
+existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he
+preferred above all others was what is known as Knickebein. Once he had
+enjoyed his liberal potion, he became jovial, friendly, companionable.
+In these moods he would venture the hardiest of assertions, not merely
+in the field of eroticism, but against the government and divine
+providence as well.
+
+And yet, when he trippled home with mincing steps, there was in his face
+an expression of cowardly, petty smirking. It was the sign of his inner
+return to virtuous living; for his night was not as his day. The one
+belied the other.
+
+He had a quite respectable income; the house in which he lived was his
+own private property. It was pointed out to strangers as one of the
+sights of the town; it was certainly one of the oldest and gloomiest
+buildings in that part of the country. An especially attractive feature
+of it was the smart and graceful bay-window. Above the beautifully
+arched outer door there was a patrician coat-of-arms, consisting of two
+crossed spears with a helmet above. This was chiselled into the stone.
+In the narrow court was a draw-well literally set in a frame of moss.
+Each floor of the house had its own gallery, richly supplied with the
+most artistic of carvings. The stairway was spacious; the tread of the
+steps was broad, the elevation slight; there were four landings. It
+symbolised in truth the leisurely, comfortable tarrying of centuries
+gone before and now a matter of easy memory only.
+
+Often in the nighttime, Herr Carovius recognised in the distance the
+massive figure of his brother-in-law, Andreas Doederlein, the professor
+of music. Not wishing to meet him, Herr Carovius would stand at the
+street corner, until the light from Doederlein's study assured him that
+the professor was at home. On other occasions he would come in contact
+with the occupant of the second floor, Dr. Friedrich Benda. When these
+two came together, there was invariably a competitive tipping of hats
+and passing of compliments. Each wished to outdo the other in matters of
+courtesy. Neither was willing to take precedence over the other. The
+polished civility of the young man made an even greater degree of pretty
+behaviour on the part of Herr Carovius imperative, with the result that
+his excessive refinement of manners made him appear awkward, while his
+embarrassment made coherent speech difficult and at times impossible.
+
+When however he came alone, he would take the huge key from his pocket,
+unlock the door, light a candle, hold it high above his head, and spy
+into every nook and cranny of the barn-like hall before entering his
+apartment on the ground floor.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Herr Carovius was a regular customer at the Crocodile Inn; a table was
+always reserved for him. Around it there assembled every noon the
+following companions: Solicitor of the Treasury Korn, assistant
+magistrate Hesselberger, assistant postmaster Kitzler, apothecary
+Pflaum, jeweller Gruendlich, and baker Degen. Judge Kleinlein also joined
+them occasionally as a guest of honour.
+
+They gossiped about their neighbours, their acquaintances, their
+friends, and their colleagues. What they said ran the whole gamut of
+human emotions from an innocent anecdote up to venomous calumny. Not a
+single event was immune from malicious backstairs comment. Reputations
+were sullied without discrimination; objections were taken to the
+conduct of every living soul; every family was shown to have its
+skeleton in the closet.
+
+When the luncheon was finished, the men all withdrew and went about
+their business, with the exception of Herr Carovius. He remained to read
+the papers. For him it was one of the most important hours of the day.
+Having feasted his ears with friends in private, he now turned to a
+study of the follies, transgressions, and tragedies that make up
+everyday life.
+
+He read three papers every day: one was a local sheet, one a great
+Berlin daily, and the third a paper published in Hamburg. He never
+deviated; it was these three, week in and week out. And he read them
+from beginning to end; politics, special articles, and advertisements
+were of equal concern to him. In this way he familiarised himself with
+the advance of civilisation, the changes civic life was undergoing, and
+the general status of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat.
+
+Nothing escaped him. He was as much interested in the murder of a
+peasant in a Pommeranian village as he was in the loss of a pearl
+necklace on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. He read with equal
+concentration of the sinking of a steamer in the South Sea and the
+wedding of a member of the Royal Family in Westminster Abbey. He could
+work up just as much enthusiasm over the latest fashions as he could
+over the massacring of enslaved Armenians by the Turks. If he read with
+care and reflection of the death of a leading citizen, he pursued the
+same course with regard to the reprehending of a relatively harmless
+vagabond.
+
+It is only fair to remark, however, that his real sympathy was with
+those events that have to be entered on the calamitous side of life's
+ledger. This was due to a bizarre kink in his philosophy: he studied the
+world primarily from the point of view of its wars, earthquakes, floods,
+hailstorms, cyclones, and public and private tragedies in the lives of
+men. Happy and reassuring events, such as the birth of a healthy child,
+the conferring of an order of distinction, heroic deeds, the winning of
+a prize in the lottery, the publication of a good book, or the
+announcement of a legitimate and successful speculation made no
+impression on him. At times they even annoyed him. He kept his mind, in
+other words, riveted on the evils, sorrows, woes, and tribulations that
+come to pass either on this earth or in the starry firmament above, and
+that were somehow brought to his attention.
+
+His brain was a storehouse of fearful and ferocious happenings; it was a
+catalogue, an inventory of disease, seduction, theft, robbery, larceny,
+assassination, murder, catastrophe, pest, incest, suicide, duel,
+bankruptcy, and the never failing family quarrel.
+
+If he chanced to enrich his collection by the addition of some
+especially curious or unheard-of incident, he took out his pocket diary,
+noted the date, and then wrote: "In Amberg a preacher had a hemorrhage
+while delivering his morning sermon." Or: "In Cochin China a tiger
+killed and ate fourteen children, and then, forcing its way into the
+bungalow of a settler, bit off the head of a woman as she was sleeping
+peacefully by the side of her husband." Or: "In Copenhagen a former
+actress, now ninety years old, mounted a huge vegetable basket on the
+market place, and recited Lady Macbeth's monologue. Her unconventional
+behaviour attracted such a large crowd of passersby that several people
+were crushed to death in the excitement."
+
+This done, he would go home, happy as a man can be. To idlers standing
+in the doorways or servants looking out the windows he would extend the
+greetings of the day, and that with really conspicuous cordiality.
+
+If a fire broke out in the city, he was present. As his eyes peered into
+the flames, they seemed intoxicated, obsessed, seized with uncanniness.
+He would hum a tune of some sort, look into the anxious faces of those
+immediately concerned, busy himself with whatever had been salvaged, and
+attempt to force his gratuitous advice on the fire chief.
+
+If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and,
+where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He
+would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the
+funeral discourse. But his lips twitched in a peculiar fashion, as if he
+felt that he were understood, and flattered.
+
+And in truth all this did flatter him. The defeat, distress, and death
+of other people, the betrayals that take place in any community, the
+highhanded injustice of those in power, the oppression of the poor, the
+violence that was done to right and righteousness, and the sufferings
+which had to be borne by thousands day after day, all this flattered
+him; it interested him; it lulled him into a comfortable feeling of
+personal security.
+
+But then he sat down at his piano at home, and played an adagio of
+Beethoven or an impromptu by Schubert, his eyes with fine frenzy rolling
+in the meantime. And when the mighty chorus in a Bach oratorio
+resounded, he became pale with ecstasy. At the hearing of a good song
+well sung he could shed copious tears.
+
+He idolised music.
+
+He was a provincial with unfettered instincts. He was an agitator with a
+tendency to conservatism. He was a Nero without servants, without power,
+and without land. He was a musician from despair and out of vanity. He
+was a Nero in our own day.
+
+He was the Nero of our day living in three rooms. He was a lonely
+bachelor and a bookworm. He exchanged his views with the corner grocer;
+he discussed city ordinances with the night watchman; he was a tyrant
+through and through and a hangman at heart; he indulged in
+eavesdropping at the shrine of fate, and in this way concocted the most
+improbable of combinations and wanton deeds of violence; he was
+constantly on the lookout for misfortune, litigation, and shame; he
+rejoiced at every failure, and was delighted with oppression, whether
+at home or abroad. He hung with unqualified joy on the imagined ruins of
+imaginary disaster, and took equal pleasure in the actual debacles of
+life as it was lived about him. And alongside of this innate and at
+times unexpressed gruesomeness and bloodthirstiness, he was filled with
+a torturing passion for music. This was Herr Carovius. Such was his
+life.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+For nine long years, that is, from the time she was fifteen until she
+was twenty-four, his sister Marguerite kept house for him. She got his
+breakfast, made his bed, darned his socks, and brushed his clothes; and
+all he knew about her was that she had yellowish hair, a skin full of
+freckles, and a timid, child-like voice. His astonishment was
+consequently unbounded when Andreas Doederlein called one day and
+proposed to her. He had moved into the house the year before. Herr
+Carovius was amazed for the very simple reason that he had never known
+Marguerite except as a fourteen-year-old girl.
+
+He took her to task. With unusual effort she summoned the courage to
+tell him that she was going to marry Doederlein. "You are a shameless
+prostitute," he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Doederlein
+the door. The wedding took place.
+
+One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas
+Doederlein, being in an unusually happy mood, went to the piano, and
+began playing the shepherd's motif from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."
+
+Herr Carovius sprang to his feet as if stung by a viper, and exclaimed:
+"Stop playing that foul magic! You know as well as you are living that I
+don't believe in it."
+
+"What do you mean, brother?" asked Andreas Doederlein, his head bowed in
+grief.
+
+"What are you trying to do? Are you trying to teach me something about
+this poisoner of wells?" shouted Herr Carovius, and his face took on the
+enraged expression of a hunchback who has just been taunted about his
+deformity. "Does the professor imagine that he knows better than I do
+who this Richard Wagner is, this comedian, this Jew who goes about
+masked as the Germanic Messiah, this cacaphonist, this bungler, botcher,
+and bully, this court sycophant, this Pulchinello who pokes fun at the
+whole German Empire and the rest of Europe led about by the nose, this
+Richard Wagner? Very well, if you have anything to teach me about him,
+go on! Proceed! I am listening. Go on! Pluck up your courage." With this
+he leaned back in his chair, and laughed a laughter punctuated with
+asthmatic sighs, his hands in the meantime resting folded across his
+stomach.
+
+Andreas Doederlein rose to his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips
+of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down
+upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crushing
+between two finger nails. "Oh, ho," he said, "how interesting! Upon my
+word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some
+one were to offer me all the money in the world, I should not like to be
+so ... interesting. Not I. And you, Marguerite, would you like to be so
+interesting?"
+
+There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority.
+It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was
+immediately converted into a gurgling titter. He opened his eyes wide
+and rolled them behind his nose-glasses, thus making himself look like a
+water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as
+she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding
+her hands, glanced in helpless fashion from her brother to her husband,
+and dropped her head before them.
+
+Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Doederlein one of hatred? It
+was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with
+which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky
+wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous mass of flesh on his
+neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If
+Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with
+crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pass his
+door with not a thought of entering it.
+
+When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings,
+he squinted into the corner, tittered, and made bold to say: "Well, my
+congratulations. It is good that the Doederleins are not to become
+extinct, for so long as one of them is living, _plaisir_ will not have
+vanished from the earth."
+
+Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or
+around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured
+forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to
+be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly
+calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She
+soon stopped playing at home.
+
+Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Doederlein wedding. Herr
+Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea.
+The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle's
+benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up
+like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of
+course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius
+said: "Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little
+toad could croak so beautifully."
+
+Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to
+attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he
+looked into Marguerite's radiant face, a certain disappointment in
+life--a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which
+delighted him.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+About this time Herr Becker died. He was the senior city official, and
+had been living in the second story of the apartment for twenty-eight
+years. Dr. Benda moved in at once with his mother.
+
+Carovius told all about this at the reserved table in the Crocodile. His
+companions were in a position to tell him a great deal more about the
+ancestry and past life of the Bendas. They were said to have been very
+rich once, to have lost their money in the great panic, and to be living
+at present in quite moderate circumstances. Benda's father was said to
+have shot himself, and his mother was reported to have taken the boy to
+school every morning. Solicitor Korn had been told that, despite his
+youth, Dr. Benda had written a number of scientific books on biology,
+but that this had not enabled him to reach his desired goal.
+
+"What goal?" the table companions asked in unison.
+
+"Why, he wanted to be made a professor, but people had objected." Why
+had they objected? came the question from more than one throat. "Well,
+you see it was this way: the man is a Jew, and the authorities are not
+going to appoint a Jew to an official position in a university without
+raising objections. That is to be taken as a matter of course." That
+this was in very truth to be taken as a matter of course was also the
+opinion of Herr Carovius, who, however, insisted that Benda didn't
+exactly look like a Jew; he looked more like a tolerably fat Dutchman.
+He was in truth not quite blond, but he was not dark either, and his
+nose was as straight as a rule.
+
+"That is just the point: that's the Jewish trick," remarked the Judge,
+and took a mighty draught from his beer glass. "In olden times," he
+said, "the Jews all had the yellow spots, aquiline noses, and hair like
+bushmen. But to-day no Christian can be certain who is Jew and who is
+Gentile." To this the whole table agreed.
+
+Herr Carovius at once began a system of espionage. He studied the faces
+of the new tenants, and was particularly careful to note when they went
+out and when they came in and with whom they associated. He knew
+precisely when they turned the lights out at night and when they opened
+the windows in the morning. He could tell exactly how many rugs they
+had, how much coal they burned, how much meat they ate, how many letters
+they received, what walks they preferred, what people they spoke to, and
+who recognised them. As if this were not enough, he went down to the
+bookstore, bought the complete works of Dr. Benda, and read these heavy
+scientific treatises in the sweat of his brow. He was annoyed at the
+thought that they had not been critically reviewed. He would have
+embraced any one who would have told him that they were all perfectly
+worthless compilations.
+
+One evening, along towards spring, he chanced to go into the backyard to
+feed Caesar. He looked up, and saw Marguerite standing on the balcony.
+She did not see him, for she was also looking up. On the balcony of the
+second floor, across the court from her, stood Friedrich Benda,
+responding to some mute signals Marguerite was giving him. Finally they
+both stopped and merely looked at each other, until Marguerite caught
+sight of her brother, when she quickly disappeared behind the glass door
+draped with green curtains.
+
+"Aha," thought Carovius, "there's something up." The scene warmed his
+very blood.
+
+From that day on he avoided the court. He sat instead for hours at a
+time in a room from which he could look out through a crack and see
+everything that was taking place at the windows and on the balconies. He
+discovered that signals were being sent from the first floor up to the
+second by changing the position of a flower pot on the railing of the
+balcony, and that these signals were answered by having a yellow cloth
+flutter on now a vertical, now a horizontal pole.
+
+At times Marguerite would come out quite timidly, and look up; at times
+Benda appeared, and stood for a while at the window completely
+absorbed, as it seemed, in melancholy thoughts. Herr Carovius caught
+them together but on one single occasion. He opened the window as
+quickly as he could, and placed his ear so that he could hear what was
+being said, but it so happened that over in the adjoining yard some one
+was just then nailing a box together. As a result of the noise it was
+impossible for him to understand their remarks.
+
+Since that day they exchanged no more signals, and never again appeared
+on the balcony.
+
+Carovius rubbed his hands at the thought that the majestic Andreas
+Doederlein had after all grown horns. But his joy waned when he reflected
+that two other people were deriving profit from the situation. That
+should not be; that had to be corrected.
+
+And so he stood at times in the evening out in the narrow passage at the
+entrance to his apartment. His bathrobe fell down over his bony body in
+many folds. In his right hand he carried a candle. Thus equipped, he
+listened in, or rather into, the stillness of the house.
+
+At times he would take a dark lantern, walk up the stairs slowly, step
+by step, and listen, listen with the greedy ears of a man who was
+determined to hear something. There was something in the air that told
+him of secret, and of course illicit, transactions.
+
+Was it the same medium through which he learned of the weakening of
+Marguerite's mind and the beclouding of her soul? Was it this that told
+him of her mental anxiety and the ever growing delusion of her terrified
+and broken heart?
+
+Later he learned of her mad outbursts of anxiety concerning the life of
+her child. He heard that she would never allow the child out of her
+sight; that she regarded the natural warmth of her body as a high fever;
+that every morning she would stand by Dorothea's bed, weep, take her in
+her arms, feel her pulse, and wrap her body in warm clothing. He heard,
+too, that night after night she sat by the child's bedside watching over
+her and praying for her, while the child herself slept like an old shoe.
+All this he learned from the maid.
+
+One day Herr Carovius came home, and found an ambulance and a crowd of
+gaping people before the house. As he went up the stairway he heard a
+hushed whimpering. Marguerite was being dragged from the house by two
+men. The rear of this procession was brought up by Andreas Doederlein, on
+whose face there was an expression of accusation. The room door was
+open. He looked in, and saw bits of broken glasses and dishes, and in
+the midst of the debris sat Dorothea. Her mouth was puckered as if just
+on the point of weeping, and a cloth was bound about her forehead. The
+maid stood in the door wringing her hands. And on a step above was
+Friedrich Benda, white as a sheet, and evidently suffering from great
+mental anxiety.
+
+Marguerite offered but little resistance. She looked behind her, and
+tried to see what the child was doing. Herr Carovius buried his hands in
+his overcoat pockets, and followed the mournful caravan out on to the
+street. The poor woman was taken to the insane asylum at Erlangen.
+
+Herr Carovius said to himself: somebody is responsible for all this. He
+determined at once to bring the guilty party to account. He took this
+stand neither out of grief nor from a feeling of love for his fellow
+men. His action was motivated by his hatred of a world in which
+something is constantly going on, and in the midst of which he was
+condemned to an inactive and deedless life.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+Not much could be learned from Doederlein's maid. The efforts to draw
+something out of little Dorothea were also fruitless. She was wrapped up
+in her own affairs. She arranged her ribbons, played with her toys,
+recounted the small incidents of her uneventful life, and could hardly
+be persuaded even to listen to the ingenious questions Carovius put to
+her when he stopped her out in the hall and asked her about this and
+that.
+
+One day he went over to Erlangen to visit his sister in the insane
+asylum. He thought that he might be able to get some clue to this
+mystery from her.
+
+He found her sitting in the corner of a room, stroking her long,
+yellowish hair. Her head was bowed; her eyes were fixed on the floor.
+Through no cunning that he could devise was it possible to entice a
+single statement from her.
+
+The physician said: "She is a harmless patient, but most secretive and
+passionate. She must have suffered for years from some heavy burden on
+her soul."
+
+Herr Carovius left her, and went back to the station. The sun was
+shining bright. He soon saw to his infinite discomfort that it was
+impossible to eliminate the picture of the melancholy woman from his
+inner eye. He went into a cafe and drank some whiskey. On the return
+journey an old woman sat opposite him who seemed to understand him.
+There was a trace of compassion in her eyes. This made him so uneasy
+that he found it necessary to change his seat.
+
+He had met with unanticipated difficulties in his investigation. He
+recognised these fully, but consoled himself with the thought that there
+was still time. It occurred to him that he might somehow get hold of Dr.
+Benda and cross-question him. He recalled having seen Friedrich Benda
+meet little Dorothea on the stairway once, and no sooner had he seen her
+coming than he made every effort to avoid her. That set Carovius to
+thinking.
+
+Some gas pipes had to be installed in the apartment about that time, and
+this gave him, as superintendent, a splendid opportunity to go up and
+see Benda. The doctor was just then making his final attempt to claim
+his rights--the rights of a man and a scholar--against the conspiracy of
+enemies who were really immune before the law.
+
+He was all alone when Carovius called. He took him straight to his
+study. The walls of his hall as well as those of his room were covered
+with books from floor to ceiling. Benda said he was just getting ready
+to go on an extended journey. The finished politeness with which he
+removed the books from a chair and the tense way in which he eyed Herr
+Carovius made it clear to the latter that this was neither the time nor
+the place to engage in mock conversation. Carovius talked gas pipes.
+Benda finished all he had to say on this subject in two short, crisp
+sentences and got up to go.
+
+Herr Carovius got up too, removed his nose glasses, and rubbed them with
+his bright blue handkerchief. "Where are you going, if I may ask?" There
+was an expression of apparent sympathy in his question.
+
+Benda made it a habit never to treat any man impolitely, however little
+regard he might have for him personally. He said that he was going to
+Kiel to deliver his trial lecture at the university.
+
+"Bravo!" cried Carovius, falling at once into the tone of awkward
+familiarity. "You have simply got to show those fellows that you are not
+a coward. Bravo!"
+
+"I don't quite understand you," said Benda in amazement. His antipathy
+for the man was growing. And no one recognised this better than Carovius
+himself.
+
+He cast a sideglance that reeked with hypocrisy at the young scholar.
+"My dear doctor, you must not look upon me as a poor uncultured yokel,"
+he said, "_anch' io sono pittore_. I have read, among other things, your
+monograph on the morphogenetic achievements of the original sulcate
+cell. Listen, man! I take off my hat to that book. Of course, it is not
+exactly original, but then it is one of your earlier works. The idea
+developed in it follows pretty closely that of the evolutionary and
+mechanical theories of the much slandered Wilhelm Roux. And yet I am
+bound to say you display considerable independence in your method.
+Indeed you do. And more than that, you throw much needed light on the
+mysteries of God himself. There is a good deal of incoherent drivel
+these days about the freedom of science. Well, you'll have to show me
+where it is. Scientists? They are a lot of conceited pin-heads, each
+working for himself, and incurably jealous of what his colleagues are
+doing. Up and at 'em, Doctor, that's my advice, and luck to you!"
+
+Benda was amazed to hear Carovius mention a work that was otherwise
+known only to specialists. This however merely tended to increase his
+distrust. He knew too much about the man to stand before him without a
+feeling of hostility. He merely needed to call to mind the story of the
+woman whose youth he had made into a waste place and a prison to be made
+aware of the fact that it was quite impossible to stand in his presence
+and breathe easily. The air of the room in which Carovius chanced to be
+was heavy, stuffy, depressing.
+
+Benda's bearing, however, remained unchanged. He replied in a serious
+tone: "It is not after all easy to get along with people. Each has his
+own place and wants to keep it. I thank you very much for your visit and
+your kind words, but my time is limited. I have a great deal to do--"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Carovius hastily, while a rancorous grin flitted
+across his face, "but you don't need to drive me away. I am going on my
+own accord. I have an engagement at the district court at five o'clock,
+I am to sign some sort of a document concerning the detention of my
+sister in the insane asylum. It probably has to do with the settling of
+her estate or something like that. Who knows? By the way, what have you
+to say about the affair? You knew her rather intimately. No hedging,
+doctor. There she sits in the cell and combs her hair. Can you imagine
+who is responsible? You know a woman doesn't lose her mind from a mere
+love affair. And this music swindler down stairs--it is impossible to
+get him to show his true colours. Yes, we all have our troubles."
+
+In order to take the sting out of his impudent insinuations, for he
+regretted having made a premature move with his trump card, Carovius
+smiled in a scurrilous fashion, ducked his head, coward that he was, and
+riveted his greedy, banal eyes on Benda.
+
+But Benda was looking down. His eyes had been attracted by the fancy
+buckle shoes of Herr Carovius. He was repelled by the man's foppish
+socks with the yellow stripes which were made more conspicuous by the
+fact that his trousers were too high. He had a feeling of unmitigated
+mental nausea, too, when he noticed how Carovius lifted first one foot
+and then the other from the floor, and then set it down, heel first. It
+was a detestable habit; and indulging in it made an ugly noise.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Benda's absence lasted for hardly a year. His mother had not accompanied
+him this time. She was not feeling well, and there was some danger that
+she was losing her eyesight.
+
+After his return he took to silent brooding. Though he never said a word
+to his mother about the disappointment he had experienced, she knew
+precisely what he had gone through, and spared him the humiliation that
+would have followed any questions she might have asked.
+
+He was oppressed by the memories the house awakened in him. Forgotten
+pictures became living ones. The figure of the murdered woman appeared
+in the nighttime on the balcony. Her shadow fell upon him, nestled up to
+him in fact, as he sat at his writing-desk.
+
+There were a great many things that still bound him to her whose spirit
+had vanished from the earth, though her body remained.
+
+It was impossible for him to forget her gentle look or the coyness of
+her hands. He knew her fate; he knew her soul. But he was condemned to
+silence. To withdraw from contact with the world and into the deepest of
+loneliness had been her lot; it had also been his. At present it was
+possible to get only one picture of her, the one her brother had given:
+she sat in her cell and combed her yellow hair.
+
+He held no one responsible; he blamed no one. He merely regretted that
+men are as they are.
+
+A former university friend of his came in, and tried to get him
+interested in collaborating on a great scientific work. He declined. As
+soon as his colleague of other days had gone, he visualised to himself
+the entire conversation: The man was affable and insistent; and yet
+there was in his very being an underground, enigmatic hostility. It was
+the hostility he invariably felt whenever he had anything to do, either
+of a purely external, business nature or in a social way, with men of
+other faith. The least he had to fear was a prejudiced inimicality, as
+if the individual in question were on the point of calling out to him:
+You stay on that side, I'll stay on this. Keep off the bridge.
+
+He was fully aware of this, but his pride forbade his fighting against
+it. He renounced his natural right to life and a living. He declined the
+university conceded privilege of co-existence. To go out and actually
+win for himself the right to participate in the inevitable contest of
+forces, or to secure even this poor privilege by supplication, or to
+defend it by argument, or to cajole it into his possession by political
+wiles, seemed to him contrary to reason and at odds with common sense.
+He would not do it.
+
+He refused to knock at the door which he himself had bolted and
+barricaded.
+
+From this self-imposed embarrassment he suffered to an almost
+intolerable degree. It was the irrational and fraudulent phase of
+matters that made him suffer. Did men act as they did because they were
+so strong in their faith? Not at all. Did he believe in those racial
+differences which made them believe? Not at all. He felt at home on the
+soil that nourished him; he felt under obligations to the weal and woe
+of his people; he was bound heart and soul to the best of them, and
+realised that he had been spiritually developed by their language,
+ideas, and ideals.
+
+Everything else was a lie. They knew that it was a lie too, but out of
+his pride they forged a weapon and turned it against him. To deny his
+relationship to them, a relationship that had been proved by his
+achievements and enthusiasm, was a part of their plan; it was also a
+part of their evil designs.
+
+To strike up acquaintances, seek out congenial companions, or take an
+active part in social organisations was repulsive to him. He did not
+care to be dragged into fruitless and empty community of effort or
+social co-operation. Defiant and alone, he explained his case to
+himself. Since it merely intensified his agony to compare his lot with
+that of others who seemed to be similarly situated, he did not do it. He
+avoided in truth all reflections that might have made the world appear
+to him as having at least a semblance of justice.
+
+He was consequently filled with a longing which took more definite
+shape day by day, and finally developed into a positive and irrevocable
+decision.
+
+About this time he made the acquaintance of Daniel, and through him he
+came to know other people. He saw at once that there was something
+unusual about Daniel; that there was something in him which he had never
+before noticed in any one. Even his outer distress was a challenge to
+greater activity, while his inner agitation never permitted his
+associates to rest in idle peace.
+
+It was not easy to be of assistance to him; he rejected all gifts which
+he could not repay. He had to be convinced first of his duty and
+indebtedness to the friend whom fate had made cross his path. And even
+then he stood out for the privilege of being theoretically ungrateful.
+
+Benda and his mother succeeded in getting him a position as a tutor in
+some private families. He had to give piano lessons to young boys and
+girls. The compensation was not great, but it at least helped him out
+for the time being.
+
+After the day's work was done, the evenings and nights bound the two
+more and more firmly together.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+One evening Daniel entered the house and met Herr Carovius. But he was
+so absorbed in thought that he passed by without noticing him. Carovius
+looked at him angrily, and walked back to the hall to see where the
+young man was going. When he heard him ring the bell on the second
+floor, an uneasy expression came over his face. He rubbed his chin with
+his left hand.
+
+"The idea of passing by me as though I were a block of wood," murmured
+Carovius spitefully. "Just wait, young man, I'll make you pay for that."
+
+Instead of leaving the house as he had wished, Carovius went into his
+apartment, lighted a candle, and tripped hastily through three rooms, in
+which there were old cabinets and trunks filled with books and music
+scores. There was also a piano in one. He then took a key from his
+pocket, and unlocked a fourth room, which had closed shades and was in
+fact otherwise quite oddly arranged.
+
+He went to a table which reached almost the full length of the room,
+picked up a piece of white paper, sat down, and wrote with red ink:
+"Daniel Nothafft. Musician. Two months in jail."
+
+He then covered the paper with mucilage, pasted it on a wooden box
+which looked like a miniature sentry-house, and nailed a lid on the box,
+using tacks that were lying ready for this purpose.
+
+There were at least five dozen such boxes on the long table, the
+majority of which had names attached to them and had been nailed up.
+
+The closed room Herr Carovius called his court chamber. What he did in
+it he termed the regulation of his affairs with humanity, and the
+collection of little wooden cells he called his jail. Every individual
+who had offended, hurt, humiliated, or defrauded him was assigned such a
+keep in which he was obliged to languish, figuratively, until his time,
+determined by a formal sentence, was up.
+
+Nor was this all. In the middle section of the table there were a number
+of diminutive sand heaps, about thirty in all, and on each one was a
+small wooden cross and on each cross was a name. That was Herr
+Carovius's cemetery, and those who were figuratively buried there were,
+so far as he was concerned, dead, even though they were still going
+about their earthly affairs as lively and cheerful as ever. They were
+people whose mundane careers were finished, as he saw it, and under each
+of their accounts, reckoned exclusively in sins, he had drawn a heavy
+line. They were such people as Richard Wagner and his champions, the
+local stationer to whom he had advanced some money years ago and who
+entered a plea of bankruptcy a few months later, the authors of bad
+books that were widely read, or of books which he loathed without having
+read them, as, for instance, those of Zola.
+
+There were still a third noteworthy section of the table, and that was
+the so-called Academy. This consisted of a plot of ground, surrounded by
+an iron fence, and divided up into twelve or fifteen square fields, each
+of which was painted in fresh green. In the middle of each field there
+was a wooden peg about two inches high, and to the middle of each peg
+there was attached a name-plate. From the tops of some of these pegs
+little banners of green cloth fluttered in the breeze.
+
+The fact is, Herr Carovius had a weakness for association with
+aristocrats. In his heart of hearts he admired the manners of the
+aristocracy, their indifference and self-complacency, their irrefragable
+traditions and their noiseless and harmonious behaviour. To the pegs of
+the Academy he had affixed the names of some of the best families he had
+known; among others, those of the Tuchers, the Hallers, the Humbsers,
+the Kramer-Kleets, and the Auffenbergs. Whenever he had succeeded in
+making the personal acquaintance of the members of any of these
+families, he went straightway to the Academy and hoisted the appropriate
+flag.
+
+But, despite all his effort, he had never in the course of time been
+able to run up more than three flags, and these only for a brief period
+and without any marked success. Some one had recognised him on the
+street or spoken to him at the concert, and that was all. The Academy
+looked, in contradistinction to the jail and the cemetery, quite
+deserted. Finally he was able to hoist the Auffenberg banner. Herr
+Carovius felt that the Academy had a great future.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Kropotkin the painter had once upon a time received an order to make a
+copy of a Holbein for Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg. He never finished
+the picture, owing to lack of ability; but he had become acquainted with
+Baron Eberhard, and years later, having met him quite accidentally, took
+him to the Paradise, where the infamous brethren were then in the habit
+of gathering.
+
+Eberhard's appearance at the Paradise was short-lived; he disappeared in
+fact as quickly as he had appeared. But this brief space was sufficient
+for Herr Carovius to become intimately acquainted with him.
+
+The first time he sat at the same table with him he was noticeably
+excited. His face shone with a mild spiritual glow. His voice was sweet
+and gentle, his remarks of an unusually agreeable moderation.
+
+He turned the conversation to a discussion of the superiorities of
+birth, and lauded the distinction of the hereditary classes. He said it
+was from them only that the people could acquire civic virtue. The
+brethren scorned his point of view. Herr Carovius came back at them with
+an annihilating jest.
+
+During the rendition of this hallelujah-solo in praise of the nobility,
+Eberhard von Auffenberg intrenched himself behind a sullen silence. And
+though Carovius used every available opportunity from then on to flatter
+the young nobleman in his cunning, crafty way, he failed. The most he
+could do was to inspire Eberhard to lift his thrush-bearded chin in the
+air and make some sarcastic remark. Fawn as he might, Carovius was
+stumped at every turn.
+
+One night, however, the two enjoyed each other's company on the way
+home. That is, Carovius never left Eberhard's side. Annoyed at the
+failure of his former tactics, he thought he would try his luck in
+another way: he ridiculed the arrogance of a certain caste which
+affected to attach less importance to a man like himself than to some
+jackanapes whose handkerchief was adorned with an embroidered crown.
+
+"What are you, any way, what is your vocation?" asked Eberhard von
+Auffenberg.
+
+"I don't do anything," replied Carovius.
+
+"Nothing at all? That is quite agreeable."
+
+"Oh, I do work a little at music," added Herr Carovius, entirely pleased
+at the curiosity of the Baron.
+
+"Now, you see, that is after all something," said the Baron. "I for my
+part am as unmusical as a shot-gun. And if you do not do anything but
+interest yourself in music, you must have a great deal of money."
+
+Herr Carovius turned away. The positive dread of being taken for a rich
+man wrestled with the vain desire to make the young Baron feel that he
+really was somebody. "I have a little," he remarked with a titter, "a
+little."
+
+"Very well; if you will loan me ten thousand marks, it will give me
+great pleasure to make you a present of the crown on my handkerchief,"
+said Eberhard von Auffenberg.
+
+Herr Carovius stopped stock still, and opened his mouth and his eyes:
+"Baron, you are taking the liberty of jesting with me." But when
+Eberhard indicated that he was quite serious, Carovius continued, blank
+amazement forcing his voice to its highest pitch: "But my dear Sir, your
+father has an income of half a million. A mere income! The tax receipts
+show it."
+
+"Well, I am not talking about my father," said Eberhard coldly, and once
+more threw his chin in the air. "It is evidently a part of your heraldic
+prejudices to feel that you can coax the income of my father into my own
+pockets."
+
+They were standing under a gas lamp at the Haller Gate. It was dripping
+rain, and they had raised their umbrellas. It was perfectly still; it
+was also late. Not a human being was to be seen anywhere. Carovius
+looked at the seriously offended young man, the young man looked at
+Carovius, then grinning a grin of embarrassment, and neither knew how to
+take the other.
+
+"You are surprised," said Eberhard, resuming the conversation. "You are
+surprised, and I don't blame you. I am a discontented guest in my own
+skin; that much I can assure you. I am as abortive a creature as ever
+was born. I inherited far too much that is superfluous, and not nearly
+enough of the necessities. There are all manner of mysteries about me;
+but they are on the outside. Within there is nothing but stale, dead
+air."
+
+He stared at the ground as though he were talking to himself, and as
+though he had forgotten that any one was listening, and continued: "Have
+you ever seen old knights carved in stone in old churches? If you have,
+you have seen me. I feel as if I were the father of my father, and as if
+he had had me buried alive, and an evil spirit had turned me to stone,
+and my hands were lying crossed over my breast and could not move. I
+grew up with a sister, and I see her as though it were yesterday"--at
+this point his face took on an expression of fantastic senility--"walking
+through the hall, proud, dainty, innocent, with roses in her hand. She
+is married to a captain of cavalry, a fellow who treats his men like
+Negro slaves, and who never returns the greeting of a civilian unless he
+is drunk. She had to marry him. I could not prevent it. Somebody forced
+her into it. And if she is carrying roses now, it is as if a corpse were
+singing songs."
+
+Herr Carovius felt most uneasy. He was not accustomed to hearing things
+like this. Where he lived people called a spade a spade. He pricked up
+his ears and made a wry face. "It is the way he has been trained that
+makes him talk like that," he thought; "it is the result of constantly
+sitting on gold-embroidered chairs and seeing nothing about him but
+paintings."
+
+"I am going to sit on such chairs too," he was happy to think, "and I
+shall see the paintings, too." He pictured himself between the Baron and
+the Baroness, marching up to the portals of the castle, flanked on
+either side by a row of liveried servants, the nervous masses catching
+sight of the splendour as well as they might. The rear of this
+procession was being brought up by the young Baron, who had returned
+home as the penitent Prodigal Son.
+
+"One must have a feeling of personal security," remarked Carovius. He
+wondered whether the Baron had reached his majority. Eberhard replied
+that he had just completed his twenty-first year, and that certain
+things had made him feel that it would be wise to live independent of
+his family and to renounce his claims to all family rights for the time
+being. What he really had in mind was the desire to avoid, so far as
+humanly possible, association with all professional money-lenders.
+
+Herr Carovius felt that this was an extremely serious case. He claimed
+moreover to understand it perfectly and to be ready for anything, but
+insisted that nothing must be withheld, that he must be given undiluted
+wine. He made this remark just as if he were holding a glass of old
+Johannisberger out in the rain, sniffing as he did with appreciative
+nostrils.
+
+"I am very discreet," he said, "very taciturn." He looked at the Baron
+tenderly.
+
+The young Baron nodded.
+
+"The wearer of purple is recognised wherever he goes," continued Herr
+Carovius, "and if he lays the purple aside he stands at once in need of
+reticent friends. I am reserved."
+
+The Baron nodded again. "If you will permit me, I shall visit you in a
+few days." With that he ended the conversation.
+
+He started off toward the Avenue, walking stiffly. It was not hard to
+see that he was ill at ease. Herr Carovius walked away with mincing,
+merry steps down toward the small end of the alley, singing an aria from
+the "Barber of Seville" as he went.
+
+At the end of the first week he was taken down with a disconcerting
+suspicion that the Baron had made a fool of him. He was filled with a
+wrath that had to be cooled. One morning, just as he was leaving his
+apartment, he saw two milk cans filled with milk standing in the outer
+hall. One was for the first floor, the other for the second. The
+milkmaid had placed them there for the time being, and had gone over to
+have a little morning chat with her neighbour. Herr Carovius went to his
+lumber-room, which also served as the kitchen, took down a jug of
+vinegar, came back, looked around with all the caution he could summon,
+and then poured half of the contents of the jug into one can and the
+other half into the other.
+
+Two days later he decided not to give Caesar anything to eat, so that he
+would terrify the neighbours by his howling. This worked. The dog howled
+and whined and barked night after night. It was enough to melt the heart
+of a stone. Nobody could sleep. Andreas Doederlein went to the police,
+but they told him that the case was beyond their jurisdiction.
+
+Herr Carovius lay in bed rejoicing with exceeding great joy over the
+fact that the people could not sleep. He became enamoured of the idea
+that it might be possible, through some ingenious invention, to rob a
+whole city or a whole nation of its sleep. The inventor could then move
+about conscious of the fact that he was at once the distributor and the
+destroyer of the world's supply of sleep. If he so elected to exploit
+his invention, he could revel in the sight of an entire people pining,
+drying up, and eventually dying from the want of sleep.
+
+After Caesar had become quite savage, Herr Carovius decided to unleash
+him. It was just after sunset. He slipped up to the beast from the rear,
+and opened the chain lock. The dog ran like mad through the court and
+the hall, and out on to the street.
+
+Just at this moment young Baron von Auffenberg was entering to pay Herr
+Carovius that promised visit. He jumped back from the beast, but it
+sprang at his body, and in a jiffy the Baron was lying full length on
+the pavement. Caesar left him, made a straight line for the open door of
+a butcher shop across the street, sprang in, and snatched a fancy cut
+from one of the hooks.
+
+In order to see just how much damage the dog would really do, Herr
+Carovius ran after him, hypocritically feigning as he ran an expression
+of horror, and acting as though the beast had somehow broken his chain
+and got loose. The first sight that caught his eyes was that of the young
+Baron as he rose to his feet and limped over toward his host to-be.
+
+The horror of Herr Carovius at once became real. With the diligence of a
+seasoned flunkey, he stooped over, picked up the Baron's hat, dusted it,
+stammered all sorts of apologies, gazed at high heaven like a martyred
+saint, and brushed the dirt from Eberhard's trousers. Then the dog came
+back, a huge piece of meat in his mouth. The butcher came to the door
+and shook his fists. The butcher's boy stuck two fingers in his mouth,
+and whistled for the police. They came, too, and Herr Carovius had to
+pay for the meat.
+
+He then took the Baron into his living-room, plying him in the meantime
+with innumerable questions as to how he felt. Having been stunned by the
+fall, the Baron asked to lie down for a few minutes on the couch. Herr
+Carovius granted his wish, smothering him with sighs of affection and
+exclamations of regret.
+
+As the Baron lay on the couch, trying to regain his vital spirits, Herr
+Carovius went to the piano and played the rondo from Weber's sonata in A
+flat major. His technique was superb; his emotion was touching.
+
+After the concert the transactions began.
+
+
+
+
+                   INSPECTOR JORDAN AND HIS CHILDREN
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Benno Jordan was now a senior in the _gymnasium_ and had begun to play
+mischievous pranks. He also declared that he was no longer minded to
+tolerate the tyranny of the school, and that he had not the slightest
+desire to enter the university. He was a wilful, obstinate boy with a
+marked tendency to sociability. He paid a great deal of attention to his
+clothes, and was proud of his handsome face.
+
+After repeated conversations with the seventeen-year-old boy, Jordan
+decided to get him a job as a clerk in the offices of the Prudentia. He
+discussed the situation with the general agent, and Alfons Diruf gave
+his consent. Benno began his work at fifty marks a month.
+
+When Jordan would come home of an evening, the first thing he would hear
+from Eleanore was that Benno had an engagement with some of his friends,
+and that they were in the Alfas Garden, or in the Wolf's Glen, or in
+Cafe Merkur, where the orchestrion, then a new invention, was being
+played for the first time.
+
+"Lord, what is to become of the next generation?" said Jordan, quite
+worried. "All they think about is having a good time. Why, I never in my
+whole life thought of merely amusing myself."
+
+Anxious about Benno's behaviour, Jordan called on the chief of the
+clerical department. The little man with the waxened, weazened, face
+expressed himself as quite satisfied with the new employe. Jordan took
+him by the hand; it was his way of displaying gratitude. And he was
+grateful, though it was hard for him to subdue a feeling of solicitude.
+He recognised the boy's external amiability, but felt convinced that
+this merely covered and concealed a decayed soul.
+
+Alfons Diruf was obese and gloomy. His clothes were made in Paris, and
+on the ring finger of his left hand was a brilliant diamond.
+
+Since the Prudentia had introduced the so-called workmen's insurance,
+the number of clerks on its payroll had been increased by about
+twenty-five thousand. Of these eighty-four were under Diruf's direct
+supervision. They were located in three rooms of a house in Fuerther
+Street. They were pale and they were silent. Diruf himself had a private
+office which resembled the boudoirs of a woman of the world. The
+curtains were of blue silk, a bathing nymph by Thumann hung on the wall,
+and the whole place smelled of musk.
+
+Three times a day he would leave his fair retreat, and, with the mien of
+disgust, make the rounds of the clerks' quarters. When they saw him
+coming, heads ducked, hands scurried across the books, feet stopped
+scraping, and all whispering died out.
+
+He gave the impression of a man who hated his job, but in reality he
+loved it. He liked the clerks because of their servile docility and
+their famished faces. He liked them because they came promptly every
+morning and went away every evening tired as tired could be, and because
+day after day, year in and year out, they sat there and wrote, wrote,
+wrote.
+
+He liked the inspectors because day after day, year in and year out,
+they did a great deal of work for a very little money. He liked the
+agents and sub-agents who made it possible for the company to issue
+hundreds of new policies every day. He liked their dirty clothes and
+tattered boots, their hungry looks, their misleading but effective line
+of talk, and their sad faces.
+
+The special bait of the workmen's insurance was the small premium,
+carrying with it a small policy. In this way the man of small means was
+to be educated in thrift. As a rule, however, the small man realised,
+when it was too late, that the agent had promised more than the company
+could do. He became distrustful; his weekly savings were so scant that
+it was impossible for him to pay his premiums regularly; with the
+expiration of each week it became increasingly difficult to make up the
+back payments, and, before he knew precisely what had happened, his
+policy had been declared void, and the money he had paid in on it
+confiscated.
+
+In this way the company made millions. It was the pfennigs of the
+poorest classes that constituted these millions, made the dividends rise
+higher and higher, increased the army of clerks, and filled the pockets
+of the agents.
+
+These agents were recruited from the scum of human society. They were
+made up of bankrupts, decadent students, gamblers, topers, and beggars.
+They came from the ranks of those who had been pursued by misfortune
+and who bore the marks of crime. No one was too small or too bad.
+
+Alfons Diruf, however, saw that it would vastly improve the credit of
+the company if to this list of outcasts he would add a few eminently
+respectable citizens. He consequently went out on his own
+responsibility, and looked for help. His quest brought him to Jason
+Philip Schimmelweis.
+
+"It's a gold mine," he said; "you work for an ideal, and you get
+something out of it for yourself. Ideals, incidentally, that are not
+profitable are idiotic." With that he blew the smoke of his Havana cigar
+through his nose.
+
+Jason Philip understood. It was not necessary to flatter the leader and
+politician that was admittedly in him. He nearly ran his legs off
+working for the company. Alfons Diruf loved this socialist bookkeeper,
+after a fashion.
+
+Inspector Jordan saw however that the countless brokers were encroaching
+on his territory and stirring up distrust on the part of his better
+clients. He lost his interest. The directors felt obliged to send Alfons
+Diruf a critical memorandum explaining Jordan's case, and showing that
+he was no longer as efficient as he used to be.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Daniel had grown tired of his room in the attic and the society of
+brush-maker Hadebusch. He announced that he was going to move.
+Surrounded by a cloud of smells from boiled cabbage, Frau Hadebusch
+raged about the ingratitude of man. Her shrieks called Herr Francke and
+the Methodist from out their warm holes; the brush-maker and his
+imbecile son also appeared in the dimly lighted vestibule; and before
+these five Hogarth figures stood the defenceless sinner, Daniel
+Nothafft.
+
+He looked about in the suburbs of St. Mary, but found everything too
+dear. He went out to New Gate, but everything was taken. He tried the
+St. John district, and that pleased him best of all. Late in the
+afternoon he came to a house in the Long Row, at the entrance to which
+hung a "To Let" sign.
+
+He pulled the bell cord, and a beautiful servant girl took him into a
+room. Through the window he could look out on a garden filled with old
+trees. A spinster came in, and smiled at the pleasure he took in the
+room and the view.
+
+"I must see my sister," she said, as he asked her about the price.
+
+She called out into the hall, and her sister, likewise an elderly and
+kindly spinster, came in. They held a council, the deliberations of
+which were conducted in muffled tones, and then agreed that they would
+have to consult Albertina. She was the third sister. The first tip-toed
+to the door and, with pointed lips, called the name, Albertina, out into
+the long hall with as much coyness as had been employed in summoning the
+second sister.
+
+Albertina was the youngest of the three; she was about forty. But she
+had forgotten, like Jasmina and Saloma, to erase twenty years from the
+calendar: all three had preserved the youthful charm of their girlhood.
+
+Albertina blushed as she looked at the young man, and her modesty was
+contagious; the two sisters also blushed. She told Daniel that they were
+the Ruediger sisters. With that she remained silent, and looked down as
+though she had divulged her entire fate. She informed Daniel that they
+had decided to rent the room to some dependable young man, because there
+had been considerable petty thieving in the neighbourhood of late and
+they would like to enjoy the protection of a man, for they were entirely
+alone, except for the boy who tended the garden. They told him also that
+they had had several offers, but that they had declined them because
+they did not like the appearance of the applicants. In affairs of this
+kind, indeed in everything, the three sisters were always of like mind.
+
+Fraeulein Saloma asked Daniel what he did. He replied that he was a
+musician. A chorus of surprise greeted his ears, rendered in perfect
+time by the three female voices. Fraeulein Jasmina asked him whether he
+was a singer or a violinist. He replied that he was neither, that he was
+a composer, or that he at least hoped to become one. With that an
+expression of intense spirituality spread over the faces of the sisters,
+so that they looked like triplets. Aha, a creative artist! "Y-e-s," said
+Daniel, "if you wish to put it that way: a creative artist."
+
+They hopped into the corner like so many sparrows, and went into serious
+conference. Fraeulein Saloma, as chairman, wanted to know whether a
+monthly rent of twelve marks would be too much. No, replied Daniel, that
+would not be excessive. He said it without giving the matter the
+slightest consideration, and then shook hands with the sisters. Fraeulein
+Jasmina added that he could use the piano on the first floor whenever he
+wished to, and that it merely needed tuning. Daniel shook her hand
+again, this time with special warmth. His joy had awakened in him a
+measure of clumsy familiarity.
+
+Before he left the house he went out into the garden, and stood for a
+while under one of the trees. A tree to myself at last, he thought. Up
+in the top a blackbird was singing. Meta the servant looked out from the
+door where she was standing, astonished at it all.
+
+Fraeulein Albertina said to her sisters: "He seems like an interesting
+young man, but he has bad manners."
+
+"Artists attach no importance to externalities," replied Fraeulein
+Jasmina with knitted brow.
+
+"A great mistake. He always looked as if he had just come out of a
+bandbox. You remember, don't you?"
+
+The other two nodded. The three then walked down the garden path, arm in
+arm.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Daniel was standing in the vegetable market before the Goose Man
+Fountain, eating apples.
+
+The sun was shining, and he noticed that the shadow of the fountain was
+moving slowly toward the church. It made him sad to see that time was
+passing and how it was passing. When he turned around, however, and saw
+that the bronze figure of the man with the two geese under his arms was
+not merely indifferent to the passing of time but confident that all is
+well, he could not help but laugh.
+
+What made him laugh was partly the calm of the man: he was always
+waiting for something, and he was always there. He was likewise amused
+at the thought that two geese could make a man look so contented.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+As Daniel was going home one afternoon from a piano lesson, he met
+Eleanore Jordan. He told her about his new room and the three bizarre
+creatures in the house in the Long Row.
+
+Eleanore had heard all about them. She said they were the daughters of
+the geometrician Ruediger, and that he had left the town some time ago
+because of a quarrel with the citizens, or rather with one of the gilds.
+The origin of the trouble was the picture of a certain painter. More she
+did not know, other than that Ruediger had gone to Switzerland and lost
+his life by falling down one of the mountains. The sisters, she said,
+were the laughing stock of the town. They never left the house except on
+certain days, when they went out to the nearby cemetery at the Church of
+St. John to place flowers on the grave of that painter.
+
+Daniel hardly listened to what she said. They were standing at the St.
+Sebaldus Church, and the chimes began to play. "Magnificent," he
+murmured, "an ascending triad in A."
+
+Eleanore asked him how he was getting along, and looked with regret at
+his sunken cheeks. Her virile expression was rather displeasing to him.
+He was surprised to see how rarely she lowered her eye lids. He said he
+was getting along quite well. She smiled.
+
+"It's terrible that a man has to have a monster in his body that must be
+fed," he remarked. "Otherwise one could storm the heavens and steal the
+songs of the angels. But this was not to be. You have first to flutter
+your wings until they are wounded and break your chains, and by that
+time such ethereal power as you may have had is dissipated."
+
+He wrinkled his face until he again looked like the wily ape. "But I am
+going to see it through," he said. "I want to find out whether God drew
+me from the urn as a blank or a prize." He could be very eloquent when
+he talked about himself.
+
+Eleanore smiled. It seemed to her that it was merely necessary to bring
+a little order into his life. She consequently assumed the
+responsibility of looking after his room.
+
+In Tetzel Street they met the inspector. As Jordan walked along at the
+side of his beloved daughter, it seemed to him that the grey walls and
+weather-beaten stones of the houses were no longer so earthy or weighed
+down with time. Eleanore looked toward the West into the purple glow of
+the setting sun. She was not quite herself. There came moments when she
+suffered from homesickness for a fairer land.
+
+She thought of Italy. She conjured up lovely visions of sunny bays,
+blooming groves, and white statues.
+
+Daniel however went on toward the Fuell. The workmen were coming from the
+suburbs, and in their tired faces he felt that he recognised his own
+world. "Oh," he sighed, "I should like to get nearer the stars, to make
+the acquaintance of more dependable hearts, of hearts that are truer
+even than my own."
+
+Just then he looked up at Benda's window, and saw his light. He was
+ashamed of himself.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+The first time Eleanore visited Daniel it was along toward evening. She
+heard from a distance the piano and the shrill crowing of Daniel's
+voice. Down in the hall she saw three white figures cuddled up close to
+each other like hens on a roost.
+
+It was the Ruediger sisters trying to drink in the creative efforts of
+the artist. That they were eavesdropping at the fount of art they
+understood both in the good and the bad sense: their enthusiasm was
+praiseworthy, their courtesy was deficient. When they caught sight of
+Eleanore on the stairway, they were terrified, and rustled into the
+adjoining room.
+
+The three elderly hearts beat impetuously. It was Jasmina's turn to read
+from Rueckert's poems. Jasmina had not the shadow of a desire to perform;
+her sisters were equally disinclined to listen.
+
+"It is not right," the three kept saying, when they heard of Eleanore's
+visits. "It is not right." Even Meta the maid was of the opinion that
+her calls were highly unconventional.
+
+As Daniel played on and merely nodded to her, Eleanore's eyes fell on
+the mask of Zingarella. She stepped up, took it down from the nail on
+the wall, and examined it in perfect silence.
+
+Daniel had in the meantime left the piano. A loud cry from him startled
+her: "What the devil are you doing?" he exclaimed in a tone of
+immoderate anger. He took the mask, which she was handling so lightly
+and tremulously, out of her hands, and replaced it on the nail with
+affectionate care.
+
+The sensitive girl at once began to cry. She turned to one side in order
+to conceal her tears. Daniel was irritated, but the first thought that
+occurred to him was how he could make amends for his rudeness. He
+fetched a worn book, and offered to lend it to her. It was a translation
+of that beautiful old novel, "Manon Lescaut."
+
+Eleanore came frequently after office hours, but never remained long;
+she did not wish to make the people at home uneasy. During the short
+time she stayed she always found a number of things to do, such as
+straightening up the papers on his table or arranging his scores.
+
+She became acquainted with Benda; he took a liking to her. It did him
+good merely to be in her presence, and he could not understand why she
+did not have the same wholesome effect on Daniel. Daniel seemed
+thoroughly unappreciative of the girl. He was like a man who goes along
+the street carrying a basket full of eggs: his sole ambition for the
+time being is to see that not a single egg is lost or broken.
+
+The two would frequently accompany the girl home. Daniel always talked
+about himself, and Benda listened with a smile. Or Benda talked about
+Daniel, and Daniel was all ears.
+
+What did people say? That Eleanore was now trotting around with three
+men, whereas she formerly had only one on her string, the Baron, and
+that you are going to hear from this affair.
+
+Every now and then a snip of ugly gossip reached Eleanore's ears. She
+paid not the slightest attention to it. She looked out from her glass
+case on to the world with cool and cheerful indifference, quite
+incapable of placing the established interpretation on the glances of
+calumniators.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Benda could have sketched Daniel's face in the darkness: the round
+forehead, the little nose, pointed and mulish, the rigidly pinched lips,
+the angular musician's chin, and the deep dimples in his cheeks.
+
+His ignorance of the musician was complete. Like all scholars, he
+nurtured an ingrained distrust when it came to the supernatural
+influence of art. For the great musical compositions which, in the
+course of time and as a result of the homage of succeeding generations,
+had come to be regarded as exemplary and incontestable, he had a feeling
+of reverence. For the creations of his contemporaries he had no ear.
+
+That it was hard to understand and appreciate, he knew. That it was
+bitter not to be understood or appreciated, he had experienced. That the
+discipline associated with all intellectual work demands its tribute in
+the form of sacrificial renunciation needed no proof in his case.
+
+The musician was something new to him. How did he regard him? As a blind
+man whose soul was on fire. As a drunken man who made the impression of
+repulsive sobriety on other men. As an obsessed individual who was
+living an excruciatingly lonely life and was unaware of it. As an
+unpolished peasant with the nerves of a degenerate.
+
+The scientist wished to find the established and formulated law in the
+musician--a task that could lead only to despair. The friend surveyed
+the life of his friend; he allowed the personalities of many young men
+whom he had met in life to pass before his mind's eye. He looked for the
+criteria of common interests; he sought a law, even here. He sat in the
+dusk, and read from the works of the philosopher Mainlaender. Then he
+laid the book to one side, and said to himself: "The youth of to-day are
+lacerating, devastating themselves.... It is a fearful age. Measure,
+proportion, and balance are gone. Every model becomes a caricature. The
+individual is absolutely dependent upon himself. The flame is without
+container, and threatens to burn the hand that would check it."
+
+In Daniel he had found his brother in fate. Music became his brother in
+torture. On seeing his friend lacerated and devastated, he saw twitch
+from the eye of Gorgo herself the profoundest of wisdom. But he did not
+lay bare his own heart.
+
+One night, after unending conversation had brought them both to
+silence--like ships which, tossed about by the winds, at last drift into
+the harbour--Benda, taking up with an angry, exasperated remark by
+Daniel as it echoed back from the other shore of this silence, said: "We
+must not be vain. We dare not usurp a privilege which has no other basis
+than our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It
+seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that
+without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout."
+
+Daniel looked up at once. Benda's big teeth were visible under his bushy
+moustache. He had a habit of pulling his lips apart whenever he was
+searching for a really incisive word.
+
+Benda continued: "The great majority of what you call talent is
+ignominious. Talent is a feather duster. All that comes from the finger
+tips is evil. The man who has a distinct goal and is willing to suffer
+in order to reach it, that man we can use. And otherwise--how beautiful
+it all is after all! Heaven is above us, the earth is beneath us, and in
+between stands immortal man."
+
+Daniel got up, and seized Benda's hand. There was nothing more
+vanquishing than Benda's handshake. His good strong right became a vise
+in which he shook a man's hand until it became limp, a perfectly
+delightful benevolence radiating from his eyes in the meanwhile.
+
+The two men exchanged the fraternal "thou."
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Eleanore returned the copy of "Manon Lescaut." When Daniel asked her
+how she liked it, she never said a word. Since he thought that it was an
+excellent book, he began to scold.
+
+She said: "I cannot read books in which there is so much talk about
+love."
+
+He gazed into space in order to allow her voice time to die away. There
+was a violin tone in her speech, the charm of which he could not escape.
+When he fully realised what she had said, he laughed a short laugh, and
+remarked that her attitude was one of affected coyness. She shook her
+head. Then he teased her about going with young Auffenberg, and asked
+her whether real love affairs were just as disagreeable to her as those
+related in novels.
+
+The flaming blue of her eyes compelled him to look down. It was not
+pleasant for him to admit, by action, that the expression in her face
+was stronger than his own. She left, and did not allow herself to be
+seen for a few days.
+
+When she returned, he was naive enough to renew his banter. She took her
+seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: "Do we
+really intend to remain friends, Daniel?" she asked.
+
+He cast a side glance of amazement at her, not because he was
+particularly struck by her charming suavity and marked winsomeness, but
+rather because the violin tone in her throat resounded more strongly and
+clearly than ever. But it was quite impossible for him to give an
+affirmative reply to her question without puckering up his lips and
+putting his hands in his trouser pockets.
+
+She said she had no desire to seem important in his estimation, that she
+merely wanted him to regard her as different from other girls. She
+insisted that he concede her one privilege if they were to remain
+friends: he was not to talk to her about love, either seriously or in
+jest. She remarked that for months the very word love had called up
+ghost-like recollections. Why this was so, she said she could not tell
+him, not now, perhaps years from now when both had grown old. She could
+not do it, for if she endeavoured to refresh old memories or revive what
+she had half forgotten, her whole past arose before her, flat, languid,
+and insipid, easily misinterpreted by the person who heard the story,
+however clear it might be to her. She repeated that this was the way it
+was, and she could not help it. Once again she asked that he spare her
+feelings on this point.
+
+Her face took on a serious expression; it resembled an old picture.
+There was something dream-like in her words.
+
+"Well, if that is all you have on your mind, Eleanore, I am sure that
+it will be easy for me to respect your wish," said Daniel. There was a
+manifest lack of feeling in the kindness he displayed. It seemed indeed
+that the secret to which she was attaching so much importance was far
+removed from his egotistically encircled world. The little fountain in
+the garden was rustling. He listened to see if he could not catch the
+dominating tone in the continual splashing.
+
+Eleanore turned to him now with renewed if not novel candour. She was
+closer to him in every way--her eyes, her hands, and her words.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Daniel had just completed an orchestral work which he had entitled
+"Vineta." He wished to have Benda hear it. One evening about six Benda
+came in. Everything was ready. Daniel sat down at the piano. His face
+was pale, his smooth upper lip was trembling.
+
+"Now think of the sea; think of a storm; think of a boat with people in
+it. Picture to yourself a wonderful _aurora borealis_ and a sunken city
+rising from the sea. Imagine a sea that had suddenly become calm, and in
+the light a strange phenomenon. Conjure up such a scene before your
+mind's eye, or conjure up something totally different, for this is a
+false way of getting at the meaning of music. It is plain prostitution
+to think anything of the kind. Ice-flat."
+
+He was just about to begin, when some one knocked at the door. Eleanore
+entered. She whisked across the room, and took her seat on the sofa.
+
+The piece opened with a quiet rhythmical, mournful movement, which
+suddenly changed to a raging presto. The melodic figure was shattered
+like a bouquet of flowers in a waterfall almost before it had had time
+to take shape and display real composure. The dissipated elements,
+scattered to the four corners of the earth, then returned, hesitatingly
+and with evident contrition, to be reunited in a single chain. It seemed
+that the mad whirlwind had left them richer, purer and more spiritual.
+They pealed forth now, one after the other, in a slow-moving
+decrescendo, until they constituted a solemn chorus played in moderato,
+melting at last into the lovely and serious main theme, which in the
+finale streamed away and beyond into infinity, dying out on an
+arpeggiated chord.
+
+Where the piano failed to produce the full effect, Daniel helped out
+with his crow-like voice. It was the uncanny energy of expression that
+prevented his singing from having a comic effect.
+
+Benda's eyes were so strained in the effort to listen intelligently and
+appreciatively that they became dazed, glazed. Had he been asked he
+could not have said whether the work was a success or a failure. The
+feature of the performance that convinced him was the man and the
+magnetism that radiated from the man. The work itself he could neither
+fathom nor evaluate. It took hold of him nevertheless because of its
+inseparable association with the human phenomenon.
+
+Daniel got up, stumbled over to the sofa, buried his face in his hands,
+and sighed: "Do you feel it? Do you really feel it?" He then rose,
+lunged at the piano, seized the score, and hurled it to the floor: "Ah,
+it's no account; it is nothing; it is an abominable botch."
+
+He threw himself on the sofa a second time. Eleanore, sitting perfectly
+motionless in the other corner, looked at him with the eyes of an
+astonished child.
+
+Benda had gone to the window, and was looking out into the trees and the
+grey clouds of the sky. Then he turned around. "That something must be
+done for you and your cause is clear," he said.
+
+Eleanore stretched out her arms toward Benda as though she wished to
+thank him. Her lips began to move. But when she saw Daniel she did not
+dare to say a word, until she suddenly exclaimed: "Heavens, there are
+two buttons on his vest which are hanging by a thread." She ran out of
+the room. In a few moments she returned with needle and thread, which
+she had had Meta give her, sat down at Daniel's side, and sewed the
+buttons on.
+
+Benda had to laugh. But what she did had a tranquilising effect; she
+seemed to enable life to win the victory over the insidious pranks of
+apparitions.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+In years gone by, Benda had known the theatrical manager and impresario
+Doermaul. He went to Doermaul now, and took Daniel's new work along with
+him; for the versatile parvenu, who always had a number of irons in the
+fire, also published music.
+
+A few weeks elapsed before Benda heard from Doermaul: "Incomprehensible
+stuff! Crazy attempt to be original! You couldn't coax a dog away from
+the stove with it." Such was Doermaul's opinion.
+
+A young man with fiery red hair followed Benda to the door and spoke to
+him. He said his name was Wurzelmann and that he was a musician himself;
+that he had attended the Vienna Conservatory, where his teacher had
+given him a letter of recommendation to Alexander Doermaul. He also told
+Benda that Doermaul was planning to form an opera company that would
+visit the smaller cities of the provinces, and that he was to be the
+Kapellmeister.
+
+He spoke in the detestable idiom of the Oriental Jew. Benda was politely
+cold.
+
+The main point was still to come: "Vineta" had aroused Wurzelmann's
+profound admiration; he had read the score on the side: "A great talent,
+Doctor, a talent such as we have not had for a long, long while," said
+Wurzelmann.
+
+"Yes, but what am I to say about Herr Doermaul's opinion?" asked Benda.
+He found it difficult to trust the man before him, and was using the
+judgment of the man behind him as a foil.
+
+"Don't you know Doermaul? I thought you did. Whenever he has no authority
+to fear he becomes very bold. Lay the Ninth Symphony before him without
+Beethoven's name to it, and he will tell you at once that it is rubbish.
+Do you want to bet?"
+
+"Honestly?" asked Benda, somewhat concerned.
+
+"Give me the score, and I'll promise you to arouse the least sensitive
+from their lethargy with it. With a work of that kind you have got to
+blow the trumpet."
+
+Benda thought it over. He had no use for trumpet-blowing, and no
+confidence in those who did the blowing. And yet he consented, for he
+did not feel justified in arbitrarily depriving Daniel of a chance.
+
+It turned out that Wurzelmann had told the truth. A fortnight later
+Daniel was informed that the Orchestral Union had decided to perform his
+work in February. In order to provide its hearers with a more elaborate
+picture of his creative ability, the Union asked him for a second work.
+His compositions were perfect; others needed revision.
+
+Wurzelmann boasted of having won his way to the seats of the mighty. He
+had the cordial approval of such professors of music as Wackerbarth and
+Herold. His masterpiece of diplomacy lay in the fact that he had secured
+Andreas Doederlein as director of the orchestra.
+
+His store of suggestions was inexhaustible, his plans without number. He
+mentioned the fact that when the company was on the road they would have
+to have a second Kapellmeister, since he himself would have to function
+at times as substitute director: "Leave it all to me, dear Nothafft," he
+said, "Alexander Doermaul has got to dance to my tune, and my tune is
+this: It is Nothafft or nobody for Kapellmeister."
+
+If he began with humility, he concluded with familiarity. Daniel hated
+red-headed people, particularly when they had inflamed eyes and
+slobbered when they spoke.
+
+"He is an unappetising fellow, your Wurzelmann," he said to Benda, "and
+it is embarrassing to me to be indebted to him. He imagines he flatters
+me when he speaks contemptibly of himself. What he deserves is a kick or
+two."
+
+Benda was silent. Touched by Wurzelmann's devoted efforts, he had called
+him _servule_, or the "little slave." It was pleasant to think that
+there was some one to remove the stumbling blocks from the road, so that
+the feet of him who had risen from obscurity might find a place to walk.
+But the little slave was filled with the admiration of the Jew, born in
+poverty and oppression, for the genius of the other race.
+
+Benda knew this. He was uneasy at the thought of it; for other and no
+less disingenuous fanatics regarded Wurzelmann's behaviour merely as a
+racial peculiarity.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+Summer with its hot August days had come. The two friends took frequent
+walks out to the suburbs, strolling through the forests of Feucht and
+Fischbach, or climbing the high hills about the city.
+
+Eleanore joined them on one of these excursions. It was a joy to see her
+drink in the fragrance of the flowers and the fir trees or study the
+various cloud formations and the alternating scenes of the landscape.
+When she did this she was like a bird gliding along on noiseless wing in
+the upper regions, far removed from the grime of the earth, bathing in
+the undefiled air of the clouds.
+
+She listened to the conversation of the friends with intelligent
+attention. A piercing glance or a wrinkle of the brow showed that she
+was taking sides, and accepting or rejecting in her own mind the views
+that were being set forth. If she was moved to express an opinion of her
+own, she generally hit the nail on the head.
+
+As they were returning home, night set in. The sky was clear; the stars
+were shining. There were a great number of falling stars. Eleanore
+remarked that she really did not have as many wishes as she could
+express under these circumstances. The erudite Benda replied with a
+smile that in these August nights there were frequently so many groups
+of asteroids that the whole firmament seemed to be in motion, and that
+one could easily grow tired of so many wishes.
+
+Eleanore wanted to know what an asteroid was. Benda explained it to her
+as well as he could. Then he told her all about constellations and the
+milky way, and explained to her that the latter consists of millions of
+individual stars. He also spoke of the size of the stars; and since he
+referred to them occasionally as suns and worlds, she became somewhat
+sceptical, and asked him whether there were any earths among the stars.
+"Earths? What do you mean by earths?" he asked. "Why, earths, just like
+the one we live on," she replied. Having been told that there were
+earths among the stars, Eleanore raised a number of rather cleverly
+framed questions about the trees and animals and people that might be
+found on these other earths. She was told that it was highly probable
+that they were all inhabited about as our own: "Why should this globe
+enjoy special privileges?" he asked. He added, however, that even if the
+inhabitants of the other earths did not have the same mental faculties
+that we have, they were at least beings endowed with reason and
+instinct.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that such people as you and Daniel and I may be
+living up there in those starry regions?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And that there are countless peoples and humanities up among the stars
+of whom we know nothing at all?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Eleanore sat down on a milestone by the roadside, gazed out into space
+with trembling lips, and broke out crying. Benda took her hand, and
+caressed it.
+
+"I am awfully sorry for all those peoples up there," Eleanore sobbed,
+looked up, smiled, and let the tears take their course. Benda would have
+liked to take Daniel by the arm, and shout into his ear: "Look at her
+now!" Daniel was looking at her, but he did not see her.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+One evening in October, Inspector Jordan left his house in Broad Street,
+buttoned his top coat more closely about him, and walked hastily through
+a connecting alley that was so narrow that it seemed as if some one had
+taken a big knife and cut the houses in two. His goal was Carolina
+Street. It was late, and he was hungry. Doubting whether Gertrude would
+have a warm supper ready for him, he went to an inn.
+
+He had spent two full hours there trying to get a rich hops dealer to
+take out some insurance. The man had him explain over and over again the
+advantages of insurance, studied the tables backwards and forwards, and
+yet he was unable to come to a decision. Then the waiter brought him his
+dinner. There he sat, smacking his lips with the noise of human
+contentment, his great white napkin tied under his chin in such a
+fashion that the two corners of it stuck out on either side of his
+massive head, giving the appearance of two white ears. He had offended
+Jordan's social instincts: he had not thought it worth while to wait for
+an invitation.
+
+Among other guests in the inn was Bonengel, the barber. He recognised
+Jordan and spoke to him. He took a seat in the background, picked out
+the ugliest and greasiest of the waitresses, and ordered a bulky portion
+of sausage and sauerkraut.
+
+He told lascivious anecdotes. When the waitress brought him his food,
+she tittered, and said: "He is a jolly good fellow, Bonengel is."
+
+Jordan began to eat rapidly, but soon lost his appetite, pushed his
+plate to one side, propped his chin on his hands, and stared at the
+immobile clouds of tobacco smoke before him.
+
+He had a feeling that it was no longer possible to keep at this work day
+after day, year in and year out. Running from one end of the city to the
+other, up and down the same stairs, through the same old streets--he
+could not do it. Answering the same questions, making the same
+assertions, refuting the same objections, praising the same plan in the
+same words, feigning the same interest and quieting the same distrust
+day after day--no, he could not do it. Disturbing the same people in
+their domestic peace, prodding himself on to new effort every morning,
+listening to the same curtain lectures of that monster of monsters, the
+insatiate stock market, and standing up under the commands of his chief,
+Alfons Diruf--no, he was no longer equal to it. It was all contrary to
+the dignity of a man of his years.
+
+He was ashamed of himself; and he was fearfully tired.
+
+He thought of his past life. He recalled how he had risen from poverty,
+and worked up to the position of a highly respected merchant. That was
+when he was in Ulm. There he had married Agnes, the blond daughter of
+the railroad engineer.
+
+But why had he never become rich? Other men who were distinctly inferior
+to him in shrewdness, diligence, and polish were now wealthy; he was
+poor. Three times he had been threatened with bankruptcy, and three
+times friends had come to his rescue. Then a partner joined him,
+invested some capital in the firm, and the business was once more on its
+feet.
+
+But it turned out that this partner was a stranger to loyalty and quite
+without conscience. "Jordan is a drag on the business," he would say to
+his customers, "Jordan is stupid, Jordan cannot make a calculation." And
+the partner never rested until Jordan was paid a set sum and eased out
+of the firm.
+
+He then tried his fortune here and there for eight or nine years. "Don't
+worry, Jordan," said Agnes, "everything will come out well." But it did
+not. Whatever Jordan took hold of, he took hold of at the wrong end at
+the wrong time with the wrong people.
+
+He could not get on. Not only because his hand was heavy and his head
+too honest, but because he had allowed himself to be befooled by a
+chimera.
+
+Early in life he had had a dream, and all his enterprise and industry
+were directed toward the fulfilment of this dream. It had been
+impossible: he had never been able to save up enough money. Every time
+he discussed his favourite wish with Agnes, and told her about the happy
+days when he would be able to live his own life and be his own boss, she
+encouraged him and tried to help him. But it seemed now that she had
+known all along that he had merely been dreaming, and that her
+magnanimity had prompted her not to jolt him out of his delusion.
+
+It had always seemed to him that the world of dolls was a world in
+itself. He had taken an enchanted delight in picturing the types of
+faces, clothes, and hair he would design for his various dolls, big and
+little. Dolls of the most variegated charm peopled his fancy: there were
+princesses of different degrees of proximity to the throne, fisher maids
+and mermaids; there were shepherds and shepherdesses, Casperls and lusty
+imps, dolls with heads of porcelain and dolls with heads of wax, all so
+faithfully imitated that it would require anthropomorphic skill to
+detect that they were not human beings. Their hair was, of course, to be
+human hair. Some of them were to wear the costumes of foreign races,
+while others were to be dressed up like fairy figures, sprites, and
+gnomes. There was to be a Haroun al Raschid and an Oriental Dervish.
+
+The last time he moved his choice fell on Nuremberg. He was attracted to
+Nuremberg because it was the centre of the doll industry.
+
+About this time Agnes died, and he was left alone with the three
+children for whom he had to make a living. He no longer had the courage
+to hope for success or prosperity; even the doll factory had become a
+chimera. He had but one ambition: he wished to lay aside ten thousand
+marks for each of his three daughters, so that they would be provided
+for in any event after his death. The boy, he thought, could take care
+of himself.
+
+Up to the present, however, he had not been able to place the half of
+this sum in the bank. And now, suppose he lost his position; suppose the
+frailties of old age prevented him from making his own living; suppose
+he was obliged to draw on the savings of years for his own support. How
+could he look his daughters in the face in the evening of his earthly
+life?
+
+"The slag hid behind something in the cellar, and when his wife tried to
+bring him his pants, she let them fall in the flour bin." This elegant
+remark emanated from Bonengel the barber.
+
+His auditors gurgled, the waitress roared.
+
+As Jordan walked home he could hear above the wind the voice of Bonengel
+the barber. It sounded like the rattling of a pair of hair-clippers.
+
+He disliked walking up the steps to his front door; they were so narrow;
+they creaked as though they were ready to fall down; and he was always
+afraid he would meet some blind people. An oculist lived on the first
+floor, and he had often seen sightless persons feeling their way around.
+
+A letter was lying on his table. The cover bore the address of the
+General Agency of the Prudentia Insurance Co. He walked up and down a
+while before opening it. It was his discharge papers.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+Friedrich Benda became more and more dejected. He saw that as a private
+individual he would have to waste energy that should be going into his
+profession. It seemed to him that he was condemned to bury his talent in
+eternal obscurity.
+
+He broke off from the most of his acquaintances; with others he quit
+corresponding. If friends spoke to him on the street, he turned his
+head. His sense of honour had been wounded; he was on the point of
+losing his self-respect.
+
+Daniel was the only one who failed to notice the change that was coming
+over him. Probably he had accustomed himself to the belief that Benda's
+life was orderly and agreeable. The plebeian prosperity of the family in
+which he himself lived probably made him feel that that was the way his
+friend was living. At all events he never asked any questions, and was
+never once struck by the fact that Benda would sit before him for hours
+with his face wrapped in bitter, melancholy gloom.
+
+Benda smiled at Daniel's naivete; for he felt that his attitude was due
+to naivete and nothing more. He harboured no resentment. He decided not
+to say a word about his condition to Daniel, then all taken up with
+himself and his music. It was, however, at times impossible for him to
+prevent his smarting and his desire to put an end to his ineffectual
+existence from breaking through the coating of reserve in which he had
+encased himself.
+
+Late in the afternoon of a dismal day, Benda called for Daniel just as
+he was finishing one of his piano lessons. The two friends decided to
+take a walk and then dine together at Benda's.
+
+In the hallway they met the Ruediger sisters as they were returning from
+their daily stroll through the garden. Benda greeted them with an
+antiquated politeness; Daniel just barely touched the rim of his hat.
+The sisters lined up as if ready for a cotillion, and returned the
+greetings with infinite grace. Fraeulein Jasmina let a rose fall, and
+when Benda picked it up for her, she pressed her hand against her
+scarcely noticeable breast and gave voice to her gratitude, again with
+infinite grace.
+
+When they reached the street, Benda said in a tone of compassion: "They
+are three delicate creatures; they live their lonely lives like vestal
+virgins guarding a sacred fire."
+
+Daniel smiled. "Yes, a sacred fire? Do you refer to the incident with
+the painter?"
+
+"Yes, I do; and he was no ordinary painter, either, let me tell you. I
+heard the whole story the other day. The painter was Anselm Feuerbach."
+
+Daniel knew nothing whatever about Anselm Feuerbach. He was impressed,
+however, by the name, which, by virtue of a mysterious magic, struck his
+ear like the chime of a noble bell. "Tell me about him," he said.
+
+The story was as follows: Four years before his death, that is, six
+years ago, Anselm Feuerbach came to Nuremberg for the last time to visit
+his mother. He was already sick in body and soul, and was much
+disappointed in his alleged friends. The incessant torture resulting
+from lack of appreciation had told on his health. A few of the more
+enlightened citizens, however, recalled his fame, as it floated about in
+the heavy air of Germany, somewhat befogged and quite expatriated, and
+the Chamber of Commerce placed an order with Feuerbach for a painting to
+be hung in the Palace of Justice. Feuerbach accepted the order, choosing
+as his theme Emperor Ludwig in the act of conferring on the citizens of
+Nuremberg the right to free trade. When the picture was completed, there
+was a great deal of dissatisfaction with it. The merchants had expected
+something totally different: they had looked for a cheap but striking
+canvas after the style of Kreling, and not this dignified, classical
+work by Feuerbach.
+
+Nor was this all. The hanging space was so small that several inches of
+the canvas had to be run into the wall, and the light was wretched. The
+Chamber of Commerce proceeded at once to make trouble with regard to the
+paying of Feuerbach's bill. An ugly quarrel arose in which Ruediger, the
+geometrician, who had always been an ardent champion of Feuerbach, took
+the artist's part. It finally reached the point where Ruediger left the
+city, swearing he would never return. His daughters had all three loved
+Feuerbach from the time he lived in their father's house.
+
+"As a matter of fact, if there ever was an amiable artist," Benda said
+in conclusion, "it was Anselm Feuerbach. Would you like to see him?
+Come, then."
+
+They were near the Cemetery of St. John. The gate was open, and Daniel
+followed Benda. They walked along a narrow path, until Benda pointed to
+a flat stone bearing the name of Albrecht Duerer. After this they came to
+Feuerbach's grave. A bronze tablet, already quite darkened with age and
+weather, bore Feuerbach's face in profile. Beneath it lay a laurel
+wreath, the withered leaves of which were fluttering in the wind.
+
+"What a life he lived!" said Benda in a low tone. "And what a death he
+died! The death of a hunted dog!"
+
+As they walked back to the city, night came on. Daniel had removed his
+hat, and was walking along at Benda's side looking straight ahead. Benda
+was as nervous as he had ever been in his life.
+
+"A German life, and a German death," he exclaimed. "He stretched out his
+hand to give, and the people spat in it. He gives and gives and gives,
+and they take and take and take, without gratitude, yea, rather with,
+scorn. The only thing they study is their consanguinity table. They make
+the microscope and the catechism copulate; their philosophy and their
+police systems live in _mesalliance_. Good demeanour they know not; of
+human agreements they have never heard. They decide to do something, and
+they do it. That is all. There is no longer a place for me in Germany. I
+am leaving."
+
+"You are going to leave? Where are you going?" asked Daniel, in faithful
+amazement. Benda bit his lips, and was silent.
+
+"Do you see these big white spots here? They have neither mountains nor
+rivers on them. Those are places that have never been trod upon by
+European feet. There is where I am going." He smiled a gentle smile.
+
+"Really? When?" asked Daniel, filled with dismay at the thought of
+losing his friend.
+
+"I have not decided when, but it will be soon. I have work to do over
+there. I need air, room, sky, the free animal and the free plant."
+
+Benda's mother came in. She was rather tall, walked with the
+difficulties of age, had sharp features and deep-set eyes.
+
+She looked first at her son and then at Daniel. Then her eyes fell on
+the atlas and remained fixed upon it, filled with an expression of
+horror and anxiety.
+
+Daniel did not know what to say. Benda, still smiling to himself, began
+to talk about other things.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+At the death of her mother, Gertrude Jordan was nine years old. She had
+crept into the death chamber and sat by the bier for three hours.
+Perhaps her seclusion from the world and association with people dated
+from that hour. As she was leaving the death room, the clock on the
+wall struck, and a cock crowed in the distance.
+
+"Why do you tick, clock?" she asked in a loud voice, "why do you crow,
+cock?" And again: "Who makes you tick, clock, who makes you crow, cock?"
+
+She had grown up, and no one knew anything about her. It was even
+difficult for her own father to approach her; how she was constituted,
+mentally and spiritually, he did not know. She never associated with
+girls of her own age. Her dark eyes glowed with wrath when she heard the
+senseless, sensuous laughter of other girls.
+
+The first time she partook of the holy communion she swooned and had to
+be carried out. Jordan then took her to Pommersfelden to his sister, the
+widow of the district physician Kupferschmied. At the end of one week
+she returned alone, completely broken in spirit. She had seen a calf
+slaughtered; the sight had made her almost insane.
+
+From the time she was fifteen years old she had insisted on having her
+own bed room. When she was sixteen she demanded that the maid be
+discharged; she herself did all the cooking and kept house. As soon as
+she had finished her work, she would take her seat by the quilting
+frame.
+
+Through her father, Benjamin Dorn had come into the family. Gertrude
+liked him because Eleanore made fun of him. He did not seem to her like
+a man; he reminded her rather of the languishing angels she embroidered.
+He brought her all his religious tracts and edifying pamphlets, but she
+could not grasp the language. He took her to the Methodist revivals, but
+the noisy gnashing of teeth at these meetings terrified her, and after a
+few times it was impossible to persuade her to go back. He also
+recommended that she read the Bible, but she could find nothing in it
+that brought her peace of mind. It seemed that she had a wound in her
+soul that would not heal. Long after she had abandoned Benjamin Dorn and
+his cheap sanctimoniousness, he imagined that she still loved him and
+looked up to him. She managed, however, to come into his presence only
+on the rarest occasions, and then she never spoke to him.
+
+Divine worship in the Protestant church seemed to her like a sort of
+bargain day on which the people assembled to do business with Heaven
+instead of on work days. She missed the dignity; the sermons left her
+cold; the ritual made not the slightest appeal to her.
+
+She never heard from any one at any time a single sentence that really
+enlightened her or remained fixed in her memory. It was the jejune
+insipidity of an entire age, the stale flatness of the world that she
+felt to the very depths of her soul. If she wished to make her heart
+glow, if she became unusually fearful of the empty air and the empty
+day, she stole secretly into the Church of Our Lady or into St.
+Sebaldus, where the house of God was more solemnly decorated, where
+there were more lights burning, where the prayers had a more mysterious
+sound, the priests seemed to be more affected by what they were doing,
+and where the worshipper could sense the awful meaning of life and
+death.
+
+All external beauty, however, was repulsive to her. She hated even
+beautiful scenery and fair weather, regarding them as temptations to
+mortal man intended to lead him into some sort of folly. She loved
+nothing about herself, neither her face nor her voice. She was indeed
+frightened at the sound of her own deep voice. She did not like her
+hair, nor had she any use for her hands.
+
+One winter evening she took from her hand the gold ring, an heirloom
+from her mother, presented to her by her father, and threw it into the
+creek. Then she bowed down over the ledge, and seemed to feel as if she
+had relieved her soul of a great burden.
+
+Eleanore tried time and time again to come near her sister, but each
+time she was thrust back. Though Gertrude never conversed with people,
+every word that was said about Eleanore reached her ears; she felt
+ashamed of her sister. She could not bear the looks of Eleanore, took an
+intense dislike to her, and in the end was obliged to summon all her
+courage in order to return her greeting. It was impossible for her,
+however, to reproach Eleanore; for that she did not have sufficient
+command of language. In truth, her control of words was exceedingly
+limited. Everything, grief as well as injustice, she was forced to
+stifle within her own soul. She grieved about Eleanore, and became at
+the same time more and more nervous and excited. It seemed that
+something about her sister was tantalising her, drawing her on, worrying
+her, making her lose sleep.
+
+Her restlessness became so great that she could no longer sit at the
+quilting frame; in fact, it was no longer possible for her to do any
+kind of exacting work. Something drew her out of the house, and once she
+was away, something forthwith drew her back home. Her heart beat
+violently when she was alone, and yet, if her father or brother or
+Eleanore came in, she could not stand their presence, and took refuge
+in her own room. If it was hot, she closed the windows; if it was cold,
+she opened them and leaned out. If it was quiet, she was filled with
+fear; if it was not quiet, she longed for peace. She could not say her
+prayers; she had none to say; her mind and soul were muted, muffled,
+dumb. She felt the hours following each other in regular order as
+something terrible; she wanted to skip over years, just as one might
+skip over pages of a tiresome book. And when the worst came to the
+worst, and she did not know what on earth to do, she ran to the Church
+of Our Lady, threw herself prostrate before the high altar, buried her
+face, and remained perfectly motionless until her soul had found greater
+peace.
+
+Something made her go to Eleanore; she did not want to do it, but she
+could not help it. She was naturally vigilant, and she wished to ward
+off misfortune if possible. She was obsessed with an uncanny feeling, a
+gruesome curiosity. She dogged her sister's steps in secret. One time
+she saw from a distance that Eleanore had started off with a man who had
+been waiting for her. She could not move from the spot; Eleanore caught
+sight of her.
+
+The next day Eleanore came to her voluntarily, and told her quite
+candidly of her relation to Eberhard von Auffenberg. Concerning what she
+knew of Eberhard's fate she said nothing; she merely indicated that he
+was extremely unhappy. She told her how she had met him the previous
+winter on the Dutzendteich at the ice carnival, how he ran after her,
+how glad she was to show him a little friendship, and how much he needed
+friendship.
+
+Gertrude was silent for a long while. Finally she said, with a voice so
+deep that it seemed to have burst from being too full: "You two either
+must get married, or you must not see each other any more. What you are
+doing is a crime."
+
+"A crime?" said Eleanore astonished, "how so?"
+
+"Ask your conscience," was the answer, spoken with eyes riveted on the
+ground.
+
+"My conscience is quite clear."
+
+"Then you have none," said Gertrude harshly. "You lie, and you are being
+lied to. You are sunk in sin; there is no hope for you. That man's evil
+looks! His ugly thoughts! And the thoughts of the other men! They are
+all beyond redemption. You are spotted through and through. You don't
+know it, but I do."
+
+She got up, kicked the chair from her with her heels, and stared at
+Eleanore with her mysterious black eyes: "Never mention this to me
+again," she whispered with trembling lips, "never, never!" With that she
+went out.
+
+Eleanore felt something like actual loathing for her own sister. Filled
+with an indescribable foreboding, she detected in Gertrude the adversary
+that fate had marked out for her.
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+When the autumn days came on and it began to get cold, Daniel was a
+frequent visitor at Jordan's. Although he had a warm stove now of his
+own, he took pleasure in remembering the comfortable corner of a year
+ago. He had a greater affection for things and rooms than he had for
+human beings.
+
+It was rare that he came in contact with Jordan, for now that he was no
+longer with the Prudentia, it was hard to locate him: he was doing odd
+jobs for a number of concerns, and this kept him more or less on the go.
+Benno came home after office hours, only to betake himself to his room,
+where he shaved and made himself as elegant-looking as possible for the
+social engagements of the evening. He did not like to be alone with
+Gertrude, so he never came until after six o'clock, when he knew that
+Eleanore would be at home. Realising that Eleanore was diligently
+pursuing the study of French and English, and that her evenings were
+therefore of great value to her, he begged her not to be disturbed by
+his visits. He said that he found nothing so agreeable as sitting still
+and saying nothing. After an hour or two, however, he left, murmuring an
+indistinct farewell as he did so.
+
+At times he would bring a book with him and read. If he chanced to look
+up, he saw Eleanore bending over the writing table, her hair, bathed in
+a flood of golden light from the lamp, falling in fine silken threads
+over her temples, while her mouth was firmly closed, her lips inclined
+to droop at the corners, but in a lovely fashion. Then he saw Gertrude.
+She did not wear her hair loose; she put it up in a tight knot above her
+neck. Her dress was no longer the Nile green; it was made of brown
+cloth, and on the front was a row of glistening black buttons.
+
+At times Eleanore would make some remark to him, and he would reply. At
+times the remarks between the two spun out into a verbal skirmish.
+Eleanore teased, and he was gruff; or he mocked, and Eleanore delivered
+a curtain lecture. Gertrude would sit with an expression of helpless
+amazement on her face, and look at the window. She purposely remained
+unoccupied; she purposely postponed her household duties. The thought
+of leaving the two alone in the room was unbearable.
+
+What Daniel did and said, how he walked or sat or stood, how he put his
+hands in his pockets and smacked his lips, all this and more aroused a
+sense of fear and shame in her. She regarded his candour as impudent
+presumption; she looked upon his capriciousness as malevolent
+irrationality; his indifferent manners and his disposition to slander
+she felt certain were of a piece with the scorn of the devil.
+
+On one occasion he dropped a caustic remark about the bigots who contend
+that God is a moralising censor. Having this phase of ethics under
+discussion, he also paid his respects to those people who look upon
+every worm-eaten pastor as an archangel. Gertrude got up with a jerk,
+and stared at him. He stood his ground; he merely shrugged his
+shoulders. Gertrude whispered: "Men without faith are worse than
+contagious diseases."
+
+Daniel laughed. Then he became serious, and asked her what she
+understood by faith. He wanted to know whether she felt that faith was a
+matter of lip service. She replied, with bowed head, that she could not
+discuss sacred matters with a man who had renounced all religion. Daniel
+told her that her remark was slanderous. He wanted to know whether she
+had ever taken the pains to find out precisely how he stood in matters
+of religion, and if not, was this the reason she passed such final
+judgment on him with such suddenness and conviction. He asked her point
+blank whether she was quite certain that her so-called faith was better
+than his so-called unfaith. Not content with this, he asked where she
+got her authority, her courage, her feeling of security; whether she
+felt she had evidence to prove that she had carefully examined his soul;
+and whether she had at any time interviewed God.
+
+He laughed again, whistled, and left.
+
+Gertrude remained motionless for a while, her eyes fixed on the floor.
+Eleanore supported her chin on her hand, and looked at her
+compassionately. Gertrude began to tremble in her whole body, and,
+without raising her head, she stretched out her arms to Eleanore. Though
+quite unable to interpret this accusing gesture, Eleanore was terrified.
+
+The next time Daniel came, he resumed his seat by the stove, and
+remained silent for a while. Then, without the slightest warning or
+apparent motivation, he began to discuss religion. And how? With the old
+spirit of defiance, as if from an ambuscade from which he could send
+out his poisoned arrows, with calculating maliciousness and cold
+rebellion, with the air of a man who has been defeated, who is now being
+pursued, and who is willing to concede more to the earthly order of
+things than to the divine. Thus he sat, the incarnation of blasphemy,
+and once more shuffled the features of his face until he looked like the
+sedulous ape.
+
+Eleanore felt that he was denying both himself and God, and that with
+violence. She went over to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder.
+Gertrude, a death-like pallor playing over her face, got up, passed by
+her and Daniel, and did not appear again that evening. Nor did she
+appear the following evening. From that time on she avoided his
+presence.
+
+For one remarkable second and no longer, Daniel fixed his eyes on the
+shape of Gertrude's legs. He became suddenly conscious of the fact that
+she was a woman and he was a man. During this second, one of the rarest
+of his life, he perceived the outer surface of her body, but without the
+enveloping clothes. He thought of her as a nude figure. It lasted only a
+second, but he pictured her to himself as a nude. Everything she had
+said and done fell from her like so much clothing.
+
+He had a feeling that his eyes had been opened; that he had really seen
+for the first time in his life; and that what he now saw was the body of
+the world.
+
+The nude picture followed him. He fought against his disquietude.
+Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He conjured up the
+picture in order to destroy it with coolness and composure; but it would
+not be destroyed, nor would it vanish. One day he chanced to meet
+Gertrude by the beautiful fountain. He stopped, stood as if petrified,
+and forgot to speak to her.
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+It was a cold, clear day in the middle of December. Eleanore wanted to
+go skating after dinner. She was known in the entire city for her skill
+on the ice. An irrepressible vivacity and sense of freedom pulsed
+through her body. It seemed to her lamentable that she should have to
+sit down in the overheated, sticky air of the office among all those
+clerks, and write.
+
+She went, nevertheless, to the office, took her place among the clerks,
+and wrote as usual. Herr Zittel's eyes shone through the lenses of his
+spectacles like two poison flasks. But she did not make much progress;
+time dragged; it dragged even more heavily and slowly than Herr Diruf's
+feet, as he made his rounds through the room. Eleanore looked up. She
+felt as if his gloomy eyes were resting on her. Conscious of having
+failed to perform her duty as she might have done, she blushed.
+
+Finally the clock struck six. The other clerks left, making much noise
+as they did so. Eleanore waited as usual until they had all gone, for
+she did not like to mix with them. Just then Benjamin Dorn came wabbling
+in: "The Chief would like to speak to Fraeulein Jordan," he said, and
+bent his long neck like a swan. Eleanore was surprised: what on earth
+could Herr Diruf want with her? Possibly it had to do with Benno.
+
+Alfons Diruf was sitting at his desk as she entered. He wrote one more
+line, and then stared at her. There was something in his expression that
+drove the blood from her cheeks. Involuntarily she looked down at
+herself and felt her flesh creep.
+
+"You wanted to see me," she said.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to see you," he replied, and made a weary attempt to
+smile.
+
+There was another pause. In her anxiety Eleanore looked first at one
+object in the room and then at another; first at the bathing nymph, then
+at the silk curtains, then at the Chinese lampshade.
+
+"Well, sweetheart," said Herr Diruf, his smile gradually changing into a
+sort of convulsion, "we are not bad, are we? By the beard of the
+prophet, we are all right, aren't we? Hunh?"
+
+Eleanore lowered her head. She thought she had misunderstood him: "You
+wanted to see me," she said in a loud voice.
+
+Diruf laid his hand, palm down, on the edge of his desk. His solitaire
+threw off actual sparks of brilliancy. "I can crush every one of you,"
+he said, as he shoved his hand along the edge of the desk toward
+Eleanore. "That boy out there, your brother, is an underhanded sharper.
+If I want to I can make him turn a somersault, believe me." He shoved
+his fat hand a little farther along, as if it were some dangerous engine
+and his solitaire a signal lamp. "I can make the whole pack of you dance
+whenever I want to. Can't I, sweetheart? _Capito?_ _Comprenez-vous?_"
+
+Eleanore looked into Alfons Diruf's smeary eyes with unspeakable
+amazement.
+
+Diruf got up, walked over to her, and put his arms around her shoulders.
+"Well, if the boy is a sweet-toothed tom-cat who can easily be led
+astray, you are a purring pussy-cat," he said with a tone of terrible
+tenderness, and held the girl so tight in his arms that she could not
+possibly move. "Now be quiet, sweetheart; be calm, my little bosom;
+don't worry, you little devil!"
+
+Horror, hot and cold, came over her, and filled her with unnamable
+dismay. Contact with the man had a more gruesome effect on her than
+anything she had ever even dreamed of. One jerk as though it were a
+matter of life and death, and she was free. White as a sheet, she
+nevertheless stood there before him, and smiled. It was a rare smile,
+something quite beyond the bounds of what is ordinarily called a smile.
+Alfons Diruf was no longer fat and fierce; he was like a pricked bubble;
+he was done for. And finding himself alone, he stood there for a while
+and gaped at the floor. He looked and felt hopelessly stupid.
+
+Eleanore hastened through the streets, and suddenly discovered that she
+was in the Long Row. She turned around. Benda, then on the way over to
+call on Daniel, caught sight of her, recognised her by the light of the
+gas lamp, stopped as she passed by him, and looked after her not a
+little concerned.
+
+When she reached home, she sank down on the sofa exhausted. To rid her
+mind of the memory of the past hour, she took refuge in her longing,
+longing for a southern country. Her longing was so intense, her desire
+to go south so fervent, that her face shone as if in fever. But the
+glass case had at last been broken.
+
+The bell rang shortly before eight; she said to Gertrude: "If it is
+Daniel, send him away. I cannot see any one this evening."
+
+"Are you ill?" asked Gertrude with characteristic sternness.
+
+"I don't know; I simply do not want to see anybody," said Eleanore, and
+smiled again as she had smiled in Diruf's office.
+
+It was Daniel, to be sure. Benda had told him that he had seen Eleanore
+out in front of the house; and when he learned that she had not been to
+call on Daniel, his anxiety increased. "There is something wrong here,"
+he said, "you had better go see her." After they had talked the
+situation over for a while Benda accompanied Daniel as far as AEgydius
+Place, in order to make sure that he inquired after Eleanore.
+
+Gertrude opened the iron door. "Eleanore does not want you to come in,"
+she said, with a trace of joy in her eyes.
+
+"Why not? What has happened?"
+
+"She does not wish to see you," said the monosyllabic Gertrude, and
+gazed into the light of the hall lamp.
+
+"Is she ill?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then she has got to tell me herself that she does not wish to see me."
+
+"Go!" commanded Gertrude and tossed her head back.
+
+Her gloomy eyes hung on his, and the two stood there for a moment
+opposite each other, like two racers who have come in at the same goal
+at the same time but from opposite directions. Daniel then turned
+around, and went down the steps in silence. Gertrude remained standing
+for a time, her head sinking deeper and deeper all the while on her
+breast. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; a cold shudder ran
+through her body.
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+Before going to bed, Eleanore wrote a letter to Herr Zittel informing
+him that she was leaving the Prudentia at once.
+
+Lying in bed, she could not sleep. She saw herself on the ice cutting
+bold and novel figures. The spectators, grouped about her in a wide
+circle, admired her skill. She saw the sea with fishing smacks and
+coloured sails. She saw gardens full of roses.
+
+Her father and Benno had come home long ago. She heard the bell up in
+the nearby church tower strike twelve--and then one--and then two.
+
+She heard some one walking back and forth in the house; she heard some
+one opening and closing a door. Then the steps died away, and all was
+quiet. She got up, went to the door, and listened. A deep sigh reached
+her ear from the next room. She opened the door just a little, without
+making the slightest noise, and peeped out through the crack.
+
+Gertrude was standing by the open window; she was in her night-gown and
+bare feet. The moon was shining on the square in front of the house; the
+glitter of the snow on the roofs made it seem quite cold. The spooky
+illumination made the girl's face look spooky. Her loose flowing hair
+looked as black as ebony.
+
+Eleanore ran into the room, and closed the window. "What on earth are
+you doing, Gertrude?" she exclaimed; "are you getting ready to take your
+life?"
+
+Gertrude's slender body shivered in the cold; her toes were all bent in
+as if she were having a convulsion. "Yes," she said with marked
+moroseness, "that is what I would like to do."
+
+"That's what you would like to do?" replied Eleanore, also trembling
+with cold. "And your father? Haven't you the slightest consideration for
+him? Do you want to give him more worry than he already has? What is
+the matter with you, you crazy girl?"
+
+"I am a sinner, Eleanore," cried Gertrude, fell on her knees, and
+clasped Eleanore about the hips. "I am a sinner."
+
+"Yes? A sinner? What sin, pray, have you committed?" asked Eleanore, and
+bent down over her.
+
+"Why am I in that house there, in that prison?" cried Gertrude, and
+clasped her hands to her breast. "Evil has come over me, evil has taken
+possession of me. I have evil thoughts. Look at me, Eleanore, look at
+me!"
+
+Her voice had now mounted to the pitch of a piercing shriek. Eleanore
+stepped back from her, terror-stricken. Gertrude fell head first on the
+floor. Her hair covered her bent and twitching back.
+
+The door leading to Jordan's room opened, and he himself came in
+carrying a lighted candle. In default of pajamas, he had thrown a
+chequered shawl around his shoulders, the fringes of which were dangling
+about his knees. He had a white-peaked night-cap on his head.
+
+Quite beside himself, he looked at the two girls and wanted to say
+something; but he was speechless. When much worried he would always
+smirk. It was a disagreeable habit. In Eleanore it always aroused a
+feeling of intense compassion. "There is nothing wrong, father," she
+stammered, and made an awkward gesture which indicated to him that it
+would be most agreeable to her if he would go away. "Gertrude has pains
+in her stomach; she tried to go to the medicine chest to get a few
+drops. Please go, father; I'll put her to bed."
+
+"I will go to the doctor, or I will call Benno and have him go," said
+Jordan.
+
+"No, father, it is not necessary. Please go away!"
+
+He appreciated Eleanore's impatience and obediently withdrew, shielding
+the light of the candle with his hand; his gigantic shadow followed
+along behind him like some unclassified animal.
+
+"Get up, Gertrude, get up and come with me!" said Eleanore.
+
+Gertrude was taken back to her room. After she had been in bed for a few
+minutes, there was a knock at the door. It was Jordan; he asked how she
+felt. Eleanore told him everything was all right.
+
+Until the moon had disappeared below the church roof, Eleanore sat on
+Gertrude's bed, and held her mute hand in her own. Though she had thrown
+a cloak about her shoulders, she was cold. Gertrude lay with open,
+lifeless eyes. Every movement of Eleanore's face revealed the changing
+moods of her soul: she was thinking over an unending series of grave
+thoughts. When it became quite dark, Gertrude turned her face to
+Eleanore, and said softly: "Please get in bed with me, Eleanore. If I
+see you sleeping, possibly I can sleep too."
+
+Eleanore laid the cloak to one side, and slipped in under the covers.
+The two girls cuddled up to each other, and in a few minutes both were
+sound asleep.
+
+
+
+
+              VOICES FROM WITHOUT AND VOICES FROM WITHIN
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Daniel gradually gained followers. Those whom the "little slave" won
+over to his cause were hardly to be called patrons: they were patriots.
+They were delighted at the thought that a _maestro_ should have been
+born and risen to fame in soulful old Franconia. In the actual life of
+their protege they took but little interest.
+
+Daniel's followers were young people.
+
+Professor Herold was a strange man. His reputation reached far beyond
+the boundaries of his native province, and yet, owing to his whimsical
+peculiarities, he had not the slightest desire to leave home. On such
+sons and daughters of the natives as were diligent in their pursuit of
+musical studies, he poured out the whole of his sarcasm. His chief, his
+darling ambition was to wean them away from their fondness for worthless
+music and clap-trap performances of it. He did not succeed: you were not
+considered educated unless you could play the piano, and in the homes of
+these merchants education was highly regarded.
+
+Enticed by his name, all kinds of people came from a distance to take
+lessons from Professor Herold. Having read the score of "Vineta," he
+said to two of these: "Fetch me that fellow dead or alive." And they
+fetched him.
+
+The two came more frequently to Daniel, and then others, pupils of
+Professors Wackerbarth and Doederlein. At times he would take luncheon
+with them in the students' restaurant. We will call them the
+long-haired, or the pale-faced. Many of them looked like snake-charmers.
+They were almost without exception hopelessly stupid, but they all had
+some kind of a bee in their bonnet.
+
+There were some young girls among them; we will call them the
+dreamy-eyed, or the lost-in-dreams. Daniel had no use for them
+whatsoever. His patience with the long-haired was equally lacking.
+
+He told "the old man," as Professor Herold was called, of his antipathy
+to these students. Professor Herold snapped like a vicious dog, brushed
+the white bristles back over his enormous head, and said: "Well, my
+young original, you have made a discovery. Don't you know that music
+cajoles into its magic circle the very riff-raff of any community? Don't
+you know that music is a subterfuge for the neglect of human duty? Don't
+you know that the voluptuous fumes it spreads over the cities results in
+the general corrosion and consumption of men's hearts? Don't you know
+that of every five hundred so-called artists, four hundred and
+ninety-nine are nothing but the cripple guard of God above? Therefore he
+who does not come to music with the holiest fire burning in the depths
+of his soul has his blood in time transformed by it into glue, his mind
+into a heap of rubbish."
+
+Whereat he pushed Daniel out of the door, so that he might work
+undisturbed on his little pictures. Of these the walls of his room were
+full. He painted them in his leisure hours. They were small in size, and
+smaller still in merit; but he was proud of them. They represented
+scenes from country life.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+On New Year's Eve, Doermaul, the impresario, gave a dinner in the Little
+Swan, to which he invited Daniel. Doermaul was quite well disposed toward
+Daniel. He said he had recognised the young man's talents at the sight
+of his very first note. He promised to publish "Vineta" and also the
+work Daniel had finished in the meantime, entitled "Nuremberg Serenade."
+He also seemed inclined to consider favourably Daniel's appointment in
+his newly founded opera company.
+
+Among those present at the dinner were Professors Herold and
+Wackerbarth, Wurzelmann, a few of the long-haired and a few of the
+lost-in-dreams. Andreas Doederlein had promised to come in later. He
+appeared, as a matter of fact, five minutes before midnight, and stood
+in the wide-opened door as ceremonious as the New Year itself.
+
+He went up to Daniel, and extended him his right hand.
+
+"Look who's here! Our Benjamin and our John, not to mention our Daniel,"
+he said, glancing at the last of the trio. "Congratulations, my young
+star! What do the annals from Andreas Doederlein's nose for news have to
+report? Back in Bayreuth, when we used to draw our wine by the flask, he
+merely had to sniffle around a bit to know just how things were. Isn't
+that true, Benjamin?"
+
+Nobody denied it. Benjamin let right yield to mercy. The mighty man
+removed his storm-cape from his shoulders as though it were ermine he
+were doffing before condescending to associate with ordinary mortals.
+
+Professor Wackerbarth had a wife who beat him and gave him nothing to
+eat: he regarded this as a rare opportunity to eat his fill and have a
+good time generally. But it was a poor sort of a good time.
+
+One of the long-haired sang the champagne song, and Wurzelmann made a
+witty speech. Doederlein suggested that now was the time to let the mice
+dance and the fleas hop. When one of the lost-in-dreams sang David's
+March, which according to the rules of Bayreuth could not be classed as
+real music, Doederlein exclaimed: "Give me Lethe, my fair one." By
+"Lethe" he meant punch.
+
+Daniel drank Lethe too. He embraced old Herold, shook hands with Andreas
+Doederlein, and tried to waltz with Wurzelmann. He was not drunk; he was
+merely happy.
+
+Then it became too close for him in the room. He took his hat, put on
+his overcoat, and hurried out.
+
+The air was warm, mild. A south wind was blowing. Heaven above, heaven
+below, the houses were standing on clouds. One breath made him thirsty
+for the next one. There was a bay-window; it was so beautiful that he
+felt like kneeling before it. There was a fountain; it was so snug and
+exotic that it seemed like a poem. There were the arches of the bridge;
+in them was the dim reflection of the water. There were two towers; they
+were as delicate as a spider's web.
+
+He rejoiced and exclaimed: "Oh world, art thou real? Art thou my world,
+and am I living in thee? My world, my year, my time, and I in it all, I
+myself!"
+
+
+                                  III
+
+He stood on AEgydius Place, and looked up at the windows in Jordan's
+house. They were all dark.
+
+He wanted to call out, but the name that was on his lips filled him with
+anxiety. The passionate flutter of his heart almost tore his breast
+asunder.
+
+He had to do something; he had to speak; he had to ask questions and
+hear a human voice. Consequently, he hurried out to the Fuell, stood
+under Benda's window, and called Benda's name. The clocks struck three.
+
+The blinds were soon drawn to one side, and Benda's stoutish figure
+appeared at the open window. "Daniel? Is it you? What's up?"
+
+"Nothing. I merely wanted to bring you New Year's greetings."
+
+"Do you think you are bringing me something good? Go home and go to
+bed."
+
+"Ah, let me come in a little while, Friedrich. Let's chat for a moment
+or two about happiness!"
+
+"Be reasonable! We might frighten happiness away by our talk."
+
+"Philistine! Well, give me your blessing at least."
+
+"You have it. Now go, night owl, and let the people sleep."
+
+Another window opened on the ground floor. Herr Carovius's desolate
+nocturnal physiognomy appeared at the window, looked up, looked down on
+the disturber of the peace on the street, and with one mighty grim,
+grinning sound on his lips, his revengeful fist swinging in the
+meanwhile, the indignant man closed the window with a bang.
+
+Something impelled Daniel to return to AEgydius Place. Again he looked up
+at the windows, this time beseechingly. The storm within his heart
+became more violent. For a long time he ran through the streets, and
+reached home at last along toward five o'clock.
+
+As he passed through the dark hall, he saw a light up on the landing.
+Meta was carrying it. She was already stirring about, ready to begin her
+morning's work. He hesitated; he looked at her; with three steps he was
+by her side.
+
+"So late?" she whispered with premonitory embarrassment, and began to
+finger her dress, which she had not yet buttoned up.
+
+"Oh, what a joy to take hold of a living human being on this glorious
+day!" he exclaimed.
+
+She offered some resistance, but when he tried to take her into her
+room, she bent her body backward, and thus pressed about his wrist. She
+was still carrying the light.
+
+"Oh, if you only knew how I feel, Meta. I need you. Hold me tight in
+your arms."
+
+She made no more resistance. Perhaps she too was not without her fervent
+desire. Perhaps it was the time of day that made nature more insistent
+than usual. Perhaps she was suffering from loneliness in the company of
+the three sisters. It was still night and dark; but for her it was
+already day; it was the first day in the year, and she greeted it in
+festive mood. She yielded to him.
+
+She was a virgin; she had no idea of the responsibility she was taking
+upon herself. Man had never been exactly a mystery to her, but now she
+felt for the first time the congenerous creature--and she gave in to
+him.
+
+Daniel returned to earth after having knocked at the portals of the gods
+with tremendous wishes. The gods smiled their profoundest smile; for
+they had decided to have an especial fate arise from this hour.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+A meeting of the Social Democrats was being held in Gosten Court. They
+had met to discuss the Chancellor's speech on accident insurance.
+
+The first speaker was Deputy Stoerbecker. But his voice had no carrying
+power, and what he said died away almost unheard.
+
+Jason Philip Schimmelweis followed him. He presented a fearful
+indictment of the government. The official representative of the
+government advised him to be more reserved, whereupon he reinvigorated
+himself with a draught of beer. Then he hurled the full beaker of that
+wrathful scorn for which his heart, beating for the people, was noted,
+at the head of the individual who was first and foremost responsible for
+the affairs of the Empire. He did not mention Bismarck by name; he spoke
+instead of a certain bogey. He snatched the halo from his head, swore
+that he would some day unmask him and show the people that he was a
+traitor, branded his fame as a tissue of lies, his deeds as the disgrace
+of the century.
+
+The venomous and eloquent hatred of the pudgy little man inflamed the
+minds that drank in his oratory. Jason Philip was greeted with a tumult
+of applause as he took his seat. His face was a bright scarlet red.
+
+The leaders of the party, however, were noticeably quiet. In a moment or
+two, Deputy Stoerbecker returned with two comrades eager to enter into a
+debate with Jason Philip. He followed them into a side room. Exalted at
+the thought that they had been delegated to express to him the gratitude
+of the party for his speech, he smiled the smile of vanity and caressed
+his beard with his fingers.
+
+"What is the matter, gentlemen? Why are you so serious? Did I go too
+far? I assume complete responsibility for everything I said. But be
+calm! They are getting afraid of us. The air has a dubious odour. The
+French are becoming cantankerous again."
+
+"No, Comrade Schimmelweis, that is not it. You have got to vindicate
+yourself. You are a Proteus, Comrade Schimmelweis. Your right hand does
+not know what your left hand is doing. You are treating us
+disgracefully. You are ploughing in the widow's garden. You preach water
+and guzzle wine. You have entered into a conspiracy with the grafters of
+the town. You are in collusion with the people down at the Prudentia,
+and you are filling your own coffers in this gigantic swindle. From
+morning to night you enrich yourself with the hard-earned pennies of the
+poor. That is sharp practice, Jason Philip Schimmelweis, sharp practice,
+we say. Now you have got to sever all connection with the Prudentia, or
+the Party is going to kick you out."
+
+Then it was that Jason Philip Schimmelweis rose to his true heights of
+eloquence. He insisted that his hands were clean, his left one and also
+his right one; that he was working in the interest of a good cause; and
+that threats could not intimidate him. He made it plain that he would
+bow to no dictatorship operating under the mask of equality and
+fraternity. He cried out that if the people wanted a scandal they could
+have it, but they would find him armed to the teeth. And he assured them
+that wherever he went in this wide, wide world, he would find the doors
+open to welcome him.
+
+He then made a sudden about-face, and left his comrades standing. On the
+way home he continued to murmur murmurs of embitterment to himself.
+
+Like a seasoned sailor eager to escape the storms of a raging sea, he
+steered his good ship toward other and more hospitable shores. Three
+days later he went to Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg, the leader of the
+Liberals, and offered him his services. He told him that he was willing
+to make any sacrifice for the great Liberal Party.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+For thirty-five minutes, by his own watch, he cooled his heels in the
+ante-chamber. He made one caustic remark after another touching on the
+arrested development of the feeling of equality among the rich. Genuine
+rebel that he was, he did not repudiate himself even when he was
+practising high treason.
+
+When he was finally taken into the office, he was not blinded in the
+slightest by the luxuriousness of the furniture, the rugs, or the oil
+paintings. He displayed not the remotest shimmer of servility on
+meeting the illustrious Baron. He sat down on one of the chairs with
+complete equanimity, took no notice of the French-speaking parrot, and
+never cast a single glance at the breakfast table covered with
+appetising tid-bits. But he did present his case with all due
+straightforwardness and simplicity.
+
+"Fine," said the Baron, "fine! I hardly believe that you will find it
+necessary to make a radical change in your battlefront. A conscienceless
+agitator you have never been. You have a family, a home of your own;
+your affairs are in good condition; and in the bottom of your heart you
+love order and discipline. I have in truth been expecting you for a long
+while. Nor am I exaggerating when I confess to you that you had to bolt,
+sooner or later."
+
+Jason Philip blushed with satisfaction. With the bearing of a cabman who
+has just pocketed his tip, he replied: "I thank you very much, Baron."
+
+"On one point we are wholly agreed," said the Baron, "and it seems to me
+to be the most important--"
+
+"Quite right," interrupted Jason Philip, "you allude to the fight
+against Bismarck. Yes, on this point we are, I hope, of precisely the
+same opinion. I will do my part. Hand and heart on it, Baron. I could
+look with perfectly cold blood on this knight of obscurantism writhing
+on the rack."
+
+Herr von Auffenberg heard this temperamental statement with noticeably
+tenuous reassurance. He smiled just a little, and then said: "Wait a
+minute, my friend, don't be quite so savage." He reached for his
+smelling salts, held them to his nose, and closed his eyes. Then he got
+up, folded his hands across his back, and walked up and down the room a
+few times.
+
+What he said after this was as familiar to him as the letters of the
+alphabet. While Jason Philip gaped at his lips in dumb inspiration, the
+Baron himself thought of things that had not the remotest connection
+with what he said.
+
+"The very same man who tried to make the new Empire inhabitable, with
+the aid of a liberal code of laws, and who brought the long-drawn-out
+quarrel between the Emperor and the Pope to a happy conclusion, is now
+trying, by word, thought, and deed, gradually to destroy all liberal
+traditions and to proclaim the Roman High Priest as the real creator of
+peace. All that the German Chancellor could do to give the final blow to
+liberalism he has done. The reaction has not hesitated to abandon the
+idea of the _Kulturkampf_ and to work instead in the interests of class
+hatred and racial prejudice, nurturing them even with deeds of
+violence. Faced with the crimes they themselves have committed, they
+will see their own children despised and rejected."
+
+"_Depeche-toi, mon bon garcon_," screeched the parrot.
+
+"I am happy at the thought of having snatched a precious booty from the
+claws of anarchy, and of having won a new citizen for the State, my dear
+Herr Schimmelweis. But for the time being it will be advisable for you
+to keep somewhat in the background. They will be inclined to make your
+change of political conviction the subject of vociferous attacks, and
+that might injure the cause."
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+What was the old Baron really thinking about while he delivered this
+political speech?
+
+There was just one thought in his mind; the same sullen, concealed anger
+gnawed incessantly at his heart.
+
+He thought incessantly of his son, of the contempt which he had
+experienced because of him, and was still experiencing daily, even
+hourly, because of the fact that Eberhard had withdrawn from his power,
+had repudiated him.
+
+He could not get over the fact that he had heaped up millions, and that
+Eberhard, so far as it was humanly possible to calculate--and in
+accordance with the law--would some day fall heir to a part of these
+millions. He knew very little about poverty; but his poisoned mind could
+think of nothing else than the satisfaction he would derive from being
+able, somehow, to deliver this abortive scion of his own name and blood
+over to poverty. Thus did he wish to take vengeance; thus would he
+punish.
+
+But it was impossible for him to wreak vengeance on his son as he would
+have liked to: between the execution of the punishment and himself stood
+the law. The very thought that his riches were increasing daily, hourly,
+that the millions he had were creating new millions without his moving a
+finger, that he could not even stop the flood if he wished to, and that
+consequently the share of this disloyal, rebellious, and hateful son was
+becoming larger daily, even hourly--this thought he could not endure. It
+poisoned his peace of mind, paralysed his powers, robbed him of all
+natural and legitimate joy, and enveloped his days in a cloud of
+despair.
+
+A modern Midas, he transformed everything he touched into gold; and the
+more gold he had the sadder his life became, the more revengeful his
+soul.
+
+The tones of a piano reached his ear; it was his wife who was playing.
+She played Mendelssohn's "Song Without Words." He shook with disgust;
+for of all things repulsive, music was to him the most repulsive.
+
+"_Depeche-toi, mon bon garcon_," screeched the parrot.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+During Jason Philip's absence, poorly dressed people frequently came to
+the shop and demanded that Theresa give them back the money they had
+paid in on their insurance.
+
+Some of them became very much excited when Theresa told them that she
+would do nothing of the kind, that the insurance was the affair of her
+husband, and that she had nothing whatever to do with it. A locksmith's
+apprentice had given a sound thrashing to Zwanziger, the clerk, who had
+hastened up to protect the wife of his employer. A gold-beater from
+Fuerth had created so much excitement that the police had to be called
+in. A cooper's widow, who had managed to pay her premiums for one year,
+but had been unable to continue the payment for the quite sufficient
+reason that she had been in the hospital, fell headlong to the floor in
+epileptic convulsions when she heard how matters stood.
+
+It finally reached the point where Theresa was frightened every time she
+saw a strange face. She breathed more easily when a day had passed
+without some disagreeable scene, but trembled at the thought of what
+might happen on the day to come.
+
+What disturbed her more than anything else was the inexplicable
+disappearance of small sums of money; this had been going on for some
+time. A man came into the office once and laid his monthly premium, one
+taler in all, on the counter. When he left, Theresa closed the door
+behind him in order that she might be able to watch the snow storm from
+the window. When she returned to the desk the taler had disappeared. She
+asked where it was. Jason Philip, who was just then handing some books
+up the ladder to Zwanziger, became so gruff that one might have thought
+she had accused him of the theft. She counted the money over in the
+till, but in vain; the taler had vanished.
+
+She had forgotten, or had not noticed, that Philippina had been in the
+office. She had brought her father his evening sandwiches, and then gone
+out again without making the slightest noise; she wore felt shoes.
+
+On another occasion she missed a number of groschen from her purse. On
+still another, a spice merchant came in and demanded that she pay a bill
+of three marks. She was certain she had already paid it; she was certain
+she had given Philippina the money to pay it. Philippina was called in.
+She, however, denied having anything to do with it, and acted with such
+self-assurance that Theresa, completely puzzled, reached down in her
+pocket and handed over the three marks in perfect silence.
+
+She had suspected the maid, she had suspected the clerk. She even
+suspected Jason Philip himself; she thought that he was appropriating
+money to pay his drinking expenses. And she suspected Philippina. But in
+no case could she produce the evidence; her spying and investigating
+were in vain. Then the thieving stopped again.
+
+For Philippina, who had been doing all the stealing, feared she might be
+discovered, and adopted a less hazardous method of making herself a rich
+woman: she stole books, and sold them to the second-hand dealer. She was
+sly enough to take books that had been on the shelves for a long while,
+and not to do all her business with one dealer: she would go first to
+one and then to another.
+
+The money which she scraped together in this way, as secretly and
+greedily as a jack-daw, she hid in the attic. There was a loose brick in
+the wall near the chimney. This she removed; and in time she removed
+other bricks. And once her treasures were safely stored in the hole, she
+would replace the bricks and set a board up against them.
+
+When everything had become perfectly quiet and she felt wholly at ease,
+she would sit down, fold her hands, and give herself up to speechless
+meditation, an evil and fanatic dream playing over her features as she
+did.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+One evening in February, Theresa and Philippina chanced to be sitting by
+the lamp mending the week's wash. Jason Philip entered the room; there
+was a sheepish expression on his face; he rubbed his hands.
+
+Since Theresa did not consider it worth her trouble to ask him why he
+was in such a good humour, he suddenly laughed out loud and said: "Now
+we can pack up, my dear. I see it in writing: The wonder of the age, or
+the humiliated relatives. A touching tableau presented by Herr Daniel
+Nothafft of the Schimmelweis family."
+
+"I do not understand you; you are talking like a harlequin again," said
+Theresa.
+
+"Compositions by Daniel are going to be played in a public concert,"
+Philippina informed her mother with that old, harsh voice of hers.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Theresa, in a tone of evident distrust.
+
+"I read it in the paper."
+
+"The miracle is to take place in the Harmony Society," said Jason
+Philip, by way of confirming Philippina's remark, with an expression of
+enigmatic malevolence. "There is to be a public rehearsal on Thursday,
+and there is nothing on earth that can keep me away. The music dealer,
+Zierfuss, has given me two tickets, and if you want to, why, you can come
+along and see how they make a local hero out of a plain loafer."
+
+"I?" responded Theresa, in a tone of contemptuous amazement, "not one
+step will I take. What have I got to do with your imbecile concerts?"
+
+"But these gentlemen are going to be disillusioned, terribly so,"
+continued Jason Philip in a threatening tone. "There is still a certain
+amount of common sense left, just as there are means of proceeding
+against a common, ordinary swindler."
+
+Philippina raised her head in the mood of a person who has come to a
+sudden decision: "C'n I go 'long, Pop?" she asked, her ears as red as
+fire.
+
+It was more than a request. Jason Philip was startled at the intractable
+expression on the girl's face. "Sure," he said, avoiding as well as he
+could the mute opposition on the part of Theresa, "but take a whistle
+along so that you can make cat calls."
+
+He sank back with a comfortable sigh on his chair, and stretched out his
+legs. Philippina knelt down and took off his boots. He then put on his
+slippers. Each of them bore a motto embroidered in red. On the left one
+were the words "For tired father"; on the right one, "Consolation."
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+Eleanore had not told her father why she had left her position with
+Alfons Diruf. Nor did Jordan ask her why when he learned that she did
+not wish to speak about it. He suspected that there was some
+disagreeable incident back of it, and if he maintained a strict silence
+it was because he feared his own wrath and grief.
+
+She soon found another position. A schoolmate and good friend of hers,
+Martha Degen, the daughter of the pastry-baker, had married Herr Ruebsam,
+a notary public and an old man to boot. Eleanore visited the Ruebsams
+occasionally, as did also her father; and in the course of conversation
+it came out that Herr Ruebsam needed an assistant copyist. Since it was
+then impossible to give Eleanore a desk in the office, she was allowed
+to do all her work at home.
+
+Friedrich Benda had also given her a cordial letter of recommendation to
+Herr Bock, Counsellor of Archives, who was just then engaged in writing
+a voluminous work on the history of Nuremberg. It would be her task to
+arrange Herr Bock's muddled manuscript.
+
+It was a laborious undertaking, but she learned a great deal from it.
+Her thirsty mind would draw nourishment even from dry and lifeless
+subjects.
+
+She was seized with a desire to fill up the gaps in her education. She
+begged Benda first for this book and then for that one. And after having
+written the whole day long, she would often sit down and read until late
+at night.
+
+Everything she came in contact with she either assimilated or shook off:
+she dragged nothing along in the form of surface impedimenta; it became
+a part of her being, or she threw it to one side.
+
+Daniel had not called for a long while. He was busy with the rehearsals
+which Wurzelmann was conducting. Professor Doederlein was not to take
+charge of the orchestra until it had been thoroughly drilled. The
+programme was to consist of Daniel's works and the "Leonore Overture."
+Wurzelmann referred to the Beethoven number as "a good third horse in
+the team."
+
+Daniel also had a lot of business to transact with the impresario
+Doermaul: the company was to go on the road in March, and many things had
+to be attended to. The contract he signed was for three years at a
+salary of six hundred marks a year.
+
+A few days before the public rehearsal he came to Jordan's with three
+tickets: one for Jordan himself and the other two for the sisters. The
+public rehearsal was quite like a regular concert; over a hundred
+persons had been invited.
+
+Jordan was just getting ready to go out. "That is fine, that is great: I
+can hear some more music now. I am looking forward to the concert with
+extreme pleasure. When I was a young fellow I rarely missed a concert.
+But that was long ago; indeed, when I think it over I see how old I am.
+The years pass by like milestones on the highway of life. Well, Daniel,
+I thank you, thank you very much!"
+
+Eleanore's joy was also great. As soon as her father had gone, she
+remarked that Daniel had looked for Gertrude; but she had left the room
+as soon as she saw him coming. Eleanore opened the door, and cried:
+"Gertrude, come in, right away! I have a surprise for you."
+
+After a while Gertrude came in.
+
+"A ticket for you to Daniel's concert," said Eleanore, radiant with joy,
+and handed her the green card of admission.
+
+Gertrude looked at Eleanore; and she wanted to look at Daniel. But her
+heavy glance, slowly rising from the floor, barely reached his face
+before it returned to its downward position, aggrieved and pained. Then
+she shook her head, and said: "A ticket for the concert? For me? Are you
+serious, Eleanore?" Again she shook her head, amazed and indignant.
+Whereupon she went to the window, leaned her arm against the cross bars,
+and pressed her head against her arm.
+
+Daniel followed her with looks of glowing anger. "You can take sheep to
+the slaughter," he said, "you can throw thieves in a dungeon, you can
+transport lepers to a hospital for incurables, but you cannot force an
+emotional girl to listen to music."
+
+He became silent; a pause ensued. Tortured at the thought that Daniel's
+eyes were riveted on her back, Gertrude turned around, went to the
+stove, sat down, and pressed her cheek against the Dutch tiles.
+
+Daniel took two steps, stood by her side, and exclaimed: "But suppose I
+request that you go? Suppose my peace of mind or something else of
+importance to the world, consolation, liberation, or improvement,
+depends on your going? Suppose I request that you go for one of these
+reasons? What then?"
+
+Gertrude had become as pale as death. She looked at him for a moment,
+then turned her face to one side, drew up her shoulders as if she were
+shivering with cold, and said: "Well--then--then--I'll go. But I will be
+sorry for it ... sorry for it."
+
+Eleanore was a witness to this scene. Her eyes, wide open when it began,
+grew larger and larger as it advanced through its successive stages. As
+she looked at Daniel a kindly, languishing moisture came to them, and
+she smiled.
+
+Daniel, however, had become vexed. He mumbled a good-bye and left.
+Eleanore went to the window and watched him as he ran across the
+square, holding his hat with both hands as a shield against the driving
+wind.
+
+"He is an amusing fellow," she said, "an amusing fellow."
+
+She then lifted her eyes to the clouds, whose swift flight above the
+church roof pleased her.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+It was the original intention to begin the regular evening concert with
+the third "Fidelio Overture." Doederlein was of the opinion that it
+offered no special difficulties: the general rehearsal was to be devoted
+primarily to the works of the novice. He raised his baton, and silence
+filled the auditorium.
+
+The "Nuremberg Serenade" opened with ensemble playing of the wind
+instruments. It was a jovial, virile theme which the violins took up
+after the wind instruments, plucked it to pieces in their capricious
+way, and gradually led it over into the realm of dreams. The night
+became living: a gentle summer wind blew, glow worms flitted about,
+Gothic towers stood out in the sultry darkness, plebeian figures crept
+into the narrow, angular alleys; it was night in Nuremberg. The
+acclamation a glorious past with an admonition to the future fell upon
+the smug complacency of the present, the heroic mingled with the jocose,
+the fantastic with the burlesque, romanticism found its counterpart, and
+all this was achieved through a flood of genuine melody in which
+stodginess played no part, while charm was abundant in every turn and
+tune.
+
+The professional musicians were astonished; and their astonishment was
+vigorously expressed in their criticisms. The general admiration, to be
+sure, was somewhat deafened by the unpleasant end that the rehearsal was
+destined to come to; but one critic, who enjoyed complete independence
+of soul, though an unfortunate incident in his life had compelled him to
+relinquish his influential circle in the city and retire to a limited
+sphere of activity in the province, wrote: "This artist has the
+unquestioned ability to become the light and leader of his generation.
+Nature created him, his star developed him. May Heaven give him the
+power and patience indispensable to the artist, if he would be born
+again and become a man above the gifts of men. If he only does not reach
+out too soon for the ripe fruits, and, intoxicated by the allurements of
+the lower passions, fail to hear the voice of his heart! He has taken a
+lofty flight; the azure gates of renown have swung wide open to him.
+Let him only be cautious about his second descent into the night."
+
+The same connoisseur found the composition of "Vineta" less ingenious,
+and its instrumentation suffering from the lean experience of a
+beginner. Yet even this work was strongly applauded. The impresario
+Doermaul clapped his hands until the perspiration poured from his face.
+Wurzelmann was beside himself with enthusiasm. Old Herold smiled all
+over his face. The long-haired found it of course quite difficult to
+subdue their jealousy, but even they were not stingy with their
+recognition.
+
+But how did Herr Carovius feel? His spittle had a bitter taste, his body
+pained him. When Andreas Doederlein turned to the audience and bowed,
+Carovius laughed a laugh of tremendous contempt. And Jason Philip
+Schimmelweis? He would have felt much more comfortable if the
+hand-clapping had been so much ear-boxing, and Daniel Nothafft, the
+culprit, had been the objective. The boy who had been cast out had
+become the leader of men! Jason Philip put his hand to his forehead,
+shook his head, and was on the point of exclaiming, "Oh, ye deceivers
+and deceived! Listen, listen! I know the boy; I know the man who has
+made fools of you here this evening!" He waited to see whether the
+misunderstanding, the colossal swindle, would not be cleared up
+automatically. He did not wait in vain.
+
+At the close of the "Serenade," Jordan was struck by Gertrude's feverish
+paleness. He asked her whether she felt ill, but received no reply.
+During the performance of the second piece she kept putting her hands to
+her bosom, as if she were suffering from repressed convulsions. Her eyes
+were now lifeless, now glowing with an uncanny fire. As soon as the
+piece was finished, she turned to her father and asked him to take her
+home. Jordan was frightened. Those sitting next to him looked at the
+girl's pale face, sympathised with her, and made conventional remarks.
+Eleanore wanted to go home too, but Gertrude whispered to her in her
+imperious way and told her to stay. Familiar as she was with Gertrude's
+disposition, she thought that it was simply a passing attack of some
+kind, and regained her composure.
+
+Daniel was standing at the door, talking to Benda and Wurzelmann. He was
+very much excited; his two companions were trying to appease his
+embitterment against Andreas Doederlein. "Ah, the man doesn't know a
+thing about his profession," he exclaimed, and scorned all attempts to
+effect a reconciliation between him and the leader of the orchestra.
+"What is left of my compositions is debris only. He drags the time,
+never even tries to make a _legatura_, scorns a _piano_ every time he
+comes to one, pays no attention to _crescendos_, never retards--it is
+terrible! My works cannot be played in public like that!"
+
+Gertrude and her father passed by quickly and without greeting. Daniel
+was stupefied. The lifeless expression in Gertrude's face unnerved him.
+He felt as if he had been struck by a hammer, as if his own fate were
+inseparably connected with that of the girl. Her step, her eyes, her
+mouth were, he felt, a part of his own being. And the fact that she
+passed by without even speaking to him, cold, reserved, hostile, filled
+him with such intense anger that from then on he was not accountable for
+what he did.
+
+The flood of melody in Beethoven's great work was on the point of
+pouring forth from the orchestra in all its exalted ruggedness. What
+happened? There came forth instead a confused, noisy clash and clatter.
+Daniel was seized with violent restlessness. It was hard enough to see
+his own works bungled; to see this creation with its delicate soul and
+titanic power, a work which he knew as he knew few things on this earth,
+torn to tatters and bungled all around was more than he could stand. The
+trumpet solo did not sound as though it came from some distant land of
+fairy spirits: it was manifestly at the people's feet and it was flat.
+He began to tremble. When the calm melancholy andante, completely robbed
+of all measure and proportion by the unskilled hand of the leader and
+made to dissipate in senseless sounds, reached his ear, he was beside
+himself. He rushed on to the platform, seized the arm of the conductor
+with his icy fingers, and shouted: "That is enough! That is no way to
+treat a divine creation!"
+
+The people rose in their seats. The instruments suddenly became silent,
+with the exception of a cello which still whimpered from the corner.
+Andreas Doederlein bounded back, looked at the mad man, his mouth as wide
+as he could open it, laid the baton on the desk, and stammered: "By
+Jupiter, this is unheard of!" The musicians left their places and
+grouped themselves around the strange man; the tumult in the public grew
+worse and worse. They asked questions, threatened, tried to set each
+other at ease, scolded and raged. In the meantime Daniel Nothafft, his
+head bowed, his back bent, stood there on the platform, glowing with
+anger and determined to have his revenge.
+
+A few minutes later, Andreas Doederlein was sitting at the table in the
+musicians' waiting room. He looked like Emperor Barbarossa in
+Kyffhaeuser. He had well founded reason to express his contempt for the
+decadence and impiety of the youth of to-day. It was superfluous for him
+to remark that a man who would conduct himself as Daniel had done should
+be eliminated from the ranks of those who lay claim to the help and
+consideration of sane people. The dignified gentlemen of the Orchestral
+Union were of the same opinion; you could search the annals of history
+from the beginning of time, and you would never find a case like this.
+Mild eyes flashed, grey beards wagged. The deliberation was brief, the
+sentence just. A committee waited on Daniel to inform him that his
+compositions had been struck from the programme. The news spread like
+wild-fire.
+
+Who was happier than Jason Philip Schimmelweis?
+
+He was like a man who gets up from the table with a full stomach, after
+having sat down at it fearing lest he starve to death. On his way home
+he whistled and laughed alternately and with well balanced proportion.
+
+"There you see it again," he said to his daughter, as she walked along
+at his side, "you see it again: you cannot get blood from a turnip any
+more than you can get happiness from misery. A jackass remains a
+jackass, a culprit a culprit, and loafing never fails to bring the
+loafer to a disgraceful end. The Devil has a short but nimble tail; and
+it makes no difference how slovenly he may conduct his business, his
+recruits have got to pay the piper in the end. This will be a windfall
+for mother. Let's hurry so that we can serve it to her while it's still
+hot!"
+
+And Philippina--she had never taken her eyes off the floor the entire
+evening--seemed to be utterly unconscious of the fact at present that
+she was surrounded by houses and people. She was a defeated woman; she
+wanted to be. She had much to conceal; her young breast was a hell of
+emotions, but her ugly, gloomy old face was as inanimate and empty as a
+stone.
+
+Herr Carovius waited at the gate. After all the other people had gone,
+Daniel, Benda, Wurzelmann, and Eleanore came along. Daniel's storm cape
+fluttered in the wind; his hat was drawn down over his eyes. Herr
+Carovius stepped up before him.
+
+"A heroic deed, my dear Nothafft," he miauled. "I could embrace you.
+From this time on you can count me among your friends. Now stand still,
+you human being transformed into a hurricane. I must say of course that
+so far as your music is concerned, I am not with you. There is too much
+hullaballoo in it, and not enough plain hellishness to suit me. But rid
+this country of the whole tribe of Doederleins, and you will find that I
+am your man. Not that I would invite you to take dinner with me, so that
+you could have me make you a loan, not on your life. I am only a poor
+musician myself. But otherwise I am at your service. I hope you sleep
+well to-night--and get the hullaballoo out of your music just as soon as
+you can."
+
+He tittered, and then scampered away. Daniel looked at him with a
+feeling of astonishment. Wurzelmann laughed, and said he had never seen
+such a queer codger in all his life. All four stood there for a while,
+not knowing exactly what to think, and in the meantime it was snowing
+and raining. Asked by Benda where he wished to go, Daniel said he was
+going home. But what could he do at home? Why couldn't he go home with
+Benda? "No," said Daniel, "I can't do that: I am a burden to every one
+to-day, including myself. Say, little servant, how are you feeling?" he
+said, turning to Wurzelmann, "how about a drink or two?"
+
+Wurzelmann, somewhat embarrassed, said that he had an engagement. There
+was something repulsive in the way he declined the invitation.
+
+"Ah, you, with your old engagement," said Daniel, "I don't give a hang
+where you are going; I am going along."
+
+"No, you're not, Daniel," cried Eleanore. And when Daniel looked at her
+in astonishment, she blushed and continued: "You are not going with him;
+he is going to see some women!"
+
+The three young men laughed, and in her confusion Eleanore laughed too.
+
+"How tragic you are, little Eleanore," said Daniel in a tone of unusual
+flippancy, "what do you want me to do? Do you think that Wurzelmann and
+I are just alike when it comes to an evening's amusement? Do you think
+the earth claims me as soon as I see a tear?"
+
+"Let him go," whispered Benda to the girl, "he is right. Don't bring an
+artificial light into this darkness; it serves his purpose; let him do
+with it as he pleases."
+
+Eleanore looked at Benda with wide-opened eyes. "Darkness? What do you
+mean? The fire then was merely a will-o'-the-wisp," she said, her eyes
+shining with pride, "I see him full of light." Daniel had heard what she
+said. "Really, Eleanore?" he asked with greedy curiosity.
+
+She nodded: "Really, Daniel."
+
+"For that you can have anything you want from me."
+
+"Well then I beg you and Benda to come over to our house. Father will
+be delighted to see you, and we will have something to eat."
+
+"Fine. That sounds good to me. Addio, Wurzelmann, and remember me to the
+girls. You are coming along, aren't you, Friedrich?"
+
+Benda first made a few polite remarks, and then said he would accept.
+
+"You liked it then, did you, Eleanore?" asked Daniel, as they walked
+along the street.
+
+Eleanore was silent. To Daniel her silence was moving. But he soon
+forgot the impression it made on him; and it was a long, long while,
+indeed even years, before he recalled this scene.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+Jordan had taken Gertrude home. He was very careful not to ask her any
+questions that would cause her pain. On reaching the house he lighted a
+lamp and helped her take off her cloak.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked in a kindly tone, "are you better?"
+
+Gertrude turned to one side, and sat down on a chair.
+
+"Well, we'll drink a cup of hot tea," continued the old man; "then my
+child will go to bed, and to-morrow morning she will be all right again.
+Yes?"
+
+Gertrude got up. "Father," she sighed, and felt around for the tea table
+as a means of support.
+
+"Gertrude, what is the matter?" cried Jordan in dismay.
+
+She moved the upper part of her body in her characteristic way--as
+though it were limp and she were trying to drag it along with her--and a
+faint smile came over her face. All of a sudden she burst out crying and
+ran to her room. Jordan heard her bolt the door, looked anxiously before
+him, waited a moment or two, and then crept up to her door on his
+tiptoes.
+
+He placed his hands under his chin and listened. Gertrude was crying. It
+was an even and touching cry, not so much filled with grief as her sobs
+generally were, and seemed to be expiratory rather than the reverse.
+
+As Jordan let the lonely, unhappy, and impenetrable life of his daughter
+pass by him in mental review, he became painfully aware of the fact that
+this was the first time in her life that she had ever heard real music.
+"Is it possible?" he asked. He tried to think of another time that would
+make him disbelieve the accuracy of his unpleasant observation.
+
+He said to himself: Her case is simple; the hitherto unknown sweetness
+and power concealed in the ensemble playing of the violins, the euphony
+of the orchestra, and the beauty of the melody with all its fateful
+directness has made the same impression on her that the sunlight makes
+on a person from whose eyes a cataract has just been removed. Her soul
+has suffered from hunger; that is where the trouble lies. She has
+struggled too fiercely with the incomprehensible and the intangible.
+
+His instinct of love told him that the best thing to do was to let her
+cry. It will do her good; it will relieve her soul. He pulled a chair up
+to her door, sat down, and listened. When he could no longer hear her
+crying, his heart grew easier.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+Eleanore was right. Her father was quite pleased to see Daniel and
+Benda. "I am proud of you," he said to Daniel, "and for your visit to me
+I thank you. I feel flattered."
+
+"If you had stayed a half hour longer, you might feel differently about
+it," replied Daniel.
+
+Eleanore gave her father a brief account of what had taken place at the
+concert. Jordan listened attentively, looked at Daniel, and, with a
+wrinkle on his forehead, said, "Is it possible?"
+
+"Yes, it is possible; it had to happen," said Daniel.
+
+"Well, if it had to happen, it is a good thing that it is over," was the
+dispassionate response.
+
+Eleanore took her father's hand; the back of it was covered with big
+yellow spots; she kissed it. Then she set the table, got everything
+ready for the meal, went in and out of the room in a most cheerful way,
+and did not forget to put the water on the stove to boil. She had asked
+about Gertrude as soon as she came home, but for some reason or other
+her father seemed disinclined to say anything on the subject, from which
+Eleanore inferred that there was nothing seriously wrong.
+
+Finally they sat down at the table. Eleanore was quite pleased to see
+the three men whom she liked so much gathered together in this way.
+There was a feeling of gratitude in her heart toward each one of them.
+But she was also hungry: she ate four sandwiches, one right after the
+other. When she saw that Daniel was not eating, she stepped up behind
+his chair, bent over him so far that the loose flowing hair from her
+temples tickled his face, and said: "Are you embarrassed? Or don't you
+like the way the sausages have been prepared? Would you like something
+else?"
+
+Daniel evaded the questions; he was out of sorts. And yet in the bottom
+of his heart the contact with the girl made a pleasing impression on
+him; it was in truth almost a saving impression. For his thoughts
+continually and obstinately returned to the girl who had fled, and whose
+presence he missed without exactly wishing that she were at the table
+with the others.
+
+Benda spoke of the political changes that might, he feared, take place
+because of the death of Gambetta. Jordan, who always took a warm
+interest in the affairs of the Fatherland, made a number of true and
+humane remarks about the tense feeling then existing between France and
+Germany, whereupon the door to Gertrude's room opened and Gertrude
+herself stood on the threshold.
+
+Deep silence filled the room; they all looked at her.
+
+Strangely enough, she was not wearing the dress she had on at the
+concert. She had put on the Nile green dress, the one in which Daniel
+saw her for the first time. Jordan and Eleanore hardly noticed the
+change; they were too much absorbed in the expression on the girl's
+face. Daniel was also astonished; he could not look away.
+
+Her expression had become softer, freer, brighter. The unrest in which
+her face had heretofore been clouded had disappeared. Even the outlines
+of her face seemed to have changed: the arch of her eyebrows was higher,
+the oval of her cheeks more delicate.
+
+She leaned against the door; she even leaned her head against the door.
+Her left hand, hanging at her side, seemed indolent, limp, indifferent.
+Her right hand was pressed against her bosom. Standing in this position,
+she studied the faces of those who were sitting at the table, while a
+timid and gentle smile played about her lips.
+
+Jordan's first suspicion was that she had lost her mind. He sprang up,
+and hastened over to her. But she gave him her hand, and offered no
+resistance at all to being led over to the table.
+
+Suddenly she fixed her silent gaze on Daniel. He got up involuntarily,
+and seized the back of his chair. His colour changed; he distorted the
+corners of his mouth; he was nervous. But when Gertrude withdrew her
+hand from her father's and extended it to him, and when he took it and
+his eye met hers--he could not help but look at her--his solicitude
+vanished. For what he read in her eyes was an unreserved and irrevocable
+capitulation of her whole self, and Daniel was the victor. His face grew
+gentle, grateful, dreamy, and resplendent.
+
+It was not merely the sensuous charm revealed in the feeling which
+Gertrude betrayed that moved him: it was the fact that she came as she
+had come, a penitent and a convert. The sublime conviction that he had
+been able to transform a soul and awaken it to new life touched him
+deeply.
+
+This it was that drew him to Gertrude more than her countenance, her
+expression, and her body combined. And now he saw all three--her
+countenance, her expression, and her body.
+
+Jordan had a foreboding of something. He felt that he would have to take
+the girl in his arms and flee with her. Pictures of future misfortune
+crowded upon his imagination; the hope he had cherished for Gertrude was
+crushed to the earth.
+
+Benda stared at his plate in silence. Nevertheless, just as if he had
+other eyes than those with which he saw earthly things, he noticed that
+Eleanore's hands and lips were trembling, that with each succeeding
+second she grew paler, that she cast a distrustful glance first at her
+father, then at her sister, and then at Daniel, and that she finally, as
+if overcome with a feeling of exhaustion, slipped away from her place by
+the table lamp, stole into a corner, and sat down on the hassock.
+
+But after they had all resumed their seats at the table, Gertrude
+sitting between Benda and her father, Eleanore came up and sat down next
+to Daniel. She never took her eyes off Gertrude; she looked at her in
+breathless surprise, Gertrude smiled as she had smiled when leaning
+against the door, timidly and passionately.
+
+From that moment on, the conversation lagged, Benda suggested to his
+friend that it was time for them to leave. They thanked Jordan for his
+hospitality and departed. Jordan accompanied them down the stairs and
+unlocked the front door. When he returned, Eleanore was just going to
+her room: "Well, Eleanore, are you not going to say good-night?" he
+called after her.
+
+She turned around, nodded conventionally, and closed the door.
+
+Gertrude was still sitting at the table. Jordan was walking up and down
+the room. Suddenly she sprang up, stepped in his way, forced him to
+stop, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. She
+had never done that before.
+
+She too had gone to sleep. Jordan felt terribly alone. He heard the
+street door open and close; he heard some one enter. It was Benno.
+Jordan thought that his son would come in, for he must have seen the
+light through the crack of the door. But Benno evidently had no desire
+to see his father. He went to his room at the other end of the hall,
+and closed the door behind him just as if he were a servant.
+
+"They are all three in bed," thought Jordan to himself, "and what do I
+know about them?"
+
+He shook his head, removed the hanging lamp from its frame, and locked
+the room, holding the lamp very carefully as he did so.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+Eleanore had not seen Eberhard von Auffenberg for a number of weeks. He
+wrote her a card, asking for the privilege of meeting her somewhere. The
+place in fact was always the same--the bridge at the gate to the
+Zooelogical Garden. Immediately after sunset she betook herself to that
+point. It was a warm March evening; there was not a breath of wind; the
+sky was covered with clouds.
+
+They strolled up the castle hill, and when they had reached the parapet,
+Eleanore said, gently laughing: "Now listen, I have talked enough; you
+say something."
+
+"It is so pleasant to be silent with you," replied Eberhard in a
+downcast mood.
+
+Filled with a disagreeable premonition, Eleanore sought out one of the
+many hundreds of lights dimly flickering down in the city, fixed her
+eyes on it, and stubbornly refused to look at any other earthly object.
+
+"If I appeal to you at this hour," the young Baron finally began, "it is
+to a certain extent exactly as if I were appealing to the Supreme Court.
+My expectations in life have, with one single exception, been utterly
+and irrevocably crushed. It depends quite upon you, Eleanore, whether I
+am to become and remain a useless parasite of human society, or a man
+who has firmly decided to pay for his share of happiness by an equal
+amount of honest work. I offer you everything I have. It is not much,
+but I offer it to you without haggling and forever. You and you alone
+can save me. That is what I wanted to say to you."
+
+He looked up at the clouds, leaning on his cane, which he had placed
+behind his back.
+
+"I have forbidden you to speak of this," whispered Eleanore in profound
+dismay, "and you promised me that you would not say anything about it."
+
+"I gave you my promise because I loved you; I break it for the same
+reason," replied Eberhard. "I feel that such a promise is the act of a
+foolish child, when the building up or the tearing down of a human life
+depends upon it. If you are of a different opinion, I can only beg your
+pardon. Probably I have been mistaken."
+
+Eleanore shook her head; she was grieved.
+
+"It was my plan to go to England with you, and there we would be
+married," continued Eberhard. "It is quite impossible for me to get
+married here: I loathe this city. It is impossible, because if I did my
+people would in all probability set up some claims to which they are no
+longer entitled and for which I would fight. The mere thought of doing
+this repels me. And it is also impossible because ..." at this he
+stopped and bit his lips.
+
+Eleanore looked at him; she was filled with curiosity. His pedantic
+enumeration of the various hindrances as well as the romanticism of his
+plans amused her. When she detected the expression of downright grief in
+his face, she felt sorry for him. She came one step nearer to him; he
+took her hand, bowed, and pressed his lips to her fingers. She jerked
+her hand back.
+
+"Fatal circumstances have placed me in a most humiliating situation; if
+I am not to succumb to them, I must shake them off at once," said
+Eberhard anxiously. "I was inexperienced; I have been deceived. There is
+a person connected with my case who hardly deserves the name of a human
+being; he is a monster in the garb of an honest citizen. I have not the
+faintest idea what I am to do next, Eleanore. I must leave at once. In a
+strange country I may regain my strength and mental clearness. With you
+I could defy the universe. Believe in me, have confidence in me!"
+
+Eleanore let her head sink. The despair of this usually reserved man
+touched her heart. Her mouth twitched as she sought for words.
+
+"I cannot get married, Eberhard," she said, "really, I cannot. I did not
+entice you to me; you dare not reproach me. I have tried to make my
+attitude toward you perfectly clear from the very first time I met you.
+I cannot get married; I cannot."
+
+For five or six minutes there was a silence that was interrupted only by
+human voices in the distance and the sound of carriages from the streets
+down in the city. In the compassion that Eleanore after all felt for
+Eberhard she sensed the harshness of her unqualified refusal. She looked
+at him courageously, firmly, and said: "It is not obstinacy on my part,
+Eberhard; nor is it stupid anxiety, nor imagination, nor lack of
+respect. Truth to tell I have a very high opinion of you. But there must
+be something quite unnatural about me, for you see that I loathe the
+very idea of getting married. I detest the thought of living with a man.
+I like you, but when you touch me as you did a little while ago when you
+kissed my hand, a shudder runs through my whole body."
+
+Eberhard looked at her in astonishment; he was morose, too.
+
+She continued: "It has been in me since my childhood; perhaps I was born
+with it, just as other people are born with a physical defect. It may be
+that I have been this way ever since a certain day in my life. It was an
+autumn evening in Pappenheim, where my aunt then lived. My sister
+Gertrude and I were walking in a great fruit garden; we came to a thorn
+hedge, and sitting by the hedge was an old woman. My father and mother
+were far away, and the old woman said to my sister, then about seven: Be
+on your guard against everything that sings and rings. To me she said:
+Be careful never to have a child. The next day the woman was found dead
+under the hedge. She was over ninety years old, and for more than fifty
+years she had peddled herbs in Altmuehltal. I naturally had not the
+vaguest idea what she meant at the time by 'having a child,' but her
+remark stuck in my heart like an arrow. It grew up with me; it became a
+part of me. And when I learned what it meant, it was a picture by the
+side of the picture of death. Now you must not think that I have gone
+through life thus far filled with a feeling of despicable fear. Not at
+all. I simply have no desires. The idea does not attract me. If it ever
+does, many questions will I ask about life and death! I will laugh at
+the old woman under the hedge and do what I must."
+
+As she spoke these last words, her face took on a strangely chaste and
+fanciful expression. Eberhard could not take his eyes from her. "Ah,
+there are after all fairy creatures on this flat, stale, and
+unprofitable earth," he thought, "enchanted princesses, mysterious
+Melusinas." He smiled somewhat distrustfully--as a matter of habit. But
+from this moment his frank, open, wooing attachment to the girl was
+transformed into a consuming passion.
+
+He was proud, and man enough to subdue his feelings. But he yearned more
+than ever, and was tortured by his yearnings to know something more than
+the vague knowledge he had at present about that glass case, that
+spirit-chest in which, so near and yet so far, this lovely creature
+lived, impervious to the touch of mortal hands and immune to the flames
+of love.
+
+"You are rejecting me, then?" he asked.
+
+"Well, it is at least advisable that for the time being we avoid each
+other's presence."
+
+"Advisable for me, you think. And for the time being? How am I to
+interpret that?"
+
+"Well, let us say for five years."
+
+"Why exactly five years? Why not twenty? Why not fifty? It would be all
+the same."
+
+"It seems to me that five years is just the right amount of time,
+Eberhard."
+
+"Five years! Each year has twelve times thirty, fifty-two times seven
+days. Why, the arithmetic of it is enough to make a man lose his mind."
+
+"But it must be five years," said Eleanore gently though firmly. "In
+five years I will not have changed. And if I am just the same in five
+years from now, why, we'll talk it over again. I must not exclude myself
+from the world forever. My father often says: What looks like fate at
+Easter is a mere whim by Pentecost. I prefer to wait until Pentecost and
+not to forget my friend in the meantime."
+
+She gave him her hand with a smile.
+
+He shook his head: "No, I can't take your hand; another one of those
+shudders will run through you if I do. Farewell, Eleanore."
+
+"And you too, Eberhard, farewell!"
+
+Eberhard started down the hill. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and
+said: "Just one thing more. That musician--Nothafft is his name, isn't
+it?--is engaged to your sister, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, Gertrude and Daniel will get married some day. But who told you
+about it?"
+
+"The musician himself was in a restaurant. The fellows were drinking,
+and he was so incautious as to raise his glass, and, somewhat after the
+fashion of an intoxicated drum-major, he himself drank to Gertrude's
+health. For some time there was talk of his marrying you. It is much
+better as it is. I can't stand artists. I can't even have due respect
+for them, these indiscreet hotspurs. Good night, Eleanore."
+
+And with that he vanished in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+                      IN MEMORY OF A DREAM FIGURE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+One evening Daniel called on Benda to take leave of him for a long
+while.
+
+Just as he was about to enter the front gate, he saw Herr Carovius's dog
+standing there showing his teeth. The beast's bloodshot eyes were fixed
+on a ten-year old girl who was likewise on the point of entering the
+house, but, afraid of the dog, she did not dare take another step. The
+animal had dragged his chain along behind him, and stood there now,
+snarling in a most vicious way.
+
+Daniel took the child by the hand and led it back a few steps, after he
+had frightened the dog into silence by some rough commands. "Who are
+you?" he asked the girl.
+
+"Dorothea Doederlein," was the reply.
+
+"Ah," said Daniel. He could not help but laugh, for there was a comic
+tone of precociousness in the girl's manner of speaking. But she was a
+very pretty child. A sly, smiling little face peeped out from under her
+hood, and her velvet mantle with great pearl buttons enshrouded a dainty
+figure.
+
+"You should have been in bed long ago, Dorothea," said Daniel. "What
+will the night watchman think when he comes along and finds you up? He
+will take you by the collar, and lead you off to jail."
+
+Dorothea told him why she was still up and why she was alone. She had
+been visiting a school friend, and the maid who called for her wanted to
+get a loaf of bread from the bakery before going up stairs. She related
+the story of her meeting with the dog with so much coquetry and detail
+that Daniel was delighted at the contrast between this rodomontade and
+the quaking anxiety in which he first found her.
+
+"You are a fraud, Dorothea," said Daniel, and called to mind the
+unpleasant sensation she aroused in him when he saw her for the first
+time years ago.
+
+In the meanwhile the maid had come up with the loaf of bread; she looked
+with astonishment at the two as they stood there gossiping, and
+immediately took the child into her charge, conscious as she was of her
+own dilatoriness. With a few piercing shrieks she drove Caesar back from
+the gate, and as he ran across the street Dorothea cast one triumphant
+glance back at Daniel, feeling that she had proved to him that she was
+not the least afraid of the dog.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Frau Benda opened the door, closed it without saying a word, and went
+into her room. She had had a violent quarrel with her son, who had just
+informed her that he had accepted the invitation of a learned society to
+come to England and settle down. He was to start at the end of spring.
+Frau Benda was tired of travelling; she shuddered at the thought of
+moving. The separation from Friedrich seemed intolerable to her; and in
+his flight from the Fatherland she saw a final and premature
+renunciation of all the opportunities that might in the end present
+themselves to him at home.
+
+She was convinced that the men who had done him injustice would in time
+come to see the error of their ways and make amends for their
+miscalculations. She was particularly anxious that he be patient until
+satisfaction had been done him. Moreover, she knew his plans, and
+trembled at the risks to which he was voluntarily exposing himself: she
+felt that he was undertaking a task for which he had not had the
+practical experience.
+
+But his decision was irrevocable. That he had never said a word about it
+to Daniel, had not even insinuated that he was thinking of making a
+change, was due to the peculiar onesideness of their present relation to
+each other.
+
+Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. "She
+looks to me as though she will give old Doederlein a good deal to think
+about in the days to come," said Daniel.
+
+"You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Doederlein," replied
+Benda. "The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and
+down for hours right under my bedroom."
+
+"You feel sorry for him, do you?"
+
+"If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon."
+
+"Do you really mean it?" exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel
+continued: "To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to
+his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would
+have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted
+to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I'll
+get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime
+gulped down the whole earth."
+
+Benda smiled a gracious smile. "Yes, you die at each fall, and at each
+come-back you appear a new-made man," he said. "That is fine. But a
+Doederlein cannot come back, once his contemporaries have thrown him
+over. The very thing that means a new idea to you spells his ruin; what
+gives you pleasure, voluptuous pleasure, is death to him."
+
+"Y-e-s," mumbled Daniel, "and yet, what good is he?"
+
+"The spirit of nature, the spirit of God, is a total stranger to such
+conceptions as harmfulness and usefulness," replied Benda in a tone of
+serious reflection. "He lives, and that is about all you can say. So far
+as I am concerned, I have not the slightest reason to defend a Doederlein
+in your presence." He was silent for a moment and took a deep breath. "I
+cannot speak more distinctly; somehow or other I cannot quite find the
+right words," he continued in a disconcerted way, "but the point is, the
+man has committed a crime against a woman, a crime so malicious, subtle,
+and naive, that he deserves every stigma with which it is possible to
+brand him, and even then he would not be adequately punished."
+
+"You see," exclaimed Daniel, "he is not only a miserable musician. And
+that is the way it always is. They are all like that. Oh, these
+bitter-sweet, grinning, pajama-bred, match-making, ninnying, super-smart
+manikins--it makes your blood curdle to look at one of them. And yet a
+real man has got to run the gauntlet before them his whole life long,
+and down through their narrow little alleys at that!"
+
+"Rather," said Benda with bowed head. "It is a tough, clammy poison pap.
+If you stir it with your finger, you will stick fast, and it will suck
+the very marrow out of your bones. But you are speaking for the time
+being without precise knowledge of all the pertinent material, as we say
+in science. During my study of the cells of plants and animals, I came
+to see that a so-called fundamental procreation was out of the question.
+I gave expression to this view in a circle of professional colleagues.
+They laughed at me. To-day it is no longer possible to oppose the theory
+I then advanced. One of my former friends succeeded in making certain
+combinations of acetic acid, crystallised by artificial means. When he
+made his great discovery known, one of the assembled gentlemen cried
+out: 'Be careful, doctorette, or your amido atoms will get out of their
+cage.' That is a sample of the base and treacherous fashion in which we
+are treated by the very people who we might think were our warmest
+friends, for they are apparently trying to reach the same goal that we
+are. But you! The world may reject you, and you still have what no one
+can take from you. I have to wait in patience until a judge hands down a
+decision either condemning me or redeeming me. You? Between you and me
+there is the same difference that exists between the seed which, sunk
+into the earth, shoots up whether it rains or shines, and some kind of a
+utensil which rusts in the store because no one buys it."
+
+He got up and said: "You are the more fortunate of us two, it behooves
+me therefore to be the more merciful."
+
+Daniel could make no reply that would console him.
+
+As he went home, he thought of the fidelity and the constant but
+unassuming help he had received from Benda. He thought of the refined
+and delicate consideration of his friend. He thought especially of that
+extraordinary courtesy which was so marked in him, that, for example,
+while laughing at a good joke, Benda would stop with open mouth if some
+one resumed the conversation: he did not wish to lose anything another
+might wish to say to him.
+
+He stopped. It seemed to him that he had neglected the opportunity to
+put an especially reassuring, cordial, and unforgettable force into his
+final handshake. He would have liked to turn back. But it is not the
+custom to turn back; no one in truth can do it.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+Daniel did not wish to take the mask of Zingarella with him on his
+tours. To expose the fragile material to all the risks associated with a
+fortuitous life on the road seemed to him an act of impiety. He had
+consequently promised Eleanore to leave the mask with her in Jordan's
+house during his absence.
+
+Eleanore opened the door; Daniel entered. Gertrude arose from her seat
+at the table, and came up to meet him. Her face showed, as it always did
+when she saw him, unmistakable traces of resignation, willingness,
+submissiveness.
+
+Daniel walked over to the table, took the newspaper wrapping from the
+mask, and held it up in the light of the lamp.
+
+"How beautiful!" exclaimed Gertrude, whose senses were now delighted at
+the sight of any object that appealed to one's feelings.
+
+"Well, take it, then, Gertrude," said Eleanore, as she leaned both
+elbows on the top of the table. "Keep it with you," she continued
+somewhat tensely, when she noticed that Gertrude was looking at Daniel
+as if to say, "May I?"
+
+"But won't he give it to both of us?" replied Gertrude with a covetous
+smile.
+
+"No, no, he simply mentioned me for courtesy's sake," said Eleanore,
+quite positively.
+
+"Eleanore, I can scarcely tell you how I feel toward you," said Daniel,
+half confused, half angry, and then stopped with conspicuous suddenness
+when the fiery blue of her eyes fell upon him.
+
+"You?" she whispered in astonishment, "you?"
+
+"Yes, you," he replied emphatically. "Later I can tell everybody; to-day
+it is true in a double sense: you seem to me just like a sister."
+
+He had laid the mask to one side and extended his left hand to Eleanore,
+and then, hesitating at first, he gave Gertrude his right hand with a
+most decisive gesture.
+
+Eleanore straightened up, took the mask of Zingarella, and held it up
+before her face. "Little Brother," she cried out in a teasing tone. The
+pale, sweet stone face was wonderful to behold, as it was raised above
+the body that was pulsing with life.
+
+And Gertrude--for one second she hung on Daniel's gaze, a sigh as deep
+as the murmuring of the sea sounded in her bosom, and then she lay in
+his arms. He kissed her without saying a word. His face was gloomy, his
+brow wrinkled.
+
+"Little Brother" sounded out from behind the mask. But there was no
+banter in the expression; it was much more like a complaint, a
+revelation of anguish: "Little Brother!"
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Daniel had left the city long ago. Eleanore chanced to meet Herr
+Carovius. He forced her to stop, conducted himself in such a familiar
+way, and talked in such a loud voice that the passersby simpered. He
+asked all about the young master, meaning Daniel.
+
+He told her that "the good Eberhard"--it was his way of referring to
+Baron von Auffenberg--had gone to Munich for a few months, and was
+taking up with spiritists and theosophists.
+
+"It is his way of having a fling," said Herr Carovius, grinning from ear
+to ear. "In former times, when young noblemen wished to complete their
+education and have a little lark at the same time, they made the grand
+tour over Europe. Now-a-days they become penny-a-liners, or they go in
+for table-tipping. Humanity is on the decline, my charming little girl.
+To study the flower of the nation at close range is no longer an
+edifying occupation. It is rotten, as rotten, I tell you, as last
+winter's apples. There is consequently no greater pleasure than to make
+such a young chap dance. You play, he dances; you whistle, he retrieves.
+It is a real treat!"
+
+He laughed hysterically, and then had a coughing spell. He coughed so
+violently that the black cord suspended from his nose-glasses became
+tangled about a button on his great coat, and his glasses fell from his
+nose. In his awkwardness, intensified by his short-sightedness, he
+fumbled the button and the cord with his bony fingers until Eleanore
+came to the rescue. One move, and everything was again in order.
+
+Herr Carovius was struck dumb with surprise. He would never have
+imagined that a young girl could be so natural and unembarrassed. He
+suspected a trap: was she making fun of him, or did she wish to do him
+harm? It had never occurred to him that one might voluntarily assist him
+when in distress.
+
+Suddenly he became ashamed of himself; he lifted his eyes and smiled
+like a simpleton; he cast a glance of almost dog-like tenderness at
+Eleanore. And then, without saying a word, without even saying good-bye
+to her, he hastened across the street to hide as soon as he might in
+some obscure corner.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+One afternoon in the last week of August, the Ruediger sisters sent the
+boy who attended to their garden over to Eleanore with the urgent
+request that she call as soon as she possibly could. Feeling that some
+misfortune had befallen Daniel and that the sisters wished to tell her
+about it, Eleanore was not slow about making up her mind: exactly one
+quarter of an hour later she entered the Ruedigers' front door.
+
+A lamentable sight greeted her. Each of the three sisters was sitting in
+a high-backed chair, her arms hanging lifeless from her sides. The
+curtains were drawn; in the shaded light their faces looked like
+mummies. Nor was the general impression measurably brightened by the
+"Medea," the "Iphigenie," and the "Roman Woman" that hung on the wall,
+copies of the paintings of their idol.
+
+Eleanore's greeting was not returned. She did not dare leave without
+finding what was the matter, and the silence with which she was received
+was broken only when she herself decided to ask some questions.
+
+Fraeulein Jasmina took out her handkerchief and dried her eyes. Fraeulein
+Saloma looked around somewhat like a judge at a session of court. And
+then she began to speak: "We three lonely women, forgotten by the world,
+have asked you to come to our house so that we might tell you of a crime
+that has been committed in our innocent home. We never heard of it until
+this morning. It is such an unexampled, gruesome, abominable deed that
+we have been sitting here ever since it was brought to our attention,
+wringing our hands in vain attempt to make up our minds as to what
+course we should pursue."
+
+Fraeulein Jasmina and Fraeulein Albertina nodded their heads in sadness
+and without looking up.
+
+"Can we put the unfortunate girl out of the house?" continued Fraeulein
+Saloma, "can we, sisters? No! Can we afford to keep her? No! What are we
+to do then? She is an orphan; she is all alone, abandoned by her
+infamous seducer, and exposed to unmitigated shame. What are we to do?"
+
+"And you," said Fraeulein Saloma turning to Eleanore, "you who are bound
+to that gifted monster by ties the precise nature of which we are in no
+position to judge, you are to show us a way out of this labyrinth of our
+affliction."
+
+"If I only knew what you are talking about," said Eleanore, a great
+burden falling from her heart as she realised that her initial fears
+were groundless. "By the monster you evidently mean Daniel Nothafft.
+What crime has he committed?"
+
+Fraeulein Saloma was indignant at the flippancy of her manner. She rose
+to her full stature, and said with punitive lips: "He has made our maid
+an ordinary prostitute, and the consequences are no longer to be
+concealed. Do you know what we are talking about now?"
+
+Eleanore uttered a faint "Oh!" and blushed to the roots of her hair. In
+her embarrassment she opened her mouth to laugh, but she came very near
+to crying.
+
+Her saddened feelings slowly crept back to Daniel, and as the picture of
+him rose before her mind's eye, she turned from it in disgust. But she
+did not wish to allow this picture to remain in her memory: it was too
+flabby, petty, and selfish. Before she knew what she was doing, she, as
+a woman, had pardoned him. Then she shuddered, opened wide her eyes,
+and resumed her accustomed cheerfulness. She was again in complete
+control of herself.
+
+The court had in the meanwhile examined the silent woman with stern
+scrutiny: "Where is Daniel Nothafft at present?" asked Fraeulein Saloma.
+
+"I do not know," replied Eleanore, "he hasn't written for over three
+weeks."
+
+"We must request you to inform him at once of the condition of the
+prostitute, for so long as such a person is in our house, we cannot
+sleep at night nor rest by day."
+
+"I am sorry that you take the matter so to heart," said Eleanore, "and
+it is a rather disagreeable affair. But I have no right to mix myself up
+in it, nor have I the least desire to do so."
+
+The three sisters received this statement with despair; they wrung their
+hands. They would rather die, they said, than meet this voluptuary face
+to face again; they would endure all manner of martyrdom before they
+would have him come in. All three spoke at once; they threatened
+Eleanore; they implored her. Jasmina told with bated breath how Meta had
+come to them and confessed the whole business. Albertina swore that
+there was not another living soul on earth who could help them out of
+this shameless situation. Saloma said that there was nothing for them to
+do but to send the wicked creature back to the streets where she
+belonged.
+
+Eleanore was silent. She had fixed her eyes on the "Medea," and was
+doing some hard thinking. Finally she came to a conclusion: she asked
+whether she might speak to Meta. Filled at once with anxiety and hope,
+Saloma asked her what she wanted with Meta. She replied that she would
+tell them later what her purpose was. Fraeulein Jasmina showed her the
+way to Meta's room.
+
+When Meta caught sight of Eleanore, her features became at once
+beclouded in sombre amazement.
+
+She was sitting at the open window of her attic room knitting. She got
+up and looked into the face of the beautiful girl without saying a word.
+Eleanore was moved on seeing the tall, youthful figure, and yet it was
+quite impossible for her to subdue a feeling of horror.
+
+At Eleanore's very first words, Meta began to sob. Eleanore comforted
+her; she asked her where she was planning to go during her confinement.
+
+"Why, there are institutions," she murmured, holding her apron before
+her face, "I can go to one of them."
+
+Eleanore sat down on the side of the bed. She unrolled her plans to the
+girl with a delicacy and consideration just as if she were speaking to a
+pampered lady. She spoke with a silver-clear vivacity just as if she
+were discussing some hardy prank. Meta looked at her at first with the
+air of one oppressed; later she assumed the attitude of a grateful
+listener.
+
+Pained by the ethereal and inhuman primness of her three employers,
+angry at the man who had abandoned her to her present fate, and fighting
+against the reproaches of her own conscience, Meta became as wax in
+Eleanore's hands, submissive, obedient, and appreciative.
+
+The Ruediger sisters, all but bursting with curiosity to know what
+Eleanore had in mind, could draw nothing from her other than that she
+was going to take Meta away and that Meta was agreed.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+It was Eleanore's intention to take the pregnant girl to Daniel's mother
+at Eschenbach.
+
+She knew of the dissension between Daniel and his mother. She knew that
+the two avoided each other's presence; that Daniel in his defiance felt
+it his duty to avenge himself for the lack of love on the part of his
+mother. Back of the picture of the unloving and impatient son she saw
+that of an old woman worrying her life away in silent care.
+
+She had often given way to a painful feeling of sympathy when she
+thought of the unknown mother of her friend. It seemed to her now as if
+she could play the role of an emissary of reconciliation; as if it were
+her duty to take the deserted woman here to the deserted woman there; as
+if she were called to take the mother-to-be to the mother who had just
+reasons for regretting that she had ever been a mother.
+
+It seemed to her as if she must create a bond which could not even be
+sundered by crime, to say nothing of misunderstanding or caprice; it
+seemed to her that Daniel had to effect a reconciliation in the home of
+the Ruedigers as well as in that of his mother; and that, conscious as
+she was of doing what was right, she would meet with no opposition,
+would have no settling of accounts to fear.
+
+She also took the practical side of the matter into careful
+consideration: Meta would have no trouble in making her living in
+Eschenbach; she could help Daniel's mother, or she could do day work
+among the peasants.
+
+When the child was born, Daniel's mother would have a picture of young
+life to look at; it would alleviate her longing; it would appease her
+bitterness to see a child of Daniel's own blood.
+
+Eleanore told the people at home that she was going on an excursion with
+a school friend to the Ansbach country. She studied the time-table, and
+wrote a postcard to Meta telling her to be at the station at eight
+o'clock in the morning.
+
+Jordan approved of Eleanore's outing, though he warned her against
+bandits and cold drinks. Gertrude was not wholly without suspicion. She
+had a feeling that something was wrong, that these unspoken words
+referred to Daniel, for she was always thinking about him.
+
+If she received a letter from him, which was very rare, she would let it
+lie on the table for a long while, imagining that it was full of the
+most glorious declarations of his love for her, expressed in language
+which she could not command. In a sort of moon-struck ecstasy she made
+an inner, dreamed music out of what he wrote.
+
+When she read his letter, she was satisfied merely to see the words he
+had written and to feel the paper on which his hand had rested. She
+submitted in silence to the laws of his nature, which would not permit
+him to be excessive in his remarks or unusually communicative. Each of
+his dry reports was a tiding of glad joy to her, though her own replies
+were just as dry, giving not the slightest picture of the enraptured
+soul from which they came.
+
+She felt that Eleanore was lying, and that the lie she was telling was
+somehow connected with Daniel. That is why she went up to Eleanore's bed
+in the dead of night, and whispered into her ear: "Tell me, Eleanore,
+has anything happened to Daniel?"
+
+But before Eleanore could reply, reassured by her sister's astonished
+behaviour, and angry at herself for having suspected Eleanore of a
+falsehood, she hurried back to her own bed. She had come to think more
+and more of her sister every day.
+
+"How she must love him," thought Eleanore to herself, and buried her
+smiling face in the pillow.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+"Wait for me at the fountain," said Eleanore to her companion, as she
+crossed the market place in Eschenbach at midday: "I'll call for you as
+soon as everything has been discussed."
+
+The coachman pointed out the little house of the widow Nothafft.
+
+A woman with a stern face and unusually large eyebrows asked her what
+she wanted as she entered the little shop, which smelled of vinegar and
+cheese.
+
+Eleanore replied that she would like to talk with her for a few minutes
+quite undisturbed and alone.
+
+The profound seriousness of Marian's features, which resembled more than
+anything else an incurable suffering, did not disappear. She closed the
+shop and took Eleanore into the living room, and, without saying a word,
+pointed to one chair and took another herself.
+
+Above the leather sofa hung the picture of Gottfried Nothafft. Eleanore
+looked at it for a long while.
+
+"Dear mother," she finally began, laying her hand on Marian's knee. "I
+am bringing you something from Daniel."
+
+Marian twitched. "Good or bad?" she asked. She had not heard from Daniel
+for twenty-two months. "Who are you?" she asked, "what have you to do
+with him?"
+
+Eleanore saw at once that she would have to be extremely cautious if she
+did not wish to offend the sensitive--and offended--woman by some
+inconsiderate remark. With all the discrimination she could command she
+laid her case before Daniel's mother.
+
+And behold--the unusual became usual, just as the natural seemed
+strange. Eleanore pictured Daniel's hardships and rise to fame, boasted
+loyally of his talents and of the enthusiasm for him of those who
+believed in him, referred to his future renown, and insisted that all
+his guilt, including that toward his mother, be forgotten and forgiven.
+
+Marian reviewed the past; she understood a great many things now that
+were not clear to her years ago; she understood Daniel better; she
+understood virtually everything, except this girl's relation to him and
+the girl herself. If it was peculiar that this strange woman had to come
+to her to tell her who Daniel was and what he meant to the people, it
+was wholly inexplicable that she had brought some one with her who had
+been the sweetheart of the very man for whom she now showed unreserved
+affection.
+
+Eleanore read Marian's face and became a trifle more deliberate. It
+occurred to her, too, to ask herself a few questions: What am I, any
+way? What is the matter with me?
+
+She could not give a satisfactory answer to these questions. His friend?
+He my friend? The words seemed to contain too much peace and calm.
+Brother? Companion? Either of these words brought up pictures of
+intimate association, inner relationship. Little Brother! Yes, that is
+what she had called out to him once from behind the mask. Well then:
+Little sister behind the mask?
+
+Yes, that was what it should be: Little sister behind the mask. She had
+to have a hiding place for so many things of which she had only a vague
+presentiment and which in truth she did not care to visualise in
+brighter outlines. A subdued heart, a captured heart--it glows, it cools
+off, you lift it up, you weigh it down just as fate decrees. To be
+patient, not to betray anything, that was the all-important point:
+Little sister behind the mask--that was the idea.
+
+Marian said: "My child, God himself has inspired you with the idea of
+coming to me and telling me about Daniel. I will put fresh flowers in
+the window as I did some time ago, and I will leave the front door open
+so that the swallows can fly in and build their nests. Perhaps he will
+think then from time to time of his mother."
+
+Then she asked to see Meta. Eleanore went out, and returned in a few
+minutes with her charge. Marian looked at the pregnant girl
+compassionately. Meta was ill at ease; to every question that was put to
+her she made an incoherent reply. She could stay with her, said Marian,
+but she would have to work, for there was no other way for the two to
+live. The girl referred to the fact that she had already worked out for
+four years, and that no one had ever accused her of lack of industry or
+willingness. Thereupon Marian told her she would have to be very quiet,
+that the people in the neighbourhood were very curious, and that if she
+ever gave them her family history she would have to leave.
+
+This attended to, Eleanore went on her way. She refused quite
+emphatically to stay for dinner. Marian thought that she was in a hurry
+to catch the next coach, and accompanied her across the square. They
+promised to write to each other; before Eleanore got into the rickety
+old coach, Marian kissed her on the cheek.
+
+She watched the coach until it had passed out through the city gate. A
+drunken man poked her in the ribs, the blacksmith called to her as she
+passed by, the doctor's wife leaned out of the window and asked her who
+the cityfied lady was. Marian paid not the slightest attention to any of
+them; she went quietly and slowly back to her house.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Thus it came about that five weeks later a daughter of Daniel Nothafft
+saw the light of the world under Marian's roof.
+
+As soon as the child was born, Marian took a great liking to it, despite
+the fact that she had thought of it before its birth only with aversion.
+It was a fine little creature: its little legs and arms were delicately
+formed, its head was small, there was something peculiarly human about
+its first cries and laughter, and it showed quite distinctly that there
+was something noble in its character.
+
+The people of Eschenbach were astonished. "Where did the child come
+from?" they asked. "Who is its mother? Who is its father?" The records
+in the office of the registrar of births showed that Meta Steinhaeger was
+the mother of the illegitimate child, Eva Steinhaeger, and that its
+father was unknown.
+
+It was to be presumed, however, that widow Nothafft knew the details.
+The old women, and the young ones too, came on this account more
+frequently now than ever to her shop. They wanted to know how the little
+thing was getting along, whether its milk agreed with it, whether it had
+begun to teethe, whether it would speak German or some foreign tongue,
+and so on.
+
+In order to quiet them, Marian told them that Meta was a poor relative
+and that she was bringing up the child at her own expense. It was not
+difficult to make this story seem plausible, for Meta had very little to
+do with her daughter. Shortly after her confinement, she got a job with
+a baker over in Dinkelsbuehl, and never visited Eva more than once a
+month. She cared very little for the child. A young fellow in the bakery
+had fallen in love with Meta, and wanted to marry her and move to
+America.
+
+At Christmas they were married, and left the country at once. Marian was
+glad of it: the child now belonged entirely to her.
+
+Though the people soon became accustomed to the existence of their
+diminutive fellow-townswoman, Eva was and remained the mysterious child
+of Eschenbach.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+The opera company made its rounds through the small cities that lie
+between the Danube and the Main, the Saale and the Neckar--and there are
+many of them,--its stay in any one place depending naturally on the
+interest shown by the public.
+
+"The province is the enchanted Sleeping Beauty," said the impresario
+Doermaul to Wurzelmann and Daniel, "the province is still asleep, and you
+must rouse it from its slumbers by pressing the kiss of the Muse on its
+forehead."
+
+But the impresario was unwilling to open his pockets. The princes who
+were to release Sleeping Beauty did not have sufficient means to make a
+presentable appearance, while their retinue was seedy-looking indeed.
+
+The tenor had long since passed the zenith of his career. His massive
+paunch placed deadening strictures on his credentials as the
+impersonator of heroes. The buffo was an inveterate toper who had often
+been placed behind bars by the police for his nocturnal excesses. The
+barytone had a big lawsuit on his hands about an estate; his lawyers
+were two stars of obscurity from a small village; and at times he became
+so vexed at the cuts of his opponents that he lost his voice. The
+soprano was incessantly quarrelling with her colleagues, and the alto
+was an intriguing vixen quite without talent. In addition to these there
+were a dozen or so super-numeraries and under-studies, who were bored, who
+played practical jokes on each other, drew starvation wages, and had
+never learned anything.
+
+The musicians were also a sorry lot. It was not rare that one or the
+other of them had pawned his instrument. Once a performance had to be
+postponed because the violinists had stayed over their time at a village
+dance where they were playing in order to add to their paltry income.
+The inspector, who was scene-shifter, promoter, ticket seller, and
+publicity agent all in one, and who was not equal to any of these
+positions, took French leave in the second year and ran off with one of
+the chorus girls, taking the box-office receipts for the evening with
+him.
+
+One time the costumes were sent to the wrong address, with the result
+that Boieldieu's "La Dame Blanche" had to be played in woollen frocks,
+patched velvet skirts, filthy cotton blouses, and French wadding.
+
+Another time the mob in "Martha" consisted of a distempered woman, a
+waiter brought in at the last minute from a herring restaurant, and the
+door-keeper of an orphanage: the chorus had gone on a strike because
+their salaries had been held up.
+
+In Karlstadt the final act of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" could not be
+played, because during the intermission Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly had
+got into a fight, and the lady had scratched a huge piece of skin from
+the singer's nose.
+
+If these musical strollers, as acting-director Wurzelmann called the
+company, nevertheless made some money, it was due to the superhuman
+efforts of Daniel. Wurzelmann was always mixed up in some kind of love
+affair, introduced in time a ruinous system of favouritism, and became
+lazier and lazier as the weeks passed by.
+
+Daniel had to pull the singers out of their beds to get them to go to
+rehearsals; Daniel had to help out with the singing when the chorus was
+too weak; Daniel had to distribute the roles, tame down refractory
+women, and make brainless dilettants subordinate their noisy opinions to
+the demands of a work which he himself generally detested. He had to
+drill beginners, abbreviate scores, transpose voices, and produce
+effects with lamentably inadequate material. And from morning to night
+he had to wage war eternal against libellous action, inattention, and
+inability.
+
+Nobody loved him for this; they merely feared him. They swore they would
+take vengeance on him, but they knuckled under whenever they seemed to
+have a chance. He had a habit of treating them with crushing coldness,
+he could make them look like criminals. He had a look of icy contempt
+that made them clench their fists when his eye fell on them. But they
+bowed before a power which seemed uncanny to them, though it consisted
+in nothing more than the fact that he did his duty while they did not.
+
+At the close of each quarter, the impresario Doermaul appeared on the
+scene to take invoice in person. His presence was invariably celebrated
+by a gala performance of "Fra Diavolo," or "The Daughter of the
+Regiment," or "Frou Frou." On these occasions the buffo did not get
+drunk, the barytone rested from the torments of his lawsuit, the alto
+had a charming smile for the sympathetic house, the soprano was as
+peaceful as a mine immediately after an explosion. Not one of the chorus
+stayed too long in the cafe; and since Wurzelmann directed, and the
+orchestra did not have to feel the burning, basilisk eye of
+Kapellmeister Nothafft resting on it and floating over it, it played
+with more precision and produced a more pleasing feast for the ears than
+ordinarily.
+
+Doermaul was not stingy with his praise. "Bravo Wurzelmann," he cried,
+"one more short year of hard work, and I'll get you a position in the
+Royal Opera House."
+
+"Nothafft will likewise rise to fame and office," he said, "although I
+was so stupid as to publish his music, and now all this waste paper is
+lying in my shop like a pound of brick cheese in a sick stomach."
+
+The impresario Doermaul wore black and white striped trousers of
+imported cut, a vest that looked like a bit of tapestry made of pressed
+leather, a massive gold watch-chain from which dangled countless fobs, a
+blood red tie with a diamond as big as the Koh-i-noor and as false as an
+April sun, and a grey silk tile hat which he lifted only when in the
+presence of privy councillors, generals, and police presidents.
+
+To a man of this kind Daniel had the boldness to remark: "Had you eaten
+cheese you would at least have digested it. Your crowded shops are after
+all more desirable in my estimation than many a head which would remain
+empty even if some one stuffed the whole of the 'Passion of St. Matthew'
+into it."
+
+Doermaul decided to laugh. "Oho, my good fellow," he said, and pushed his
+tile hat on to the back of his head, "you are getting all puffed up.
+Look out that you don't burst. You remember the story of Haenschen: He
+was awfully proud of his porridge while sitting behind the stove; but
+when he went out on to the street, he fell into the puddle."
+
+The little slave tittered. Daniel had known for a long time that
+Wurzelmann was working against him. Quite innocently, to be sure, for
+half souls can admire and betray at the same time.
+
+"Envy is my only virtue," said Wurzelmann quite openly, "I am a genius
+at envying."
+
+Daniel was not equal to such cynicism. He was stupefied by Wurzelmann's
+remark, but he did not break with the little slave; he continued to use
+him. He was the only individual with whom he could speak of himself and
+his work. And though he was overburdened, owing to his present position,
+he nevertheless managed to steal a few hours every day for his own work.
+And the pressure from all sides fanned the flame within him.
+
+It was then that he staked out his field in order to be master in his
+own realm; he turned to the song; he chose the clear, restrained forms
+of chamber music; he studied with unwavering industry the old masters;
+he deduced from their works the right rules of composition; and he set
+these up before him like a dam against arbitrariness and aesthetic
+demoralisation.
+
+He was not unmindful of the fact that by so doing he was cutting himself
+off from association with men, and renouncing, probably forever, the
+satisfaction that comes from monetary reward and outward success. He
+knew, too, that he was not making his life easier by adopting this
+course, nor was he gaining the popular favour of the emotionalists.
+
+When he would sit in a cafe late at night and show Wurzelmann one score
+after another, sing a few bars in order to bring out the quality of a
+song, improvise an accompaniment, praise a melody, or explain the
+peculiarity of a certain rhythm, he surprised the little slave, and
+drove him into an attitude of self-defence. All this was fundamentally
+new to Wurzelmann. If Daniel proved that the new was not new after all,
+that the trouble lay in the fact that the deranged and shattered souls
+of the present century had lost the power to assimilate unbroken lines
+in their complete purity, Wurzelmann at once became an advocate of
+modern freedom, insisting that each individual should be allowed to do
+all that his innate talent enabled him to vindicate.
+
+Daniel remained unconvinced. Was not the whole of life, the rich
+contents of human existence, to be found in the beautiful vessel that
+had been proved long ago? Could any one say that he was displaying a
+spirit of greediness in his love for the classical? And were joy and
+sorrow, however intense, less perceptible when expressed through a
+concise, well ordered medium? "What a distorted view a man takes when he
+becomes so narrow-minded," thought Daniel. "His ambition makes it
+impossible for him to feel; his very wit militates against clear
+thinking."
+
+Thus they went from town to town, month after month, year after year.
+The company had in time its traditions, its _chronique scandaleuse_, its
+oft-tested drawing cards, its regular patrons, its favourite stands, and
+its stands that it avoided if humanly possible.
+
+The local paper greeted them editorially; the children stood on the
+sidewalks to gape their fill at the ladies from the theatre; the retired
+major bought a reserved seat for the first performance; the barber
+offered his services; and the faculty of the Latin School held a special
+meeting to decide whether they should permit their pupils to go to the
+opera or not. The Young Men's Christian Association voiced its protest
+against the nude shoulders of the _artistes_; the members of the Casino
+turned up their noses at the achievements of the company; the police
+insisted that the booth or hotel lobby in which they performed should be
+fireproof; the wife of the mining engineer fell in love with the
+barytone, and her husband hired a number of hoodlums to take their
+places in the gallery and hoot and hiss when the time came. And those
+who nag under any circumstances requested more cheerfulness. They found
+the "Czar and Zimmermann" too dull, the "Muette de Portici" too
+hackneyed. They insisted on "Madame Angot" and "Orpheus in the Under
+World."
+
+There was always something wrong.
+
+Daniel shuddered at the mere presence of these people; he was repelled
+by their occupations, their amusements, and the cadavers of their
+ideals. He did not like the way they laughed; nor could he stand their
+dismal feelings. He despised the houses out of which they crept, the
+detectives at their windows, their butcher shops and hotels, their
+newspapers, their Sundays and their work days. The world was pressing
+hard upon him. He had to look these people straight in the face, and
+they compelled him to haggle with them for money, words, feelings, and
+ideas.
+
+He learned in time, however, to see other things: the forests on the
+banks of the Main; the great meadows in the hills of Franconia; the
+melancholy plains of Central Germany; the richly variegated slopes of
+the Jura Mountains; the old cities with their walls and cathedrals,
+their gloomy alleys and deserted castles. In time he came to see people
+in a different and easier light. He saw the young and the old, the fair
+and the homely, the cheerful and the sad, the poor--and the rich so far
+away and peaceful. They gave him, without discrimination, of their
+wealth and their poverty. They laid their youth and their old age, their
+beauty and their ugliness, their joys and their sorrows, at his feet.
+
+And the country gave him the forests and the fields, the brooks and the
+rivers, the clouds and the birds, and everything that is under the
+earth.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+It was winter. The company came to Ansbach, where they were to play in
+the former Margrave Theatre. "Freischuetz" was to be given, and Daniel
+had held a number of special rehearsals.
+
+But a violent snow storm broke out on the day of the performance;
+scarcely two dozen people attended.
+
+How differently the violins sounded in this auditorium! The voices were,
+as it seemed, automatically well balanced; there was in them an element
+of calm and assurance. The orchestra? Daniel had so charmed it that it
+obeyed him as if it were a single instrument. At the close of the last
+act, an old, grey-haired man stepped up to Daniel, smiled, took him by
+the hand, and thanked him. It was Spindler.
+
+Daniel went home with him; they talked about the past, the future, men
+and music. They could not stop talking; nor could the snow stop falling.
+This did not disturb them. They met again on the following day; but at
+the end of the week Spindler was taken ill, and had to go to bed.
+
+As Daniel entered the residence of his old friend one morning, he
+learned that he had died suddenly the night before. It had been a
+peaceful death.
+
+On the third day, Daniel followed the funeral procession to the
+cemetery. When he left the cemetery--there were but few people at the
+funeral--he went out into the snow-covered fields, and spent the
+remainder of the day walking around.
+
+That same night he sat down in his wretched quarters, and began his
+composition of Goethe's "Harzreise im Winter." It was one of the
+profoundest and rarest of works ever created by a musician, but it was
+destined, like the most of Daniel's compositions, not to be preserved to
+posterity. This was due to a tragic circumstance.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+In the spring of 1886, the company went north to Hesse, then to
+Thuringia, gave performances in a few of the towns in the Spessart
+region and along the Rhoen, the box receipts growing smaller and smaller
+all the while. Doermaul had not been seen since the previous autumn; the
+salaries had not been paid for some time. Wurzelmann prophesied a speedy
+and fatal end of the enterprise.
+
+An engagement of unusual length had been planned for the town of
+Ochsenfurt. The company placed its last hopes on the series, although it
+was already June and very warm. The thick, muggy air of the gloomy hall
+in which they were to play left even the enthusiasts without much desire
+to brighten up the monotony of provincial life by the enjoyment of grand
+opera.
+
+They drew smaller houses from day to day. Finally there was no more
+money in the till; they did not even have enough to move to the next
+town. To make matters worse, the tenor was taken down with typhus, and
+the other singers refused to sing until they had been paid. Daniel wrote
+to Doermaul, but received no reply. Wurzelmann, instead of helping,
+fanned the easily inflamed minds of the company into a fire of noise,
+malevolence, and hostility. They demanded that Daniel give them what was
+due them, besieged him in his hotel, and finally brought matters to such
+a pitch that the whole town was busied with their difficulties.
+
+One afternoon, a stately gentleman between fifty-five and fifty-six
+years old entered Daniel's room, and introduced himself as Sylvester von
+Erfft, the owner of an estate.
+
+His mission was as follows: Every year, at this season, the Chancellor
+of the German Empire was taking the cure at the nearby Kissingen Baths.
+Herr von Erfft had made his acquaintance, and the Prince, an
+enthusiastic landowner, had expressed the desire to visit Herr von
+Erfft's estate, the management of which was widely known as excellent in
+every way. In order to celebrate the coming of the distinguished guest
+with befitting dignity, it had been decided not to have any tawdry
+fireworks or cheap shouting, but to give a special performance of the
+"Marriage of Figaro" in a rococo pavilion that belonged to the Erfft
+estate.
+
+"This idea comes from my wife," said Herr von Erfft. "Some ladies and
+gentlemen of noble birth who belong to our circle will sing the various
+parts, and my daughter Sylvia, who studied for two years in Milan with
+Gallifati, will take the part of the page. The only thing we lack is a
+trained orchestra. For this reason I have come to you, Herr
+Kapellmeister, to see if you could not bring your orchestra over and
+play for us."
+
+Daniel, though pleased with the kindly disposition of Herr von Erfft,
+could not make him any definite promise, for he felt bound to the
+helpless, if not hopeless, opera company now in his care. Herr von Erfft
+inquired more closely into the grounds of his doubt as to his ability to
+have his orchestra undertake the special engagement, and then asked him
+whether he would accept his help. "Gladly," replied Daniel, "but such
+help as you can offer us will hardly be of any avail. Our chief is a
+hardened sinner."
+
+Herr von Erfft went with Daniel to the mayor; a half-hour later an
+official dispatch was on its way to the impresario Doermaul. It was
+couched in language that was sufficient to inspire any citizen with
+respect, referred to the desperate plight in which the company then
+found itself, and demanded in a quite imperious tone that something be
+done at once.
+
+Doermaul was frightened; he sent the necessary money by return wire. In
+another telegram to Wurzelmann he declared the company dissolved; most
+of the contracts had expired, and those members of the company who put
+in claims were satisfied in one way or another.
+
+Daniel was free. Wurzelmann said to him on taking leave: "Nothafft, you
+will never amount to anything. I have been disappointed in you. You have
+far too much conscience. You cannot make children out of morality, much
+less music. The swamp is quaggy, the summit rocky. Commit some act of
+genuine swinishness, so that you may put a little ginger into your
+life."
+
+Daniel laid his hand on his shoulder, looked at him with his cold eyes,
+and said: "Judas."
+
+"All right, Judas so far as I am concerned," said Wurzelmann. "I was not
+born to be nailed to the cross; I am much more for the feasts with the
+Pharisees."
+
+He had got a position as critic on the _Phoenix_, one of the best known
+musical magazines.
+
+Daniel found the members of the orchestra only too glad to take the
+excursion over to Herr von Erfft's. They were put up in a hotel; Daniel
+himself lived in the castle. The rehearsals were held with zeal and
+seriousness. Though the name of the Chancellor was still darkened by the
+clouds of political life, by the enmity of his opponents, by pettiness
+and misunderstanding, all these young people felt the power of the great
+Immortal, and were delighted with the idea of meaning something to him,
+even in the guise of an imaginary world and for only a fleeting hour or
+two. Agatha von Erfft, the wife of Herr von Erfft, was indefatigable in
+preparing the costumes, surmounting technical difficulties, and
+entertaining her guests. The twenty-four-year-old Sylvia had inherited
+neither the strength of her mother nor the amiability of her father: she
+was delicate and reserved. Nevertheless, she managed to put a great deal
+of winsomeness and roguishness into the role of the cherub. Even her
+parents were surprised at the unexpected wealth of her natural ability.
+Moreover, her voice was velvety and well trained. Accustomed as he had
+been for years to the mediocre accomplishments of sore throats, Daniel
+nodded approval when she sang.
+
+The other members of the improvised company he handled with no greater
+indulgence than he had shown the singers of the Doermaul troupe. They had
+to put up with his gruffness and snappishness, and to do it without a
+murmur. Herr von Erfft attended the rehearsals regularly, observing
+Daniel at all times with quiet admiration. If Daniel spoke to any one
+with such seeming harshness that the case was taken up with Herr von
+Erfft, the latter said: "Let the man have his way; he knows his
+business; there are not many like him."
+
+Sylvia was the only one he treated with consideration. As soon as Herr
+von Erfft mentioned her name, Daniel listened; and as soon as he had
+seen her, he knew that he had seen her before. It was the time he was
+on his journey; he was standing out at the entrance to the park; some
+one called to her. It seemed strange to him that he should remember
+this. Now he was with her, and yet he was just as much of a stranger to
+her as ever.
+
+But the thing that drew him to the beautiful girl had nothing to do with
+this chance incident; nor was there the slightest trace of sensuousness
+in his feelings. It was all a sort of dream-like sympathy, similar to
+the quest of memory in search of a forgotten happiness. It was a vaguer
+and more plaguing sensation than the one that bound him so inviolably to
+Gertrude; it was more sorrow than joy, more unrest than consciousness.
+
+This forgotten happiness slumbered deep down in his soul; it had been
+washed away by the waves of life. It was not Sylvia herself; it was
+perhaps a movement of her hand: where had he known this same movement
+before? It was the way she tossed her head back; it was her proud look,
+the blue of her eyes--but where had he seen all this before?
+
+Forgotten, forgotten....
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+Just as everything was in full swing, just as they had decorated the
+buildings and arranged the Herrenhaus, the news came of the death of
+King Ludwig of Bavaria. The newspapers bore a broad black margin, and
+were crowded with details concerning the tragedy at the Starnbergersee.
+The entire country, including the family of Herr von Erfft, mourned the
+loss of the art-loving monarch genuinely and for a long while.
+
+Of an operatic performance there could be no thought. The Chancellor
+cancelled his engagement, and the young men who had assembled for the
+rehearsals went quietly home. Herr von Erfft gave Daniel a considerable
+purse with which he might recompense his musicians for their trouble,
+and, not wishing to treat Daniel himself as though he were an ordinary
+mechanic, he invited him to spend a few more days on his estate.
+
+Daniel did not decline; he had not in truth given one minute's thought
+to where he would go when he left.
+
+After he distributed the present from Herr von Erfft among the musicians
+and discharged them, he took a long walk in the woods. He ate a frugal
+meal in a village restaurant, and then sauntered around until evening.
+When he returned, he found his hosts sitting at the table. He neglected
+to beg their pardon; Frau Agatha looked at her husband and smiled, and
+told the maids to bring in something for the Herr Kapellmeister. Sylvia
+had a book in her hand and was reading.
+
+Daniel was a trifle ill at ease; he merely took a bite here and there.
+When Frau von Erfft left the table, walked over to the window, and
+looked out into the cloudy sky, Daniel got up, went into the adjoining
+room, and sat down at the piano.
+
+He began to play Schubert's "Song to Sylvia." Having finished the
+impetuous, heart-felt song, he struck up a variation, then a second, a
+third, and a fourth. The first was melancholy, the second triumphant,
+the third meditative, the fourth dreamy. Each was a hymn to forgotten
+joy.
+
+Herr von Erfft and Agatha were standing in the open door. Sylvia had sat
+down close beside him on a tabourette; there was a pleasing, far-away
+look in her eyes, riveted though they were to the floor.
+
+He suddenly stopped, as if to avoid both thanks and applause. Sylvester
+von Erfft took a seat opposite him, and asked him in a most kindly tone
+whether he had any definite plans for the immediate future.
+
+"I am going back to Nuremberg and get married," said Daniel. "My fiancee
+has been waiting for me for a long time."
+
+Herr von Erfft asked him whether he was not afraid of premature marriage
+bonds. Daniel replied rather curtly that he needed some one to stand
+between him and the world.
+
+"You need some one to act as a sort of buffer," said Frau Agatha
+sarcastically. Daniel looked at her angrily.
+
+"Buffer? No, but a guardian angel if such a creature can shield me from
+rebuffs," said Daniel, even more brusquely than he had spoken the first
+time.
+
+"Why do you wish to settle down and live in Nuremberg, a city of such
+one-sided commercial interests?" continued Herr von Erfft, with an
+almost solicitous caution. "Would you not have a much better opportunity
+as a composer in one of the great cities?"
+
+"It is impossible to separate the daughter from her father," replied
+Daniel with unusual candour. "It is impossible. Nor is it possible to
+get the old man to tear himself away from his former associations. He
+was born and reared there. And I do not wish to live alone any longer.
+Everybody needs a companion; even the miner digs with a better heart,
+when he knows that up on the earth above his wife is preparing the soup.
+I must say, however, that I am not so much taken up with the soup phase
+of married life: it is the dear little soul that will belong to me that
+interests me."
+
+He turned around, and struck a minor chord.
+
+"And even if everything were different, your great cities would not
+attract me," he began again, wrinkling his face in a most bizarre way.
+"What would I get out of them? Companions? I have had enough of them.
+Music I can study at home. I can summon the masters of all ages to my
+study. Fame and riches will find their way to me, if they wish to. The
+dawn is missed only by those who are too indolent to get up, and real
+music is heard by all except the deaf. God attends to everything else;
+man has nothing to do with it."
+
+He struck another chord, this time in a major key.
+
+Herr von Erfft and his wife looked at him with evident joy and sympathy.
+Sylvia whispered something to her mother, who then said to Daniel: "I
+have a sister living in Nuremberg, Baroness Clotilde von Auffenberg.
+From the time she was a mere child she was an ardent lover of good
+music. If I give you a letter of introduction to her, I am quite sure
+she will welcome you with open arms. She is unfortunately not in the
+best of health, and a heavy fate is just now hanging over her; but she
+has a warm heart, and her affections are trustworthy."
+
+Daniel looked down at the floor. He thought of Gertrude and his future
+life with her, and murmured a few words of gratitude. Frau von Erfft
+went at once to her desk, and wrote a detailed letter to her sister.
+When she had finished it, she gave it to Daniel with a good-natured
+smile.
+
+The next morning he left the castle with the feeling of regret that one
+experiences on leaving the dwelling place of peace and separating from
+noble friends.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+The streets of Nuremberg were hung with black banners. It was raining.
+Daniel took a cheap room in The Bear.
+
+It had already grown dark when he started to Jordan's. He met Benno at
+the front door. He did not recognise the foppishly-dressed young man,
+and was on the point of passing by without speaking to him; but Benno
+stopped, and laughed out loud.
+
+"Whew, the Herr Kapellmeister!" he cried, and his pale face, already
+showing the signs of dissipation, took on a scornful expression. "Be
+careful, my friend, or Gertrude will swoon."
+
+Daniel asked if they were all well. Benno replied that there was no
+lack of good health, though some of the family were a little short of
+change. Then he laughed again. He spoke of his father, said the old
+gentleman was not getting along very well, that he was having quite a
+little trouble to get anything to do, but then what could be expected
+with a man of his age, and the competition and the hard times! Daniel
+asked if Eleanore was at home. No, she was not at home: she had gone on
+a visit with Frau Ruebsam over to Pommersfelden, and planned to stay
+there for a few weeks. "Well, I'll have to be hurrying along," said
+Benno, "my fraternity brothers are waiting for me."
+
+"Good gracious! Do you have fraternity brothers too?"
+
+"Of course! They are the spice of my life! We have a holiday to-day: The
+King's funeral. Well, God bless you, Herr Kapellmeister, I must be
+going."
+
+Daniel went up and rang the bell; Gertrude came to the door. It was
+dark; each could see only the outline of the other.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Daniel!" she whispered, happy as happy could be. She came
+up to him, and laid her face on his shoulder.
+
+Daniel was surprised at the regularity of his pulse. Yesterday the mere
+thought of this meeting took his breath. Now he held Gertrude in his
+arms, and was amazed to find that he was perfectly calm and composed.
+
+In the room he led her over to the lamp, and looked at her for a long
+while, fixedly and seriously. She grew pale at the sight of him: he was
+so strange and so terrible.
+
+Then he took her by the hand, led her over to the sofa, sat down beside
+her, and told her of his plans. Her wishes and his tallied exactly. He
+wanted to get married within four weeks. Very well; she would get
+married.
+
+He found her the same unqualifiedly submissive girl. In her eyes there
+was an expression of fatal docility; it terrified him. There was no
+cowardly doubt in her soul; her cool hand lay in his and did not twitch.
+With her hand her whole soul, her whole life, lay in his hand. He wanted
+to raise some doubt in her mind: he spoke in a down-hearted tone of his
+future prospects; he said that there was very little hope of his ever
+winning recognition from the world for his compositions.
+
+"What is the good of recognition?" she asked. "They can take nothing
+from you, and what they give you is clear gain."
+
+He became silent. The feeling of her worth to him swept like a fiery
+meteor through the heaven of his existence.
+
+The statement that they were going to remain in Nuremberg made her
+happy, particularly because of her father. She said there was a small
+apartment for rent on AEgydius Place, three rooms, a very quiet
+neighbourhood. They went over to the window; Gertrude showed him the
+house. It was close to the church, right where the Place makes a turn.
+
+Jordan came in, and welcomed Daniel with a long handshake. His hair had
+become greyer, he walked with more of a stoop, and his clothes showed
+traces of neglect.
+
+When he heard what Daniel and Gertrude were planning to do, he shook his
+head: "It is a bad year, children. Why are you in such a hurry? Both of
+you are still young."
+
+"If we were older, we would have less courage," replied Daniel.
+
+Jordan took a seat, and buried his face in his hands. In course of time
+he looked up, and said that three years ago he had only eight thousand
+marks in the bank; that hard times had forced him to draw on this sum to
+keep the house going; and that to-day there was hardly a third of it
+left. Two thousand marks was all he could give Gertrude as a dowry; with
+that they would have to be satisfied, and get along as well as they
+could.
+
+"We don't need any more," said Daniel; "as a matter of fact I did not
+expect that much. Now I haven't a care in the world; I am ready for
+anything."
+
+A bat flew in at the open window, and then quietly flew out again. It
+had stopped raining. You could still hear the water trickling and
+splashing down the leaders and in the pipes. There was something heavy,
+portentous, in the air of this June evening.
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+At first Daniel had received small bits of news from England about
+Benda, but for a year and a half he had not heard a word. When Eleanore
+returned from Pommersfelden in July, she told him that she had received
+a letter from Benda in April, and that she had sent him this letter when
+he was at Naumburg. Daniel, however, had never received it, and the
+investigations which he made proved fruitless.
+
+Benda's mother was not in the city; she was living with relatives in
+Worms, but had kept her apartment at Herr Carovius's.
+
+Frau von Auffenberg was at Bad Ems, and did not plan to return until
+September. Daniel looked up old friends, and rebound the ties of former
+days. He also succeeded in getting a number of students to tutor, an
+occupation that netted him a little spending money.
+
+He had to attend to a great deal of business for which he was quite
+unfit. He had imagined that he could get married just as he might go to
+a shop and buy something: he would not make any noise, nor would it take
+much time. He had a hundred moods, a hundred objections, a hundred
+grimaces. The apartment on AEgydius Place was already rented. It
+embittered him to think that in order to live with a person you loved,
+you had to have tables, beds, chairs, cupboards, lamps, glasses, plates,
+garbage cans, water pails, window cushions, and a thousand and one other
+foolish objects.
+
+There was a great deal of talk in the city about the marriage. The
+people said they did not know what Jordan could be thinking of. They
+were convinced that he was in desperate financial straits if he would
+marry his daughter to an impecunious musician.
+
+Daniel found everything hard: every day was his Day of Judgment. A
+melody was gnawing at his heart, trying to take on a pure and finished
+form. Freedom sounded in his ears with voices from above; his quiet
+fiancee begged for comradeship. The task to which he had dedicated
+himself demanded loneliness; then his blood carried him along and away,
+and he became like wax, but wild.
+
+He would rush to Jordan's house, enter the living room, his hair all
+dishevelled, sit down where the two sisters were working on Gertrude's
+trousseau, and never utter a syllable until Gertrude would come up to
+him and lay her hand on his forehead. He thrust her back, but she smiled
+gently. At times, though none too frequently, he would take her by the
+arms and pull her down to him. When he did this, Eleanore would smile
+with marked demureness, as if it were not right for her to see two
+people in love.
+
+There was a second-hand baby grand piano in Jordan's living room. Daniel
+played on it in the evening, and the sisters listened. Gertrude was like
+a woman wrapt in peaceful slumber, her every wish having been fulfilled,
+with kindly spirits watching over her. Eleanore, however, was wide
+awake; she was awake and meditating.
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+The day of the wedding arrived. At half past nine in the morning, Daniel
+appeared in Jordan's house. He wore an afternoon suit and a high hat!
+He was vexed, and villanous to behold, a picture of misery.
+
+Benno, the man of the world, was forced to leave the room. No sooner was
+he outside than he laughed so heartily that he fell into a clothes
+basket. He did not approve of this marriage; he was ashamed to tell his
+friends about it.
+
+Gertrude wore a plain street dress and a little virgin bonnet, then
+prescribed by fashion. She sat by the table, and gazed into space with
+wide-opened eyes.
+
+Eleanore came into the room with a wreath of myrtle. "You must put this
+on, Gertrude," she said, "just to please us; just to make us feel that
+you are a real bride. Otherwise you look too sober, too much as though
+you two were going to the recorder's office on profane business."
+
+"Where did you get that wreath?" asked Jordan.
+
+"I found it in an old chest; it is mother's bridal wreath."
+
+"Really? Mother's bridal wreath?" murmured Jordan, as he looked at the
+faded myrtle.
+
+"Put it on, Gertrude," Eleanore again requested, but Gertrude looked
+first at Daniel, and then laid it to one side.
+
+Eleanore went up to the mirror, and put it on her own head.
+
+"Don't do that, child," said Jordan with a melancholy smile.
+"Superstitious people say that you will remain an old maid forever, if
+you wear the wreath of another."
+
+"Then I will remain an old maid, and gladly so," said Eleanore.
+
+She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Daniel half unconscious
+of what she was doing. The blond of her eyelashes had turned almost
+grey, the red of her lips had been dotted with little spots from her
+smiling, and her neck was like something liquid and disembodied.
+
+Daniel saw all this. He looked at the Undine-like figure of the girl. It
+seemed to him that he had not seen her since the day of his return, that
+he had not noticed that she had become more mature, more beautiful, and
+more lovely. All of a sudden he felt as if he were going to swoon. It
+went through him like a flash: Here, here was what he had forgotten;
+here was the countenance, the eye, the figure, the movement that had
+stood before him, and he, fool, unspeakable fool, had been struck by
+blindness.
+
+Gertrude had a fearful suspicion of the experience he was going through.
+She arose, and looked at Daniel in horror. He hastened up to her as if
+he were fleeing, and seized her hands. Eleanore, believing she had
+aroused Daniel's displeasure by some word or gesture, snatched the
+myrtle wreath from her hair.
+
+Jordan had paid no attention to these incidents. Bringing at last his
+restless pacing back and forth to an end, he took out his watch, looked
+at it, and said it was time they were going. Eleanore, who had displayed
+a most curious disposition the whole morning, asked them to wait a
+minute. Before they could find out why she wished them to wait, the door
+bell rang, and she ran out.
+
+She returned with a radiant expression on her face; Marian Nothafft
+followed her. Marian composed herself only with extreme difficulty. Her
+eyes roamed about over the circle of people before her, partly as if she
+were frightened, partly as if she were looking for some one.
+
+Mother and son stood face to face in absolute silence. That was the work
+of Eleanore.
+
+Marian said she was living with her sister Theresa; that she had arrived
+the day before; and that she wished to return this evening.
+
+"I am glad, Mother, that you could come," said Daniel with a stifled
+voice.
+
+Marian laid her hand on his head; she then went up to Gertrude, and did
+the same.
+
+After the wedding, Jordan gave a luncheon for his children. In the
+afternoon they all started off in two hired coaches. Daniel had never
+seen his mother so cheerful; but it was useless to ask her to prolong
+her visit. While this was being discussed, she and Eleanore exchanged
+knowing glances.
+
+As evening drew on, Daniel and Gertrude betook themselves to their home.
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+It is night. The antiquated old square is deserted. The bell in the
+church tower has struck eleven; the lights in the windows die out,
+slowly, one by one.
+
+The figure of a woman is seen coming up the alley. She is spying
+anxiously about, before her and behind her. Finally she stops before the
+little house in which Daniel and Gertrude live. Is it a living creature?
+Is it not rather an uncanny gnome? The garments hang loose about the
+unshapely body; a crumpled straw hat covers the mad-looking face; the
+shoulders are raised; the fists are clenched; the eyes are glassy.
+
+Suddenly there is a scream. The woman hastens over toward the church,
+falls on her knees, and sinks her teeth with frenzied madness into the
+wooden pickets of the fence. After some time she rises, stares up once
+more at the windows with distorted lips, and then moves away with slow,
+dragging steps.
+
+It was Philippina Schimmelweis. She kept going about the streets in this
+fashion until break of day.
+
+
+
+
+                          DANIEL AND GERTRUDE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+The Reichstag had voted to extend the period during which the Socialist
+law would be in effect; the passing of a new army bill was also to be
+expected. These two measures had provoked tumultuous discord in many
+parts of the country.
+
+The Social Democrats were planning a parade through the main streets of
+the city in October, but the police had already forbidden their
+demonstration. The evening the edict was issued the regiments stood at
+alert in the barracks; feeling ran high throughout the entire city. In
+Woehrd and Plobenhof there had been a number of riots; in the narrow
+streets of the central zone thousands of workmen had stormed the
+Rathaus.
+
+Every now and then there would come a long, shrill whistle from the
+silent mass, followed at once by the heavy rolling of drums at the guard
+house.
+
+Among those who came down from the direction of Koenig Street was the
+workman Wachsmuth. In the vicinity of the Schimmelweis shop he delivered
+an excited harangue against the former member of the party; his words
+fell on fruitful soil. A locksmith's apprentice who had lost some money
+through the Prudentia violently defamed the character of the bookseller.
+
+The mob gathered before the lighted shop window. Wachsmuth stood by the
+door, and demanded that the traitor be suspended from a lamp post before
+this day's sun had set. A stone flew through the air over their heads,
+and crashed through the window; pieces of glass flew in all directions.
+Thereupon a dozen fellows rushed into the shop, exclaiming, "Where is
+the dirty dog? Let us get at the blood-sucker!" They wanted to teach him
+a lesson he would never forget.
+
+Before Theresa could open her mouth, scraps of books and newspapers were
+flying in every direction, and pamphlets were being trampled under foot.
+A forest of arms were reaching out for the shelves, and bundles of books
+were falling to the floor, like stacks of cards piled up by a child and
+blown over by the wind. Zwanziger had taken refuge at the top of the
+ladder; he was howling. Theresa stood by the till looking like the ghost
+of ages. Philippina came in through the back door, and eyed what was
+going on without one visible trace of surprise or discomfort; she merely
+smiled. Just then the policeman's whistle blew; in less time than it
+takes to draw one breath, the rebellious insurgents were beating a hasty
+retreat.
+
+When Theresa regained consciousness, the shop was empty; and the street
+in front of the shop was as deserted as it ordinarily is at midnight.
+After some time, the chief of police came up; he was followed by a crowd
+of curious people, who stood around and gaped at the scene of
+devastation.
+
+Jason Philip, seeing what was coming, had left the shop betimes and
+hidden in his house. He had even locked the front door and was sunk down
+on a chair, his teeth clappering with vigour and regularity.
+
+He returned at last to the shop, and with heart-rending dignity faced the
+dispenser of justice, who by this time had put in his appearance. He
+said: "And this is what I get from people for whom I have sacrificed my
+money and my blood."
+
+In giving his testimony as an eyewitness, Zwanziger displayed boastful
+hardiness in his narration of details. Philippina looked at him with
+venomous contempt from under the imbecile locks that hung down over her
+forehead, and murmured: "You disgusting coward!"
+
+When Jason Philip came back from the inn, he said: "To believe that
+people can be ruled without the knout is a fatal delusion." With that he
+stepped into his embroidered slippers--"For tired Father--Consolation."
+The slippers had aged, and so had Jason Philip. His beard was streaked
+with grey.
+
+Theresa took an invoice of the damage the mob had done: she felt that
+Jason Philip was a ruined man.
+
+As he lay stretched out in bed, Jason Philip said: "The first thing I
+want to do is to have a serious, heart-to-heart talk with Baron
+Auffenberg. The Liberal Party is going to take direct action against the
+impudence of the lower classes, or it is going to lose a constituent."
+
+"How many quarts of beer did you drink?" asked Theresa from the depths
+of the pillows.
+
+"Two."
+
+"You are a liar."
+
+"Well, possibly I drank three," replied Jason Philip with a yawn. "But
+to accuse a man of my standing of lying on such small grounds is an act
+of perfidy such as only an uncultured woman like yourself could be
+brought to commit."
+
+Theresa blew out the candle.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg had returned from Munich, where he had had
+an interview with the Minister.
+
+He had also seen a great many other people in the presence of whom he
+was condescending, jovial, and witty. His amiability was proverbial.
+
+Now he was sitting with a gloomy face by the chimney. Not a one of those
+many people who had so recently been charmed by his conversational gifts
+would have recognised him.
+
+The stillness and loneliness pained him. An irresistible force drew him
+to his wife. He had not seen her for seven weeks, though they had lived
+in the same house.
+
+He was drawn to her, because he wanted to know whether she had heard
+anything from that person whose name he did not like to mention, from
+his son, his enemy, his heir. Not that he wanted to ask his wife any
+questions: he merely wished to read her face. Since no one in the
+vicinity had dared say a word to him about his son, he was forced to
+rely on suppositions and the subtle cunning of his senses at ferreting
+out information on this kind of subjects. He did not dare betray the
+curiosity with which he waited for some one to inform him that his hated
+offspring had at last come to mortal grief.
+
+Six years had elapsed, and still he could hear the insolent voice in
+which the monstrous remarks were made that had torn him from the
+twilight of his self-complacency; remarks that distressed him more than
+any other grief he may have felt in the secrecy of his bed chamber and
+which completely and forever robbed him of all the joys of human
+existence.
+
+"_Depeche-toi, mon bon garcon_," screeched the parrot.
+
+The Baron arose, and went to his wife's room. She was terrified when she
+saw him enter. She was lying on a sofa, her head propped up by cushions,
+a thick Indian blanket spread out over her legs.
+
+She had a broad, bloated face, thick lips, and unusually big black eyes,
+in which there was a sickly glare. She had been regarded as a beauty in
+her young days, though none of this beauty was left, unless it was the
+freshness of her complexion or the dignified bearing of the born lady of
+the world.
+
+She sent her maid out of the room, and looked at her husband in silence.
+She studied the friendly, Jesuitic wrinkles in his face, by virtue of
+which he managed to conceal his real thoughts. Her anxiety was
+increased.
+
+"You have not played the piano any to-day," he began in a sweet voice.
+"It makes the house seem as though something were missing. I am told
+that you have acquired perfect technique, and that you have engaged a
+new teacher. Emilia told me this."
+
+Emilia was their daughter. She was married to Count Urlich, captain of
+cavalry.
+
+In the Baroness's eyes there was an expression such as is found in the
+eyes of some leashed beast when the butcher approaches, axe in hand. She
+was tortured by the smoothness of the man from whom she had never once
+in the last quarter of a century received anything but brutality and
+scorn, and from whom she had suffered the grossest of humiliations--when
+no one was listening.
+
+"What do you want, Siegmund?" she asked, with painful effort.
+
+The Baron stepped close up to her, bit his lips, and looked at her for
+ten or twelve seconds with a fearful expression on his face.
+
+She then seized him by the left arm: "What is the matter with Eberhard?"
+she cried; "tell me, tell me everything! There is something wrong."
+
+The Baron, with a gesture of stinging aversion, thrust her hands from
+him, and turned to go. There was unfathomable coldness in his conduct.
+
+Beside herself with grief, the Baroness made up her mind to tell him,
+for the first time in her life, of the thousand wrongs that burned
+within her heart. And she did: "Oh, you monster! Why did Fate bring you
+into my life? Where is there another woman in the world whose lot has
+been like mine? Where is the woman who has lived without joy or love or
+esteem or freedom or peace, a burden to others and to herself? Show me
+another woman who goes about in silk and satin longing for death. Name
+me another woman who people think is happy, because the devil, who
+tortures her without ceasing, deceives them all. Where is there another
+woman who has been so shamelessly robbed of her children? For is not my
+daughter the captive and concubine of an insane tuft-hunter? Has not my
+son been taken from me through the baseness that has been practised
+against his sister, and the lamentable spectacle afforded him by my own
+powerlessness? Where, I ask high Heaven, is there another woman so
+cursed as I have been?"
+
+She threw herself down on her bosom, and burrowed her face into the
+cushion.
+
+The Baron was surprised at the feverish eloquence of his wife; he had
+accustomed himself to her mute resignation, as he might have accustomed
+himself to the regular, monotonous ticking of a hall clock. He was
+anxious to see what she would do next, how she would develop her
+excitement; she was a novel phenomenon in his eyes: therefore he
+remained standing in the door.
+
+But as he stood there in chilly expectancy, his haggard face casting off
+expressions of scorn and surprise, he suddenly sensed a feeling of weary
+disgust at himself. It was the disgust of a man whose wishes had always
+been fulfilled, whose lusts had been satisfied; of a man who has never
+known other men except as greedy and practical supplicants; of a man who
+has always been the lord of his friends, the tyrant of his servants, and
+the centre of all social gatherings; of a man before whom all others
+yielded, to whom all others bowed; of a man who had never renounced
+anything but the feeling of renunciation.
+
+"I am not unaware," he began slowly, just as if he were making a
+campaign speech to his electors, "I am not unaware that our marriage has
+not been the source of wholesome blessings. To be convinced of this,
+your declamation was unnecessary. We married because the circumstances
+were favourable. We had cause to regret the decision. Is it worth while
+to investigate the cause now? I am quite devoid of sentimental needs.
+This is true of me to such an extent that any display of sympathy or
+exuberance or lack of harshness in other people fills me with mortal
+antipathy. Unfortunately, my political career obliged me to assume a
+favourable attitude toward this general tendency of the masses. I played
+the hypocrite with complete consciousness of what I was doing, and made
+so much the greater effort to conceal all feeling in my private life."
+
+"It is easy to conceal something you do not have," replied the Baroness
+in a tone of intense bitterness.
+
+"Possibly; but it is a poor display of tact for the rich man to irritate
+the poor man by flaunting his lavish, spendthrift habits in his face;
+and this is precisely what you have done. The emphasis you laid on a
+certain possession of yours, the value of which we will not dispute,
+provoked my contempt. It gave you pleasure to cry when you saw a cat
+eating a sparrow. A banal newspaper novel could rob you completely of
+your spiritual equanimity. You were always thrilled, always in ecstasy,
+it made not the slightest difference whether the cause of your ecstasy
+was the first spring violet or a thunder storm, a burnt roast, a sore
+throat, or a poem. You were always raving, and I became tired of your
+raving. You did not seem to notice that my distrust toward the
+expression of these so-called feelings was transformed into coldness,
+impatience, and hatred. And then came the music. What was at first a
+diversion for you, of which one might approve or disapprove, became in
+time the indemnity for an active life and all the defects of your
+character. You gave yourself up to music somewhat as a prostitute gives
+herself up to her first loyal lover"--the Baroness twitched as if some
+one had struck her across the back with a horsewhip--"yes, like a
+prostitute," he repeated, turning paler and paler, his eyes glistening.
+"Then it was that your whole character came to light; one saw how
+spoiled you were, how helpless, how undisciplined. You clung like a worm
+to uncertain and undetermined conditions. If I have become a devil in
+your eyes, it is your music that has made me so. Now you know it."
+
+"So that is it," whispered the Baroness with faltering breath. "Did you
+leave me anything but my music? Have you not raged like a tiger? But it
+is not true," she exclaimed, "you are not so vicious, otherwise I myself
+would be a lie in the presence of the Eternal Judge, and that I had
+borne children by you would be contrary to nature. Leave me, go away, so
+that I may believe that it is not true!"
+
+The Baron did not move.
+
+In indescribable excitement, and as quickly as her obese body would
+permit, the Baroness leaped to her feet: "I know you better," she said
+with trembling lips, "I have been able to foreshadow what is driving you
+about; I have seen what makes you so restless. You are not the man you
+pretend to be; you are not the cold, heartless creature you seem. In
+your breast there is a spot where you are vulnerable, and there you have
+been struck. You are bleeding, man! If we all, I and your daughter and
+your brothers and your friends and your cowardly creatures, are as
+indifferent and despicable to you as so many flies, there is one who has
+been able to wound you; this fact is gnawing at your heart. And do you
+know why he was in a position to wound you? Because you loved him. Look
+me in the eye, and tell me that I lie. You loved him--your son--you
+idolised him. The fact that he has repudiated your love, that he found
+it of no value to him, the love that blossomed on the ruined lives of
+his mother and sister, this is the cause of your sorrow. It is written
+across your brow. And that you are suffering, and suffering for this
+reason, constitutes my revenge."
+
+The Baron did not say a word; his lower jaw wagged from left to right as
+though he were chewing something; his face seemed to have dried up; he
+looked as though he had suddenly become older by years. The Baroness,
+driven from her reserve, stood before him like an enraged sibyl. He
+turned in silence, and left the room.
+
+"My suffering is her revenge," he murmured on leaving the room. Once
+alone, he stood for a while perfectly absent-minded. "Am I really
+suffering?" he said to himself.
+
+He turned off a gas jet that was burning above the book case. "Yes, I am
+suffering," he confessed reluctantly; "I am suffering." He walked along
+the wall with dragging feet, and entered a room in which a light was
+burning. He felt the same satiety and disgust at himself that he had
+experienced a few moments earlier. This time it was caused by the sight
+of the hand-carved furniture, the painted porcelain, the precious
+tapestries, and the oil paintings in their gold frames.
+
+He longed for simpler things; he longed for barren walls, a cot of
+straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his
+exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic
+life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants,
+had long been tired of Protestantism. He regarded the Roman Church as
+the more wholesome and merciful.
+
+But the transformation of his religious views was his own carefully
+guarded secret. And secret it had to remain until he, the undisciplined
+son of his mother, could atone for his past misdeeds. He decided to wait
+until this atonement had been effected. Just as a hypnotist gains
+control of his medium by inner composure, so he thought he could hasten
+the coming of this event by conceding it absolute supremacy over his
+mind.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+When Eberhard von Auffenberg left the paternal home to strike out for
+himself, he was as helpless as a child that has lost the hand of its
+adult companion in a crowd.
+
+He put the question to himself: What am I going to do? He had never
+worked. He had studied at various universities as so many other young
+men have studied, that is, he had managed to pass a few examinations by
+the skin of his teeth.
+
+He had had so little to do in life, and was so utterly devoid of
+ambition, that he looked upon a really ambitious individual as being
+insane. Anything that was at all practical was filled with
+insurmountable obstacles. His freedom, in other words, placed him in a
+distressing state of mind and body.
+
+It would not have been difficult for him to find people who would have
+been willing to advance him money on his name. But he did not wish to
+incur debts of which his father might hear. If he did, his solemn
+solution of an unbearable relation would have amounted to nothing.
+
+He could, of course, count on his share of the estate; and he did count
+on it, notwithstanding the fact that to do so was to speculate on the
+death of his own father. He stood in urgent need of a confidential
+friend; and this friend he thought he had found in Herr Carovius.
+
+"Ah, two people such as you and I will not insist upon unnecessary
+formalities," said Herr Carovius. "All that I need is your face, and
+your signature to a piece of paper. We will deduct ten per cent at the
+very outset, so that my expenses may be covered, for money is dear at
+present. I will give you real estate bonds; they are selling to-day at
+eighty-five, unfortunately. The Exchange is a trifle spotty, but a
+little loss like that won't mean anything to you."
+
+For the ten thousand marks that he owed, Eberhard received seven
+thousand, six hundred and fifty, cash. In less than a year he was again
+in need of money, and asked Herr Carovius for twenty thousand. Herr
+Carovius said he did not have that much ready money, and that he would
+have to approach a lender.
+
+Eberhard replied sulkily that he could do about that as he saw fit, but
+he must not mention his name to a third party. A few days later Herr
+Carovius told a tale, of hair-splitting negotiations: there was a
+middleman who demanded immodest guarantees, including certified notes.
+He swore that he knew nothing about that kind of business, and that he
+had undertaken to supply the needed loan only because of his excessive
+affection for his young friend.
+
+Eberhard was unmoved. The eel-like mobility of the man with the
+squeaking voice did not please him; not at all; as a matter of fact he
+began to dread him; and this dread increased in intensity and
+fearfulness in proportion to the degree in which he felt he was becoming
+more and more entangled in his net.
+
+The twenty thousand marks were procured at an interest of thirty-five
+per cent. At first Eberhard refused to sign the note. He would not touch
+it until Herr Carovius had assured him that it was not to be converted
+into currency, that it could be redeemed with new loans at any time, and
+that it would lie in his strong-box as peacefully as the bones of the
+Auffenberg ancestors rested in their vaults. Eberhard, tired of this
+flood of words, yielded.
+
+Every time he signed his name he had a feeling that the danger into
+which he was walking was becoming greater. But he was too lazy to defend
+himself; he was too aristocratic to interest himself in petty
+explanations; and he was simply not capable of living on a small income.
+
+The endorsed notes were presented as a matter of warning; new loans
+settled them; new loans made new notes necessary; these were extended;
+the extensions were costly; an uncanny individual shielded in anonymity
+was taken into confidence. He bought up mortgages, paid for them in
+diamonds instead of money, and sold depreciated stocks. The debts having
+reached a certain height, Herr Carovius demanded that Eberhard have his
+life insured. Eberhard had to do it; the premium was very high. In the
+course of three years Eberhard had lost all perspective; he could no
+longer survey his obligations. The money he received he spent in the
+usual fashion, never bothered himself about the terms on which he had
+secured it, and had no idea where all this was leading to and where it
+was going to end. He turned in disgust from Herr Carovius's clumsy
+approaches, malicious gibes, and occasional threats.
+
+What an insipid smile he had! How fatuous, and then again how profound,
+his conversation could be! He took upon himself the impudent liberty of
+running in and out at Eberhard's whenever he felt like it. He bored him
+with his discussion of philosophic systems, or with miserable gossip
+about his neighbours. He watched him day and night.
+
+He followed him on the street. He would come up to him and cry out,
+"Herr Baron, Herr Baron!" and wave his hat. His solicitude for
+Eberhard's health resembled that of a gaoler. One evening Eberhard went
+to bed with a fever. Herr Carovius ran to the physician, and then spent
+the whole night by the bedside of the patient, despite his entreaties to
+be left alone. "Would it not be well for me to write to your mother?" he
+asked, with much show of affection on the next morning when he noticed
+that the fever had not fallen. Eberhard sprang from his bed with an
+exclamation of rage, and Herr Carovius left immediately and
+unceremoniously.
+
+Herr Carovius loved to complain. He ran around the table, exclaiming
+that he was ruined. He brought out his cheque book, added up the
+figures, and cried: "Two more years of this business, dear Baron, and I
+will be ready for the poor house." He demanded security and still more
+securities; he asked for renewed promises. He submitted an account of
+the total sum, and demanded an endorsement. But it was impossible for
+any one to make head or tail out of this welter of interest,
+commissions, indemnities, and usury. Herr Carovius himself no longer
+knew precisely how matters stood; for a consortium of subsequent
+indorsers had been formed behind his back, and they were exploiting his
+zeal on behalf of the young Baron for all it was worth.
+
+"What is this I hear about you and the women?" asked Herr Carovius one
+day. "What about a little adventure?" He had noticed that the Baron had
+a secret; and it enraged him to think that he could not get at the
+bottom of this amorous mystery.
+
+He made this discovery one day as Eberhard was packing his trunk. "Where
+are you going, my dear friend?" he crowed in exclamatory dismay.
+Eberhard replied that he was going to Switzerland. "To Switzerland? What
+are you going to do there? I am not going to let you go," said Herr
+Carovius. Eberhard gave him one cold stare. Herr Carovius tried
+beseeching, begging, pleading. It was in vain; Eberhard left for
+Switzerland. He wanted to be alone; he became tired of being alone, and
+returned; he went off again; he came back again, and had the
+conversation with Eleanore that robbed him of his last hope. Then he
+went to Munich, and took up with the spiritists.
+
+Spiritual and mental ennui left him without a vestige of the power of
+resistance. An inborn tendency to scepticism did not prevent him from
+yielding to an influence which originally was farther removed from the
+inclinations of his soul than the vulgar bustle of everyday life.
+Benumbed as his critical judgment now was, he went prospecting for the
+fountain of life in a zone where dreams flourish and superficial
+enchantment predominates.
+
+Herr Carovius hired a spy who never allowed Eberhard to get out of his
+sight. He reported regularly to his employer on the movements of the
+unique scion of the Auffenberg line. If Eberhard needed money, he was
+forced to go to Carovius, who would stand on the platform for an hour
+waiting for the Baron's train to come in; and once Eberhard had got out
+of his carriage, Herr Carovius excited the laughter of the railroad
+officials by his affectionate care for his protege. Delighted to see him
+again, he would talk the sheerest nonsense, and trip around about his
+young friend in groundless glee.
+
+It seemed after all this that Herr Carovius really loved the Baron; and
+he did.
+
+He loved him as a gambler loves his cards, or as the fire loves the
+coals. He idealised him; he dreamt about him; he liked to breathe the
+air that Eberhard breathed; he saw a chosen being in him; he imputed all
+manner of heroic deeds to him, and was immeasurably pleased at his
+aristocratic offishness.
+
+He loved him with hatred, with the joy of annihilation. This hate-love
+became in time the centre of his thoughts and feelings. In it was
+expressed everything that separated him from other men and at the same
+time drew him to them. It controlled him unconditionally, until a
+second, equally fearful and ridiculous passion became affiliated with
+it.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Daniel had hesitated for a long while about making use of the letter of
+introduction from Frau von Erfft. Gertrude then took to begging him to
+go to the Baroness. "If I go merely to please you, my action will avenge
+itself on you," he said.
+
+"If I understood why you hesitate, I would not ask you," she replied in
+a tone of evident discomfort.
+
+"I found so much there in Erfft," said he, "so much human kindness that
+was new to me; I dislike the idea of seeing some ulterior motive back of
+it, or of putting one there myself. Do you understand now?" She nodded.
+
+"But must is stronger than may," he concluded, and went.
+
+The Baroness became quite interested in his case. The position of second
+Kapellmeister at the City Theatre was vacant, and she tried to have
+Daniel appointed to it. She was promised that it would be given to him;
+but the usual intrigues were spun behind her back; and when she urged
+that the matter be settled immediately and in favour of her candidate,
+she was fed on dissembling consolation. She was quite surprised to be
+brought face to face with hostile opposition, which seemed to spring
+from every side as if by agreement against the young musician. Not a
+single one of his enemies, however, allowed themselves to be seen, and
+no one heard from by correspondence. It was the first time that she had
+come in conflict with the world in a business way; there was something
+touching in her indignation at the display of cowardly fraud.
+
+Finally, after a long, and for her humiliating, interview with that
+chief of cosmopolitan brokers, Alexander Doermaul, Daniel's engagement
+for the coming spring was agreed upon.
+
+In the meantime the Baroness took lessons from Daniel. She expressed a
+desire to familiarise herself with the standard piano compositions, and
+to be given a really practical introduction to their meaning and the
+right method of interpreting them.
+
+It was long before she became accustomed to his cold and morose
+sternness. She had the feeling that he was pulling her out of a nice
+warm bath into a cold, cutting draught. She longed to return to her
+twilights, her ecstatic moods, her melancholy reveries.
+
+Once he explained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement
+of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut
+the piano with a bang, and said: "Adieu, Baroness." He did not return
+until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.
+
+"Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time," he thought, though he did not
+fail to appreciate the Baroness's human dignity. The eight hours a month
+were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an
+hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him
+alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.
+
+A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and
+shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and
+much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.
+
+Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain
+crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense
+admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as
+humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her
+choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of
+Schumann's "Carneval" for her, a piece of music of which she was
+passionately fond.
+
+Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always
+walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his
+mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was
+always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be
+alone. He bent the rim of his hat down so that it covered his forehead.
+His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.
+
+At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into
+space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about
+him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: "Tell
+me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?"
+
+This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just
+before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so
+aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle
+of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so
+old. This is the light in which we must see him.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the
+street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.
+
+With very limited means, but with diligence and pleasure, Gertrude had
+done all in her power to make the apartment as comfortable as possible.
+Though the ceilings were low and the walls almost always damp, the rooms
+seemed after all quite home-like and attractive.
+
+In Daniel's study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it
+dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the
+general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of
+his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of
+Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the
+face of the father turned toward the mask of Zingarella as if to ask who
+and what it was. The mask hung on the other side of the room from the
+oil painting; its unbroken smile was lost in the shadows.
+
+Gertrude had to do all the household work; they could not afford a
+servant. In the years of Daniel's absence, however, she had learned to
+copy notes. Herr Seelenfromm, assistant to the apothecary Pflaum, had
+taught her. He was a cousin of Frau Ruebsam, and she had become
+acquainted with him through Eleanore. In his leisure hours he composed
+waltzes and marches, and dedicated them to the princes and princesses of
+the royal family. He also dedicated one to Gertrude. It was entitled
+"Feenzauber," and was a gavotte.
+
+When Daniel learned of her accomplishment, he was so astonished that he
+threw his hands above his head. The rare being looked up at him
+intoxicated with joy. "I will help you," she said, and copied his notes
+for him.
+
+When they walked along the streets she would close her eyes at times. A
+melody floated by her which she had never before been able to
+understand. As she bought her vegetables and tried to drive a bargain
+with the old market woman, her soul was full of song.
+
+Certain tones and combinations of tones took on definite shapes in her
+mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily
+veiled woman; the middle E resembled a young man who was stretching his
+arms. In chords, harmonies, and harmonic transformations these figures
+were set in motion, the motion depending on the character of the
+composition: a procession of mourning figures between clouds and stars;
+wild animals spurred on by the huntsmen who were riding them; maidens
+throwing flowers from the windows of a palace; men and women plunging
+into an abyss in one mass of despairing humanity; weeping men and
+laughing women, wrestlers and ball players, dancing couples and grape
+pickers. The pause appealed to her as a man who climbs naked from a deep
+subterranean shaft, carrying a burning torch in his hand; the trill
+seemed like a bird that anxiously flutters about its nest.
+
+All of Daniel's compositions came close to her heart; all his pictures
+were highly coloured; his figures seemed to be full of blood. If they
+remained dead and distant, her sympathy vanished; her face became tired
+and empty. Without having spoken a word with each other, Daniel would
+know that he was on the wrong track. But all this bound him to the young
+woman with hoops of steel; he came to regard her as the creature given
+him of God to act as his living conscience and infallible if mute judge.
+
+He hated her when her feelings remained unmoved. If he at last came to
+see, after much introspection, that she was right, then he would have
+liked to fall down and worship the unknown power that was so inexorable
+in pointing him the way.
+
+Spindler had a beautiful harp which he had bequeathed to Daniel in his
+will. It had remained in Ansbach in the possession of the old lady who
+kept house for him. Daniel had forgotten all about the harp. After his
+marriage he had it sent to him.
+
+He kept it in the living room; Gertrude was fond of looking at it. It
+enticed her. One day she sat down and tried to draw tones from its
+strings. She touched the strings very gently, and was charmed with the
+melody that came from them. Gradually she learned the secret; she
+discovered the law. An innate talent made the instrument submissive to
+her; she was able to express on it all the longings and emotions she had
+experienced in her dark and lonely hours.
+
+She generally played very softly; she never tried intricate melodies,
+for the harp was adapted to the expression of simple, dream-like
+harmonies. The tones were wafted out into the hall and up the stairs;
+they greeted Daniel as he entered the old house.
+
+When he came into the room, Gertrude was sitting in a corner by the
+stove, the harp between her knees. She smiled mysteriously to herself;
+her hands, like strange beings loosed from her body, sought chords and
+melodies that were his, and which she was trying to translate to her own
+world of dreams.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Her command of language was more defective now than ever. She was seized
+with painful astonishment when she noticed that in matters of daily
+intercourse Daniel's mind was not able to penetrate the veil behind
+which she lived.
+
+He said to himself: she is too heavy. He was dumbfounded at her conduct,
+and displeased with it.
+
+"The gloomy house oppresses you," he said in a tone of ill humour, when
+she smiled in her helpless way.
+
+"Let us run a race," he said to her one day as they were taking a walk
+through the country. An old tree in the distance that had been struck by
+lightning was to be their objective.
+
+They ran as fast as their feet could carry them. At a distance of about
+ten metres from the tree, Gertrude collapsed. He carried her over to the
+meadow.
+
+"How heavy you are," he said.
+
+"Too heavy for you?" she asked with wide-opened eyes. He shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+Then she slipped out of his embrace, sprang to her feet, and ran with
+remarkable swiftness a distance that was twice as long as the one he had
+staked off; she did not fall; she did not want to fall; she dared not.
+
+Breathing heavily and pale as a corpse, she waited until he came up. But
+he had no tenderness for her now; he merely scolded. Arm in arm they
+walked on. Gertrude felt for his hand; he gave it to her, and she
+pressed it to her bosom.
+
+Daniel was terrified as he looked into her face, and saw her thoughts
+written there as if in letters of fire: We belong to each other for time
+and eternity.
+
+That was her confession of faith.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+She lay wide awake until late at night. She heard him go into the
+kitchen and get a drink of water and then return to his room. He had
+forbidden her to come to the door and ask whether he was not going to
+bed soon: she was not to do this, it made no difference how late it was.
+
+Then he lay beside her, his head on his arm, and looked at her with eyes
+that had lost their earthly, temporal glow. Man, where are your eyes
+anyway, she would have liked to exclaim. And yet she knew where they
+were; she knew, too, that it is dangerous to disturb a somnambulist by
+calling to him.
+
+One night he had found it impossible to do his work. He sat down on the
+edge of the bed and stared into the light of the lamp for an hour or so,
+hating himself. Gertrude saw how he raged at himself; how he really fed,
+nourished his lack of confidence in himself. But she could not say
+anything.
+
+A publisher had returned one of his manuscripts with a courteous but
+depressing conventional rejection slip. Daniel spoke disparagingly of
+his talents; he had lost hope in his future; he was bitter at the world;
+he felt that he was condemned to a life of unceasing obscurity.
+
+The only thing she could do was look at him; merely look at him.
+
+He became tired of having her look at him; a fresh, vigorous remark
+would have served his purpose much better, he thought.
+
+She measured her work and his not in terms of reward; she did not seek
+for connection of any kind between privation and hope; nor did she
+measure Daniel's love in terms of tender expressions and embraces. She
+waited for him with much patience. In time her patience irritated him.
+"A little bit more activity and insistence would not hurt you," he said
+one day, and thrust her timid, beseeching hands from him.
+
+He saw himself cared for: He had a home, a person who prepared his
+meals, washed his clothes, and faithfully attended to his other
+household needs. He should have been grateful. He was, too, but he could
+not show it. He was grateful when he was alone, but in Gertrude's
+presence his gratitude turned to defiance. If he was away from home, he
+thought with pleasure of his return; he pictured Gertrude's joy at
+seeing him again. But when he was with her, he indulged in silent
+criticism, and wanted to have everything about her different.
+
+The judge's wife on the first floor complained that Gertrude did not
+speak to her. "Be kind to your neighbours," he remarked with the air of
+a professional scold. The next Sunday they took a walk, on which they
+met the judge's wife. Gertrude spoke to her: "Well, you don't need to
+fall on her neck," he mumbled. She thought for a long while of how she
+might speak to people without offending them and without annoying
+Daniel. She was embarrassed; she was afraid of Daniel's criticism.
+
+On such days she would put too much salt in the soup, everything went
+wrong, and in her diligent attempt to be punctual she lost much time.
+She was fearfully worried when he got up from the table and went to his
+room without saying a word. She would sit perfectly still and listen;
+she was frightened when he went to the piano to try a motif. When he
+again entered her room, she looked into his face with the tenseness of a
+soul in utter anguish. Then it suddenly came about that he would sit
+down by her side and caress her. He told her all about his life, his
+home, his father, his mother. If she could only have heard each of his
+words twice! If she could only have drunk in the expression in his eyes!
+They were filled with peace; his nervous hands lay in quiet on his knees
+when he spoke to her in this way on these subjects. His twitching,
+angular face, weather-beaten by the storms of life, took on an expression
+of sorrow that was most becoming to it.
+
+When she had a headache or was tired, he expressed his anxiety for her
+in touching tones. He would go about the house on tiptoes, and close the
+doors with infinite care. If a dog barked on the street, he rushed to
+the window and looked out, enraged at the beast. When she retired, he
+would help her undress, and bring her whatever she needed.
+
+It was also strange that he disliked the idea of leaving her alone.
+There was something child-like in his restlessness when he was at home
+and she was out. He pictured her surrounded by grievous dangers; he
+would have liked to lock her up and hold her a captive, so as to be sure
+that she was quite safe. This made her all the weaker and more dependent
+upon him, while he was like a man who presses what he has to his heart,
+plagued with the thought that by some mischance it might escape, and
+yet clings to it also lest he be disturbed by the thought of another
+more precious possession he loved long since and lost a while.
+
+Once he came to Gertrude while she was playing the harp, threw his arms
+about her, looked into her face with a wild, gloomy expression, and
+stammered: "I love you, I love you, I do." It was the first time he had
+spoken these eternal words. She grew pale, first from joy and then from
+fear; for there was more of hatred than of love in his voice.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+He felt that association with congenial men would help him over many a
+dark hour. But when he set out to look for these men, the city became a
+desert and a waste place.
+
+Herr Seelenfromm came to his house now and then. Daniel could not endure
+the timid man who admired him so profoundly, and who, in the bottom of
+his heart, had an equal amount of respect for Gertrude. The young
+architect who had been employed at the St. Sebaldus Church while it was
+being renovated, and who loved music, had won Daniel's esteem. But he
+had a repulsive habit of smacking his tongue when he talked. Daniel and
+he discussed the habit, and parted the worst of enemies. His association
+with a certain Frenchman by the name of Riviere was of longer duration.
+Riviere was spending some time in the city, looking up material for a
+life of Caspar Hauser. He had made his acquaintance at the Baroness von
+Auffenberg's, and taken a liking to him because he reminded him of
+Friedrich Benda.
+
+M. Riviere loved to hear Daniel improvise on the piano. He knew so
+little German that he merely smiled at Daniel's caustic remarks; and if
+he became violently enraged, M. Riviere merely stared at his mouth. He
+had a wart on his cheek, and wore a straw hat summer and winter. He
+cooked his own meals, for it was an obsession of his that people wanted
+to poison him because he was writing a life of Caspar Hauser.
+
+When Herr Seelenfromm and M. Riviere came in of a Sunday evening, Daniel
+would reach for a volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann or Clemens Brentano, and
+read from them until he was hoarse. He tried in this way to find peace
+in a strange world; for he did not wish to weep at the sight of human
+beings who seemed perfectly at ease.
+
+Gertrude looked at him, and put this question to herself: How is it
+that a man to whom music is life and the paradise of his heart can allow
+himself to be so enveloped in sorrow, so beclouded by gloom? She
+understood the smarting pains in which he composed; she had a vague idea
+of the labyrinthine complications of his inner fate; these she grasped.
+But her own soul was filled with joyless compassion; she wished with all
+her power to plant greater faith and more happiness in his heart.
+
+She meditated on the best means of carrying on her spiritual campaign.
+It occurred to her that he had had more of both faith and happiness at
+the time he was going with Eleanore. She saw Eleanore now in a quite
+different light. She recalled that Eleanore was not merely her sister
+but the creator of her happiness. Nor was she unmindful of the fact that
+through the transformation of her being, love and enlightenment had
+arisen to take the place of her former suspicion and ignorance.
+
+She ascribed to Eleanore all those powers in which she had formerly been
+lacking: general superiority and stimulating vigour; an ability to play
+that lent charm to drudgery and made the hard things of life easy;
+brightness in conversation and delicacy of touch. In her lonely
+broodings she came to the conclusion that Eleanore was the only one who
+could help her. She went straightway to her father's house to find out
+why Eleanore so rarely came to see her.
+
+"I don't like to come; Daniel is so unkind to me," said Eleanore.
+
+Gertrude replied that he was unkind to everybody, including her herself,
+and that she must not pay any attention to this; for she knew full well
+that Daniel liked her--and perhaps he himself was offended because she
+never called.
+
+Eleanore thought it all over, and from then on visited her sister more
+frequently. But if it did not look as though Daniel did everything in
+his power to avoid her, this much was certain: he never said a word to
+her more than human decency required, and was an expert at finding
+reasons why he had to leave the room when she was there. Eleanore was
+gainfully conscious of this; it hurt her.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+One morning Gertrude returned from the market, carrying a heavy basket
+full of things she had bought. As she came in the front door she heard
+Daniel playing. She noticed at once that he was not improvising; that he
+was playing a set piece, the tones of which were quite unfamiliar to
+her.
+
+As she came up the steps, the basket no longer seemed like a burden.
+She went quietly into the living room and listened. Something drew her
+closer and closer to the piano. Daniel had not noticed that she had
+entered the room and sat down. He was wholly lost in what he was doing;
+he never took his rapt and wondering eyes from the music before him.
+
+It was his draft of the "Harzreise im Winter." For a year and a half,
+since the time he had composed it in Ansbach, he had never again thought
+of it; it had lain untouched. Suddenly the fire of creation had flamed
+up in him; he could once more bind the incoherent, and make what had
+been merely implied or indicated take definite shape.
+
+He would play a movement again and again, trying to connect it with what
+went before or came after; he would take his pencil and write in a few
+notes here or there; then he would try it again, and smile to himself in
+a strange, confused, and yet enchanted way, when he saw that the motif
+was complete, perfect. Gertrude was drawn still closer to him. In her
+awe-struck admiration she crouched on the floor beside him. She would
+have liked to creep into the piano, and give her soul the opportunity it
+sought to express itself in the tones that came from the strings. When
+Daniel had finished, she pressed her head to his hips, and reached her
+hot hands up to him.
+
+Daniel was terrified; for he recalled instantaneously another occasion
+on which another woman had done precisely the same thing. His eye
+involuntarily fell on the mask of Zingarella. He was not conscious of
+the connection; there was no visible bridge between the two incidents;
+Gertrude's face was too unlike that of its momentary prototype. But with
+a feeling of awe he detected a mysterious liaison between then and now:
+he imagined he could hear a voice calling to him from the distant shores
+of yonder world.
+
+He laid his hand on Gertrude's hair. She interpreted the gesture as a
+visible sign that his promise had been fulfilled; that this work
+belonged to her; that he had created it for her, had taken it from her
+heart, and was returning it to the heart from whence it came.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+Zierfuss, the music dealer, had sent out invitations to a concert.
+Daniel did not feel like going. Gertrude asked Eleanore if she would
+not go with her. Daniel called for them after the concert.
+
+Eleanore told him on the way home that she had received a letter for him
+that afternoon bearing a London stamp.
+
+"From Benda?" asked Daniel quickly.
+
+"It is Benda's handwriting," replied Eleanore. "I was going to bring it
+to you when Gertrude called for me. Wait out in the front of the house,
+and I'll go in and get it."
+
+"Take dinner with us this evening, Eleanore," said Gertrude, looking
+rather uncertainly at Daniel.
+
+"If it is agreeable to Daniel...."
+
+"No nonsense, Eleanore, of course it is agreeable to me," said Daniel.
+
+A quarter of an hour later Daniel was sitting by the lamp reading
+Benda's letter.
+
+The first thing his friend told him was that he was to join a scientific
+expedition to the Congo, and that his party would follow almost exactly
+the same route that had been taken by the Stanley Expedition when it set
+out to look for Emin Pascha.
+
+Benda wrote: "This letter then, my dear friend, is written to say
+good-bye for a number of years, perhaps forever. I feel as if I had been
+born anew. I have eyes again; and the ideas that fill my brain are no
+longer condemned to be stifled in the morass of imprisoned colleagues,
+loyal and inimical. To labour in nature's laboratory will make me forget
+the wrongs I have suffered, the injustice that has been done me. Hunger
+and thirst, disease and danger will of course have to be endured; they
+are the effects of those crimes of civilisation that spare the body
+while they poison the mind and soul."
+
+Further on Benda wrote: "I am bound to my home by only two people, my
+mother and you. When I think of you, a feeling of pride comes over me;
+every hour we spent together is indelibly stamped on my heart. But there
+is one delicate point: it is a point of conscience. Call it, so far as I
+am concerned, a chip; call it anything you please. The fact is I have
+had a Don Quixotic run in, and I have got to defend myself."
+
+Daniel shook his head and read on. Benda knew nothing of his marriage.
+He did not even seem to know that Daniel and Gertrude had been engaged.
+Or if he had known it he had forgotten it. Daniel could hardly believe
+his own eyes when he came to the following passage: "My greatest anxiety
+always lay in the fear that you would pass Eleanore by. I was too
+cowardly to tell you how I felt on this point, and I have reproached
+myself ever since for my cowardice. Now that I am leaving I tell you how
+I feel about this matter, though not exactly with the sensation of
+performing a belated task."
+
+For Heaven's sake, thought Daniel, what is he trying to do to me?
+
+"I have often thought about it in quiet hours; it gave me the same
+feeling of satisfaction that I have in a chemical experiment, when the
+reactions of the various elements take place as they should: what
+Eleanore says is your word; what you feel is Eleanore's law."
+
+He is seeing ghosts, cried Daniel, he is tangling up the threads of my
+life. What does he mean? Why does he do it?
+
+"Don't neglect what I am telling you! Don't crush that wonderful flower!
+The girl is a rare specimen; the rarest I know. You need your whole
+heart with all its powers of love and kindness to appreciate her. But if
+my words reach you too late, please tear this letter into shreds, and
+get the whole idea out of your mind as soon and completely as possible."
+
+"Come, let's eat," said Gertrude, as she entered the room with a dish of
+pickled herring.
+
+Eleanore was sitting on the sofa looking at Daniel quizzically. He was
+lost in thought.
+
+Daniel looked up, and studied the two women as if they were the figures
+of a hallucination: the one in dark red, the other in dark blue; minor
+and major keys. The two stood side by side, and yet so far removed from
+each other: they were the two poles of his world.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+"What has Benda got to say?" asked Gertrude hesitatingly.
+
+"Just think, he is going to Africa," replied Daniel, with a voice as if
+he were lying. "Curious, isn't it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this
+time."
+
+With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he
+was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the
+letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared
+to them.
+
+"Why don't you read on?" asked Eleanore, when he paused.
+
+She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the
+whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became
+entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up
+and liberated her.
+
+Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore
+threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet;
+she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It
+gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his.
+
+"Don't you know that that is not polite?" he asked. "We have some
+secrets, probably, Benda and I."
+
+"I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings," replied
+Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment.
+
+Daniel then held the letter above the chimney of the lamp, waited until
+it had caught fire, and then threw it on the floor, where it burned up.
+
+"It is late, and father is already waiting," said Eleanore, after they
+had eaten in great haste.
+
+"I will take you home," declared Daniel. Surprised by such unusual
+gallantry, Eleanore looked at him with amazement. He at once became
+moody; she was still more surprised. "I can go home alone, Daniel," she
+said in a tone of noticeable seriousness, "you do not need to put
+yourself out for me."
+
+"Put myself out? What do you mean? Are you one of those people who can't
+keep a tune, and step on the pedal when their sentiment runs short?"
+
+Eleanore had nothing to say.
+
+"Put your great coat on, Daniel," said Gertrude in the hall, "it is cold
+and windy out."
+
+She wanted to help him on with it, but he threw it in the clothes press;
+he was irritated.
+
+He walked along at Eleanore's side through the deserted streets.
+
+She had already put the key in the front door, when she turned around,
+looked up in a most unhappy way, and said: "Daniel, what in the world is
+the matter with you? When I look at you, a feeling of anguish and
+distress comes over me. What have I done that you should act so
+disagreeably toward me?"
+
+"Oh, forget it, think about something else, don't mention the subject
+any more," said Daniel, in a rough, rude voice. But the glance she fixed
+on him was so stern and unpitying, so testing and so un-girl-like, so
+strong and so bold, that he felt his heart grow softer. "Let us take a
+little walk," he said.
+
+For a long time they paced back and forth in perfect silence. Then she
+asked him what he was working on now. He made cautious, non-committal
+replies, and then suddenly he was overwhelmed with a flood of words. He
+remarked that he felt at times as if he were struggling with goblins in
+the dark. What gushed forth from the deepest depths of his soul, he
+said, was somehow or other too noisy and blatant, and died in his hands
+while he was trying to create an appropriate form for it. He said he had
+no success with anything unless it was something disembodied,
+incorporeal, the melody of which had thus far found an echo in no human
+breast. Therefore he seemed to be groping around, without anchorage,
+after sprites from the land of nowhere. And the more domineering the
+order was to which he subjected his mind and his fancy, the more lost
+and hopeless his earthly self seemed to be as it drifted in the chaos of
+the everyday world. He remarked that heaven was in his dreams, hell in
+his association with men. And how dead everything about him seemed to
+be! It was all like a cemetery; it was a cemetery. His doughtiest life
+was gradually transformed into a shadow and lacerated into a
+monstrosity. But that he was aggrieved at men he felt full well; for
+they lived more innocent lives than he, and they were more useful.
+
+"But you have some one to hold to," said Eleanore, realising that she
+was skating on thin ice, "you have Gertrude."
+
+To this he made no reply. She waited for him to say something, and when
+she saw that he did not care to make a reply of any kind, she smiled at
+him as if in a last attempt to get him to tell her what was the matter.
+Then all peace of mind vanished from her soul--and her face. Every time
+they passed a street lamp she turned her head to one side.
+
+"She is after all in the presence of God your wife," said Eleanore
+gently and with remarkable solemnity.
+
+Daniel looked up and listened as if greatly abashed. Speaking out into
+the wind he said: "The over-tone, Eleanore; a bird twittering in the
+bush. In the presence of God my wife! But in the roots the bass is
+howling; it is an infernal tremolo; do you hear it?"
+
+He laughed as if mad, and his face, with his spotted teeth, was turned
+toward her. She took him by the arm, and implored him to straighten up.
+
+He pressed her hand to his forehead, and said: "The letter, Eleanore,
+the letter ...!"
+
+"Now you see, Daniel, I knew it all along. What was in the letter?"
+
+"I dare not tell you, otherwise my sweet over-tone will take a
+somersault, become mingled with the gloomy bass, and be lost forever."
+
+Eleanore looked at him in amazement; he had never seemed so much like a
+fool to her in her life.
+
+"Listen," he said, putting his arm in hers, "I have composed a song;
+here is the way it goes." He sang a melody he had written for one of
+Eichendorff's poems. In it there was a tender sadness. "While everything
+is still and everybody asleep, my soul greets the eternal light, and
+rests like a ship in the harbour."
+
+They had again reached the front door; they had been strolling back and
+forth for two hours.
+
+He had an unpleasant feeling when he went up the steps of his apartment.
+
+Gertrude was sitting where he had left her: by the clothes press. She
+had wrapped his top coat about her legs, her back was leaning against
+the wall, her head had sunk on her shoulder; she was asleep. She was not
+awakened by his coming. Beside her stood the candle, now burned down to
+the edge of the metal holder; it was spluttering. The light from it fell
+on Gertrude's face, lighting it up irregularly and lending it a painful
+expression.
+
+"In the presence of God my wife," murmured Daniel. He did not waken
+Gertrude until the candle had gone out. Then he did; she got up, and the
+two went off in darkness to their bed room.
+
+
+
+
+                         THE GLASS CASE BREAKS
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a
+time he knew she would be there.
+
+He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when
+she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her
+with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red
+cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.
+
+She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for
+the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started
+off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came
+over to him. She smiled in a confidential way, chatted with him, glided
+backwards in a circle about him, laughed at his impatience because she
+would not stand still, threw her muff over to him, asked him to throw it
+back, and, with arms raised to catch it, cut an artistic figure on the
+ice.
+
+The picture she offered filled Daniel with reverence for the harmony of
+her being.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+They frequently took walks after sunset out to the suburbs and up to the
+castle. Gertrude was pleased to see that Daniel and Eleanore were good
+friends again.
+
+One time when they walked up the castle hill, Eleanore told Daniel that
+there was where she had taken leave of Eberhard von Auffenberg. She
+could recall everything he said, and she confessed with marked candour
+what she had said in reply. The story about the old herb woman Daniel
+did not find amusing. He stopped, and said: "Child, don't have anything
+to do with spirits! Never interfere with your lovely reality."
+
+"Don't talk in that way," replied Eleanore. "I dislike it. The tone of
+your voice and the expression on your face make me feel as if I were a
+woman of worldly habits."
+
+They went into the Church of St. Sebaldus, and revelled in the beauty
+of the bronze castings on the tomb of the saint. They also went to the
+Germanic Museum, where they loved to wander around in the countless
+deserted passage-ways, stopped and studied the pictures, and never tired
+of looking at the old toys, globes, kitchen utensils, and armour.
+
+Eleanore's greatest pleasure, however, was derived from sauntering
+through the narrow alleys. She like to stand in an open door, and look
+into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window
+of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings
+with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of
+roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy
+tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land
+of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been
+passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of
+reality over there.
+
+The tailor sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering
+the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the
+trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged
+veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider's nest
+in the corner of a wall--around all these things and still others she
+wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what she saw had never
+been seen by mortal eyes before. It seemed that the things or people
+that attracted her attention had not existed until she had seen them.
+For this reason she was never in a bad humour, never bored, never lazy,
+never tired.
+
+There was something about her, however, that Daniel could not
+understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that
+there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was
+something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did
+so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to the left,
+half to the right, neither meeting his. If she came so close to him that
+their arms touched, he had the feeling that he could not take hold of
+her if he wished to.
+
+He struggled against the enticement that lay in this peculiarity.
+
+Her presence ennobled his ambition and dispelled his whims. She gave him
+the beautifully formed cloud, the tree covered with young foliage, the
+moon that rises up over the roofs of the houses--she gave him the whole
+earth over which he was hastening, a stranger to peace, unfamiliar with
+contentment.
+
+He cherished no suspicion; he had no foreshadowing of his fate. And
+Eleanore was not afraid of him; she, too, was without a sense of danger.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+One Sunday afternoon in April they took a walk out into the country.
+Gertrude had been suffering for weeks from lassitude and could not go
+with them.
+
+Eleanore was a superb walker. It gave Daniel extreme pleasure to walk
+along with her, keeping step, moving hastily. The quick movement
+increased his susceptibility to the charm of the changing landscapes. It
+was quite different when he walked with Gertrude. She was slow, given to
+introspection, thoughtful, and not very strong.
+
+In the course of an hour clouds gathered in the sky, the sun
+disappeared, big drops began to fall. Eleanore had taken neither
+umbrella nor rain coat along; she began to walk more rapidly. If they
+tried, they could reach the inn beyond the forest, and find shelter from
+the storm.
+
+Just as they slipped through the crowd that had hurried up the road to
+the same refuge and entered the inn, the sluices of heaven seemed to
+open, and a cloud-burst followed. They were standing in the hall.
+Eleanore was warm, and did not wish to remain in the draught. They went
+into the restaurant; it was so full that they had considerable trouble
+to find seats. A working man, his wife, and four sickly-looking children
+squeezed up more closely together; the two youngest boys gave them their
+chairs and went to look for others.
+
+The clouds hung low, causing premature darkness. Lamps were lighted, and
+their odour mingled freely with the other odours of this overcrowded
+room. A few village musicians played some unknown piece; the eyes of the
+workingman's children shone with delight. Because they sat there so
+quietly--and because they looked so pale--Eleanore gave each of the
+children a sandwich. The mother was very grateful, and said so. The
+father, who said he was the foreman in a mirror factory, began to talk
+with Daniel about the troubles of the present era.
+
+All of a sudden Daniel caught sight of a familiar face at a nearby
+table. As it turned to one side, he saw in the dim, smelly light another
+face he knew, and then a third and a fourth. It was all so ghost-like in
+the room that it was some time before he knew just where to place them.
+Then it occurred to him where they came from.
+
+Herr Hadebusch and Frau Hadebusch, Herr Francke and Benjamin Dorn were
+having a little Sunday outing. The brush-maker's wife was radiant with
+joy on seeing her old lodger. She nodded, she blinked, she folded her
+hands as if touched at the sight, and Herr Hadebusch raised his beer
+glass, eager to drink a toast to Daniel's health.
+
+They could not quite make out who Eleanore was; they took her for
+Daniel's wife. This misunderstanding, it seemed, was then cleared up by
+the Methodist after he had craned his neck and called his powers of
+recognition into play. The demoniac woman nodded, to be sure, and kept
+on blinking, but in her face there was an expression of rustic
+disapproval. Her mouth was opened, and the tusks of her upper jaw shone
+forth uncannily from the black abyss.
+
+The swan neck of the Methodist was screwed up so hardily and
+picturesquely above the heads of the others that Eleanore could not help
+but notice his physical and spiritual peculiarities. She wrinkled her
+brow, and looked at Daniel questioningly.
+
+She looked around, and saw a great many people from the city whom she
+knew either by name or from having met them so frequently. There was a
+saleswoman from Ludwig Street; a clerk with a pock-marked face from a
+produce store; the dignified preceptress of a Kindergarten; an official
+of the savings bank; the hat-maker from the corner of the Market Place
+with his grown daughter; and the sergeant who invariably saluted when he
+passed by her.
+
+All these people were in their Sunday clothes and seemed care-free and
+good natured. But as soon as they saw Eleanore a mean expression came
+over them. The fluttering of the lights made their faces look ghastly,
+while partial intoxication made it easy to read their filthy, lazy
+thoughts. Full of anxiety, Eleanore looked up at Daniel, as if she felt
+she would have to rely on his wealth of experience and greater
+superiority in general.
+
+He was sorry for her and sorry for himself. He knew what was in store
+for him and her. When he looked over this Hogarthian gathering, and saw,
+despite its festive, convivial mood, hidden lusts of every description,
+crippled passions, secreted envy, and mysterious vindictiveness spread
+about like the stench of foul blood, he felt it was quite futile to
+cherish delusions of any kind as to what was before him. To spare
+Eleanore and to defend her, to leave her rather than be guilty of
+causing the child-like smile on her lips to die out and disappear
+forever--this he believed in the bottom of his heart he could promise
+both her and himself.
+
+The working man and his family had left; and as it was no longer
+raining, most of the other guests had also gone. Up in the room above
+people were dancing. The lamps were shaking, and it was easy to hear the
+low sounds of the bass violin. Daniel took out his pencil, and began
+writing notes on the table. Eleanore bent over, looking at him, and,
+like him, fell to dreamy thinking.
+
+Neither wished to know what the other was thinking; they entertained
+themselves in silence; inwardly they were drawn closer and closer
+together, as if by some mysterious and irresistible power. They had not
+noticed that it was evening, that the room was empty, that the waiters
+had taken the glasses away, and that the dance music in the room above
+had stopped.
+
+They sat there in the half-lighted corner side by side, as if in some
+dark, deserted cavern. When they finally came out of their deep silence
+and looked at each other, they were first surprised and then dismayed.
+
+"What are we going to do?" asked Eleanore half in a whisper, "it is
+late; we must be going home."
+
+The sky was clouded, a warm wind swept across the plains, the road was
+full of puddles. Here and there a light flashed from the darkness, and a
+dog barked every now and then in the distant villages. When the road
+turned into the forest, Daniel gave Eleanore his arm. She took it, but
+soon let go. Daniel stopped, and said almost angrily: "Are we bewitched,
+both of us? Speak, Eleanore, speak!"
+
+"What is there for me to say?" she asked gently. "I am frightened; it is
+so dark."
+
+"You are frightened, Eleanore, you? You do not know the night. It has
+never yet been night in your soul; nor night in the world about you. Now
+you appreciate perhaps how a being of the night feels."
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"Give me your hand," he said, "I will lead you."
+
+She gave him her hand. Soon they saw the lights of the city. He took her
+to her house; but when they reached it, they did not say good-bye: they
+looked at each other with dazed, helpless, seeking eyes; they were both
+pale and speechless.
+
+Eleanore hastened into the hall, but turned as she reached the stairs,
+and waved to him with a smile, as if the two were separated by a hazy
+distance. As he fixed his eyes on the spot where he saw the slender
+figure disappear, he felt as if something were clutching his throat.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Without the slightest regard for time, without feeling tired, without
+definite thoughts, detached from the present and all sense of
+obligation, Daniel wandered aimlessly through the streets. A low dive on
+Schuett Island saw him as a late guest. He sat there with his hands
+before his eyes, neither seeing nor hearing nor feeling, all crouched up
+in a bundle. Dirty little puddles of gin glistened on the top of the
+table, the gamblers were cursing, the proprietor was drunk.
+
+The fire alarm drove him out: there was a fire in the suburbs of
+Schoppershof. The sky was reddened, it was drizzling. It seemed to
+Daniel that the air was reeking with the premonition of a heart-crushing
+disaster. Above the Laufer Gate a sheaf of sparks was whirling about.
+
+Just then the melody for which he had waited so long throughout so many
+nights of restless despair arose before him in a grandiose circle. It
+seemed as if born for the words of the "Harzreise": "With the dim
+burning torch thou lightest for him the ferries at night over bottomless
+paths, across desolate fields."
+
+In mournful thirds, receding again and again, the voices sank to earth;
+just one remained on high, alone, piously dissociated from profane
+return.
+
+He hummed the melody with trembling lips to himself, until he met the
+nineteenth-century Socrates with his followers in the Rosenthal. They
+were still gipsying through the night.
+
+They all talked at once; they were going to the fire. Daniel passed by
+unrecognised. The shrill voice of the painter Kropotkin pierced the air:
+"Hail to the flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!" The
+laughter of the slough brothers died away in the distance.
+
+Gertrude was standing at the head of the stairs with a candle in her
+hand; she had been waiting there since twelve o'clock. At eleven she had
+gone over to her father's house and rung the bell. Eleanore, frightened,
+had raised the window, and called down to her that Daniel had left her
+at nine.
+
+He took the half-inanimate woman into the living room: "You must never
+wait for me, never," he said.
+
+He opened the window, pointed to the glowing sky beyond the church, and
+as she leaned her head, with eyes closed, on his shoulder, he said with
+a scurrilous distortion of his face: "Behold! The fire! Hail to the
+flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!"
+
+
+                                   V
+
+The following morning Eleanore had no time to think of why Daniel had
+not gone home.
+
+Jordan had just finished his breakfast when some one rang the door bell
+with unusual rapidity. Eleanore went to the door, and came back with
+Herr Zittel, who was in a rare state of excitement.
+
+"I have come to inquire about your son, Jordan," he began, clearing his
+throat as though he were embarrassed.
+
+"About my son?" replied Jordan astonished, "I thought you had given him
+three days' leave."
+
+"I know nothing about that," replied Herr Zittel.
+
+"Last Saturday evening he went on a visit to his friend Gerber in
+Bamberg to celebrate the founding of a club, or something of that sort;
+we are not expecting him until to-morrow. If you know nothing about this
+arrangement, Herr Diruf must have given him his leave."
+
+The chief of the clerical department bit his lips. "Can you give me the
+address of this Herr Gerber?" he asked, "I should like to send him a
+telegram."
+
+"For heaven's sake, what has happened, Herr Zittel?" cried Jordan,
+turning pale.
+
+Herr Zittel stared into space with his gloomy, greenish eyes: "On
+Saturday afternoon Herr Diruf gave your son a cheque for three thousand
+seven hundred marks, and told him to cash it at the branch of the
+Bavarian Bank and bring the money to me. I was busy and did not go to
+the office in the afternoon. To-day, about a half-hour ago, Herr Diruf
+asked me whether I had received the money. It turned out that your son
+had not put in his appearance on Saturday, and since he has not shown up
+this morning either, you will readily see why we are so uneasy."
+
+Jordan straightened up as stiff as a flag pole: "Do you mean to
+insinuate that my son is guilty of some criminal transaction?" he
+thundered forth, and struck the top of the table with the bones of his
+clenched fist.
+
+Herr Zittel shrugged his shoulders: "It is, of course, possible that
+there has been some misunderstanding, or that some one has failed to
+perform his duty. But in any event the affair is serious. Something must
+be done at once, and if you leave me in the lurch I shall have to call
+in the police."
+
+Jordan's face turned ashen pale. For some reason or other he began to
+fumble about in his long black coat for the pocket. The coat had no
+pocket, and yet he continued to feel for it with hasty fingers. He tried
+to speak, but his tongue refused to obey him; beads of perspiration
+settled on his brow.
+
+Eleanore embraced him with solicitous affection: "Be calm, Father, don't
+imagine the worst. Sit down, and let us talk it over." She dried the
+perspiration from his forehead with her handkerchief, and then breathed
+a kiss on it.
+
+Jordan fell on a chair; his powers of resistance were gone; he looked at
+Eleanore with beseeching tenseness. From the very first she had known
+what had happened and what would happen. But she dared not show him that
+she was without hope; she summoned all the power at her resourceful
+command to prevent the old man from having a paralytic stroke.
+
+With the help of Herr Zittel she wrote out a telegram to Gerber. The
+answer, to be pre-paid, was to be sent to the General Agency of the
+Prudentia, and Eleanore was to go to the main office between eleven and
+twelve o'clock. She accompanied Herr Zittel to the front door, whereupon
+he said: "Do everything in your power to get the money. If the loss can
+be made good at once, Herr Diruf may be willing not to take the case to
+the courts."
+
+Eleanore knew full well that it would be exceedingly difficult to get
+such a sum as this. Her father had no money in the bank; his employer
+had lost confidence in him because he could no longer exert himself;
+what he needed most of all was a rest.
+
+She entered the room with a friendly expression on her face, and
+remarked quite vivaciously: "Now, Father, we will wait and see what
+Benno has to say; and in order that you may not worry so much, I will
+read something nice to you."
+
+Sitting on a hassock at her father's feet she read from a recent number
+of the _Gartenlaube_ the description of an ascent of Mont Blanc. Then
+she read another article that her eye chanced to fall upon. All the
+while her bright voice was ringing through the room, she was struggling
+with decisions to which she might come and listening to the ticking of
+the clock. That her father no more had his mind on what she was reading
+than she herself was perfectly clear to her.
+
+Finally the clock struck eleven. She got up, and said she had to go to
+the kitchen to make the fire. A maid usually came in at eleven to get
+dinner for the family, but to-day she had not appeared. Out in the hall
+Eleanore took her straw hat, and hastened over to Gertrude's as fast as
+her feet could carry her. Daniel was not at home; Gertrude was peeling
+potatoes.
+
+In three sentences Eleanore had told her sister the whole story. "Now
+you come with me at once! Go up and stay with Father! See that he does
+not leave the house! I will be back in half an hour!"
+
+Gertrude was literally dragged down the steps by Eleanore; before she
+could ask questions of any kind, Eleanore had disappeared.
+
+At the General Agency Herr Zittel met her with the reply from that
+Gerber, Benno's friend. It bore Gerber's signature, and read: "Benno
+Jordan has not been here."
+
+Benjamin Dorn stood behind Herr Zittel; he displayed an expression of
+soft, smooth, dirge-like regret.
+
+"Herr Diruf would like to speak to you," said Herr Zittel coldly.
+
+Eleanore entered Herr Diruf's private office; her face was pale. He kept
+on writing for about three minutes before he took any notice of her.
+Then his plum-like eyes opened lazily, a rare, voluptuous smile sneaked
+out from under his moustache like a slothful flash of heat lightning; he
+said: "The sharper has gone and done it, hasn't he?"
+
+Eleanore never moved.
+
+"Can the embezzled money be returned within twenty-four hours?" asked
+the pudgy, purple prince of pen-pushers.
+
+"My father will do everything that is humanly possible," replied
+Eleanore anxiously.
+
+"Be so good as to inform your father that to-morrow morning at twelve
+o'clock the charge will be preferred and placed in the hands of the
+police, if the money has not been paid by that time."
+
+Eleanore hastened home. Now her father had to be brought face to face
+with the realities of the case. He and Gertrude were sitting close to
+each other in terrible silence. Eleanore revealed the exact state of
+affairs; she had to.
+
+"My good name!" groaned Jordan.
+
+He had to save himself from disgrace; the twenty-four hours seemed to
+offer him a sure means of doing this. He had not the remotest doubt but
+that he could find friends who would come to his aid; for he had
+something of which he could boast: a blameless past and the reputation
+of being a reliable citizen.
+
+Thus he thought it over to himself. And as soon as he made up his mind
+to appeal to the friends of whom he felt he was certain, the most
+difficult part of his plan seemed to have been completed. The suffering
+to which he was condemned by his wounded pride and his betrayed, crushed
+filial affection he had to bear alone. He knew that this was a separate
+item.
+
+He went out to look up his friends.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+The first one he appealed to was the brother-in-law of his sister, First
+Lieutenant Kupferschmied, retired. His sister had died six months ago,
+leaving nothing; the lieutenant, however, was a well-to-do man. He had
+married into the family of a rich merchant. Jordan's relation to him had
+always been pleasant; indeed the old soldier seemed to be very fond of
+him. But hardly had Jordan explained his mission when the lieutenant
+became highly excited. He said he had seen this disaster coming. He
+remarked that any man who brings up his children in excessive ease must
+not be surprised if they come to a bad end. He remarked, too, that no
+power on earth could persuade him to invest one penny in Jordan's case.
+
+Jordan went away speechless.
+
+The second friend he appealed to was his acquaintance of long standing,
+Judge Ruebsam. From him he heard a voluble flow of words dealing with
+regrets, expressions of disgust, one lament after the other, a jeremiade
+on hard times, maledictions hurled at dilatory creditors, infinite
+consolation--and empty advice. He assured Jordan that yesterday he had
+almost the requisite sum in cash, and that he might have it again some
+time next month, but to-day--ah, to-day his taxes were due, and so on,
+and so on.
+
+Oppressed by the weight of this unexpected humiliation, he went to the
+third friend, a merchant by the name of Hornbusch, to whom he had once
+rendered invaluable assistance. Herr Hornbusch had forgotten all about
+this, though he had not forgotten that he had vainly sounded in Jordan's
+ears a warning against the ever-increasing flippancy of young Benno. He
+told Jordan that he himself was just then in urgent need of money, that
+he had only last month been obliged to sacrifice a mortgage, and that
+his wife had pawned her diamonds.
+
+Thus it went with the fourth friend, an architect who had told him once
+that he would sacrifice money and reputation for him if he ever got into
+trouble. And it was the same story with the fifth and sixth and seventh.
+With a heart as heavy as lead, Jordan decided to take the last desperate
+step: He went to Herr Diruf himself. He asked for a three days'
+extension of time. Diruf sat inapproachable at his desk. He was smoking
+a big thick Havana cigar, his solitaire threw off its blinding
+fireworks, he smiled a cold, tired smile and shook his head in
+astonishment.
+
+When Jordan came home that evening he found Daniel and Gertrude in the
+living room. Gertrude went up to him to support him; then she brought
+him a glass of wine as a stimulant: he had not eaten anything since
+breakfast.
+
+"Where is Eleanore?" he murmured, but seemed to take no interest in the
+reply to his question. He fell down on a chair, and buried his face in
+his hands.
+
+Gertrude, who saw his strength leaving him as the light dies out of a
+slowly melting candle, became dizzy with compassion. Her last hope was
+in Eleanore, who had left at five o'clock simply because she found it
+intolerable to sit around, hour after hour, doing nothing but waiting
+for the return of her father. At every sound that could be heard in the
+house, Gertrude pricked up her ears in eager expectancy.
+
+Daniel stood by the window, and looked out across the deserted square
+into the dull red glow of the setting sun.
+
+It struck seven, then half past seven, eight, and Eleanore had not
+returned. Daniel began to pace back and forth through the room; he was
+nervous. If his foot chanced to strike against a chair, Gertrude
+shuddered.
+
+Shortly after eight, steps were heard outside. The key rattled in the
+front gate, the room door opened, and in came Eleanore--and Philippina
+Schimmelweis.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Everybody looked at Philippina; even Jordan himself honoured her with a
+faint glance. Daniel and Gertrude were amazed. Daniel did not recognise
+his cousin; he knew nothing about her; he had seen her but once, and
+then he was a mere child. He did not know who this repulsive-looking
+individual was, and demanded that Eleanore give him an explanation. As
+he did this, he raised his eyebrows.
+
+Eleanore was the only one Philippina looked at in a kindly way; in
+Philippina's own face there was an expression of curiosity.
+
+Philippina's whole bearing had something of the monstrous about it. Even
+her dress was picturesque, adventuresome. Her great brown straw hat,
+with the ribbon sticking straight up in the air, was shoved on to the
+back of her head so as not to spoil the effect of the fashionable bangs
+that hung down over her forehead. Her loud, checkered dress was strapped
+about her waist with a cloth belt so tightly that the contour of her fat
+body was made to look positively ridiculous: she resembled a gigantic
+hour glass. In her rough-cut features there was an element of lurking
+malevolence.
+
+After a few minutes of painful stillness she walked up to Daniel, and
+plucked him by the coat-sleeve: "Eh, you don't know who I am?" she
+asked, and her squinty eyes shone on him with enigmatic savagery: "I am
+Philippina; you know, Philippina Schimmelweis."
+
+Daniel stepped back from her: "Well, what of it?" he asked, wrinkling
+his brow.
+
+She followed him, took him by the coat-sleeve again, and led him over
+into one corner: "Listen, Daniel," she stammered, "my father--he must
+give you all the money you need. For years ago your father gave him all
+the money he had, and told him to keep it for you. Do you understand? I
+happened to hear about it one time when my father was talking about it
+to my mother. It was a good seven years ago, but I made a note of it. My
+father spent the money on himself; he thinks he can keep it. Go to him,
+and tell him what you want; tell him how much you want, and then go help
+these people here. But you must not give me away; if you do they'll kill
+me. Do you understand? You won't say a word about it, will you?"
+
+"Is that true?" Daniel managed to say in reply, as a feeling of
+unspeakable anger struggled with one of indescribable disgust.
+
+"It is true, Daniel, every word of it; 'pon my soul and honour," replied
+Philippina; "just go, and you'll see that I have told you the truth."
+
+During the conversation of the two, of which she could hardly hear a
+single syllable, Eleanore never took her eyes off them.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Since the day Philippina had made her little brother Markus a cripple
+for life, she had been an outcast in the home of her parents.
+
+To be sure, she had had no great abundance of kindness and cheerfulness
+before the accident took place. But since that time the barbarous
+castigation of her father had beclouded and besmirched her very soul.
+From her twelfth year on, her mind was ruled exclusively by hate.
+
+Hatred aroused her; it gave birth to thoughts and plans in her; it
+endowed her with strength of will and audacity; and it matured her
+before her time.
+
+She hated her father, her mother, her brothers.
+
+She hated the house with all its rooms; she hated the bed in which she
+slept, the table at which she ate. She hated the people who came to see
+her parents, the customers who came into the shop, the loafers who
+gathered about the window, the tall lanky Zwanziger, the books and the
+magazines.
+
+But the day she overheard her father and mother talking about that
+money, a second power had joined the ranks of hate in her benighted,
+abandoned soul. With her brain on fire she stood behind the door, and
+heard that she was to be married to Daniel. This remark had filled the
+then thirteen-year-old girl with all the savage instincts of a bound and
+fettered woman, with all the crabbedness of an unimaginative person of
+her standing.
+
+In her father's remark she did not see merely a more or less carefully
+outlined plan; she heard a message from Fate itself; and from that time
+on she lived with an idea that brought light and purpose into her daily
+existence.
+
+Shortly after his arrival in Nuremberg, she saw Daniel for the first
+time as he was standing by a booth in the market place on Schuett Island.
+Her father had pointed him out to her. She knew that he wished to become
+a musician; this made no special impression on her. She knew that he was
+having a hard time of it; this filled her neither with sympathy nor
+regret. When she later on saw him in the concert hall, he was already
+her promised spouse; he belonged to her. To capture him, to get him into
+her power, it made no difference how, was her unchanging aspiration, in
+which there was a bizarre mixture of bestiality and insanity.
+
+The thieving, which she decided upon at once and practised with perfect
+regularity, netted her in the course of time a handsome sum. She did not
+become bolder and bolder as she continued her evil practices, but,
+unlike thieves generally, she grew to be more and more cautious. She
+acquired in time remarkable skill at showing an outwardly honest face.
+Indeed she became such an adept at dissimulation that the suspicion of
+even Jason Philip, aroused as it had been during the course of a
+careful investigation, was dispelled by her behaviour.
+
+Her plan was to gain a goodly measure of independence through the money
+she had stolen. For she always felt convinced that the day would come
+when her parents would debar her from their home. She was convinced that
+her father and mother were merely waiting for some plausible excuse to
+rid themselves of her for good and all.
+
+Moreover, she had two pronounced passions: one for candy and one for
+flashy ribbons.
+
+The candy she always bought in the evening. She would slip into the shop
+of Herr Degen, and, with her greedy eyes opened as wide as possible, buy
+twenty pfennigs' worth of sweets, at which she would nibble until she
+went to bed.
+
+The ribbons she sewed together into sashes, which she wore on her hat or
+around her neck or on her dress. The gaudier the colour the better she
+liked it. If her mother asked her where she got the ribbons she was
+forced to lie. Although she had no girl friends, as a matter of fact no
+friends of any kind, she would say that this or that girl had given them
+to her. When her wealth became too conspicuous, she would leave the
+house and not tie her sashes about her until she had reached some
+unlighted gateway or dark corner.
+
+She never dared go to the attic more than once a week; she did this when
+her brothers were at school and her parents in the shop. The fear lest
+some one find her out and take her stolen riches from her made her more
+and more uneasy, lending to her face an expression of virulent distrust.
+
+She would go up the thirteen steps from the landing to the attic with
+trembling feet. The fact that there were exactly thirteen was the first
+thing that awakened her superstition. As the months crept on, she
+resigned to this superstition with the abandon of an inveterate
+voluptuary. If she chanced to put her left foot first on the bottom step
+and not to notice it until she was half way up, she would turn around,
+come down, and relinquish the pleasure of seeing her treasures for the
+rest of that week.
+
+She was afraid of ghosts, witches, and magicians; if a cat ran across
+the street in front of her, she turned as white as chalk.
+
+Theresa did not keep a maid; Philippina helped in the kitchen; this
+ruined her complexion, and made her skin rough and horny. Frequently she
+got out of washing dishes by simply running away. On these occasions
+Theresa would create such an uproar that the neighbours would come to
+the window and look out. Philippina avenged herself by purposely ruining
+the sheets, towels, and shirts that lay in the clothes basket. When in
+this mood and at this business, she made use of a regular oath that she
+herself had formulated: it consisted of sentences that sounded most
+impressive, though they had no meaning.
+
+She cherished the odd delusion that it lay in her power to bring
+misfortune to other people. The time Jason Philip complained of poor
+business she felt an infernal sense of satisfaction. His change of
+political views had driven away his old customers, and the new ones had
+no confidence in him. He had to go in for the publication of dubious
+works, if he wished to do any business at all. The result of this was
+that when people passed by the Schimmelweis bookshop, they stopped
+before the window, looked at his latest output, and smiled
+contemptuously. The workman's insurance no longer paid as it used to,
+for the credit of the Prudentia and its agents had suffered a violent
+setback.
+
+The rise and fall in bourgeois life follows a well established law. In a
+single day the honesty and diligence of one man, the tricks and frauds
+of another, grow stale, antiquated. Thus Jordan's affairs started on the
+down grade, and Jason Philip's likewise.
+
+Philippina ascribed their failure to the quiet influence of her
+destructive work. Every bit of misfortune in the life of her father
+loosened by that much the chain that prevented her from complete freedom
+of movement. In her most infamous hours she would dream of the hunger
+and distress, bankruptcy and despair of her people. Once this state of
+affairs had been realised, she would no longer have to play the role of
+Cinderella; she would no longer have to be the first one up in the
+morning; she would no longer have to chop wood, and polish her brothers'
+boots: she would have a fair field and no favours in her campaign to
+capture Daniel.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+At times she thought she could simply go to him and stay with him. At
+times she felt that he would come and get her. One thing or the other
+had to take place, she thought.
+
+One Sunday afternoon--it chanced to be her eighteenth birthday--a junior
+agent of Jason Philip, a fellow by the name of Pfefferkorn, came to the
+house, and in the course of the conversation remarked rather casually
+that the elder of the Jordan sisters was engaged to the musician
+Nothafft, that the engagement had been kept secret for a while, but that
+the wedding was to take place in the immediate future.
+
+"By the way, I hear that the musician is your nephew," said Pfefferkorn
+at the close of his report.
+
+Jason Philip cast a gloomy look into space, while Theresa, then sipping
+her chicory coffee, set her cup on the table, and looked at the man with
+scornful contempt.
+
+Philippina broke out in a laughter that went through them like a knife.
+Then she ran from the room, and banged the door behind her. "She seems a
+bit deranged," murmured Jason Philip angrily.
+
+Then came that June night on which she did not come home at all. Jason
+Philip raged and howled when she returned the next morning; but she was
+silent. He locked her up in the cellar for sixteen hours; but she was
+silent.
+
+After this she did not leave the house for months at a time; she did not
+wash or comb her hair; she sat crouched up in the kitchen with her long,
+dishevelled, unwashed hair falling in loose locks down over her neck and
+shoulders.
+
+A feeling of consuming vengeance seethed in her heart; the patience she
+was forced to practise, much against her will, petrified in time into a
+mien of hypocritic sottishness.
+
+Suddenly she took to dressing up again and sauntering through the
+streets in the afternoon. Her loud ribbons awakened the mocking laughter
+of young and old.
+
+She had learned that Eleanore Jordan was attending the lectures in the
+Cultural Club. She went too; she always crowded up close to Eleanore,
+but she could not attract her attention. One time she sat right next to
+Eleanore. A strolling pastor delivered a lecture on cremation.
+Philippina took out her handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes as
+though she were weeping. Eleanore, somewhat concerned, turned to her,
+and asked her what was the matter. She said that it was all so sad what
+the old gentleman was saying. Eleanore was surprised, for nothing the
+speaker had said was sad or in any way likely to bring tears to the eyes
+of his auditors.
+
+At the end of the lecture she left the hall with Eleanore. When the
+ugly, disagreeable creature told her of the wretchedness of her life,
+how she was abused by her parents and brothers, and that there was not a
+soul in the world who cared for her, Eleanore was moved. The fact that
+Philippina was Daniel's blood cousin made her forget the aversion she
+felt, and drew from her a promise to go walking with her on certain
+days.
+
+Eleanore kept her promise. She was not in the least disconcerted by the
+queer looks cast at her by the people they met. With perfect composure
+she walked along by the side of this strapping, quackish young woman
+dressed in the oddest garments known to the art of dress-making. At
+first they strolled in broad daylight through the park adjoining the
+city moat. Later Eleanore arranged to have the walks, which were to take
+place two or three times a month, postponed until after sunset.
+
+This was quite agreeable to Philippina. She threw out a hint every now
+and then that there was a mysterious feud between the Schimmelweis
+family and the Nothaffts, and implored Eleanore never to let Daniel know
+that she was taking these walks with her. It was painful to Eleanore to
+have Philippina make such requests of her. The lurking manner in which
+she would turn the conversation to the affairs of Daniel and Gertrude
+had an element of offensive intrusiveness in it. She wanted to know
+first this, then that. She even had the impudence to ask about
+Gertrude's dowry; and finally she requested that Eleanore bring her
+sister along some time when they went walking.
+
+Eleanore came to have a feeling of horror at the sight or thought of
+Philippina; she was dismayed too when, despite the darkness, she noticed
+the shrewish look of incorrigible wickedness in Philippina's face. An
+ineluctable voice put her on her guard. In so far as she could do it
+without grievously offending Philippina, she withdrew from further
+association with her. And even if she had not promised her absolute
+silence, a feeling half of fear and half of shame would have prevented
+her from ever mentioning Philippina's name in Daniel's presence.
+
+She never once suspected that Philippina was spying on her. Philippina
+soon found out just when, how often, and where Daniel and Eleanore met;
+and wherever they went, she followed at a safe distance behind them. Why
+she did this she really did not know; something forced her to do it.
+
+What she had succeeded in doing with Eleanore she now wished to do with
+Gertrude. She would bob up all of a sudden in the butcher shop, at the
+vegetable market, in the dairy, anywhere, stare at Gertrude, act as
+though she were intensely interested in something, and make some such
+remarks as: "Lord, but beans are dear this year"; or "That is a nasty
+wind, it is enough to give you the colic." But Gertrude was far too lost
+to the world and much too sensitive about coming in contact with
+strangers to pay any attention to her awkward attempts at approach.
+
+"Just wait," thought Philippina, enraged, "the penalty of your arrogance
+will some day descend upon your head."
+
+
+                                   X
+
+On that Monday so fatal for the Jordan family, Philippina had another
+violent quarrel with her mother. Theresa was still shrieking, when Jason
+Philip came up from the shop to know what could be wrong.
+
+"Don't ask," cried Theresa at the top of her shrill voice, "go teach
+your daughter some manners. The wench is going to end up in jail; that's
+what I prophesy."
+
+Philippina made a wry face. Jason Philip, however, was little inclined
+to play the role of an avenging power: he had something new on the
+string; his face was beaming.
+
+"I met Hornbusch," he said, turning to Theresa, "you know him, firm of
+Hornbusch heirs, bloody rich they are, and the man tells me that young
+Jordan has embezzled some money from the Prudentia and left the country.
+I went at once to the Prudentia, and Zittel told me the whole story,
+just as I had heard it. It is almost four thousand marks! Jordan has
+been requested to make good the deficit; but he hasn't a penny to his
+name and is in a mighty tight place, for Diruf is threatening to send
+him to jail. You know, Diruf is hard-boiled in matters of this kind.
+What do you think of that?"
+
+Theresa wrapped her hands in her apron, and looked at Jason Philip out
+of the corner of her eye. She guessed at once the cause of his joy, and
+hung her head in silence.
+
+Jason Philip smirked to himself. Leaning up against the Dutch tiles of
+the stove, he began to whistle in a happy-go-lucky mood. It was the
+"Marseillaise." He whistled it partly out of forgetfulness and partly
+from force of habit.
+
+He had not noticed how Philippina had listened to every syllable that
+fell from his lips; how she was holding her breath; that her features
+were lighted up from within by a terrible flame of fire. He did notice,
+however, that she got up at the close of his remarks and left the room
+with rustling steps.
+
+Five minutes later she was standing before Jordan's house. She sent a
+small boy in with the request that Fraeulein Eleanore come down at once.
+The boy came back, and said that Fraeulein Eleanore was not at home. She
+took her position by the front gate, and waited.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+Driven by the torment of her soul, Eleanore had gone to Martha Ruebsam's
+only to hear that her father had been there three hours earlier. From
+the confused and embarrassed conduct of her friend she learned that her
+father had made a request of Judge Ruebsam, and a fruitless one at that.
+
+Then she stood for a while on one of the leading streets, and stared in
+bewilderment at the throngs of people surging by. It was all so cruelly
+real.
+
+She thought of whom she might go to next. A wave of purple flashed
+across her face as she thought of Eberhard. Involuntarily she made a
+passionate, deprecating gesture, as if she were saying: No, no, not to
+him! The first ray of this hope was also the last. Her conscience struck
+her; but she was helpless. Here was a feeling impervious to reason;
+armed ten times over against encouragement. Anyhow, he was not at home.
+She thought of this with a sigh of relief.
+
+Would Daniel go to the Baroness? No; that could not be thought of for a
+minute.
+
+She could no longer endure the city nor the people in it. She walked
+through the park out into the country. She could not stand the sight of
+the sky or the distant views; she turned around. She came back to The
+Fuell, entered the Carovius house, and rang Frau Benda's bell. She knew
+the old lady was away, and yet, as if quite beside herself, she rang
+four times. If Benda would only come; if the good friend were only
+sitting in his room and could come to the door.
+
+But there was not a stir. From the first floor the sounds of a piano
+floated out the window; it was being played in full chords. Down in the
+court Caesar was howling.
+
+She started back home with beating heart. At the front gate she saw
+Philippina.
+
+"I have heard all about your misfortune," said Philippina in her shrill
+voice. "Nobody can help you but me."
+
+"You? You can help?" stammered Eleanore. The whole square began to move,
+it seemed, before her.
+
+"Word of honour--I can. I must simply have a talk with Daniel first.
+Let's lose no time. Is he upstairs?"
+
+"I think he is. If not, I will get him."
+
+"Let's go up, then."
+
+They went up the stairs.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+Jason Philip had been invited to a sociable evening in the Shufflers'
+Club. He was now enjoying his siesta after his banquet by reading an
+editorial in the _Kurier_. One of Bismarck's addresses had been so
+humorously commented on that every now and then Jason Philip emitted a
+malevolent snarl of applause.
+
+He had brought a lemon along home with him; it was lying on a plate
+before him, sliced and covered with sugar. From time to time he would
+reach over, take a piece and stick it in his mouth. He smacked his
+tongue with the display of much ceremony of his kind, and licked his
+lips after swallowing a piece. His two sons gaped at his hand with
+greedy eyes and likewise licked their lips.
+
+Willibald was groaning over an algebraic equation. In his pale, pimpled
+face were traces of incapability and bad humour. Markus, owing to his
+physical defect, was not allowed to study by artificial light. He helped
+his mother shell the peas, and in order to make her angry at Philippina,
+kept making mean remarks about her staying out so long.
+
+Just as the last piece of the lemon disappeared behind Jason Philip's
+moustache, the door bell rang.
+
+"There is a man out there," said Markus, who had gone to the door and
+was now standing on the threshold, stupidly staring with his one
+remaining eye.
+
+Jason Philip stretched his neck. Then he got up. He had recognised
+Daniel standing in the half-lighted hall.
+
+"I have something to say to you," said Daniel, as he entered the room.
+His eyes gazed on the walls and at the few cheap, ugly, banal objects
+that hung on them: a newspaper-holder with embroidered ribbons; a corner
+table on which stood a beer mug representing the fat body of a monk; an
+old chromic print showing a volunteer taking leave of his big family as
+he starts for the front. These things appealed to Daniel somewhat as an
+irrational dream. Then, taking a deep breath, he fixed his eyes on Jason
+Philip. In his mind's eye he looked back over many years; he saw himself
+standing at the fountain in Eschenbach. Round about him glistened the
+stones and cross beams of the houses. Jason Philip was hurrying by at a
+timid distance. There was bitterness in his face: he seemed to be
+fleeing from the world, the sun, men, and music.
+
+"I have something to say to you," he repeated.
+
+Theresa felt that the worst of her forebodings were about to be
+fulfilled. With trembling knees she arose. She did not dare turn her
+eyes toward the place in the room where Daniel was standing. She did not
+see, she merely sensed Jason Philip as he beckoned to her and his sons
+to leave the room. She took Markus by the hand and Willibald by the
+coat-sleeve, and marched out between the two.
+
+"What's the news?" asked Jason Philip, as he crossed his arms and looked
+at the pile of beans on the table. "You have a--what shall I say?--a
+very impulsive way about you. It is a way that reminds me of the fact
+that we have a law in this country against disturbing the peace of a
+private family. Your stocks must have gone to the very top of the market
+recently. Well, tell me, what do you want?"
+
+He cleared his throat, and beat a tattoo on the elbows of his crossed
+arms with his fingers.
+
+Daniel felt that his peace was leaving him; his own arm seemed to him
+like a shot-gun; it itched. But thus far he could not say a thing. The
+question he had in mind to put to Jason Philip was of such tremendous
+import that he could not suppress his fear that he might make a mistake
+or become too hasty.
+
+"Where is the money my father gave you?" came the words at last, rolling
+from his lips in a tone of muffled sullenness.
+
+The colour left Jason Philip's face; his arms fell down by his side.
+
+"The money? Where it's gone to? That your father--?" He stuttered in
+confusion. He wanted to gain time; he wanted to think over very
+carefully what he should say and what he could conceal. He cast one
+glance at Daniel, and saw that it was not possible to expect mercy from
+him. He was afraid of Daniel's bold, lean, sinewy face.
+
+He nearly burst with anger at the thought that this young man, for whom
+he, Jason Philip, was once the highest authority, should have the
+unmitigated audacity to call him to account. In this whole situation he
+pictured himself as the immaculate man of honour that he wished he was
+and thought he was in the eyes of his fellow citizens. At the same time
+he was nearly stifled with fear lest he lose the money which he had long
+since accustomed himself to regard as his own, with which he had worked
+and speculated, and which by this time was as much a part of his very
+being as his own house, his business, his projects. He buried his hands
+in his pockets and snorted. His cowardly dread of the consequences of
+fraud forced him into a half confession of fraud, but in his words lay
+the feverish pettifogging of the frenzied financier who fights for
+Mammon even unto raging and despair.
+
+"The money is here; of course it is. Where did you think it was? My
+books will show exactly how much of it has found its way over to
+Eschenbach in the shape of interest and loans. My books are open to
+inspection; the accounts have been kept right up to this very day. I
+have made considerable progress in life. A man who has lived as I have
+lived does not need to fear a living soul. Do you imagine for a minute
+that Jason Philip Schimmelweis can be frightened by a little thing like
+this? No, no, it will take more of a man than you to do that. Who are
+you anyhow? What office do you hold? What authority have you? With what
+right do you come rushing into the four walls of my home? Do you perhaps
+imagine that your artistic skill invests you with special privileges? I
+don't give a tinker's damn for your art. The whole rubbish is hardly
+worth spitting on. Music? Idiocy. Who needs it? Any man with the least
+vestige of self-respect never has anything to do with music except on
+holidays and when the day's work is done. No, no, you can't impress me
+with your music. You're not quite sane! And if you think that you are
+going to get any money out of me, you are making the mistake of your
+life. It is to laugh. If a man wants money from me, he has to come to me
+at least with a decent hair-cut and show me at least a little respect.
+He can't come running up like a kid on the street who says: 'Mumma, gif
+me a shent; I want to buy some tandy.' No, no, son, you can't get
+anything out of me that way."
+
+The smile that appeared on Daniel's face filled Jason Philip with mortal
+terror. He stopped his talk with incriminating suddenness. He decided to
+hold in and to promise Daniel a small payment. He hoped that by handing
+over a few hundred marks he could assure himself the desired peace of
+mind.
+
+But Daniel never felt so certain of himself in his life. He thought of
+the hardships he had had to endure, and his heart seemed as if it were
+on fire. At the same time he was ashamed of this man and disgusted with
+him.
+
+He said quietly and firmly: "I must have three thousand seven hundred
+marks by ten o'clock to-morrow morning. It is a question of saving an
+honourable and upright family from ruin. If this sum is handed over to
+me promptly, I will waive all rights to the balance that is due me, in
+writing. The receipt will be filled out ready for delivery in my house.
+If the money is not in my hands by the stipulated time, we will meet
+each other in another place and in the presence of people who will
+impress you."
+
+He turned to go.
+
+Jason Philip's mouth opened wide, and he pressed his fist to the hole
+made thereby. "Three thousand seven hundred marks?" he roared. "The man
+is crazy. Completely crazy is the man. Man, man, you're crazy," he cried
+in order to get Daniel to stop. "Are you crazy, man? Do you want to ruin
+me? Don't you hear, you damned man?"
+
+Daniel looked at Jason Philip with a shudder. The door to the adjoining
+room sprang open, and Theresa rushed in. Her face was ashen pale; there
+were just two little round red spots on her cheek bones. "You are going
+to get that money, Daniel," she howled hysterically, "or I am going to
+jump into the Pegnitz, I'll jump into the Pegnitz and drown myself."
+
+"Woman, you ..." he gnashed his teeth, and seized her by the shoulder.
+
+She sank down on a chair, and, seizing her hair, continued: "He is
+everywhere, and wherever he is, our dear Gottfried, he is looking at me.
+He stands before the clothes press, at the cupboard, by my bedside,
+nods, exhorts, raises his finger, finds no peace in his grave, and does
+not let me sleep; he has not let me sleep all these years."
+
+"Now listen, you had better think of your children," snapped Jason
+Philip.
+
+Theresa let her hands fall in her lap, and looked down at the floor:
+"All that nice money, that nice money," she cried. Then again, this time
+with a face distorted beyond easy recognition and at the top of her
+voice: "But you'll get it, Daniel; I'll see to it that you get it: I'll
+bring it to you myself." Then again, in a gentle voice of acute
+lamentation: "All that nice money."
+
+Daniel was almost convulsed. It seemed to him as if he had never rightly
+understood the word _money_ before, as if the meaning of _money_ had
+never been made clear to him until he heard Theresa say it.
+
+"To-morrow morning at ten o'clock," he said.
+
+Theresa nodded her head in silence, and raised her hands with
+outstretched fingers as if to protect herself from Jason Philip.
+Willibald and Markus had crept under the door. The gate must not have
+been closed, for just then Philippina came in. She had come over with
+Daniel, but had remained outside on the street. She could not wait any
+longer; she was too anxious to see the consequences of her betrayal.
+
+She looked around with affected embarrassment. Was it merely the sight
+of her that aroused Jason Philip's wrath? Was it the half-cowardly,
+half-cynical smile that played around her lips? Or was it the cumulative
+effect of blind anger, long pent up and eager to be discharged, that
+made Jason Philip act as he did? Or did he have a vague suspicion of
+what Philippina had done? Suffice it to say, he leapt up to her and
+struck her in the face with his fist.
+
+She never moved a muscle.
+
+Indignant at the rudeness of his conduct, Daniel stepped between Jason
+Philip and his daughter. But the venomous scorn in the girl's eyes
+stifled his sympathy; he turned to the door, and went away in silence.
+
+"All that nice money," murmured Theresa.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+When Daniel told the Jordans that the money would be there the next
+morning, Jordan looked at him first unbelievingly, and then wept like a
+child.
+
+Eleanore reached Daniel both her hands without saying a word. Gertrude,
+who was lying on the sofa, straightened up, smiled gently, and then lay
+down again. Daniel asked her what was the matter. Eleanore answered for
+her, saying that she had not felt well since some time in the afternoon.
+"She must go to bed, she is tired," added Eleanore.
+
+"Well, come then," said Daniel, and helped Gertrude to get up. But her
+legs were without strength; she could not walk. She looked first at
+Daniel and then at Eleanore; she was plainly worried about something.
+
+"You won't care, will you, Father, if I go home with them?" asked
+Eleanore in a tone of flattery.
+
+"No, go, child," said Jordan, "it will do me good to be alone for a few
+minutes."
+
+Daniel and Eleanore took Gertrude between them. At the second landing in
+their apartment, Daniel took Gertrude in his arms, and carried her into
+the bedroom. She did not want him to help her take off her clothes; she
+sent him out of the room. A cup of warm milk was all she said she
+wanted.
+
+"There is no milk there," said Eleanore to Daniel, as she entered the
+living room. He stopped suddenly, and looked at her as if he had
+awakened from a fleeting dream: "I'll run down to Tetzel Street and get
+a half a litre," said Eleanore. "I'll leave the hall door open, so that
+Gertrude will not be frightened when I come in."
+
+She had already hastened out; but all of a sudden she turned around, and
+said with joyful gratitude, her blue eyes swimming in the tears of a
+full soul: "You dear man."
+
+His face took on a scowl.
+
+There was a fearful regularity in his walking back and forth. The chains
+of the hanging lamp shook. The flame sent forth a thin column of smoke;
+he did not notice it. "How long will she be gone?" he thought in his
+unconscious, drunken impatience. He felt terribly deserted.
+
+He stepped out into the hall, and listened. There hovered before him in
+the darkness the face of Philippina. She showed the same scornful
+immobility that she showed when her father struck her in the face. He
+stepped to the railing, and sat down on the top step; a fit at once of
+weakness and aimless defiance came over him. He buried his face in his
+hands; he could still hear Theresa saying, "All that nice money."
+
+There were shadows everywhere; there was nothing but night and shadows.
+
+Eleanore, light-hearted and light-footed, returned at last. When she saw
+him, she stopped. He arose, and stretched out his arms as if to take the
+milk bottle. That is the way she interpreted his gesture, and handed it
+to him in surprise. He, however, set it down on the landing beside him.
+The light from the living room shone on it and made it look sparkling
+white. Then he drew Eleanore to him, threw his arms around her, and
+kissed her on the mouth.
+
+Merely a creature of man, only a woman, nothing but heart and breath,
+all longing and forgetting, forgetting for just one moment, finding
+herself for a moment, knowing her own self for a moment--she pressed
+close up to him. But her hands were folded between her breast and his,
+and thus separated their bodies.
+
+Then she broke away from him, wrung her hands, looked up at him, pressed
+close up to him again, wrung her hands again--it was all done in
+absolute silence and with an almost terrible grace and loveliness.
+
+Everything was now entirely different from what it had been, or what she
+had formerly imagined it to be; there were depths to everything now. She
+lost herself; she ceased to exist for a moment; darkness enveloped her
+much-disciplined heart; she entered upon a second existence, an
+existence that had no similarity with the first.
+
+To this existence she was now bound; she had succumbed to it: the law of
+nature had gone into effect. But the glass case had been shattered; it
+was in pieces. She stood there unprotected, even exposed, so to speak,
+to men, no longer immune to their glances, an accessible prey to their
+touch.
+
+She went into the kitchen, and heated the milk. Daniel returned to the
+living room. His veins were burning, his heart was hammering. He had no
+sense of appreciation of the time that had passed. When Eleanore came
+into the room, he began to tremble.
+
+She came up to him, and spoke to him in passionate sadness: "Have you
+heard about Gertrude? Don't you know, really? She is with child--your
+wife."
+
+"I did not know it," whispered Daniel. "Did she tell you?"
+
+"Yes, just now."
+
+
+
+
+                        TRES FACIUNT COLLEGIUM
+
+
+                                   I
+
+The habitues of the reserved table at the Crocodile were all reasonably
+well informed of the events that had recently taken place in the homes
+of Inspector Jordan and Jason Philip Schimmelweis. Details were
+mentioned that would make it seem probable that the cracks in the walls
+and the key-holes of both houses had been entertaining eavesdroppers.
+
+Some refused to believe that Jason Philip had made restitution for the
+money young Jordan had embezzled. For, said Degen, the baker,
+Schimmelweis is a hard-fisted fellow, and whoever would try to get money
+out of him would have to be in the possession of extraordinary
+shrewdness.
+
+"But he has already paid it," said Gruendlich, the watchmaker. He knew he
+had; he knew that the wife of the bookseller had gone over to Nothafft's
+on Tuesday afternoon; that she had a heap of silver in a bag; and that
+when she came back home she took to bed, and had been ill ever since.
+
+Kitzler, the assistant postmaster, felt there was something wrong here;
+and if there was not, you would simply have to assume that Nothafft, the
+musician, was a dangerous citizen, who had somehow managed to place the
+breast of his uncle _vis-a-vis_ a revolver.
+
+"And you know, Nothafft is to be made Kapellmeister at the City
+Theatre," remarked the editor Weibezahl, the latest member of the round
+table. "His appointment is to be made public in a few days."
+
+"What! Kapellmeister! You don't say so! That will make Andreas Doederlein
+the saddest man in ten states."
+
+Herr Carovius, whose mouth was just then hanging on his beer glass,
+laughed so heartily that the beer went down his Sunday throat; he was
+seized with a coughing spell. Herr Korn slapped him on the back.
+
+It was a shame that such a bad actor as Nothafft had to be endured in
+the midst of people who lived peaceful and law-abiding lives. This
+lament came from Herr Kleinlein, who had been circuit judge now for
+some time. He was anxious to know whether all the tales that were
+circulating concerning Nothafft were true.
+
+Well, he was told, a great many things are said about Nothafft, but it
+is difficult to get at the truth. They appealed to the apothecary
+Pflaum, on the ground that his assistant knew the musician and might be
+able to give them some definite information.
+
+Herr Pflaum took on an air as if he knew a great deal but was under
+obligations not to tell. Yes, yes, he said rather perfunctorily, he had
+heard that some one had said that Nothafft was running a pretty
+questionable domestic establishment; that he had a rather unsavoury
+past; and that there was some talk about his neglecting his wife.
+
+The deuce you say! Why, they were married only a short while ago. Yes,
+but there was a rumour to the effect that there was a woman in the case.
+Who could it be? Ahem! Well-ah, it would be a good idea to be cautious
+about mentioning names. Good Lord, why cautious? Why not straight out
+with the information any one chanced to be fortunate enough to have? Is
+it not a question of protecting one's own wife and daughters?
+
+And so this slanderous babble rattled on. There was something
+unfathomable in their hatred of the musician. They were just as agreed
+on this point as they would have been if Daniel had broken open their
+strong boxes, smashed their windows, and betrayed their honour and
+dignity to public ridicule.
+
+They did not know what they should do about him. They passed by him as
+one would pass by a bomb that might or might not explode.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+When Herr Carovius was alone, he picked up the paper, and read the
+account of a mine explosion in Silesia. The number of killed satisfied
+him. The description of the women as they stood at the top of the shaft,
+wept, wrung their hands, and called out the names of their husbands,
+filled him with the same agreeable sensation that he experienced when he
+listened to the melancholy finale of a Chopin nocturne.
+
+But he could not forget the expression on Herr Pflaum's face when he
+told how Nothafft was neglecting his wife. It had been the expression
+that comes out, so to speak, from between the curtains of a sleeping
+room: something was up, make no mistake, something was going on.
+
+For quite a while Herr Carovius had harboured the suspicion that there
+was something wrong. Twice he had met Daniel and Eleanore walking along
+the street in the twilight, talking to each other in a very mysterious
+way. Things were going on behind Herr Carovius's back which he could not
+afford to overlook.
+
+Since the day Eleanore had disentangled the cord of his nose glasses
+from the button of his top coat, the picture of the young girl had been
+indelibly stamped on his mind. He could still see the beautiful
+curvature of her young bosom as she raised her arm.
+
+A year and a half after this incident, Herr Carovius was going through
+some old papers. He chanced upon an unfinished letter which Eberhard von
+Auffenberg had written to Eleanore but had never posted. Eberhard had
+come to Nuremberg at the time to transact some business connected with
+the negotiation of a new loan; he had left his hotel, and Herr Carovius
+had had to wait for him a long while. This time he had spent in looking
+over the unsealed documents of the incautious young Baron.
+
+Then it was that he discovered the letter. What words! And oh, the
+passion! Herr Carovius would never have believed that the reserved
+misanthrope was capable of such a display of emotion. He felt that
+Eberhard had disclosed to him the most secret chambers of his heart. He
+was terrified at the voluptuousness revealed to him by the unveiling of
+the mystery of his soul. They are human beings after all, those members
+of the nobility, he exclaimed with a feeling of personal triumph. They
+throw themselves away; they meet some slippery imp, and fall; they lose
+control of themselves as soon as they hear a skirt rustle.
+
+But what concerned the Baron in this case concerned also Herr Carovius.
+A passion that had taken possession of the Baron had to be guarded,
+studied, and eventually shared by Herr Carovius himself.
+
+Herr Carovius's loneliness had gradually robbed him of his equanimity.
+Suppressed impulses were stifling his mind with the luxuriant growths of
+a vivid and vicious imagination. The adventures into which he had
+voluntarily plunged in order to make sure of his control over Eberhard
+had almost ruined him. The net he had spread for the helplessly
+fluttering bird now held him himself entangled in its meshes. The world
+to him was a body full of wounds on which he was battening his Neronic
+lusts. But it was at the same time a tapestry, with bright coloured
+pictures which could be made living and real by a magic formula, and
+this formula he had not yet been able to discover.
+
+At the insinuations of the apothecary his fancy took on new life: he
+was not a man in whose soul old emotions died out; his lusts never
+became extinct. Lying on the sofa, taking his midday siesta, he would
+picture the figure of Eleanore dancing around him in diminutive form.
+When he sat at the piano and played an _etude_, he imagined he saw
+Daniel standing beside him criticising his technique--and doing it with
+much show of arrogance. When he went out of evenings, he saw Nothafft
+displayed on all the signs, while every _demi-monde_ bore Eleanore's
+features.
+
+It seemed to him in time that Eleanore Jordan was his property; that he
+had a right to her. His life, he felt, was full of lamentable
+privations: other people had everything, he had nothing. Others
+committed crimes; all he could do was to make note of the crimes. And no
+man could become either satiated or rich from merely taking the criminal
+incidents of other people's lives into account.
+
+At midnight he put on his sleeping gown, took a seat before the mirror,
+and read until break of day a novel in which a man fifty years old has a
+secret and successful love affair with a young woman. As he read this
+novel he knew that something was going on. And he knew that out there in
+a certain house on AEgydius Place something was also going on. Make no
+mistake, something was up.
+
+He saw trysts on unlighted stairways. He saw people coming to mutual
+understandings by a certain pressure of the hand and adulterous signals.
+That is the way they did it; that is the way Benda and Marguerite had
+done it. His old hate was revived. He transferred his hate, but also his
+hope, to music. Through music he was to build a bridge to Daniel and
+Eleanore. He wanted to give them the advantage of his insight, his
+tricks, his experience, simply in order that he might be on hand when
+they committed the gruesome deed; so that he might not be cut off from
+them by an impenetrable wall and be tortured in consequence by an
+incorporeal jealousy; he wanted to be one with them, to feast his eye
+and reach forth his empty, senescent hand.
+
+"I am," he said to himself, "of the same flesh and blood as that man; in
+me too there is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I have, to be sure," he said to
+himself, "despised women, for they are despicable. But let some woman
+come forward and show me that she is fit for anything more than to
+increase by two or three the number of idiots with which the world is
+already overcrowded, and I will do penance, whole and complete, and then
+offer her my services as a knight."
+
+He no longer slept or ate; nor could he do anything that was in any way
+rational. In a belated sexual outburst, a second puberty, his
+imagination became inflamed by a picture which he adorned with all the
+perfections of both soul and body.
+
+He heard that one of Daniel's works was to be played before invited
+guests at the home of Baroness von Auffenberg. He wired to Eberhard, and
+asked him to get him an invitation. The reply was a negative one. In his
+rage he could have murdered the messenger boy. He then wrote to Daniel,
+and, boasting of what he had already done for him, begged Daniel to see
+to it that he was among the guests at the recital. He received a printed
+card from the Baroness, on which she had expressed the hope that she
+might be able to greet him on a certain day.
+
+He was in the seventh heaven. He decided to pay Daniel a visit, and to
+thank him for his kindness.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+"The only thing to do is to leave the city, to go far, far away from
+here," thought Eleanore, on that evening that was so different from any
+other evening of her life.
+
+While she was combing her hair, she was tempted to take the scissors and
+cut it off just to make herself ugly. In the night she went to the
+window to look for the stars. If it only had not happened, if it only
+were a dream, a voice within her cried.
+
+As soon as it turned grey in the morning, she got up. She hastened
+through the deserted streets, just as she had done yesterday, out to the
+suburbs. But everything was different. Tree and bush looked down upon
+her with stern reproachfulness. The mists hung low; but the hazy grey
+cold of the early morning was like a bath to her. Later the sun broke
+through; primroses glistened with gold on the meadow. If it could only
+have been a dream, she thought in silence.
+
+When she came home, her father had already received the news about the
+money: it had been paid to Diruf; Daniel had taken it to him.
+
+Jordan remained in his room the whole day. And on the following day he
+kept to himself except while at dinner. He sat at the table with bowed
+head; he had nothing to say. Eleanore went to his door from time to time
+to see if she could hear him. There was not a sound; the house sang with
+solitude.
+
+Jordan had requested the landlord to sublet the house before his lease
+had expired: he felt that it was too large and expensive for him in the
+present state of his affairs. The landlord approved of the idea. In the
+house where Daniel and Gertrude were living there were two vacant rooms
+in the attic. Gertrude suggested to her father that it would be well for
+him to take them. Jordan agreed with her.
+
+Eleanore began to think the situation over: if Father moves into those
+rooms, I can leave him. She learned from Gertrude, who came now to see
+her father every other day, that Daniel had received the appointment as
+Kapellmeister at the City Theatre. Eleanore could carry out her plans
+then with a clear conscience, for her brother-in-law and her sister were
+getting along quite well at present.
+
+She recalled some conversations she had had with M. Riviere, who had
+advised her to go to Paris. Since Christmas, when he was invited to be
+present at the distribution of the presents, he had been coming to
+Jordan's quite frequently to talk French with Eleanore. This was in
+accord with her express desire.
+
+One afternoon she went to visit M. Riviere. He was living in the
+romantic place up by the gardener on Castle Hill. His room had a balcony
+that was completely overgrown with ivy and elder, while in the
+background the trees and bushes of the city moat formed an impenetrable
+maze of green. The spring air floated into the room in waves. As
+Eleanore made her business known, she fixed her enchanted eyes on a
+bouquet of lilies of the valley that stood on the table in a bronze
+vase.
+
+M. Riviere took a handful of them, and gave them to her. They had not
+been cut; they had been pulled up by the roots. Eleanore laughed happily
+at the fragrance.
+
+M. Riviere said he was just about to write to his mother in Paris, and
+as she was so familiar with the city, she could be of great help to
+Eleanore.
+
+Eleanore stepped out on the balcony. "The world is beautiful," she
+thought, and smiled at the fruitless efforts of a tiny beetle to climb
+up a perpendicular leaf. "Perhaps it was after all merely a dream," she
+thought, and thereby consoled herself.
+
+When she returned, Daniel was at her father's. The two men were sitting
+in the dark.
+
+Eleanore lighted the lamp. Then she filled a glass with water, and put
+the lilies of the valley in it.
+
+"Daniel wants to know why you never visit them any more," said Jordan,
+weak and distraught as he now always was. "I told him you were busy at
+present with great plans of your own. Well, what does the Frenchman
+think about it?"
+
+Eleanore answered her father's question in a half audible voice.
+
+"Go wherever you want to go, child," said Jordan. "You have been
+prepared for an independent life in the world for a long while; there is
+no doubt about that. God forbid that I should put any hindrances in your
+way." He got up with difficulty, and turned toward the door of his room.
+Taking hold of the latch, he stopped, and continued in his brooding way:
+"It is peculiar that a man can die by inches in a living body; that a
+man can have the feeling that he's no longer a part of the present; and
+that he can no longer play his role, keep up with his own people, grasp
+what is going on about him, or know whether what is to come is good or
+evil. It is fearful when a man reaches that stage, fearful--fearful!"
+
+He left the room, shaking his head. To Daniel his words sounded like a
+voice from the grave.
+
+They had been silent for a long while, he and Eleanore. Suddenly he
+asked gruffly: "Are you serious about going to Paris?"
+
+"Of course I am," she said, "what else can I do?"
+
+He sprang up, and looked angrily into her face: "One has to be ashamed
+of one's self," he said, "human language becomes repulsive. Don't you
+have a feeling of horror when you think? Don't you shudder when you
+reflect on that caricature known as the heart, or the soul, or whatever
+it may be called?"
+
+"I don't understand you, Daniel," said Eleanore. She would never have
+considered it possible that he would look with disfavour on her
+contrition and the decision that had sprung from it. Then it had not
+after all been the flash of a solitary second? Had she not hoped and
+expected to hear a self-accusation from him that would make her forget
+all and forgive herself? Where was she? In what world or age was she
+living?
+
+"Do you believe that I merely wanted to enjoy a diverting and momentary
+side-step?" Daniel continued, measuring her with his eyes from head to
+foot. "Do you believe that it is possible to jest with the most sacred
+laws of nature? You have had a good schooling, I must say; you do your
+teachers honour. Go! I don't need you. Go to Paris, and let me
+degenerate!"
+
+He stepped to the door. Then he turned, and took the lamp, which she had
+removed from the holder when she lighted it. Holding the lamp in his
+right hand, he walked close up to her. Her eyes closed involuntarily.
+"I simply wanted to see whether it was really you," he said with
+passionate contempt. "Yes, it is you," he said scornfully, "it is you."
+With that he placed the lamp on the table.
+
+"I don't understand you, Daniel," she said softly. She looked around for
+some object to rest her eyes on.
+
+"So I see. Good night."
+
+"Daniel!"
+
+But he had already gone. The hall door closed with a bang. The house
+sang with solitude.
+
+The green threadbare sofa, the old, old smoke stains on the whitewashed
+ceiling, the five rickety chairs that reminded her of so many decrepit
+old men, the mirror with the gilded angel of stucco at the top--all
+these things were so tiring, so irksome, so annoying: they were like
+underbrush in the forest.
+
+Little brother! Little brother!
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Three evenings of the week were devoted to opera, the others to drama.
+
+The first Kapellmeister was a middle-aged man whose curly hair made him
+the idol of all flappers. He was lazy, uncultivated, and his name was
+Lebrecht.
+
+The director was an old stager who referred to the public about as a
+disrespectful footman refers to his lord. At Daniel's suggestions for
+improving the repertory, he generally shrugged his shoulders. The operas
+in which he had the greatest confidence as drawing cards were "The
+Beggar Student," "Fra Diavolo," "L'Africaine," and "Robert le Diable."
+The singers and the orchestra were not much better than those of the
+lamented Doermaul-Wurzelmann troupe. The possibility of arousing them to
+intensified effort or filling them with a semblance of intelligent
+enthusiasm for art was even less. Privileges based on length of service
+and the familiar traditions of indolence made aesthetic innovations
+unthinkable.
+
+Wherever careworn Philistines and slothful materialists occupy the seats
+from which art should raise her voice, advancement, progress born of
+sacrificial application, is out of the question: the most it is
+reasonable to expect is a bourgeois fulfilment of inescapable duties. In
+such, cases the flower droops; the dream vanishes; the free-born spirit
+has the choice of fighting day in and day out against the collective
+demons of pettiness and mediocrity, or of going down in admitted defeat.
+
+"Stuff the people can easily digest, my dear boy, that is the idea,"
+said the director.
+
+"What are you so excited about? Don't you know these people haven't a
+musical muscle in their whole soul?" said Lebrecht.
+
+"For nine consecutive years I have been singing F sharp at this opera
+house, and now here comes a _musicien_ from the backwoods and demands
+all of a sudden that I sing F!" This was the commentary of Fraeulein
+Varini, the prima donna whose outstanding bosom had long been a source
+of human merriment to pit, stall, and gallery.
+
+"Ah, he is a greasy grind determined to arrive," said the first
+violinist.
+
+"He's a spit-fire," said the lad who beat the big drum, when Daniel
+threatened to box his ears for a false intonation.
+
+The Baroness had secured a publisher in Leipzig for his cycle of sixteen
+songs; the compositions were to be brought out at her expense. That did
+not have the right effect: it was not something, Daniel felt, that he
+had fought for and won; it was not a case where merit had made rejection
+impossible. He had the feeling that he was selling his soul and was
+being paid to do it. Moreover, and worst of all, he had to express his
+gratitude for this act. The Baroness loved to have somebody thank her
+for what she had done. She never once suspected that what Daniel wanted
+was not benefactors, but people who were stirred to the depths of their
+souls by his creations. The rich cannot sense the feelings of the poor;
+the higher classes remain out of contact with the lower.
+
+His excitability saved him. In his magnificent solicitude for the
+mission that is at once the token and the curse of those who are really
+called, he shut himself off from a world from which the one thing he
+wanted was bread; bread and nothing else.
+
+After the publication of the songs a review appeared in the _Phoenix_
+which had a remarkably realistic ring to the ear of the layman. As a
+matter of fact it was merely an underhanded attempt at assassination.
+The thing was signed with a big, isolated "W." Wurzelmann, the little
+slave, had shot from his ambush.
+
+Other musical journals copied this review. A half dozen people bought
+the songs; then they were forgotten.
+
+It was no use to hope. The trouble was, he needed bread, just bread.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+It was often difficult for him to find the peace and quiet necessary for
+effective work. May brought cold weather; they had to make a fire; the
+stove smoked; the potter came in and removed the tiles; the room looked
+like an inferno.
+
+Gertrude was pounding sugar: "Don't be angry at me, Daniel; I must pound
+the sugar to-day." And she pounded away until the hammer penetrated the
+paralysed brain of the listener by force of circumstances.
+
+The hinges of the door screeched. "You ought to oil them, Gertrude."
+Gertrude looked high and low for the oil can, and when she finally found
+it, she had no feather to use in smearing the oil on. She went over to
+the chancellor's, and borrowed one from her maid. While she was gone,
+the milk boiled over and filled the house with a disagreeable stench.
+
+The door bell rang. It was the cobbler; he had come to get the money for
+the patent leather shoes. The wives of Herr Kirschner and Herr Ruebsam
+had both said that Daniel must not think of appearing at the coming
+recital at the Baroness's without patent leather shoes.
+
+"I haven't the money, Gertrude; have you got that much?"
+
+Gertrude went through her chests, and scraped up five marks which she
+gave the cobbler as a first instalment. The man went away growling;
+Daniel hid from him.
+
+Gertrude was sitting in the living room making clothes for her
+baby-to-come. There was a happy expression on her face. Daniel knew that
+it was a display of maternal joy and expectation, but since he could not
+share this joy, since indeed he felt a sense of fear at the appearance
+of the child, her happiness embittered him.
+
+Between the fuchsias in the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish
+bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room:
+"Come out," it chirped, "come out." And Daniel went.
+
+He had an engagement with M. Riviere at the cafe by the market place.
+Since he no longer saw anything of Eleanore, he wanted to find out how
+her plans for going to Paris were getting along.
+
+The Frenchman told of the progress he was making in his Caspar Hauser
+research. In his broken German he told of the murder of body and soul
+that had been committed in the case of the foundling: "He was a mortal
+man _comme une etoile_," he said. "The bourgeoisie crushed him. The
+bourgeoisie is the _racine_ of all evil."
+
+Daniel never mentioned Eleanore's name. He tried to satisfy himself by
+the fact that she kept out of his sight. He bit his lips together, and
+said: I will. But a stronger power in him said, No, you won't. And this
+stronger power became a beggar. It went around saying, Give me, please,
+give me!
+
+The billiard balls rattled. A gentleman in a red velvet vest had a
+quarrel with a shabby looking fellow who had been reading _Fliegende
+Blaetter_ for the last two hours; he would begin over and over again at
+the very beginning, and break out into convulsions of laughter every
+time he came to his favourite jokes.
+
+Daniel was silent; he insisted somehow on remaining silent. M. Riviere
+wished, for this reason, to hear something about the "Harzreise." By way
+of starting a discussion he remarked quite timidly that _sans musique la
+vie est insupportable_, "There is something about music that reminds one
+of insanity," he remarked. He said there were nights when he would open
+a volume of Schubert's or Brahms's songs, leaf through them, read the
+notes, and hum the melodies simply in order to escape the despair which
+the conduct of the people about him was emptying into his heart. "_Moi_,
+I ought to be, how do you say? stoic; _mais_ I am not. In me there is
+_trop de musique, et c'est le contraire_."
+
+Daniel looked at him in astonishment. "Come with me," he said suddenly,
+got up, and took him by the arm.
+
+They met Eleanore in the hall. She had been up in the new flat with the
+whitewasher. Her father was to move in the following day.
+
+"Why was all this done so quickly?" asked Daniel, full of a vague
+happiness that drew special nourishment from the fact that Eleanore was
+plainly excited.
+
+"Mere chance," she said, and carefully avoided looking at him. "A
+captain who is being transferred here from Ratisbon is moving in our
+place. It is a pity to leave the good old rooms. The second-hand dealer
+is going to get a deal of our stuff; there is no room for it up there in
+those two cubby holes. How is Gertrude? May I go up and see her for a
+minute or two?"
+
+"Yes, go right up," said Daniel stiffly; "you can stay and listen if you
+wish to. I am going to play the Harzreise."
+
+"If I wish to? I almost have a right to; you promised me this long ago."
+
+"She thinks after all that I want to catch her," he thought to himself.
+"It will be better for me to drop the whole business than to let the
+idea creep into her stupid skull that my composition is going to make
+propaganda for our private affairs." With bowed head he ascended the
+stairs, M. Riviere and Eleanore following along behind. His ears were
+pricked to hear anything they might say about Paris; they talked about
+the weather.
+
+As they entered the room Gertrude had the harp between her knees; but
+she was not playing. Her hands lay on the strings, her head was resting
+on the frame. "Why haven't you lighted a lamp?" asked Daniel angrily.
+
+She was terrified; she looked at him anxiously. The expression on her
+face made him conscious of many things that he had kept in the
+background of his thoughts during his everyday life: her unconditional
+surrender to him; the magnanimity and nobility of her heart, which was
+as dependent on his as the mercury in the thermometer is dependent on
+the atmosphere; her speechless resignation regarding a thousand little
+things in her life! her wellnigh supernatural ability to enter into the
+spirit and enjoyment of what he was doing, however much his mind might
+presume to write _De profundis_ across his creations.
+
+It was on this account that he recognised in her face a serious,
+far-away warning. At once cowardly and reverential, conscious of his
+guilt and yet feeling innocent, he went up to her and kissed her on the
+hair. She leaned her head on his breast, thus causing him to feel,
+though quite unaware of it herself, the whole weight of the burden she
+was placing on him.
+
+He told her he was going to play. He said: "I have lost my picture
+again; I want to try to find it in others."
+
+Gertrude begged him, with a pale face, to be permitted to stay in the
+living room. She closed the door only partly.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+In Goethe's verses entitled "Harzreise im Winter," thoughts lie
+scattered about like erratic strata in the world of geology, and
+feelings that are as big and terrible as the flames from burning
+planets. In Daniel's work the whole of Goethe's prodigious sorrow and
+solemnity seemed to have been transformed automatically into music.
+
+When, in the second half, the motif of human voices was taken over, when
+these voices pealed forth first singly, one by one, from the surging
+sea of tones, and then gathered with ever-increasing avidity, longing,
+and candour into the great chorus, one had the feeling that without this
+liberation they would have been stifled in the darkness.
+
+The effect of the pianissimo moaning of the basses before the soprano
+set in was overwhelming: it was like the vulture which, resting with
+easy wing on the dark morning cloud, spies around for booty. So was the
+song meant to be. The trombone solo was a shout of victory: it imparted
+new life to the sunken orchestra.
+
+Daniel had infinite trouble in making all this wealth of symbolic art
+clear through song, word, and gesture at the same time that his music
+was being played.
+
+The work abounded in blends and half tones which stamped it as a child
+of its age, and still more of ages to come, despite the compact rigidity
+of its architecture. There was no bared sweetness in it; it was as rough
+as the bark of a tree; it was as rough as anything that is created with
+the assurance of inner durability.
+
+Its rhythm was uniform, regular; it provided only for crescendos. There
+was nothing of the seductive, nothing of the waltz-fever in it. It was
+in no way cheap; it did not flatter slothful ears. It had no languishing
+motifs; it was all substance and exterior. The melody was concealed like
+a hard kernel in a thick shell; and not merely concealed: it was
+divided, and then the divisions were themselves divided. It was
+condensed, compressed, bound, and at the same time subterranean. It was
+created to rise from its depths, rejoice, and overwhelm: "But clothe the
+lonely one in thy clouds of gold! Enshroud with ivy until the roses
+bloom again, oh Love, the dampened hair of thy poet!"
+
+The work was written a quarter of a century before its time. It was out
+of touch with the nerves of its contemporary environment. It could not
+hope to count upon a prophet or an interpreter. It could not be carried
+further by the benevolence of congenial champions. It bore the marks of
+mortal neglect. It was like a bird from the tropics left to die on the
+icy coasts of Greenland.
+
+But for those who are near in heart there is a fluid in the air that
+intercedes for the higher truth. M. Riviere and Eleanore scarcely
+breathed during the recital. Eleanore's big eyes were still: they opened
+and closed slowly. When Daniel finished, he dried his hot brow with his
+handkerchief, and then his arms fell limp at his sides. He felt as if
+the brilliancy of Eleanore's eyes had reached the tips of his hair and
+had electrified it.
+
+"Enshroud with ivy, until the roses bloom again, oh Love, the dampened
+hair of thy poet!"
+
+"It is impossible to get an idea of it," murmured Daniel; "the piano is
+like an instrument of torture."
+
+They were struck by peculiar sounds coming from the living room. They
+went in, and found Gertrude pale as death, her hands folded across her
+bosom, sitting on the sofa. She was talking to herself, partly as if in
+a dream, partly as if she were praying. It was impossible to understand
+what she was saying. She seemed distant, estranged.
+
+Eleanore hastened to her; Daniel looked at her with a scowl. Just then
+the bell rang, and M. Riviere went out. There was the sound of a man's
+voice; it was disagreeable. The door was opened and--Herr Carovius
+entered.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Herr Carovius bowed in all directions. He wore tan shoes with brass
+buckles, black trousers, a shiny green coat, and a white cravat that
+could no longer be called clean. He laid his slouch hat on a chair, and
+said he would like to beg their pardon if he had called at an
+inopportune hour. He had come, he said, to thank his dear young master
+for the aforementioned invitation.
+
+"It seems--yes, it seems," he added, with a droll blinking of his eyes,
+"that I have in all innocence interrupted the performance of a most
+interesting production. There is a crowd of people gathered out in front
+of the house, and I could not forego the pleasure of listening. I hope
+you will not stop playing the sacrificial festival on my account. What
+was it, _maestro_? It wasn't the symphony, was it?"
+
+"Yes, it was the symphony," replied Daniel, who was so amazed at the
+appearance and conduct of the man that he was really courteous.
+
+"It cost me money to be sure--believe it or not. I had to get an
+afternoon coat that would do for a Count--latest cut, velvet collar,
+tails that reached down to my calves. Aristocratic, very!" He stared
+over Gertrude's head into the corner, and tittered for at least a half a
+minute.
+
+Nobody said a word. Everybody was dumb, astounded.
+
+"Good lord, social obligations," continued Herr Carovius, "but after all
+you can't afford to be a backwoodsman. Music is supposed to ennoble a
+man even externally. By the way, there is a rumour afloat that it is a
+symphony with chorus. How did you happen upon the idea? The laurels of
+the Ninth will not let you sleep? I would have thought that you didn't
+give a damn about classical models. Everybody is so taken up now with
+musical lullabies, _wage-la-wei-a_, that kind of stuff, you know. But
+then I suppose that is only a transition stage, as the fox said when he
+was being skinned."
+
+He took off his nose glasses, polished them very hastily, fumbled for a
+while with his cord, and then put them on again. Having gained time in
+this way, he began to expatiate on the decadence of the arts, asked
+Daniel whether he had ever heard anything about a certain Hugo Wolf who
+was being much talked about and who was sitting in darkest Austria
+turning out songs like a Hottentot, made a number of derogatory remarks
+about a fountain that was being erected in the city, said that a company
+of dancers had just appeared at the Cultural Club in a repertory of
+grotesque pantomimes, remarked that as he was coming over he learned
+that there was an institution in the city that loaned potato sacks, and
+that there had just been a fearful fire in Constantinople.
+
+Thereupon he looked first at Daniel, then at M. Riviere, took the snarls
+of the one and the embarrassment of the other to be encouraging signs
+for the continuation of his gossip, readjusted his glasses, and sneezed.
+Then he smoothed out the already remarkably smooth hairs he had left on
+his head, rubbed his hands as if he were beginning to feel quite at
+home, and tittered when there was any sign of a stoppage in his asinine
+eloquence.
+
+At times he would cast a stealthy glance at Gertrude, who would draw
+back somewhat as the arm of a thief who feels he is being watched.
+Eleanore did not seem to be present so far as he was concerned: he did
+not see her. Finally she got up. She was tortured by the interruption of
+what she had just experienced from the music and by his flat, stale, and
+unprofitable remarks. Then he got up too, looked at his watch as if he
+were frightened, asked if he might repeat his visit at another time,
+took leave of Gertrude with a silly old-fashioned bow, from Daniel with
+a confidential handshake, and from the Frenchman with uncertain
+courtesy. Eleanore he again entirely overlooked.
+
+Out in the hall he stopped, nodded several times, and said with an
+almost insane grin, speaking into the empty air before him: "_Auf
+Wiedersehen_, fair one! _Auf Wiedersehen_, fairest of all! Good-bye, my
+angel! Forget me not!"
+
+In the room Eleanore whispered in a heavy, anxious tone: "What was
+that? What was that?"
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Philippina Schimmelweis came to help Eleanore with the moving. At first
+Eleanore was quite surprised; then she became accustomed to having her
+around and found her most helpful. Jordan took no interest in anything
+that was going on. The last of all his hope seemed to be shattered by
+the fact that he was to move.
+
+Philippina gradually fell into the habit of coming every day and working
+for a few hours either for Eleanore or for Gertrude, so long as the
+latter had anything to do in the kitchen. They became used to seeing
+her, and put up with her. She tried to make as little noise as possible;
+she had the mien of a person who is filling an important but
+unappreciated office.
+
+She made a study of the house; she knew the rooms by heart. She
+preferred to come along toward sunset or a little later. One day she
+told Eleanore she had seen a mysterious-looking person out on the hall
+steps. Eleanore took a candle and went out, but she could not see any
+one. Philippina insisted nevertheless that she had seen a man in a green
+doublet, and that he had made a face at her.
+
+She was particularly attracted by the rooms in the attic. She told the
+neighbours that there was an owl up there. As a result of this the
+children of that section began to fear the entire house, while the
+chancellor's wife, who lived on the ground floor, became so nervous that
+she gave up her apartment.
+
+There was no outside door or entrance hall of any kind to Jordan's new
+quarters. You went direct from the stairway into the room where Eleanore
+worked and slept. Adjoining this was her father's room. People still
+called him the Inspector, although he no longer had such a position.
+
+He sat in his narrow, cramped room the whole day. One wall was out of
+plumb. The windows he kept closed. When Eleanore brought him his
+breakfast or called him to luncheon, which she had cooked in the tiny
+box of a kitchen and then served in her own little room, he was
+invariably sitting at the table before a stack of papers, mostly old
+bills and letters. The arrangement of these he never changed.
+
+Once she entered his room without knocking. He sprang up, closed a
+drawer as quickly as he could, locked it, put the key in his pocket,
+and tried to smile in an innocent way. Eleanore's heart almost stopped
+beating.
+
+He never went out until it was dark, and on his return he could be seen
+carrying a package under his arm. This he took with him to his room.
+
+At first Eleanore was always uneasy when she had to leave. She requested
+Philippina to be very careful and see to it that no stranger entered the
+house. Philippina had a box full of ribbons in Eleanore's cabinet. She
+set a chair against the door leading into Jordan's room; and when her
+hands were tired from rummaging around in the ribbons and her eyes weary
+from looking at all the flashy colours, she pressed her ear to the door
+to see if she could find out what the old man was doing.
+
+At times she heard him talking. It seemed as if he were talking with
+some one. His voice had an exhortatory but tender tone in it. Philippina
+trembled with fear. Once she even pressed the latch; she wanted to open
+the door as quietly as possible, so that she might peep in and see what
+was really going on. But to her vexation, the door was bolted on the
+other side.
+
+For Gertrude she did small jobs and ran little errands: she would go to
+the baker or the grocer for her. Gertrude became less and less active;
+it was exceedingly difficult for her to climb the stairs. Philippina
+took the place of a maid. The only kind of work she refused to do was
+work that would soil her clothes. Gertrude's shyness irritated her; one
+day she said in a snappy tone: "You are pretty proud, ain't you? You
+don't like me, do you?" Gertrude looked at her in amazement, and made no
+reply; she did not know what to say.
+
+Whenever Philippina heard Daniel coming, she hid herself. But if he
+chanced to catch sight of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders at the
+"frame," as he contemptuously called her. It seemed to him that it would
+be neither wise nor safe to mistreat her. He felt that it was the better
+part of valour to look with favour on her inexplicable diligence, and
+let it go at that.
+
+Once he even so completely overcame himself that he gave her his hand;
+but he drew it back immediately: he felt that he had never touched
+anything so slimy in his life; he thought he had taken hold of a frog.
+Philippina acted as if she had not noticed what he had done. But
+scarcely had he gone into his room, when she turned to Gertrude with a
+diabolic glimmer in her eyes, and, making full use of her vulgar voice,
+said: "Whew! Daniel's kind, ain't he? No wonder people can't stand him!"
+
+When she saw that Gertrude knit her brow at this exclamation, she
+wheeled about on the heels of her clumsy shoes, and screamed as if the
+devil were after her: "Oi, oi, Gertrude, Gertrude, oi, oi, the meat's
+burning! The meat's burning."
+
+It was a false alarm. The meat was sizzling quite peacefully in the pan.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+Late in the afternoon of a stormy day in June Daniel came home from the
+last rehearsal of the "Harzreise," tired and out of humour. The
+rehearsals had been held in a small room in Weyrauth's Garden. He had
+quarrelled with all the musicians and with all the singers, male and
+female.
+
+As he reached AEgydius Place a shudder suddenly ran through his body. He
+was forced to cover his eyes with his hands and stand still for a
+moment; he thought he would die from longing for a precious virginal
+possession which he had been so foolish as to trifle away.
+
+He went up the steps, passed by his own apartment, and climbed on up to
+the apartment of Inspector Jordan and his daughter Eleanore.
+
+His eye fell on the board partition surrounding the stove and the copper
+cooking utensils that hung on the wall. There sat Eleanore, her arm
+resting on the window sill, her head on her hand: she was
+meditating--meditating and gaining new strength as she did so. Her face
+was turned toward the steep fall of a roof, the century-old frame-work,
+grey walls, darkened window panes and dilapidated wooden galleries,
+above which lay stillness and a rectangular patch of sky that was then
+covered with clouds.
+
+"Good evening," said Daniel, as he stepped out of the darkness into the
+dimly lighted room. "What are you doing, Eleanore, what are you thinking
+about?"
+
+Eleanore shuddered: "Ah, is it you, Daniel? You show yourself after a
+long while? And ask what I am thinking about? What curiosity! Do you
+want to come into my room?"
+
+"No, no, sit perfectly still," he replied, and prevented her from
+getting up by touching her on the shoulder. "Is your father at home?"
+
+She nodded. He drew a narrow bench from which he had removed the coffee
+mill and a strainer up to the serving table, and sat down as far as
+possible from Eleanore, though even so they were as close together as
+if they were sitting opposite each other in a cab.
+
+"How are you making out?" she asked with embarrassment, and without the
+remotest display of warmth.
+
+"You know that I am beating a perforated drum, Eleanore." After a pause
+he added: "But whatever people may do or fail to do, between us two
+there must be a clear understanding: Are you going to Paris?"
+
+She dropped her head in silence. "Well, I could go; there is nothing to
+prevent me," she said, softly and with hesitation. "But you see how it
+is. I am no longer as I used to be. Formerly I could scarcely picture
+the happiness I would derive from having some one there in whom I could
+confide and who would be interested in me. I would not have hesitated
+for a moment. But now? If I go, what becomes clear from my going? And if
+I stay here, what will be clear? I have already told you, Daniel, that I
+don't understand you. How terrible it is to have to say that! What do
+you want now? How is all this going to come out?"
+
+"Eleanore, do you recall Benda's last letter? You yourself brought it to
+me, and after that I was a different person. He wrote to me in that
+letter just as if he had never heard of Gertrude, and said that I should
+not pass you by. He wrote that we two were destined for each other, and
+neither for any one else in the world. Of course you recall how I acted
+after reading the letter. And even before that: Do you remember the day
+of the wedding when you put the myrtle wreath on? Why, I knew then that
+I had lost everything, that my real treasure had vanished. And even
+before that: Do you recall that I found that Fraeulein Sylvia von Erfft
+had your complexion, your figure, your hair, and your hands? And even
+before that: When you went walking with Benda in the woods, I walked
+along behind, and took so much pleasure in watching you walk, but I
+didn't know it. And when you came into the room there in the Long Row,
+and caressed the mask and sat down at the piano and leaned your head
+against the wood, don't you recall how indispensable you were to me, to
+my soul? The only trouble is, I didn't know it; I didn't know it."
+
+"Well, there is nothing to be done about all that: that is a by-gone
+story," said Eleanore, holding her breath, while a blush of emotion
+flitted across her face only to give way to a terrible paleness.
+
+"Do you believe that I am a person to be content with what is past?
+Every one, Eleanore, owes himself his share of happiness, and he can get
+it if he simply makes up his mind to it. It is not until he has
+neglected it, abandoned it, and passed it by, that his fate makes a
+slave out of him."
+
+"That is just what I do not understand," said Eleanore, and looked into
+his face with a more cheerful sense of freedom. "It wounds my heart to
+see you waging a losing battle against self-deception and ugly defiance.
+We two cannot think of committing a base deed, Daniel. It is impossible,
+isn't it?"
+
+Daniel, plainly excited, bent over nearer to her: "Do you know where I
+am standing?" he asked, while the blue veins in his temples swelled and
+hammered: "Well, I'll tell you. I am standing on a marble slab above an
+abyss. To the right and left of this abyss are nothing but blood-thirsty
+wolves. There is no choice left to me except either to leap down into
+the abyss, or to allow myself to be torn to pieces by the wolves. When
+such a being as you comes gliding along through the air, a winged
+creature like you, that can rescue me and pull me up after it, is there
+any ground for doubt as to what should be done?"
+
+Eleanore folded her arms across her bosom, and half closed her eyes: "Ah
+no, Daniel," she said in a kindly way, "you are exaggerating, really.
+You see everything too white and too black: A winged creature, I? Where,
+pray, are my wings? And wolves? All these silly little people--wolves?
+Oh no, Daniel. And blood-thirsty? Listen, Daniel, that is going quite
+too far; don't you think so yourself?"
+
+"Don't crush my feelings, Eleanore!" cried Daniel, in a suppressed tone
+and with passionate fierceness: "Don't crush my feelings, for they are
+all I have left. You are not capable of thinking as you have just been
+talking, you cannot think that low, you are not capable of such languid,
+ordinary feelings. The over-tone! The over-tone! Think a little! Can't
+you see them gritting their teeth at me? Can't you hear them howling day
+and night? Can you possibly say that they are kind or compassionate? Or
+are they willing to be good and great when one comes? Do you have
+confidence in a single one of them? Have they not even dragged your good
+name into the mire? Are any of the things that are sacred to you and to
+me sacred to them? Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch
+by your distress or my distress or the distress of any human being? Is
+not the slime of slander thick upon their tongues? Is not your smile a
+thorn in their flesh? Do they not envy me the little I have and for
+which I have flayed myself? Don't they envy me my music, which they do
+not understand, and which they hate because they do not understand it?
+Would it not fill them with joy if I had to make my living beating
+stones on the public highway or cleaning out sewers? Do they find it
+possible to pardon me for my life and the things that make up my life?
+And yet you say there are no wolves? That they are not wolves? Tell me
+that you are afraid of them, that you do not wish to turn them against
+yourself; but don't tell me that you are committing an evil act when I
+call you to me, you with your wings, and you come."
+
+His arms were stretched out toward her on the top of the kitchen table;
+they were trembling to the very tips of his fingers.
+
+"The evil deed, Daniel," whispered Eleanore, "hasn't anything to do with
+these people; it was committed against the higher law of morals, against
+our feeling of right usage and established honour...."
+
+"False," he hissed, "false! They have made you believe that. They have
+preached that to you for centuries and centuries; your mother, your
+grand-mother, your great-grand-mother, they have all been telling you
+that. It is false; it is a lie; it is all a lie. It is with this very
+lie that they support their power and protect their organisation. It is
+truth on the contrary that fills my heart, fills it with joy, and helps
+me along. What nature offers, obedience to nature, that is truth. Truth
+lies in your thoughts, in your feelings, girl, in your choked feelings,
+in your blood, in the 'yes' you speak in your dreams. Of course I know
+that they need their lie, for they must be organised, the wolves; they
+must go in packs, otherwise they are impotent. But I have only my truth,
+only my truth as I stand on the marble slab above the abyss."
+
+"Your truth, Daniel," said Eleanore, "_your_ truth. But your truth is
+not my truth."
+
+"No, Eleanore? No? Not yours? What then is the use of my talking with
+you? And even if everything else were falsehood and error, I am as
+convinced as I can be that my truth is also your truth."
+
+"You can't stand out against the whole world," said Eleanore in anguish,
+"you are after all in the world yourself."
+
+"Yes, I will take my stand against the whole world," he said, "that is
+precisely what I have made up my mind to do. I will pay them back in
+their own coin. Just as they have all stood against me, just so will I
+stand against them. I am no compromiser, no treaty-maker, no haggler, no
+beggar. I live according to my own law. I _must_, where other people
+merely _should_ or _may_, or _may not_. Whoever does not comprehend that
+has nothing in common, one way or the other, with me."
+
+She was terrified at the presumptuousness of his words; and yet there
+was a feeling in her of joy and pride: she felt a desire to be for him,
+to be with him. If he was fighting against the very power that would in
+the end overcome him, he was doing it for her sake. She did not feel,
+therefore, that she had the right to withdraw from him. The thing about
+it all that gave her a wonderful feeling of relief, and at the same time
+made her morally flabby and carried her away, was the passion of his
+will and the undaunted assurance of his feelings.
+
+But their eyes chanced to meet; and in the eyes of each there was the
+name of Gertrude.
+
+Gertrude stood between them in living form. Everything they had said had
+proceeded from her and returned to her. That Daniel was not thinking of
+annulling his marriage, that he could not think of it, Eleanore knew. A
+child was expected; who could reject the mother under these
+circumstances? How would it be possible, poor as they were, to expose
+both mother and child to the inevitable misery that would follow
+annulment of the marriage? Daniel could not do this, and Eleanore knew
+it.
+
+But she also knew, for she knew her sister, that separation from Daniel
+would mean her death. She knew too that Daniel considered his marriage
+to Gertrude as indissoluble, not only because of his knowledge of her
+character, but because there was in his life with Gertrude something
+that is quite independent of passions, views, and decisions, something
+that binds even in hate and binds even more firmly in despair.
+
+Eleanore knew all this. She knew that Daniel knew it. And if she drew
+the only conclusion that could be drawn from his argument and his state
+of mind, she knew what he demanded of her.
+
+He was demanding that she give herself up to him. Of this there could be
+not a shred of doubt.
+
+But how? Secretly? Could that produce happiness? With the understanding
+of Gertrude? Could Gertrude endure such a thought, even if she were as
+magnanimous as a saint? Where was the way that could be followed? Where
+was there an angle from which embarrassment, anxiety, and ruin were not
+ready to leap forth without warning?
+
+She bowed her head, and covered it with her hands. She sat in this
+position for a long while. Darkness settled down over the roofs of the
+houses.
+
+Suddenly she got up, reached him her hand, smiled with tears in her
+eyes, and said with a last attempt to escape the horrible consequences,
+"Bruederlein[1]...." She spoke the word in a tone of longing fervour and
+half-humorous appealing.
+
+  [Footnote 1: "Little brother."]
+
+He shook his head sadly, but took her hand and held it tenderly between
+his.
+
+Her face became clouded; it was like a landscape at the coming of night.
+Her eyes, turned to one side, saw the trees of a great garden, an ugly
+old woman sitting by a hedge, and two little girls who looked into the
+setting sun with fear in their hearts.
+
+There was a noise; she and Daniel were startled. In the doorway stood
+Philippina Schimmelweis. Her eyes glistened like the skin of a reptile
+that has just crept up from out of the bog.
+
+Daniel went down to his apartment.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+For nine years the rococo hall in the Auffenberg home had been closed to
+festive celebrations of every kind. It took a long, tedious exchange of
+letters between the secretary of the Baron living in Rome and the
+secretary of the Baroness to get the permission of the former to use the
+hall.
+
+The indignation at Nothafft's work was general. The members of the
+social set could hardly contain themselves, while the amateurs and
+specially invited guests were likewise but little edified. The chief
+diversion of the evening, in fact, was to see the composer himself
+conduct. At the sight of the jumping and sprawling fellow, Herr Zoellner,
+councillor of the consistory, almost burst with laughter.
+
+Old Count Schlemm-Nottheim, who not only had a liking for pornographic
+literature but was also known to drink a quarter of a litre of Dr.
+Rosa's balsam of life every afternoon, declared that the ensemble
+playing of all the instruments represented by the show-booths at the
+annual fair was an actual musical revelation in comparison with this
+Dutch concert of rogues' marches. Judge Braun of the Supreme Court gave
+it as his candid opinion that there was evidently a conspiracy against
+good taste.
+
+Remarks of this kind were, of course, made behind screens and in the
+corners. In order not to offend the Baroness, there was a goodly measure
+of seemingly cordial applause. The guests and artists then assembled
+around a huge table arranged in the shape of a horseshoe.
+
+Count Schlemm-Nottheim was the table companion of the Baroness; he had
+her tell him who the various personages from the world of art were. He
+asked who was the woman of such interesting melancholy sitting next to
+Major Bellmann. He was told that that was the wife of the composer. His
+wife? She is not at all bad; life with her would be rather worth while.
+And who was the woman between old Herold and the Frenchman? A charming
+little creature: she had eyes like the Lake of Liguria and hands like a
+princess. That was the sister of the composer's wife. Sister? You don't
+tell me! A jolly fine family; worth the support of any man.
+
+Toasts were drunk. Herr Ehrenreich, the wholesale merchant, drank to the
+health of the creator of the "Harzreise"; the Count to the ladies
+present.
+
+Herr Carovius created a sensation. He sat with the members of the
+"Liedertafel"; they had sung in the chorus; and they were ashamed of
+him, for he conducted himself in a most unseemly fashion.
+
+He had somehow managed to get hold of a glove Eleanore had lost, and
+possibly it was this that made him so convivial. He picked up an almond
+shell from the serving tray, and threw it at Fraeulein Varini. He let his
+leery, lascivious eyes roam about over the cut glass and the decorations
+of the hall, and never once grew tired of praising the wealth and
+splendour of the house. He acted as though he were quite at home. He
+raised his wine glass, and declared that he was charmed by the flavour
+and colour of the costly, precious juice from the grape: he tried to
+give the impression that he knew the Auffenberg wine cellar from years
+of intimate association with it.
+
+Then it happened that through a hasty, awkward movement, he upset his
+plate; a rivulet of rich brown gravy ran down over his white vest. He
+became silent; he retired within himself. He dipped his napkin in the
+water, and rubbed and rubbed. The waiters tittered. He buttoned up his
+coat, and looked like a show window in the dead of night.
+
+The eyes of the waiters were also given the privilege of feasting on
+another rare social phenomenon. They noticed that Kapellmeister Nothafft
+was sitting at the table in his stocking feet. His patent leather shoes
+had hurt him so much that he made short work of it and took them off
+during the dinner. There they stood without master or servant, one at
+the right, the other at the left of his disencumbered feet. Whenever the
+waiters passed by, they would cast one furtive but profitable glance
+under the table, and bite their lips to keep from bursting out in
+laughter.
+
+This rude offence to social dignity was not unknown to the other dinner
+guests. They whispered, smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and shook
+their heads. Daniel made no effort to conceal his bootlessness when the
+guests rose to leave the table; without giving the astonishment of his
+companions a single thought, he once more drew the patent leather
+torturers on to his extremities. But he had made a mistake: he had
+gambled and lost.
+
+The news of the extraordinary event was fully exploited on the following
+day. It was carried from house to house, accumulated momentous charm in
+its course, passed from the regions of the high to those of the less
+high and quite low, and provoked storms of laughter everywhere. No one
+had anything to say about the symphony; everybody was fully informed
+concerning the patent leather episode.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+On the way home Daniel walked with Eleanore. Gertrude followed at some
+distance with M. Riviere; she could not walk rapidly.
+
+"How did you find it, Eleanore? Didn't you have the feeling that you
+were at a feast of corpses?"
+
+"Dear," she murmured; they walked on.
+
+After they had gone along for some time in perfect silence, they came to
+a narrow gateway. Eleanore suddenly felt that she could no longer endure
+Daniel's mute questioning. She pulled her silk veil closer to her
+cheeks, and said: "Give me time! Don't hurry me! Please give me time!"
+
+"If I hadn't given you time, my dear girl, I should not have deserved
+this moment," he replied.
+
+"I cannot, I cannot," she said, with a sigh of despair. She had only one
+hope, one ray of hope left, and her whole soul was fixed on that. But
+she was obliged to act in silence.
+
+Standing in the living room with Gertrude, Daniel's eye fell on the mask
+of Zingarella; it had been decorated with rose twigs. Under the green
+young leaves fresh buds shone forth; they hung around the white stucco
+of the mask like so many little red lanterns. "Who did that?" he asked.
+
+"Eleanore was here in the afternoon; she did it," replied Gertrude.
+
+His burning eyes were riveted on the mask, when Gertrude stepped up to
+him, threw her arms around him, and in the fulness of her feelings
+exclaimed: "Daniel, your work was wonderful, wonderful!"
+
+"So? Did you like it? I am glad to hear it," he said, in a tone of dry
+conventionality.
+
+"The people don't grasp it," she said gently, and then added with a
+blush: "But I understand it; I understand it, for it belongs to me."
+
+The following day he laid the score of the "Harzreise" together with the
+words in a big old chest, and locked it. It was like a funeral.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+In the dark, winding alleys behind the city wall stand little houses
+with large numbers and coloured lanterns. They are filled with a
+sweetish, foul odour, and have been laboriously built up out of
+dilapidated lumber-rooms. From the cracks in the closed blinds come
+forth, night after night, the sounds of shrill laughter. Those who enter
+are received by half-nude monsters, and are made to sit down on
+monstrous chairs and sofas covered with red plush.
+
+The citizen calls these places dens of vice. Between Friday and Sunday
+he thinks with lustful horror of the inhabitants with their bloated or
+emaciated bodies and the sad or intoxicated stare of their eyes.
+
+Herr Carovius wended his way to this quarter of the city. Because it was
+only a shadow which he embraced in hours when his inflamed imagination,
+vitiated by all the poisons of the earth, conjured up a human body, he
+was angry; now he went there, and bought himself a real human body.
+
+After he had been in a half a dozen of these houses, had been jubilantly
+greeted, and then thrown out to the accompaniment of bawdy abuse, he at
+last found what he had been looking for: a creature whose cunning had
+not entirely been lost, who still had the features of a daughter of man,
+and whose figure and character still had the power to call up a memory,
+provided one were firmly decided to see what one wished to see and to
+forget what one wished to forget.
+
+Her name was Lena, charming reminder of a desired reality! He went with
+her as she left the circle of her companions, and followed her into the
+wretched hole between winding stairs and attic rooms. He rattled the
+coins in his pocket, and gave his orders. The nymph had to put on a
+street dress, set a modest hat on her head, and draw a veil over her
+rouged face. Thereupon he went up to her, spoke to her courteously, and
+kissed her hand. He had never in his life acted in so polite and
+chivalric a fashion in the presence of a woman.
+
+The prostitute was frightened; she ran away. She had to be given
+instructions; these were given her by the madame of the house; for Herr
+Carovius was rattling the coins in his pocket. "You will have to be
+patient and indulgent; we are not prepared for such refined guests
+here."
+
+He returned. Lena had been told what to do. She soon fell into her role.
+
+"To be frank," he said to Lena, "I am inexperienced in the arts of love.
+I am too proud to kowtow to the berobed and bodiced idol. A woman is a
+woman, and a man is a man. They delude themselves and each other, or try
+to, into believing that each woman is a special person, and each man a
+man to himself. Idiocy!"
+
+The prostitute grinned.
+
+He walked back and forth; the room was just large enough to allow him to
+take three steps. He recalled the expression on Eleanore's face during
+the performance of the symphony; his greedy eyes had rested on her all
+the while. He became enraged: "You don't imagine that progress can be
+made by such amateurish efforts?" he said with a roar. "It is all
+hocus-pocus. There is as a matter of fact no such thing as progress in
+art, any more than there is progress in the course of the stars.
+Listen!"
+
+He bellowed forth the first motif from the "Sonata quasi una fantasia"
+of Mozart: "Listen to this: Da--dada--da--daddaa! Is it possible to
+progress beyond that? Don't let them make a fool of you, my angel. Be
+honest with yourself. He has hypnotised you. He has turned your
+unsuspecting heart upside down. Look at me! Are you afraid of me? I will
+do all in my power for you. Give me your hand. Speak to me!"
+
+The prostitute was obliged to stretch out her arms. He sat down beside
+her with a solemn ceremoniousness. Then he removed the pin from her
+hat, and laid the hat tenderly to one side. She had to lean her head on
+his shoulder.
+
+With that he fell into a dreamy meditation.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+Philippina came up to Gertrude in the living room. Daniel was not at
+home. Philippina was humming the latest street song, the refrain of
+which ran as follows:
+
+    _Drah' di, Madel, drah' di,
+    Morgen kommt der Mahdi._
+
+"There it is," said Philippina, and threw a ball of yarn on the table.
+
+Gertrude had yielded to the girl's importunities, and was addressing her
+now with the familiar "thou" and allowing Philippina to do the same in
+speaking to her. "We are after all relatives, you know, Gertrude," said
+Philippina.
+
+Gertrude was afraid of Philippina; but she had thus far found no means
+of defending herself against her exaggerated eagerness to help her with
+the housework. And she felt in Philippina's presence what she felt in
+the presence of no one else--a sense of shame at her own condition.
+
+Philippina, in fact, saw something indecent in Gertrude's pregnancy;
+when she talked to her she always held her head up and looked into
+space; her action was quite conspicuous.
+
+"Oh, but ain't people impudent," Philippina began, after she had taken a
+loutish position on a chair. "The clerk over in the store asked me
+whether there wasn't something up between Daniel and Eleanore. What d'ye
+think of that? Fresh, yes? You bet I give him all that was coming to
+him!"
+
+The needle in Gertrude's fingers stopped moving. It was not the first
+time that Philippina had made such insinuating remarks. To-day she would
+come up to Gertrude, and whisper to her that Daniel was upstairs with
+Eleanore; yesterday she had said in a tone of affected sympathy that
+Eleanore looked so run down. Then she gave a detailed report of what
+this person and that person had said; then she turned into a champion of
+good morals and gentle manners, and remarked that you ought not offend
+people.
+
+Her every third word was "people." She said she knew what a faultless
+character Eleanore had and how Daniel loved his wife, but people! And
+after all you couldn't scratch everybody's eyes out who annoyed you with
+dubious questions; if you did, there would soon be very few eyes left.
+
+Philippina's bangs had acquired an unusual length; they covered her
+whole forehead down to her eyelashes. The glances she cast at Gertrude
+had on this account something especially malevolent about them. "She is
+not so certain of herself and her family after all," thought Philippina,
+and made a lewd gesture with her legs as she sprawled on the chair.
+
+"You know, I think Daniel ought to be more cautious," she said with her
+rasping voice. "This being together all alone for hours at a time ain't
+going to do no good; no good at all, I say. And the two are always
+running after each other; if it's not her, it's him. If you happen to
+take 'em by surprise, they jump like criminals. It's been going on this
+way for six weeks, day after day. Do you think that's right? You don't
+need to put up with it, Gertrude," she said in conclusion, making a sad
+attempt to look coquettish. Then she cast her eyes to the floor, and
+looked as innocent as a child.
+
+Gertrude's heart grew cold. Her confidence in Daniel was unfaltering,
+but the venomous remarks made to her left her without peace of mind or
+body; she could not think clearly. The very fact that such things were
+being said about Daniel and Eleanore, and that words failed her to stop
+them because from the very beginning she had borne it all with the
+self-assurance that naturally springs from contempt for gossip, only
+tended to make her grief all the more bitter.
+
+How hollow any objection on her part would have sounded! How fatuous and
+ineffective a rebuke from her would have been! Could she muzzle these
+wicked, slanderous tongues by referring to the peculiarities of Daniel's
+nature? Could he be expected to go to Philippina and give an account of
+himself? A contemptuous smile came to her face when she pondered on such
+possibilities.
+
+And yet, why was she heart-sore? Was it because she was at last
+beginning to realise that she was unloved?
+
+Involuntarily her eyes fell on the mask; it was still covered with the
+withered rose twigs. She got up and removed them. Her hand trembled as
+if she were committing some evil act.
+
+"Go home, Philippina, I don't need you any more," she said.
+
+"Oi, it is late, ain't it? I must be going," cried Philippina. "Don't
+worry, Gertrude," she said by way of consolation. "And don't complain of
+me to your husband; he'll git ugly if you do. If you say anything bad
+about me, there's going to be trouble here, I say. I am a perfect fool;
+people git out of my way, they do. I've got a wicked mouth, I have;
+there's no stopping it. Well, good night."
+
+She rubbed her hands down over her skirt, as if she were trying to
+smooth out the wrinkles; there was an element of comic caution in what
+she did.
+
+Out on the street she began to hum again:
+
+    _Drah' di, Madel, drah' di,
+    Morgen kommt der Mahdi._
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+When Daniel came home, it was late; but he sat down by the lamp in his
+room and began to read Jean Paul's "Titan." In the course of time his
+thoughts liberated themselves from the book and went their own way. He
+got up, walked over to the piano, raised the lid, and struck a chord; he
+listened with closed eyes: it seemed that some one was calling him. It
+was a sultry night; the stillness was painful.
+
+Again he struck the chord: bells from the lower world. They rang up
+through the green, grey mists, each distinct and delicate. Each tone
+sent forth its accompanying group like sparks from a skyrocket. Those
+related by the ties of harmony joined; those that were alien fell back
+and down. And up in the distant, inaccessible heights there rang out
+with deceiving clarity, like the last vision of earthly perfection, the
+melody of love, the melody of Eleanore.
+
+Yet, some one was calling him; but from where? His wife? The distant,
+gloomy, waiting one? He closed the piano; the echo of the noise made
+thereby rebounded from the church wall through his window.
+
+He put out the lamp, went into his bedroom, and undressed by the light
+of the moon. The border of the curtain was embroidered with heavy
+Vitruvian scrolls, the shadows of which were reflected on the floor;
+they made jagged, goalless paths. All these lines consisted after all of
+only one line.
+
+As he lay in bed his heart began to hammer. Suddenly he knew, without
+looking, that Gertrude was not asleep; that she was lying there staring
+at the ceiling just as he was. "Gertrude!" he called.
+
+From the slight rustling of the pillow he concluded that she turned her
+face to him.
+
+"Don't you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, Daniel."
+
+"You must give me some advice; you must help me: help me and your
+sister, otherwise I cannot say what may happen."
+
+He stopped and listened, but there was not a stir: the stillness was
+absolute.
+
+"It is at times possible to remain silent out of consideration for
+others," he continued, "but if the silence is maintained too long,
+deception follows, and falsehood does not fail. But of what use is
+candour if it thrusts a knife into the heart of another merely in order
+to prepare an unblocked path for him who is candid? What good does it do
+to confess if the other does not understand? Two are already bleeding to
+death; shall the third meet with the same fate merely in order to say
+that the matter was talked over? The truth is, too many words have
+already been spoken, gruesome, shameless words, at the sound of which
+the innocent night of the senses vanishes. And must one bleed to death
+when it becomes clearer and clearer that those are not eternal laws
+against which war is being waged? How can I, dwarf that I am, attack
+eternal laws? No, it is the frail, mutable customs of human society--?
+Are you listening, Gertrude?"
+
+A "yes" that sounded like a note from a bird on a distant hill greeted
+his ears: it was the answer to his question.
+
+"I have reached the point where silence is no longer thinkable: there is
+no going any farther without you. I will neither exaggerate nor have
+recourse to conventional phrases: I will not speak of passion nor say
+that it could not be helped. It is just barely possible that everything
+can be helped; that a man could always have done differently if he had
+begun soon enough. But who can ever tell what the future may bring? And
+passion? There are many varieties of passion. It is the term that every
+swain, washed and unwashed, uses in referring to his lusts. I had never
+felt a passion for which a woman was guilty. But now one has seized me
+with hide and hair. I had imagined that I could get out of it and not
+bring you into it; impossible! I am burning up with this passion,
+Gertrude, my whole being has been changed by it; and if help is not
+given me, I will be ruined."
+
+For a time there was a death-like stillness in the room; then he
+continued.
+
+"But where is help to come from? It is strange; never until this thing
+happened did I know what holds us two together, you and me. Threads are
+being spun back and forth between us which no hand may touch without
+withering, as it is written in the Bible. There is a secret, a sacred
+secret, and if I offended it I would feel as though I had strangled the
+unborn child in your womb; and not only the child in your womb, but all
+the unborn children in my own breast. There is in the life of each man a
+woman in whom his own mother becomes young again, and to whom he is
+bound by an unseen, indestructible, umbilical cord. Face to face with
+this woman, his love, great or small, even his hate, his indifference,
+becomes a phantom, just as everything that we give out becomes a phantom
+compared with what is given to us. And there is another woman who is my
+own creation, the fruit of my dreams; she is my picture; I have created
+her from my own blood; she lay in me just as the seed lay in the bud.
+And she must be mine once she has been unveiled and made known to me, or
+I will perish of loneliness and maddened longing."
+
+The extravagant man pressed his face to the pillow and groaned: "She
+must be mine, or I will never get up from this bed. But if my way to her
+passes over you, Gertrude, I would have to cry out with Faust: 'Oh, had
+I never been born!'"
+
+Gertrude never uttered a sound. Minute after minute passed by. Daniel,
+growing calmer, listened to see if he could not hear some sound in the
+room. He heard nothing. The silence of his wife began to fill him with
+anxiety; he rose up in bed. The moon had gone down; it was pitch dark.
+He felt around for some matches, and lighted a candle. Holding it in his
+hand, he bent over Gertrude. She was as pale as death; she was looking
+at the ceiling with wide-opened eyes.
+
+"Put the candle out, Daniel," she whispered, "I have something to say to
+you."
+
+He put the candle out, and set it away.
+
+"Give me your hand, Daniel."
+
+He felt for her hand; he took hold of it. It was ice cold; he laid it on
+his breast.
+
+"May I stay with you, Daniel? Will you tolerate me in your home?"
+
+"Tolerate? Gertrude, tolerate?" he asked, in a lifeless, toneless voice.
+"You are my wife, in the presence of God my wife," he added, in deadened
+memory of the words of another.
+
+"I will become your mother made young again, as you wish."
+
+"Yes, Gertrude, but how?"
+
+"I will help you, you and Eleanore. The hearts of you two shall not
+bleed to death because of me. Let me stay; that is all I ask."
+
+"That is more easily said than done, Gertrude." He pressed close up to
+her, took her in his arms, and sobbed with unexpected violence.
+
+"It is hard; yes, it is hard. But your heart must not be allowed to
+bleed on my account."
+
+His head lay on her breast; he was seized with convulsions of grief that
+would not let him go until break of day.
+
+Then all of a sudden the words came like a scream from Gertrude's lips:
+"I too am a creature."
+
+He embraced her with warmth; and she murmured: "It is hard, Daniel, but
+be of good cheer, be of good cheer."
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+Pflaum, the apothecary, had begun to feel cramped in his house near the
+Church of the Holy Ghost. He had looked at several houses in the last
+week or two, and had finally decided on the Schimmelweis property, which
+was now for sale. The apothecary shop was to remain for the time being
+at its present location, and Jason Philip was likewise to keep his store
+and his residence. Herr Pflaum, being the landlord, intended to occupy
+the first and second floors; he had a large family.
+
+One beautiful August afternoon, the two men--the apothecary and the
+bookseller--left the office of Judge Ruebsam, where they had gone to sign
+the papers transferring the mortgage on the Schimmelweis property. A
+cloudless sky, already tinted with the blue of the descending sun, shone
+over the city.
+
+Herr Pflaum looked the picture of happiness: his troubles seemed all to
+be behind him; he was manifestly facing the future without fear and
+without care. Jason Philip Schimmelweis, on the contrary, was plainly
+worried. He looked like a man who was on the down grade. There was a
+great grease spot on his coat. This spot told the story of domestic
+troubles; it revealed the fact that Jason Philip had a wife who had been
+ill in bed for months, and no physician in the city could diagnose her
+case; none knew what she was suffering from. Jason Philip was angry at
+his wife, at her illness, at the whole medical profession, and at the
+growing confusion and disorder in his affairs.
+
+As they crossed AEgydius Place he cast a glance of unbounded hatred at
+the house in which Daniel and Gertrude lived. But he did not say
+anything; he merely pinched his lips and hung his head. In so doing he
+noticed the grease spot on his coat, and emitted a vexed growl. "I will
+go along with you, Herr Apothecary, and get a bottle of benzine," he
+said, turning to his companion. In his voice there was a noticeable
+trace of that reluctant and unwilling humility which the poor display in
+the presence of the rich.
+
+"Good, good," he said, "come right along." He blew the air before him;
+for he was warm. "Greetings, greetings," he exclaimed, and waved his
+hand, "what are you doing here?"
+
+It was Herr Carovius to whom he spoke. Herr Carovius was just then
+standing by the fountain of the Goose Man, rapt in the sort of
+reflection that was peculiar to him.
+
+"At your service, gentlemen," he said.
+
+"I see there are natives who study our native art," remarked the
+apothecary with an ironical smile, and stopped. Jason Philip likewise
+stopped, and looked in a dazed, distraught way at the bronze man with
+the two geese. Some boys were playing ball close by the fountain. When
+they saw the three men looking at it, they quit playing, came up, and
+looked at the fountain and the men and grinned as if there were
+something new to be seen.
+
+"We have no idea what riches we possess," said Herr Carovius.
+
+"Quite right, quite right," nodded the apothecary.
+
+"I have just been trying to think what meaning this group may have,"
+continued Herr Carovius, "there is undeniably a musical motif in it."
+
+"A musical motif?" murmured Jason Philip, to whom the very term music
+conveyed the idea of something unpleasant.
+
+"Yes, but you have got to understand it," said Herr Carovius rather
+jauntily. With that he seized the ear of a small boy who had ventured
+right up to his trousers' legs; the boy screamed.
+
+After casting an angry look at the monument, Jason Philip broke out in
+sudden and hearty laughter. "Now I understand," he stammered as he
+coughed, "you are a fox, a sly old dodger."
+
+"What do you mean, gentlemen?" asked the apothecary, who had become
+somewhat anxious, for he feared that this outburst of hilarity was
+directed at him.
+
+"Why, don't you see? Don't you understand?" panted Jason Philip with a
+scarlet red face, "the two geese--? The musical motif and the two
+geese--? Isn't it clear yet?"
+
+It was clear to Herr Carovius. He stuck the index finger of his right
+hand in the air, and broke out in a neighing sort of laughter. Then he
+took the apothecary by the arm, and in the pauses between salvos of
+laughter he bleated: "Magnificent!--Under each arm a goose!--Priceless!
+Say, Herr Schimmelweis, that was good. We will allow you one on that."
+
+The connection was now clear to the apothecary. He slapped himself on
+his hips and cried: "As sure as there is a devil, that's the best joke I
+ever heard in my life."
+
+Jason Philip Schimmelweis again got control of himself. He pressed his
+hands to his stomach and said breathlessly: "Who would have thought that
+the Goose Man moves about among us in bodily form?"
+
+"Yes, who would have thought it?" said Herr Carovius as if conceding a
+point. "It is a capital shot, a real discovery. We come to the simple
+conclusion: Goose Man! And we are capable of drawing a conclusion, for
+there are three of us. According to an old proverb, _Tres faciunt
+collegium._"
+
+"And they," stuttered Jason Philip, pointing to the group, as tears of
+laughter trickled down over his pudgy cheeks, "they are three, too. See,
+there are three of them!"
+
+"Right," screamed Herr Carovius, "there are three of them, too. It is
+all clear."
+
+"Have a chew, gentlemen?" said the apothecary, taking his tobacco pouch
+from his pocket.
+
+"No," replied Jason Philip, "that joke deserves a cigar." The remark was
+made between gulps of laughter.
+
+"I suggest that we christen the story with a flask of Salvator," said
+Herr Carovius.
+
+The other two agreed to the proposal. The _collegium_ marched across the
+square, stopped every now and then, broke out in fits of insuppressible
+laughter, and then continued on their way to the inn with parched
+throats.
+
+It may have been only an evening shadow, or it may have been a rare
+inspiration that created the impression. But the Goose Man, standing
+there in all his pride behind the iron railing, seemed to follow them
+with his eyes, in which there were traces of sorrow and astonishment.
+The boys playing ball had soon forgotten the delectable episode.
+
+
+
+
+                       PHILIPPINA STARTS A FIRE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Daniel and Eleanore had reached a stage of mutual silence; it was not
+the first time, however, and it was as disagreeable now as it had been
+then. They would meet on the steps, and pass each other with a mere nod.
+If Eleanore came in to see Gertrude, Daniel withdrew.
+
+Once Eleanore called when Gertrude was not at home. Daniel was stubborn;
+nor could Eleanore manage to make a single rational remark. He did not
+like her looks; he suspected her paleness and outward, enforced
+cheerfulness. "It is an undignified state of affairs, Eleanore," he
+exclaimed, "we must make an end of it."
+
+Make an end of it? Yes--but how? This was the thought that came at once
+to Eleanore's mind. Every day the chain that bound her to him became
+stronger.
+
+Daniel was also tortured by the sight of Gertrude. He felt that she was
+watching him and that she was worried about him. More than that, the
+event was approaching that surrounded her with an atmosphere of
+suffering and made forbearance obligatory. Her features, though haggard
+and distorted, bore nevertheless an expression of mysterious
+transfiguration.
+
+After Gertrude had noticed for some time that Daniel was being estranged
+from his work and that he had lost interest in everything, she decided
+to have a talk with Eleanore. She did it without preparation or
+tenderness.
+
+"Can't you see that you are ruining him?" she cried.
+
+"You want me to be ruined, do you?" asked Eleanore, in surprised dismay.
+She had appreciated at once and without difficulty the complete range of
+Gertrude's renunciation.
+
+"What difference does it make about you?" replied Gertrude harshly;
+"what are you getting excited about?"
+
+This question made Eleanore's ideas of order and duty quake and totter.
+She looked at her sister with incredulous eyes and in perfect silence.
+It was not the happy, gentle Gertrude that had spoken, but the Gertrude
+of months ago, the lonely, loveless Gertrude.
+
+What difference does it make about you? Why are you getting excited?
+That was equivalent to saying: Make short work of your life, and don't
+draw out the episode in his life any longer than you have to.
+
+Eleanore took courage to carry out the plan she had had in mind for a
+long while and in which she placed her last hope.
+
+One evening she went to Daniel and said: "I should like to go with you
+to Eschenbach, Daniel, and visit your mother."
+
+"Why do you wish to do that?" he asked in amazement. He and his mother
+did not write to each other: that was due first of all to their natures,
+and secondly to the condition in which each was now living. But he knew
+that Eleanore received an occasional letter from Eschenbach which she
+answered without consulting him. This had never seemed strange to him
+until now.
+
+A few days later she repeated her wish; Daniel granted it. They decided
+upon the following Sunday for the excursion.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+A warm, languid October sun shone over the land; the forests presented a
+gorgeous array of autumnal foliage; the fields lay stretched in barren
+rows; along the hills of Franconia floated clouds that looked like down
+driven by the wind.
+
+They had taken the train as far as Triesdorf; from there they went on to
+Merckendorf by stage coach. The rest of the distance they walked. Daniel
+pointed to a flock of geese that were trotting around on the shore of an
+abandoned pond, and said: "That is our national bird; his cackle is our
+music. But it doesn't sound so bad."
+
+A peasant woman passed by, and made the sign of the cross before the
+picture of a saint: "It is strange that everything has suddenly become
+Catholic," said Eleanore.
+
+Daniel nodded, and replied that when his father moved to Eschenbach a
+few other Protestant families were living there, all of whom joined in
+Protestant worship. Later, he said, most of them emigrated, leaving his
+mother as the only Protestant, so far as he knew, in the neighbourhood.
+But, Daniel remarked in the course of conversation, his mother had never
+had any unpleasant experience on this account, and he himself had
+frequently gone to church, primarily of course to hear the organ, though
+no one had ever taken offence at this. "There is a totally different
+type of people here," he added, "people who lay greater stress on
+externals than we do, and yet are more secretive."
+
+Eleanore looked at the church tower whose Spanish-green roof rose from
+the valley. After a long silence she said: "I wonder whether it will be
+a boy or a girl, Gertrude's baby? Oh, a girl, of course. Some day it
+will be in the world, and will look at me with eyes, with real eyes. How
+strange that a child of yours should look at me!"
+
+"What is there strange about that? Many children are born, many look at
+some one."
+
+"What are you going to call it?" asked Eleanore.
+
+"If it is blond and has blue eyes like yours, I am going to call it
+Eva."
+
+"Eva!" cried Eleanore, "no, that won't do." She herself had chosen the
+name of Eva for the child of the maid at the Ruedigers'. That he should
+now want to call Gertrude's child by the same name seemed so strange to
+her.
+
+"Why not Eva?" he asked. "There is something back of this objection on
+your part. Women always have something up their sleeve. Out with it! Why
+do you object to Eva?"
+
+Eleanore smiled, and shook her head. She would have liked to make a
+clean confession to him, but she was not certain how he would take it:
+she was afraid he would turn back, enraged at her cunning. Once the
+child had been born and lay there before him, it would captivate him,
+and she knew it.
+
+They had stopped and were looking out over the sunlit plains. "How alone
+we are!" said Daniel.
+
+"Everything is easier here," said Eleanore thoughtfully. "If one could
+only forget where one comes from, it would be easy to be happy."
+
+
+                                  III
+
+"I have been away for seven years," said Daniel as they passed through
+the village gate. Everything seemed so ridiculously small--the Town
+Hall, the Church, the Market Place, and the Eschenbach Fountain. He had
+also pictured the houses and streets to himself as being cleaner and
+better kept. As he passed over the three steps at the front gate, each
+one of which was bulging out like a huge oyster shell, and entered the
+shop with its smell of spices, the past dwindled to nothing. Marian was
+so happy she could not speak. She reached one of her hands to Daniel,
+the other to Eleanore. Her first question was about Gertrude.
+
+In the room sat a four-year-old child with blond hair and marvellous
+blue eyes. Its little face was of the most delicate beauty, its body was
+delicately formed.
+
+"Who is the child? To whom does it belong?" asked Daniel.
+
+"It is your own child, Daniel," said his mother.
+
+"My own child! Yes, for heaven's sakes--!" He blushed, turned pale,
+looked first at his mother, and then at Eleanore.
+
+"It is your own flesh and blood. Don't you ever think of Meta any more?"
+
+"Of Meta.... Oh, I see. And you, you adopted the child? And you,
+Eleanore, knew all about this? And you, Mother, took the child?" He sat
+down at the table, and covered his face with his hands. "That was what
+Eleanore had in mind?" he murmured timidly to himself. "And I presume
+that to make the story complete the child's name is Eva ...?"
+
+"Yes, Eva," whispered Eleanore, touched by the situation. "Go to your
+father, Eva, and shake hands with him."
+
+The child did as it had been told. Then Marian related to her son how
+Eleanore had brought the child to Eschenbach, and how Meta had married
+and gone to America with her husband.
+
+Every look, every movement on the part of Marian showed how great her
+love for the child was: she guarded it as the apple of her eye.
+
+The circle of wonderful events closed in around Daniel's heart. Where
+responsibility lay and where guilt, where will power ended and fate
+began, Daniel could not say. To express gratitude would be vulgar; to
+conceal his emotions was difficult. He was ashamed of himself in the
+presence of both of the women. But when he looked at the living
+creature, his shame lost all meaning. And how exalted Eleanore appeared
+in his eyes just then! She seemed to him equally amiable and worthy of
+respect, whether he regarded her as an active or as a sentient, feeling
+woman. He almost shuddered at the thought that she was so near him; that
+what she had done had been done for him filled him with humility.
+
+The strangest of all, however, was little Eva herself. He could not see
+enough of her; he was amazed at the trick nature had played: a human
+being of the noblest mien and form had been born of a gawky, uncouth
+servant girl. There was something divinely graceful and airy about the
+child. She had well-formed hands, delicate wrists, shapely ankles, and a
+clear, transparent forehead, on which a network of bluish veins spread
+out in various directions. Her laughter was the purest of music; and in
+her walk and gestures in general there was a rhythm which promised much
+for her future poise and winsomeness.
+
+Daniel took Eleanore through the village and out to the old town gate.
+It was the time of the annual fair; Eschenbach was crowded. They
+returned on this account to the more quiet streets, and finally entered
+the church. The sexton came up and admitted Daniel to the choir. Daniel
+sat down at the organ; the sexton pumped the bellows; Eleanore took a
+seat on one of the little benches near the side wall.
+
+Daniel's eyes became fixed; his fingers touched the keys with
+supernatural power; he began to improvise. There were two motifs
+following each other in close succession; both were in fifths; they were
+united into one; they ran from the low to the high registers, from Hell
+through the World to Heaven. A hymn crowned the improvised composition.
+
+He stood with Eleanore for a long while in the stillness. The songs
+echoed from the lofty arches. It seemed to both of them that the blood
+of the one was flowing into the body of the other. Incidents of the past
+faded from their memory; they seemed to have completed a long journey;
+there was no voice to remind them of their return; they were completely
+liberated from duties and made immune from care.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Eleanore was to sleep with Marian and Eva; Daniel was to have his old
+room. He showed it to Eleanore; they stepped to the window and looked
+out. They saw Eva down in the yard dancing back and forth barefooted on
+a wooden balustrade. She kept her equilibrium by holding out her arms.
+The grace of her movements was so fairy-like that Daniel and Eleanore
+smiled at each other in astonishment.
+
+After dinner Daniel went out in front of the house; Marian and Eleanore
+sat for a while at the window; the light of the lamp shone behind them.
+Later they came out into the street and joined Daniel. Marian, however,
+was uneasy on account of the child. She said that Eva had been restless
+all day and might cry for her. "Stay out just as long as you like; I
+will leave the door open," she said, and went back.
+
+Daniel and Eleanore returned to the fair. It was still early in the
+evening, but the crowd had disappeared. They sauntered around among the
+booths, and stopped to listen to the harangue of a mountebank or to
+watch peasant boys shooting at figures of various kinds and a glass ball
+that danced on a jet of water. There was a sea of red and green
+lanterns; sky-rockets were hissing into the air from the rampart;
+musicians were playing in the cafes, while hilarious tipplers sang or
+hooted as the spirit moved them.
+
+They came to a grass plot, the sole illumination of which was the light
+from a circus wagon. On the steps of the wagon sat a man in tricot
+holding the head of a black poodle between his knees.
+
+"Those were the last inhabitants of the earth," said Daniel, after they
+had crossed the square. The noise died away, the gaudy lights
+disappeared.
+
+"How far are you going?" asked Eleanore, without the remotest trace of
+fear in her voice.
+
+"I am going on until I am with you," was the quick reply.
+
+The indistinct outline of a bridge became visible; under it the water
+flowed noiselessly. The path had a yellowish shimmer; there were no
+stars in the heavens. Suddenly the path seemed to come to an end; at the
+end of it were trees there that seemed to be moving closer and closer
+together; it became darker and darker; they stopped.
+
+"We have told each other our whole story," said Daniel. "In the way of
+words we owe each other nothing. We have had enough of talk; there has
+been no lack of sorrow and enough of error. We can no longer act
+differently, and therefore we dare not act differently any longer."
+
+"Be still," whispered Eleanore, "I don't like your wrangling; what you
+say is so unpeaceful and fiendish. Yesterday I dreamed that you were
+lying on your knees and had your folded hands uplifted. Then I loved
+you--very much."
+
+"Do you need dreams in order to love me, girl? I don't; I need you just
+as you are. I will soon be thirty years old, Eleanore. A man never
+really wakes up until he is thirty; it is then that he conquers the
+world. You know what rests within me; you suspect it. You know too how I
+need you; you feel it. You are my soul; you are created out of my music;
+without you I am an empty hull, a patchwork, a violin without strings."
+
+"Oh, Daniel, I believe you, and yet it is not all true," replied
+Eleanore. He thought he could see in the darkness her mockingly ironical
+smile: "Somewhere, I am almost tempted to say in God, it is not true. If
+we were better, if we were beings in the image of God and acting in
+God's ways, we would have to desist from our own ways. Then it would be
+wonderful to live: it would be like living above the clouds, happy, at
+peace, pure."
+
+"Does that come from your heart, Eleanore?"
+
+"My dear, dear man! My heart, like yours, has been beclouded and
+bewitched. I cannot give you up. I have settled my accounts. In my soul
+I am entirely conscious of my guilt. I know what I am doing and assume
+full responsibility for my action. There is no use to struggle any
+longer; the water is already swirling over our heads. I simply want to
+say that you should not delude yourself into believing that we have
+risen up above other people by what we have done, that we have deserved
+the gratitude of fate. No, Daniel, what we are doing is precisely what
+all those do who fall. Let me stay with you, dearest; kiss me, kiss me
+to death."
+
+
+                                   V
+
+Philippina had promised Eleanore to look after Jordan and Gertrude on
+Sunday.
+
+As she was crossing Five Points, she went into a shop, and asked for
+three pfennigs' worth of court plaster. While doing some housework she
+had scratched herself on a nail. The clerk gave her the plaster, and
+asked her what was the news.
+
+"Ah, you poor bloke, you want to know the very latest, don't you?" she
+snarled, and then grinned with blatant self-complacency.
+
+"The later the better," said the fellow with a lustful smirk.
+
+Philippina bent over the counter, and whispered: "They're taking their
+wedding trip to-day." She laughed in a lewd, imbecile way. The clerk
+stared at her with wide-opened eyes and mouth. Two hours later the news
+was in the mouth of every hussy in that section of the city.
+
+Gertrude was in bed. The day woman who did the cooking gave Philippina a
+plate with Jordan's dinner on it: Meat, vegetables, and a few sour
+plums. Philippina ate two of the plums on the way up to his room, and
+licked her fingers.
+
+The whole forenoon she spent rummaging around in Eleanore's room; she
+looked through the cabinets, the presses, and the pockets of Eleanore's
+dresses. As it began to grow dark, Jordan suddenly entered, in hat and
+great coat, and looked on in speechless and enraged amazement at the
+girl's inexplicable curiosity.
+
+Philippina took the broom from the corner, and began to sweep with all
+her might. While sweeping she sang, out of tune, impudently, and
+savagely:
+
+    "No fire, no coal, so warmly glows
+    As secret love that no one knows."
+
+Jordan went away without saying anything. He had forgotten to lock his
+room. Hardly had Philippina noticed that he had left the key in the
+door, when she opened it and went in.
+
+She spied around with cowardly, superstitious eyes. She was afraid of
+the old inspector, as she would have been afraid of an invincible
+magician. For such cases she had a number of formulas at her tongue's
+end. She murmured: "Put earth in, close the lid, hold your thumbs, spit
+on your shoe." She spat on her shoe.
+
+She then began to examine the cabinet, for she believed that it
+contained all of Jordan's secrets. But she could not open the lock, try
+as she might. She then went at the writing desk; she was angry. There
+she found, in plain wooden frames, the pictures of Gertrude and
+Eleanore. She ran out, got a large needle, came back, and stuck it in
+the picture of Eleanore right between the eyes. Then she took Gertrude's
+picture, and after she had held it for a while, looking at it with her
+gloomy eyes, she noticed that it was spotted with blood. The plaster had
+come off her finger, and the finger had started to bleed.
+
+"Come now, Philippina," she said to herself, "go and see how Gertrude is
+making out." Entering Gertrude's room, she found her asleep. Creeping up
+to her bed on her tiptoes, she took a chair, straddled it, leaned her
+chin on the back, and stared fixedly at the face of the young woman, now
+just barely visible in the darkness of the room.
+
+Gertrude dreamed that a black bird was hovering over her and picking at
+her breast with its pointed beak. She screamed and woke up.
+
+Shortly after this Gertrude had to send for the midwife.
+
+During the night, Gertrude gave birth to a girl; she had suffered
+terrible pains. Philippina had seen and heard it all. She had run back
+and forth, from the kitchen to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the
+kitchen, for hours; she was like an insane person; she kept mumbling
+something to herself. What she mumbled no one knew.
+
+Gertrude had called in vain for Daniel; in vain had she waited for him
+the whole day.
+
+"Where in the world can Daniel be?" cried Philippina, "where can Daniel
+be with his damned Eleanore?" She sat in the corner with her hands
+folded, her hair tangled and knotted, her face distorted with the
+grimaces of madness. The midwife was still busy with Gertrude; the
+new-born child was crying pitifully.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Daniel held the child in his arms, and looked at it carefully but
+without love. "You little worm, what do you want in this world?" he said
+to his daughter. He still had his hat on; so had Eleanore. Both of them
+were dressed just as they came from the station; they were embarrassed
+and excited at what had happened. Eleanore was exceedingly pale; her
+great eyes looked dreamy; her body seemed of almost boyish slenderness.
+At times she smiled; then the smile died away, as if she did not have
+the courage to appear so cheerful.
+
+Inspector Jordan was also in the room, acting as he had always acted
+since his bankruptcy--like a guest who feels that he is a burden to the
+family. He said very humbly: "I have suggested to Gertrude that she call
+the child Agnes after my deceased wife."
+
+"Very well, let's call her Agnes," said Daniel.
+
+Gertrude asked that the child be brought to her so that she could nurse
+it. Eleanore carried it over and laid it at her breast. As the hands of
+the sisters touched, Gertrude looked up quickly: there was an
+indescribable expression of thoughtfulness, knowingness, and kindliness
+on her face. Eleanore fell on her knees, threw her arms around
+Gertrude's neck, and kissed her passionately. Gertrude reached out her
+left hand to Daniel; he gave her his right hand with some hesitancy.
+Jordan was radiant with joy: "It is so good, children, to see that you
+all love each other, so good," he said with visible emotion.
+
+"Daniel, you must move up into Father's quarters at once," said
+Gertrude. "Your piano, bed, and all your things must be taken up, and
+Eleanore will move into your room. I have already spoken to Father about
+it, and he feels that it will be a good arrangement. He will be very
+quiet so as not disturb you. The crying of the baby would make it
+impossible for you to work."
+
+"It is a very practical solution of the problem," said Jordan, speaking
+for Daniel, and looked down at his frayed coat-sleeves, which he tried
+to conceal by hiding them behind his back. "I am also glad that Eleanore
+will be with you. A man, you know, has a habit of going to bed long
+before a woman quits her daily work. Is that not true, my son-in-law?"
+With that he clapped Daniel on the shoulder.
+
+"During Gertrude's confinement I will sleep here in her room," said
+Eleanore, avoiding Daniel's eyes as she said so. "She cannot stay alone,
+and it costs too much to keep a nurse."
+
+"Exactly," said Jordan, and went to the door. But he turned around: "I
+should like to know," he asked in a tone of great grief, "who has been
+at Gertrude's and Eleanore's pictures. The one is covered with spots of
+blood, and the other has a hole punched in it. Isn't that very strange?
+I can't understand it: I can't imagine who could have done me this
+injury." He shook his head and went out.
+
+"Do you realise that to-morrow is the first of November?" asked
+Gertrude. "Have you the rent ready? Did Father make any money last
+month?"
+
+"No, he didn't," replied Eleanore, "but I have almost enough to pay the
+landlord."
+
+It was no longer possible to depend upon Jordan. He was supported by his
+children, and seemed to find the arrangement neither strange nor
+humiliating. At times he would allude in a mysterious way to a big
+enterprise that was going to claim the whole of his attention and bring
+him a great deal of money and honour. But if you asked him about it, he
+would wrinkle his brow and put his finger to his lips.
+
+"I owe the man more than the rent," said Daniel. He kissed Gertrude on
+the forehead, and went out.
+
+"Put the child in the cradle, and come over here," said Gertrude to
+Eleanore, as soon as Daniel had closed the door behind him. Eleanore did
+as she had been told. The baby was asleep. She took it up, looked at its
+wrinkled face, and carried it to the cradle. Then she went over to
+Gertrude's bed.
+
+Gertrude seized her by her hands, and drew her down to her with more
+strength than one would have imagined her to have just then. The eyes of
+the two women were drawn close together. "You must make him happy,
+Eleanore," she said in a hoarse voice, and with a sickly glimmer in her
+eyes. "If you do not, it would be better if one of us were dead."
+
+Despite her terror, Eleanore loosened Gertrude's hold on her with great
+gentleness. "It is hard to discuss that subject, Gertrude; it is hard to
+live and hard to think about it all." Eleanore breathed these words into
+Gertrude's ears.
+
+"You must make him happy; you must make him happy! Repeat it to yourself
+and keep it in your mind every day, every hour, every minute. You must,
+you must, you must." Gertrude was almost beside herself.
+
+"I will learn how to do it," replied Eleanore slowly and seriously. "I
+am ... I hardly know what I am or how I feel. But be patient with me,
+Gertrude, I will learn how to make him happy." She looked into
+Gertrude's face with anxious curiosity. Gertrude however pressed her
+hands against Eleanore's cheeks, drew her down to her again, and kissed
+her with unusual fervour. "I too must learn how," whispered Gertrude, "I
+must learn the whole of life from the very beginning."
+
+Some one knocked at the door. The midwife came in to look after her
+patient.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+At that time the superstition still prevailed that the window in the
+room of a woman in confinement must never be opened. The air in the room
+was consequently heavy and ill-smelling. Eleanore could hardly stand it
+during the day; during the night she could not sleep. Moreover natural
+daylight could not enter the room, and, as if it were not already gloomy
+enough, the window had been hung with green curtains which were kept
+half drawn.
+
+The most unpleasant feature of all, however, was the interminable round
+of visits from the women: custom had decreed that they should not be
+turned away. The wife of the director of the theatre came in; Martha
+Ruebsam came in, and so did the wife of Councillor Kirschner, and the
+wives of the butcher, baker, preacher, and physician. And of course the
+wife of the apothecary called. No one of them failed to pour out an
+abundance of gratuitous advice or go into ecstasies over the beauty of
+the baby. Once Daniel came in just as such an assemblage was in the sick
+room. He looked first at one, then at another, threw back his head, and
+left without saying a word.
+
+Herr Seelenfromm and M. Riviere were likewise not frightened by the
+distance; they called. Eleanore met them in the hall, and got rid of
+them by the usual method. And one day even Herr Carovius came around to
+inquire how mother and child were doing. Philippina received him; and
+Philippina was having a hard time of it at present: she was not allowed
+to enter Gertrude's room; Gertrude would have nothing to do with her;
+she refused to see her.
+
+So that she might not get too far behind with her work--for it meant
+her daily bread--Eleanore pushed the table up to the window, and despite
+the poor light, kept on writing. In the evening she would sit by the
+lamp and write, although she was so tired that she could hardly keep her
+eyes open.
+
+After three days, Gertrude had no milk for the baby; it had to be fed
+with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as
+it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or
+Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in.
+Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across
+the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby
+did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached.
+Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, her oppression. Not even
+Daniel noticed that there was anything wrong with her.
+
+She had very little opportunity to talk with him. And yet there was
+probably not another pair of eyes in the whole world that could be so
+eloquent and communicative with admonition, promise, request, and
+cordial resignation. One evening they met each other at the kitchen
+door: "Eleanore, I am stifling," he whispered to her.
+
+She laid her hands on his shoulder, and looked at him in silence.
+
+"Come with me," he urged with a stupid air. "Come with me! Let's run
+off."
+
+Eleanore smiled and thought to herself: "The demands of his soul are
+always a few leagues in advance of the humanly possible."
+
+The next morning he stormed into the room. Eleanore was only half
+dressed. With an expression of wrath flitting across her face she
+reached for a towel and draped it about her shoulders. He sat down on
+Gertrude's bed, and let loose a torrent of words: "I am going to set
+Goethe's 'Wanderers Sturmlied' to music! I am planning to make it a
+companion piece to the 'Harzreise' and publish the two in a cycle. I
+have not slept the whole night. The main motif is glorious." He began to
+hum it over in a falsetto voice: "'Oh, mortal man, if genius does not
+forsake thee, neither rain nor storm can breathe upon thy heart!' How do
+you like that?"
+
+Gertrude looked at him inspired.
+
+"I should have a good drink on that idea," he continued; "I have rarely
+felt such a longing for a flask of old wine. It's a bloody shame that I
+can't afford it. But you wait till I get a little money, and you will
+see a _bouteille_ of Tokay on my table every day."
+
+"My God, just listen how he raves! He's going to have the best there
+is," said Philippina angrily, as she entered the room in her stocking
+feet and heard Daniel's remarks.
+
+Daniel told her to keep her mouth shut and leave the room at once. He
+paid no attention to her reply, and cried out: "Something has got to
+happen. If I can't drink, I at least want to dance. Dance with me,
+Eleanore; don't be afraid, come, dance with me!" He threw his arms
+around her, pressed her to his bosom, sang a waltz melody, and drew the
+struggling and embarrassed girl across the floor.
+
+Philippina broke out in her slimy, malicious laughter, and then shrieked
+at the top of her voice that Frau Kirschner was outside and wanted to
+see the Kapellmeister's wife. Gertrude made an imploring gesture, the
+full meaning of which Daniel easily grasped. The baby began to cry,
+Eleanore tore herself away from Daniel's embrace, arranged her hair, and
+hastened over to the cradle. Philippina opened the door to let the
+Councillor's wife in. Just then a violent discussion was started in the
+hall. One could hear the voice of Jordan and that of some strange man.
+
+It was the furniture dealer who had come to collect the money for the
+cradle. He was boiling with the rage that cares not how it may be
+expressed: he said he had already been there four times, and each time
+he was put off. The truth is, Daniel was very hard up.
+
+The Councillor's wife took Daniel to one side, and made him an offer of
+a loan of two hundred marks. Daniel was silent; he bit his lips, and
+looked down at the floor. She scolded him: "You are always your own
+worst enemy. Now be reasonable, Nothafft, I will send the money over at
+noon. If you have any left, you may pay it back."
+
+Daniel went out, and gave the blustering furniture dealer his last
+ten-mark piece.
+
+Frau Kirschner had brought a flask of Tokay wine with her for Gertrude.
+Tokay was regarded at that time as a sort of elixir of life.
+
+"You see, so quickly are wishes fulfilled," said Gertrude to Daniel in
+the evening, when he came into her room. She poured out a glass for him.
+
+"Have you any bills to settle?" he asked, looking partly at Eleanore,
+partly at Gertrude, and striking his wallet, then bulging with notes.
+"It's Court Councillor's money," he said, "real Court Councillor's
+money. How beautiful it looks, lousy fine, eh? And upon that stuff the
+salvation of my soul depends!" He threw the money on Gertrude's bed,
+stuck out his tongue, and turned away in disgust.
+
+Eleanore handed him the glass of Tokay; her eyes glistened with tears.
+
+"No, Eleanore," he said, "I have trifled it away. In my arrogance I
+imagined I could do something; I thought I could get somewhere. I sit
+down, brood over my ideas, and find that they are all wind-eggs. I have
+the feeling that I have taken a false oath. What good am I, Eleanore,
+what good am I, Gertrude?"
+
+"Ah, take a drink, and perhaps your troubles will leave you," said
+Eleanore, and stroked his brow with her hand.
+
+Gertrude called out to her: "Quit that! Put that glass away!" She spoke
+so harshly that Eleanore sprang back, and Daniel got up.
+
+"Leave me alone for a while," she said. Daniel and Eleanore left the
+room.
+
+Eleanore went into the living room, sat down at the table, and laid her
+head in her hands. "What can we do now?" she said to Daniel. The violin
+tone in her voice had something unusually touching about it.
+
+Daniel set the candle he was carrying in the bay window. He bent down
+over the table, and took Eleanore by her small wrists. "Accept the
+bitter for the sake of the sweet," he murmured. "Believe in me, believe
+in yourself, believe in the higher law. It is not possible that I merely
+imagined that there is a winged creature for me. I must have something
+to cling to, something indestructible, ah, even superhuman."
+
+"You must have something superhuman to cling to," Eleanore repeated
+after him. She could not help but think that he had already made
+superhuman demands of the other woman, his wife, her sister, Gertrude.
+She raised her finger as if to warn him: it was a gesture of infinite
+timidity.
+
+But Daniel scarcely saw what she had done. In his arrogant presumption
+and passion he could have smashed the universe to pieces, and then
+re-created it merely in order to mould this one creature after his own
+desires. He would have made her of boundless pliability, and yet active
+in her love for him; he would have had her spurn venerable commandments
+in a spirit of self-glorification, and yet cherish unequivocal
+confidence in him, the creature of need and defiance; and she would be
+cheerful withal.
+
+"I am cold," whispered Eleanore, peering into the dark shadows of the
+room.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+To know that these eyes and their pure passion were so close to him; to
+be able to touch this cool, sincere, mutely-eloquent mouth with his
+lips; to be able to hold these hands in which passion resided as it does
+in the speechless unrest of a messenger; to be able to press this
+throbbing figure with all its willingness and hesitation to his
+bosom--it was almost too much for Daniel. It involved pain; it aroused
+an impatience, a thirst for more and more. His daily work was
+interrupted; his thoughts, plans, and arrangements were torn from their
+connection.
+
+He spoke to people whom he knew as though they were total strangers; he
+amazed those whom he did not know by the loyal confidence he voluntarily
+placed in them. He forgot to put on his hat when he walked along the
+street; the distraction he revealed was the source of constant merriment
+to passersby and on-lookers. He would not know when it was noon; he would
+come home at three o'clock, thinking it was twelve. Once he came nearly
+being run over by a team of galloping horses; another time he had his
+umbrella taken straight from his hands without noticing it. This took
+place at the Ludwig Station.
+
+"Oh, winged creature, winged creature," he would say to himself, and
+smile like a somnambulist. Deep in his soul a sea of tones was surging.
+He listened to them with complete assurance, angry though he would
+become at times because of the failure of this or that. He was so
+absorbed in himself, so enmeshed in his own thoughts, that he scarcely
+saw the sky above him; houses, people, animals, and the things that are
+after all necessary to human existence existed only in his dreams, if at
+all.
+
+Winged creature, winged creature!
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+As soon as Gertrude could get up and go about, Eleanore accepted an
+invitation from Martha Ruebsam to visit her aunt, Frau Seelenfromm, in
+Altdorf. The visit was to last two weeks. Eleanore looked upon it as a
+test that would determine whether she could do anything on her own
+account now: whether she could get along without Daniel.
+
+But she saw that she could no longer live without him. In the lonely
+house she came to the conclusion that her love was great enough to
+enable her to bear the monstrous burden fate had been trying to impose
+upon her. She saw that neither flight nor concealment nor anything else
+could save her, could save Daniel, could give back to Gertrude what she
+had lost, what had been taken from her.
+
+There were times, to be sure, when she asked herself whether it was all
+true and real; whether it could be possible. She walked in darkness
+surrounded by demons. Her being was plunged into the deepest and
+strangest bewilderment; confusion enveloped her; there was sorrow in the
+effort she made to avert the inexorable.
+
+But in one of her sleepless nights she thought she was covering Daniel's
+mind with a flame of fire; she thought she heard his voice calling out
+to her with a power she had never known before.
+
+No one she had ever seen was so vivacious, so alive as he. Her
+slumbering fancy had awakened at the sound of his voice and the feel of
+his warm breath. She felt that people owed him a great deal; and since
+they did not seem inclined to pay their debts, it was her duty to make
+restitution to Daniel for their neglect.
+
+She could not survey the ways of his art: the musician in him made
+neither a strange nor a special appeal to her. She grasped and felt only
+him himself; to her he was Daniel. She grasped and felt only the man who
+was born to do lofty, the loftiest, deeds and who passed by the base and
+evil in men in silence; who knew that he had been chosen but was obliged
+to renounce the privilege of ruling; who was always in full armour,
+ready to defend a threatened sanctuary.
+
+Of such a man, of such a knight and warrior, she had dreamt even when a
+child. For although she looked at things and circumstances with the eyes
+of truth, her soul had always been full of secret dreams and visions.
+Back of her unceasing and unfading activity the genii of romanticism had
+been spinning their bright-coloured threads; it was they that had formed
+the glass case in which she had lived for so long, impervious to the
+touch of mortal hand, immune to the flames of love.
+
+The morning following that night she explained to her friend that she
+was going home. Martha tried in vain to get her to stay: she was almost
+ill with longing.
+
+Martha let her go; she had the very saddest of thoughts concerning
+Eleanore's future; for the unhappy incidents of that unhappy home had
+reached Martha's sensitive ears. She did not worry because of moral
+principles; she was not that kind of a woman. She worried over Eleanore
+out of genuine affection: it pained her to know that she could no longer
+admire Eleanore.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+In the meanwhile Daniel had told his wife that a child of his was living
+with his mother in Eschenbach, and that he had known nothing about it
+until Eleanore took him over there. He told her the child's name and how
+old it was and who its mother was, and gave her a detailed description
+of that celebrated New Year's Night on which he had embraced the maid.
+He told her how he had stood out in front of her house that night and
+longed for her with all his senses, and how he felt, when he looked at
+little Eva, as if Providence had only seemed to use the body of a
+strange woman, and that Eva was in reality Gertrude's own child.
+
+To this Gertrude replied: "I never want to see that child."
+
+"You will be ashamed of having made this remark once you do see the
+child," replied Daniel. "You should not be envious of a creature whom
+God brought into the world so that the world may be more beautiful."
+
+"Don't speak of God!" said Gertrude quickly and with uplifted hand.
+Then, after a pause, during which Daniel looked at her angrily, she
+added with a painful smile: "The very idea: I, jealous, envious! O no,
+Daniel."
+
+The way she pressed her hands to her bosom convinced Daniel, and quite
+emphatically too, that she did not know the feeling of envy or jealousy.
+He said nothing, but remained in her room for an unusually long while.
+When she was cutting bread, she let the knife fall. He sprang and picked
+it up for her. He had never done this before. Gertrude looked at him as
+he bent over. Her eyes became dim, flared up, and then became dim again.
+
+"Don't speak of God!" Somehow Daniel could not get these words out of
+his mind.
+
+When Eleanore returned she was terrified at the expression on Daniel's
+face. He seemed dazed; his eyes were inflamed as though he too had not
+been able to sleep; he could hardly talk. Finally he demanded that she
+swear to him never to go away again.
+
+She hesitated to take an oath of this kind, but he became more and more
+insistent, and she took it. He threw his arms about her with passionate
+impetuosity; just then the door opened, and Gertrude stood on the
+threshold. Daniel hastened to her, and wanted to take her by the hand;
+but she stepped back and back until she reached her bedroom.
+
+It was evening; covers were laid for four: Jordan was to take dinner
+with them that evening. He came down promptly; Eleanore brought in the
+food; but Gertrude was nowhere to be found. Eleanore went in to her. She
+was sitting by the cradle, combing her hair with slow deliberation.
+
+"Won't you eat with us, Gertrude?" asked Eleanore.
+
+Gertrude did not seem to hear her. In a few minutes she got up, walked
+over to the mirror on the wall, pressed her hair with the palms of her
+hands to her two cheeks, and looked in the mirror with wide-opened eyes.
+
+"Come, Gertrude," said Eleanore, rather timidly, "Daniel is waiting."
+
+"That they are in there again," murmured Gertrude, "it seems like a
+sin." She turned around, and beckoned to Eleanore.
+
+Eleanore went over to her in perfect obedience. Gertrude threw her arms
+around her neck until her left temple touched Eleanore's right one with
+only her hair hanging between them like a curtain. Gertrude again looked
+in the mirror; her eyes became rigid; she said: "Oh yes, you are more
+beautiful, much more beautiful, a hundred times more beautiful."
+
+Just then the child began to stir, and since Gertrude was still standing
+immovable before the mirror, Eleanore went to the cradle. Hardly had
+Gertrude noticed what she had done, when she rushed out and cried with
+terrifying rudeness: "Don't touch that child! Don't touch it, I say!"
+She then went up, snatched the child from the cradle, and went back to
+her bed with it, saying gently and yet threateningly: "It belongs to me,
+to me and to no one else."
+
+Since this incident, Eleanore knew that a fearful change had come over
+her sister. She did not know whether other people noticed it; she did
+not even know whether Daniel was aware of it. But she knew it, and it
+frightened her.
+
+One afternoon, about sunset, Eleanore came in and found Gertrude on her
+knees in the hall scrubbing the floor. "You shouldn't do that,
+Gertrude," said Eleanore, "you are not strong enough for that kind of
+work yet."
+
+Gertrude made no reply; she kept on scrubbing.
+
+"Why don't you dress better?" continued Eleanore; "Daniel does not like
+to see you going about in that ugly old brown skirt. Believe me, it
+makes him angry."
+
+Gertrude straightened up on her knees, and said with disconcerting
+humility: "You dress up; it is not well for two to look so nice. What
+shall I do?" she asked, and let her head sink. "You wear your gold chain
+and the corals in your ears. That pleases me; that is the way it should
+be. But I have no gold chain; I have no corals. If I had them, I
+wouldn't wear them; and if I wore them, it would not be right."
+
+"Ah, Gertrude, what are you talking about?" asked Eleanore.
+
+The ringing of the church bells could be heard in the hall. Gertrude
+folded her hands in prayer. There was a stern solemnity in her action.
+In her kneeling position she looked as though she were petrified.
+
+Eleanore went into the room with a heavy heart.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+Through the dividing walls Daniel and Eleanore were irresistibly drawn
+to each other. They accompanied each other in their thoughts; each
+divined the other's wishes and feelings. If he came home in a bad
+humour, if she was anxious and restless, they both needed merely to sit
+down by each other to regain their peace.
+
+If Daniel's power of persuasion was great, Eleanore's example was
+equally great. A dish would displease Daniel. Eleanore would not only
+eat it, but would praise it; and Daniel would then eat it too, and like
+it. Gertrude had prepared the food, and Eleanore felt it was her duty to
+spare her sister as much humiliation as possible. But Gertrude did not
+want to be treated indulgently. She would lay her knife and fork aside,
+and say: "Daniel is right. It is not fit to eat." She would get up and
+go into the kitchen and make a porridge that would take the place of the
+inedible dish. That was the way she acted: she was always resigned,
+diligent, and quiet; she made every possible effort to do her duty.
+Daniel and Eleanore looked at each other embarrassed; but their
+embarrassment was transformed in time into mutual ecstasy: they could
+not keep from looking at each other.
+
+There was nothing of the seducer in Daniel's sexual equipment. On the
+other hand he was dependent to a very high degree upon his wishes and
+desires; and in his passionate obstinacy he not infrequently lacked
+consideration. Eleanore however possessed profound calmness, cheerful
+certainty, and a goodly measure of indulgence; and she knew exactly how
+to make use of these traits. The claims that were made on her patience
+and moderation would have harassed a heart steeled in the actualities of
+politics and flooded with worldly experiences. She however found a safe
+and unerring guide in the instincts of her nature, and was never tired.
+
+The trait in her to which he took most frequent and violent exception
+was what he called her plebeian caution; she seemed determined to pay
+due and conventional respect to appearances. He did not wish to lay
+claim to the hours of his love as though they were a stolen possession;
+he did not wish to sneak across bridges and through halls; he did not
+wish to whisper; he did not wish to lie in wait for a secret tryst; he
+rebelled at the thought of coming and going in fear and trembling.
+
+There is not the slightest use to investigate all the secrecies between
+Daniel and Eleanore. It will serve no useful end to infringe with
+unskilled hand on the work of the evil spirit Asmodeus, who makes walls
+transparent and allows his devotees to look into bed chambers. It would
+be futile to act as the spy of Daniel and show how he left the attic
+room in the dead of night and crept down the stairs in felt slippers. We
+have no desire to hear of Eleanore's pangs of conscience and her
+longings, her flights, her waiting in burning suspense; to relate how
+she endeavoured to avert the inevitable to-day and succumbed to-morrow
+would be to tell an idle tale. It is best to overlook all these things;
+to draw a curtain of mercy before them; for they are so human and so
+wholly without a trace of the miraculous.
+
+It will be enough to touch upon a single night on which Daniel went to
+Eleanore's room and said: "I have never yet seen you as a lover sees his
+beloved." Eleanore was sitting on the edge of her bed, trembling. She
+blew out the candle. Daniel heard the rustling of her clothes. She went
+up to the stove and opened the front draft door. There was a red hot
+coal fire in the stove. She stood before him with the purple glow of the
+burning coals upon her body, slender, delicate, nude. Her figure,
+peculiarly beautiful, was filled with the most harmonious of
+inspiration; it was ensouled. And since the play of her limbs, as they
+became conscious of the light, was suddenly stiffened with shame,
+Eleanore bent her head over to the wall where the mask of Zingarella,
+which he had given her, was hanging. She took it down, and held it with
+both hands so that the purple glow from the stove fell also on it. As
+she did this she smiled in a way that cut Daniel to the very heart:
+something eternal came over him; he had a premonition of the end; he
+feared fate.
+
+At the same time Gertrude rose up in her bed, and stared with eyes as
+if she were beholding, who knows whom? at the door. After she had stared
+for a long while, she got up, opened the door, went out into the hall
+without making the slightest noise, came back, went out again, came back
+again, and got in bed, left the door open, sat upright and gazed at the
+closed door across the hall behind which she knew Daniel and Eleanore
+were. Her hair hung down in two long braids on either side of her head.
+Her pale face in this frame of black hair above it and on both sides of
+it looked like a wax figure in an old black frame.
+
+Of the pictures that were being formed in her mind and soul, there was
+not a single twitching of the muscles to indicate what they looked like.
+
+For her the entire world lay behind that door. It seemed to her that she
+could no longer endure the knowledge she had of what was taking place.
+In her maddened imagination she saw women stealing through the halls of
+the house; in every corner there was a woman, and with every woman there
+was a man; they embraced each other, and sank their teeth into each
+other's flesh. It was all as criminal as it was irrational; it was a
+shame and an abomination to behold. Everywhere she looked she saw
+reprehensible nudeness; all clothes seemed to be made of glass; she
+could look neither at a man nor at a woman without turning pale. She had
+only one refuge: the cradle of her child. She would rush to it and pray.
+But as soon as her prayer was ended she again felt stifled in the
+poisoned air about her, while the desire to acquit herself of the crime
+of which she felt guilty, unable though she was to define the crime or
+determine her part in it, robbed her of her sleep. She felt that a great
+jagged stone was suspended over her head, that it was becoming less and
+less firmly attached every day, and that its fall if not imminent was
+certain.
+
+Hour after hour passed by; Daniel finally appeared in the vestibule. He
+was not a little terrified when he saw the burning lamp and Gertrude
+sitting up in bed.
+
+He went into the bedroom, closed the door, walked up to the cradle,
+looked at the child, and then went over to Gertrude. She cast a glance
+of infinite inquiry at him. It was a look that seemed to implore him for
+a decision, a judgment. At the same time she put out her hands as if to
+ward off any approach on his part. When she saw that he was astonished,
+she softened the expression on her face, and said: "Give me your hand."
+
+She took his right hand, stroked it, and whispered: "Poor hand, poor
+hand."
+
+Daniel bit his lips: "Oh woman, what ...?" That was all.
+
+He sat down in silence on the edge of her bed. Gertrude looked at him in
+the same tense, anxious way in which she had studied him a few moments
+earlier. He sank down beside her, and fell asleep with his head on her
+breast.
+
+She kept on holding his hand. She looked into his pale, narrow face and
+at his angular brow, the skin of which could be seen to twitch every now
+and then under the loose flowing hair that hung over it. The oil in the
+lamp was getting low, the wick had begun to smell. She was afraid
+however to put it out lest she might waken Daniel. She looked on in
+silence as the light became dimmer and dimmer and finally went out,
+leaving only the red glow of the wick. This too died away in time, and
+it became dark.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+For some time Eleanore had noticed that the baker's boy, instead of
+carefully putting the rolls in the sack each morning as had always been
+his custom, threw them through the lattice on to the ground.
+
+The newspaper boy stopped speaking to her; the postman smiled
+scornfully; and even the beggar, at least she thought so, asked for his
+alms in a tone of impudence.
+
+One day she was passing through Schmausen Street; a woman was leaning
+out of the window. Seeing Eleanore coming, she called back into the
+room, whereupon a young man and three half-grown girls rushed to the
+window, began making remarks to each other, and gaped at her with looks
+that made her turn deathly pale.
+
+Another time Daniel brought her a free ticket to a concert. She went,
+and as soon as she reached the hall she was struck by the discourteous
+and indecent manner in which the bystanders looked at her. A
+well-dressed woman moved away from her. Some men kept walking around
+her, grinning at her. She found it intolerable, and went home.
+
+Exercise in the open had often driven away the cares that chanced to be
+weighing upon her: she went skating. As soon as the people saw her, they
+began to whisper among themselves. She did not bother about them or
+their remarks; she cut her beautiful figures on the ice as if she were
+quite alone. A group of young girls pointed at her with their fingers.
+She went up to them with pride glistening in her eyes, and they all ran
+away. Those who had formerly paid homage to her avoided her now. Her
+soul rebelled within her; meeting with so much unexpected and cowardly
+vulgarity enflamed her sensibilities and ennobled her self-respect.
+
+One day in December she crossed the Wine Market, and started to pass
+through a narrow street that led to the Halle Gate. Standing at the
+entrance to the alley were a number of men engaged in conversation. She
+recognised Alfons Diruf among them. She thought they would step to one
+side and let her pass, but not one of them moved. They gaped at her in
+unmitigated shamelessness. She could have turned about and taken another
+street, but that defiance on the part of those men made her insist upon
+her rights to go the way she had originally decided upon. Impressed,
+apparently, by the flaming blue of her eyes, the scoundrels at last
+condescended to shift their lazy frames to one side. They formed an
+espalier through which she had to walk. But worse than this were the
+lewd looks that she knew were following her, and the laughter that
+greeted her ears. It was the type of laughter ordinarily heard at night
+when one passes a low dive, in which the scum of human society has
+gathered to amuse itself by the telling of salacious stories.
+
+She often had the feeling, particularly after dark, that some one was
+following her. Once she looked around, and a man was behind her. He wore
+a havelock; he turned quickly into a gate. A few days later she had a
+similar experience, but this time she was frightened worse than ever,
+for she thought it was Herr Carovius.
+
+One evening as she was leaving the house she saw the same figure
+standing by the church on the other side of the street. As she hesitated
+and wondered whether she should go on, another person joined the first.
+She thought it was Philippina. The two began to talk, but Eleanore could
+not make out who they were; it was snowing, and there was no street lamp
+nearby.
+
+She could not tell why, but she was suddenly seized with anxiety for
+Daniel; for him and for no one else. She felt that unless she went back
+something dreadful would happen to him. She rushed up the steps to the
+attic room, and knocked at his door; there was not a sound. She opened
+the door and went in, but everything was dark. In the darkness, however,
+standing out against the white background from the light of the snow,
+she saw his body. He was sitting at the piano; he had his arms on the
+lid, his head between his hands. Eleanore hastened up to him, and, with
+a tone of sweet sadness in what she said, threw her arms around his
+neck.
+
+Daniel took her on his lap, pressed her head to his bosom, and laughed
+with open month and shining teeth but without making a sound. He often
+laughed that way now.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+He laughed that way at the intrigues that were being forged against him
+by his bitterest enemy, Fraeulein Varini, and which resulted in his
+meeting with distrust and opposition in everything he undertook at the
+City Theatre.
+
+He laughed that way at the anonymous letters, filled with insulting
+remarks, which were being sent him by his fellow citizens, and which he
+read with naive curiosity merely to see how far human nastiness and
+bestial hate could go.
+
+He laughed that way when he received the letter from Baroness von
+Auffenberg informing him that she was forced to discontinue her lessons
+and recitals. She said that her constitution had been weakened, and that
+she was going to close her town house and spend the winter at her
+country place at Hersbruck. Daniel heard however that she spent a great
+deal of her time in town, and that she had arranged for an elaborate
+cycle of _musicales_, a thing she had never dared to do under his
+administration. Andreas Doederlein had been engaged as her musical
+adviser: now she could rave and go into ecstasies and hypnotise her
+impotent soul in the mephitic air of artificial aroma just as much as
+she pleased.
+
+And he laughed that way at the weekly attacks upon him and his art that
+appeared in the _Fraenkischer Herold_, copies of which were delivered at
+his front door with the regularity of the sun. The attacks consisted of
+sly, caustic sneers, secrets that had been ferreted out with dog-like
+keenness, gigantic broadsides based on hearsay evidence, and perfidious
+suspicions lodged against Daniel Nothafft, the artist, and Daniel
+Nothafft, the man.
+
+The articles never failed to mention the Goose Man. Daniel asked to have
+the allusion explained. The Goose Man was elevated to the rank and
+dignity of an original humourist. "What is the latest concerning the
+Goose Man?" became a standing head-line. Or the reader's eye would fall
+on the following notice: "The Goose Man is again attracting the
+attention of all friends of music. He has had the ingenious audacity to
+make the opera 'Stradella' more enjoyable by the interpolation of a
+funeral march of his own make. The ever-submissive domestic birds which
+he carries under his arms have rewarded him for his efforts in this
+connection by the cackling of their abundant and affectionate
+gratitude."
+
+The birthplace of these inimitable achievements in the field of
+journalistic wit was the reserved table at the Crocodile. If ever in the
+history of the world men have laughed real honest tears it was at the
+writing of such news bearing on the life and conduct of the Goose Man.
+The editor-in-chief, Weibezahl, was the recording secretary at these
+intellectual Olympiads, and Herr Carovius was the protagonist. He had
+access to reliable sources, as newspaper men say, and every evening he
+surprised the round table with new delicacies for Weibezahl's columns.
+
+Daniel was ignorant of what was going on. But the Goose Man, the
+expression as well as the figure, became interwoven with his thoughts,
+and acquired, somehow and somewhere in the course of time, a
+transfigured meaning.
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+One day Frau Kirschner wrote to Daniel telling him that she did not wish
+to have anything more to do with him; she demanded in the same letter
+that he pay back the money she had advanced him. He could not raise it:
+the City Theatre had already made him a loan, he had no friends, and M.
+Riviere, the only person on earth who might have been able to come to
+his rescue, had gone back to France.
+
+Matters took their usual course: A lawyer notified Daniel, giving him so
+many days grace; when these had elapsed and no payment had been made, a
+summons was served on him; the sheriff came in, and in default of any
+other object of value he pawned the piano.
+
+Daniel's objections were quite ineffectual: a few days more and the
+piano would be put up at auction.
+
+One gloomy morning in January Philippina entered his room.
+
+"Say, Daniel," she began, "would you like to have some money from me?"
+
+Daniel turned his head slowly and looked at her in amazement.
+
+"I have lots of it," she continued with her hoarse voice, her glassy
+eyes glittering underneath her bangs. "I have been saving it a pfennig
+at a time ever since I was a child. I can give you the money you owe
+the Councillor's wife. Sling it at her, the old hag! Say to me: 'Please
+Philippina, give me the money,' and you'll find it on the table."
+
+"Are you crazy?" asked Daniel, "get out of here just as quickly as your
+feet can carry you!" He felt distinctly creepy in her presence.
+
+Philippina, beside herself with rage, seized his hand. Before he could
+do a thing she bit him just below the little finger. The wound was quite
+deep. He groaned, shook her off, and pushed her back. She looked at him
+triumphantly, but her face had turned yellow.
+
+"Listen, Daniel," she said in a begging, beseeching tone, "don't be so
+ugly! Don't be so mean toward me! Don't be so jealous!"
+
+The wench's infamous smile, her hair hanging down over her eyes, her big
+red hands, the snow-flakes on her short cloak, the border on her fiery
+red dress below her cloak, and the poison green ribbon on her hat--this
+ensemble of ugliness filled Daniel with the loathing he might have
+experienced had he stood face to face with the most detestable picture
+he had ever seen from the world of human beings. But as he turned his
+head, a feeling of sympathy came over him; he suspected that the girl
+was bound to him by bonds that did not reach him until after they had
+taken their course through the dark channels of some subterranean
+labyrinth. What she had done filled him with dismay; but as a revelation
+of character it surprised him and set him to thinking.
+
+He went over to the washing table to put his bleeding hand in the water.
+Philippina took a fresh handkerchief from the cabinet, and handed it to
+him as a bandage. He looked at her with piercing eyes, and said: "What
+kind of a person are you? What sort of a devil is in you, anyway? Be
+careful, Jason Philip's daughter, be careful!"
+
+Since there was a tone of kindness in these words, the muscles of
+Philippina's face moved in a mysterious way. Her features were distorted
+as if by a grin, and yet she was not grinning. She drew a leather purse
+from her cloak pocket, opened it, and took out two one-hundred-mark
+notes and a gold coin. They had been wrapped in paper. She unfolded the
+paper and the notes, laid them, together with the coin, on the table,
+and handed Daniel a written statement.
+
+He read it: "I, the undersigned, Daniel Nothafft, promise to pay to
+Philippina Schimmelweis two hundred and twenty marks at five per cent
+interest, for value received."
+
+"With that you c'n pay the sheriff and git yourself out of this mess,"
+said Philippina, in a most urgent tone. "You can't give piano lessons on
+a rolling pin, and that music box of yours is after all the tool you
+make your living by. Sign that, and you will be in peace."
+
+"Where did you get the money?" asked Daniel. "How did you ever come by
+so much money? Tell me the truth." All of a sudden he remembered
+Theresa's words: "All that nice money, all that nice money!"
+
+Philippina began to chew her finger nails. "That's none of your
+business," she said gruffly, "it ain't been stolen. Moreover, I c'n tell
+you," she said, as she felt that his distrust was taking on a
+threatening aspect, "mother give it to me on the sly. She didn't want me
+to be without a penny if anything happened. For my father--he would like
+to see me strung up. She give it to me, I say, on the side, and she made
+me swear before the cross that I would never let any one know about it."
+
+This tale of horror made Daniel shake his head; he had his doubts. He
+felt she was lying, and yet there was a mysterious force back of her
+statement and in her eyes. He was undecided; he thought it over. His
+livelihood was at stake. Weeks, months might pass by before he could get
+another piano. Philippina's readiness to help him was a riddle to him,
+everything she said was repulsive and banal; but after all she was
+willing to help in a most substantial way, and he was in such
+difficulties that voices of admonition simply had to be drowned out.
+
+"It is nothing but money," he thought contemptuously, and sat down to
+put his name to the note.
+
+Philippina drew up her shoulders, and never once breathed until he had
+signed the note and handed it over to her in silence. Then she looked at
+him imploringly, and said: "Now Daniel, you must never again treat me
+like you would a scurvy cat."
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+There had been an unusual amount of talk this year about the parade on
+Shrove Tuesday. On the afternoon of that day the whole city was on its
+feet.
+
+Daniel was on his way home; he had reached the corner of Theresa Street
+when he ran into the crowd. He stopped out of idle curiosity. The first
+division of the parade came up: it consisted of three heralds in gaudy
+mediaeval costumes, and back of them were three councillors on horseback.
+
+Next in the procession was a condemned witch on a wheelbarrow. Her face
+had been hideously painted, and in her hand she swung a huge whiskey
+bottle. She was followed by a group of Chinese, each with a long
+pigtail, and they by a troupe of dancing Kameruns.
+
+The procession moved on in the following order: a giant carrying
+twenty-seven quart beer mugs; a woman's orchestra consisting exclusively
+of old women; a wagon from one of the peasant districts bearing the
+inscription, "Adorers of Taxes"; a smoking club with the Swedish match
+merchant; a wagon with a replica of the Spittler Gate made of beer kegs;
+the so-called guard against sparks; a nurse with a grown child in
+diapers and Hussar boots; the seven Swabians on velocipedes; a cabriolet
+with a gaily dressed English family; a conveyance carrying authors.
+There were two inscriptions on it: "The And So Forths" and "The Et
+Ceterists."
+
+At the end of the procession was a wagon with a skilful imitation of the
+Goose Man. It had been made out of old boards, hoops, clay, old rags,
+and iron. The Goose Man himself wore an open velvet doublet and short
+velvet trousers, from the pockets of which protruded rolls of banknotes.
+Instead of a cap he had a rusty pan on his head, and on his feet was a
+pair of worn patent leather shoes. Under each arm he carried a goose.
+The geese had been made of dough. Their heads were not the heads of
+geese but of women artificially painted and with so-called taws, or
+marbles, for their eyes. The face at the Goose Man's left looked
+melancholy, the one at his right was cheerful.
+
+This was the centre of attraction; it was surrounded by the largest
+crowds. Every time it came within sight of a fresh group of on-lookers
+there was a tremendous shouting and waving of flags. This was true even
+where it was plain that the people did not appreciate the significance
+of it. Pulchinellos brandished their wooden swords, Indian chieftains
+danced around it screaming their mighty war-whoops, a Mephistopheles
+turned somersaults, knights mounted on stilts saluted, and children with
+wax masks shrieked until it was impossible to hear one's own voice.
+
+Daniel had watched the performance with relative indifference. He had
+regarded it merely as a display of commonplace ability to amuse the
+people. Then came the wagon with the imitation of the Goose Man. On it
+stood Schwalbe the sculptor, gloriously drunk. Beside him stood
+Kropotkin the painter in his shirt sleeves, apparently oblivious to the
+fact that it was cold. A fearfully fat youth--a future school officer,
+so far as could be determined from his looks--had hit upon the happy
+idea of pasting the title of the _Fraenkischer Herold_ to the Goose Man's
+hat. This took the initiated by storm.
+
+Kropotkin recognised Daniel. He called to him, threw him kisses, had one
+of the wooden swords given him, and went through the motion of directing
+an orchestra. The fat boy hurled a handful of pretzels at the spot on
+the sidewalk where Daniel was standing; a trombone began to bray; the
+Englishman first stuck his head out of his cabriolet, and then got out
+and hopped over to Daniel, carrying a pole draped with women's clothes,
+including a feather hat and a veil. A new keg of beer was tapped on the
+Gambrinus wagon, while the people in the houses rushed to the windows
+and roared.
+
+"You have forgotten the railing," cried Daniel in a loud voice to the
+people on the Goose Man wagon.
+
+"What did he say?" they asked, and looked at each other in astonishment.
+The on-lookers were filled with curious silence: many of them gazed at
+Daniel, bewildered.
+
+"You forgot the railing," he repeated, with glistening eyes, "you have
+forgotten the iron railing. Without his protection the poor Goose Man is
+to be sure your buffoon, your zany, your clown."
+
+He laughed quietly, and, with opened mouth and shining teeth, quickly
+withdrew from the innumerable gapers. Having reached a deserted alley,
+he began to sing with a frenzied expression on his face: "Whom thou dost
+not desert, oh Genius, him wilt thou raise up with wings of fire. He
+will wander on as if with feet of flowers across Deucalion's seas of
+slime, killing Python, light-footed, famed Pythius Apollo."
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+A few weeks later a real singer came to Daniel. She sang several of the
+songs he had written. He had thought they were completely forgotten by
+everybody. Her art was not merely perfect; it was wonderful.
+
+It was a very mysterious visit the singer paid him. One afternoon during
+a fearful snow storm the bell rang; and when Gertrude opened the door,
+she saw a woman wearing a heavy black veil standing before her, who said
+she wished to speak to Kapellmeister Nothafft. Gertrude took her up to
+Daniel's room. The stranger told Daniel she had been wishing to make his
+acquaintance for a long time, and, now on her way to Italy, she had been
+detained in the city for a few days by the illness of a near friend.
+This, she said, she regarded as a hint from fate itself. She had come to
+extend him her greetings, and particularly to thank him for his songs, a
+copy of which a friend had been good enough to present to her at a time
+when she was living under the weight of a great sorrow.
+
+She spoke with an accent that had a Northern note in it, but easily and
+fluently; she gave the impression of a woman who had seen a great deal
+of the world and had profited by her travels. Daniel asked her with whom
+he had the pleasure of speaking, but she smiled, and asked permission to
+conceal her name for the present. She said that it really did not make
+much difference, and that it might be more agreeable to him later to
+think that an unknown woman had come to him to express her appreciation
+than to recall that Fraeulein So-and-So had been there: she hoped that
+her very anonymity would make a more lasting impression on his memory
+than could be made by a woman of whom he knew only what everybody knows.
+
+The mingling of the jocose and the serious, of the mind and the heart,
+in the words of the stranger pleased Daniel. Though his replies were
+curt and cool, it was plain that she was affording him much pleasure:
+she was reminding him of the fact that his creations had not after all
+sunk into an echoless abyss. In course of time, the conversation turned
+again to the songs; she said she would like very much to sing some of
+them for him. Daniel was pleased. He got the score, sat down at the
+piano, and the enigmatic woman began to sing. At the very first note
+Daniel was enraptured; he had never heard such a voice: so soft, so
+pure, so emotional, so unlike the conventional product of the
+conservatory. As soon as she had finished the first song, he looked up
+at her in unaffected embarrassment, and murmured: "Who are you, anyhow?
+Who are you?"
+
+"No investigations or cross-questioning, please," replied the singer,
+and, blushing at the praise Daniel was bestowing on her by his very
+behaviour, she laughed and said, "The next song, please, that one by
+Eichendorff!"
+
+Gertrude, who had not wished to remain longer than was necessary
+because of the unkempt impression she knew she made, had hastened down
+to the kitchen. And now Eleanore came in, after having knocked at the
+door with all imaginable timidity. She had heard the strange voice, had
+rushed out into the hall, and, unable to restrain her curiosity any
+longer, had come in to see the singer.
+
+Daniel nodded to her with radiant eyes, the stranger greeted her
+cordially though calmly, and then began to sing the next song; after
+this she took up the third, and so on until she had sung the complete
+cycle of six. Old Jordan was standing behind the door; he had his hands
+pressed to his face and was listening; he was much moved.
+
+"Well, I must be going," said the strange woman, after she had finished
+the last song. She shook hands with Daniel, and said: "It has been a
+beautiful hour."
+
+"It has been one of the most beautiful hours I have ever experienced,"
+said Daniel.
+
+"Farewell!"
+
+"Farewell!"
+
+The strange woman went away, leaving behind her not a trace of anything
+other than the memory of a joy that grew more fabulous as the
+storm-tossed years rolled by. Daniel never saw her again, and never
+heard from her again.
+
+
+                                 XVII
+
+While the woman was singing, Gertrude had been standing down in the hall
+listening. She knew every note of every song; every melody in the
+accompaniment seemed to her like an old, familiar picture. She was also
+aware that an artist by the grace of God had been in the house.
+
+But how strange it was that she should find nothing unusual in the
+incident. She felt that a living stream in her bosom had dried up,
+leaving nothing but sand and stones in its bed. This inability to feel,
+this being dead to all sensations, took the form of excruciating pangs
+of conscience.
+
+"My God, my God, what has happened to me?" she sighed, and wrung her
+hands.
+
+That evening she went to the Church of Our Lady, and prayed for a long
+while. Her prayer did not appease her, however; she came back home more
+disquieted than ever.
+
+The door of the living room was open: Daniel and Eleanore were sitting
+by the lamp, reading together from a book. The baby began to move;
+Eleanore had left the door open so that she might be able to hear the
+child when it woke up. Gertrude took the child in her arms, quieted it,
+and returned to the door leading into the living room. Daniel and
+Eleanore had turned their backs to the door, and were so absorbed in
+their reading that they were not aware of Gertrude's presence.
+
+A light suddenly came into Gertrude's heart: she became conscious of her
+guilt--the guilt she had been trying in vain to fathom now for so many
+cruel weeks.
+
+She did not have enough of the power of love; therein lay her guilt. She
+had assumed an obligation that was quite beyond her power to fulfil: she
+had entered into marriage without having the requisite strength of
+heart.
+
+Marriage had seemed to her like the Holy of Holies. Her union with the
+man she loved seemed to her to be of equal significance with the union
+with God. But when she saw that this bond had been broken, the world was
+plunged into an abyss immeasurably remote from God. And it was not her
+husband who seemed to her to be guilty of infidelity; nor did she look
+upon her sister as being the guilty one; it was she herself who had been
+unfaithful and guilty in their eyes. She had not stood the test; she had
+been tried and found wanting; her strength had not been equal to her
+presumptions; God had rejected her. This conviction became irrevocably
+rooted in her heart.
+
+In her union with Daniel music had become something divine; and she saw,
+now this union had been broken, something in music that was perilous,
+something that was to be avoided: she understood why she was so
+unemotional, why her feelings had dried up and vanished.
+
+But she wanted to make one more effort to see whether she was entirely
+right in the analysis of her soul. One morning she went to Daniel, and
+asked him to play a certain passage from the "Harzreise." She said she
+would like to hear the close of the slow middle movement which had
+always made such an appeal to her. Her request was made in such an
+urgent, anxious tone that Daniel granted it, though he did not feel like
+playing. As Gertrude listened, she became paler and paler: her diagnosis
+was being corroborated with fearful exactness. What had once been a
+source of ecstasy was now the cause of intense torture. The tones and
+harmonies seemed to be eating into her very soul; the pain she felt was
+so overwhelming, that it was only with the greatest exertion that she
+mustered up sufficient self-control to leave the room unaided. Daniel
+was dismayed.
+
+On her return to the kitchen, Gertrude heard a most peculiar noise in
+her bedroom. She went in only to see that little Agnes had crept into
+the corner of the room where the harp stood, and was striking the
+strings with a copper spoon, highly pleased with her actions. Gertrude
+was seized with a vague, nameless terror. She took the harp into the
+kitchen, removed the strings from the frame, rolled them up, put them in
+a drawer, and carried the stringless frame up to the attic.
+
+"What can I do?" she whispered to herself, and looked around in the
+attic with an expression of complete helplessness. She longed for peace,
+and it seemed peaceful up where she was. She stayed a while, leaning up
+against one of the beams, her eyes closed.
+
+"What can I do?" That was the question she put to herself day and night.
+"I can no longer be of any help to my husband; to stand in his way
+merely because of the child is not right." Such was the trend of her
+argument. She saw how he was suffering, how Eleanore was suffering, how
+each was suffering on account of the other, and how both were suffering
+because of the despicable vulgarity of the human race. She thought to
+herself that if she were not living, everything would be right. She
+imagined, indeed she was certain, that all the truth he had given her
+had had the sole purpose of whitewashing a lie, by which she was to be
+made to believe that her existence was a necessity to him. She was
+convinced that the weight of this lie was crushing the very life out of
+him. She wished to free him from it and its consequences. But how she
+was to do this she did not know. She knew that if Daniel and Eleanore
+could belong to each other in a legal, legitimate way, they would be
+vindicated in the eyes of God and man. But how this was to be brought
+about she did not know.
+
+She sought and sought for a way out. Her ideas were vague but
+persistent. She felt that she was running around in a circle, unable to
+do more than stare at the centre of the circle. Every morning at five
+o'clock she would get up and go to church. She prayed with a devotion
+and passion that physically exhausted her heart.
+
+One morning she knelt before the altar in unusually heart-rending
+despair. She thought she heard a small voice crying out to her and
+telling her to take her life.
+
+She swooned; people rushed up to her, and wet her forehead with cold
+water. This enabled her to get up and go home. A peculiarly sorrowful
+and dreamy expression lay on her face.
+
+She wanted to do some knitting, for she recalled that when she was a
+girl she was always able to dispel care and grief by knitting. But every
+stitch she made turned into the cry: "You must take your life."
+
+She knelt down by the cradle of little Agnes, but the child said to her
+only too distinctly: "Mother, you must take your life."
+
+Eleanore came in. On her brow was the light of enjoyed happiness; her
+whole body was happiness; her lips trembled and twitched with happiness.
+But her eyes said. "Sister, you must take your life."
+
+Philippina stood by the kitchen stove, and whispered to the coals:
+"Gertrude, you must take your life." Her father came in, got his dinner,
+expressed his thanks for it, and went out murmuring, "Daughter, you must
+take your life; believe me, it will be for the best."
+
+If she passed by the well, something drew her to the edge; voices called
+to her from the depths. From every beaker she put to her lips to drink
+shone forth her image as if from beyond the tomb. On Sunday she climbed
+up the Vestner Tower, and let her eyes roam over the plains below as if
+in the grief of departure. She leaned forward out of the little window
+with a feeling of assuaging horror. The keeper, seeing what she was
+doing, rushed up, seized her arms, and made her get back.
+
+If the cock crew, it was the crow of death; if the clock ticked, it was
+the tick of death; if the wind blew, it was a breath from beyond the
+grave. "You must take your life"--with this thought the air, the earth,
+the house, the church, the morning, the evening, and her dreams were
+full.
+
+In April Eleanore was taken down with fever. Gertrude watched by her
+bedside night and day; she sacrificed herself. Daniel, worried about
+Eleanore, went around in a dazed condition. When he came to her bed he
+never noticed Gertrude. After Eleanore had begun to recover, Gertrude
+lay down; for she was very tired. But she could not sleep; she got up
+again.
+
+She went into the kitchen in her bare feet, though she did not know why
+she went. It was the consuming restlessness of her heart that drove her
+from her bed. Her legs were heavy with exhaustion, but she did not like
+to stay in any one place for any length of time. Later Daniel came back
+from the city, and brought her a silver buckle which he fastened to her
+bracelet. Then he pressed his lips to her forehead, and said: "I thank
+you for having been so good to Eleanore."
+
+Gertrude stood as if rooted to the floor. Something seemed to cry
+incessantly within her; she felt that a mortally wounded beast was in
+her bosom wallowing in its blood. Long after Daniel had gone to his room
+she could still be seen standing in the middle of the floor. Wrapped in
+gloomy meditation, she removed the buckle from her bracelet: she thought
+she saw an ugly mark where the metal had touched her skin. She went into
+her room, opened the cabinet, and hid the buckle under a pile of linen.
+
+She had only one wish: she wanted to sleep. But as soon as she would
+close her eyes her heart would begin to beat with doubled, trebled
+rapidity. She had to get up and walk back and forth in the room; she was
+struggling for breath.
+
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+A few days later she went out during a pouring rain storm, and wandered
+about aimlessly through the streets. Every minute she feared--and
+hoped--she would fall over and become unconscious of herself and the
+world about her. She passed by two churches, the doors of which were
+locked. It was growing dark; she reached the apothecary shop of Herr
+Pflaum, and looked in through the glass door. Herr Seelenfromm was
+standing at the counter, mixing some medicine in a mortar. She went in
+and asked him whether he could not give her a narcotic. He said he
+could, and asked her what it should be. "One which makes you sleep for a
+long, long while," she said, and smiled at him so as to make him
+inclined to fulfil her request. It was the first smile that had adorned
+her grief-stricken face for many a day. Herr Seelenfromm was just about
+to suggest a remedy to her. He sat down in a vain position so that he
+might avail himself of the opportunity to flirt with her a little. The
+apothecary, however, came up just then, and when he heard what Gertrude
+wanted, he cast a penetrating glance at her and said: "You had better go
+to the doctor, my good woman, and have him make you out a prescription.
+I have had some rather disagreeable experiences with cases of this
+kind."
+
+When Gertrude had finally dragged herself home, she found Philippina
+sitting by the cradle of little Agnes, rocking the child back and forth
+and humming a lullaby. "Where is Eleanore?" asked Gertrude.
+
+"Where do you think she is?" said Philippina contemptuously: "She is
+upstairs with your husband."
+
+Gertrude heard Daniel playing the piano. She raised her head to hear
+what he was playing.
+
+"She told me I was to go with her to Glaishammer to get a washwoman for
+you," continued Philippina.
+
+"Ah, what do we want with a washwoman?" said Gertrude; "we cannot afford
+one. It costs a great deal of money, and every cent of money spent means
+a drop of blood from Daniel's veins. Don't go to Glaishammer! I would
+rather do the washing myself!"
+
+She knew, however, at that very moment that she had done her last
+washing. There was something so mournful about the light of the lamp.
+Agnes's little face looked so pale as it peeped out from under the
+covers, Philippina cowered so witlessly at the floor. But all this was
+only for the moment; all this she could take with her up into a better
+world.
+
+She bent down over the child, and kissed it, and kissed it with hot,
+burning lips. A lurk of unsoftened evil crept into Philippina's face.
+"Listen, Gertrude, listen: you are all Greek to me," said Philippina, "I
+don't understand you."
+
+Gertrude went over to Eleanore's room, where she stood for a while in
+the dark, trembling and thinking. At times she was startled: she heard
+some one walking about, and she thought the door would open. She could
+scarcely endure her impatience. Suddenly she remembered the attic and
+how quiet it was up there; there no one could disturb her. She decided
+to go up. On her way she went into the kitchen, and took a thick cord
+from a sugar-loaf.
+
+As she passed by Daniel's room, she noticed that the door was half open.
+He was still playing. Two candles were standing on the piano; Eleanore
+was leaning up against the side of the piano. She had on a pale blue
+dress that fell down over her beautiful body in peaceful folds.
+
+Gertrude looked at the picture with wide-open eyes. There was an
+inimitable urging, a reaching aloft, and a painful sinking-back in the
+piece he was playing and in the way he was playing it. Gertrude went on
+up without making the slightest bit of noise. It was dark, but she found
+her way by feeling along with her hands.
+
+
+                                  XIX
+
+After a half-hour had gone by, Philippina began to wonder where Gertrude
+was. She looked in the living room, then in Eleanore's room, and then
+hastened up the steps and peeped through the open door into Daniel's
+room. Daniel had stopped playing and was talking with Eleanore.
+Philippina turned back. On the stairs she met Jordan just then coming in
+from his evening walk. She lighted a candle, and looked in the kitchen.
+Gertrude was nowhere to be found.
+
+"It is raining; there is her raincoat, and here is her umbrella, so she
+can't have gone out," thought Philippina to herself. She sat down on the
+kitchen table, and stared before her.
+
+She was filled with an ugly, bitter suspicion; she scented a tragedy. In
+the course of another half-hour, she got up, took the lighted candle,
+and started out on a second search. Something drove her all about the
+house: she went out into the hall, into the various rooms, and then back
+to the kitchen.
+
+All of a sudden she thought of the attic. It was the expression on
+Gertrude's face the last time she kissed Agnes that made her think of
+it. Was not the attic of any house, and particularly the one in this
+house, the room that had the greatest attraction for her, and that her
+light-fearing fancy invariably chose as the most desirable and befitting
+place for her hidden actions?
+
+She went up quickly and without making the least noise. Holding the
+lighted candle out before her, she stared at a rafter from which hung a
+human figure dressed in woman's clothes. She wheeled about, uttering a
+stifled gurgle. A sort of drunkenness came over her; she was seized with
+a terrible desire to dance. She raised one leg, and sank her teeth deep
+into the nails of her right hand. In her convulsions she had the feeling
+that some one was crying out to her in a strong voice: "Set it on fire!
+Set it on fire!"
+
+Near the chimney wall was a pile of letters and old newspapers. She fell
+on her knees, and exclaimed: "Blaze! Blaze!" And then, half with horror
+and half with rejoicing, she uttered a series of irrational, incoherent
+sounds that were nothing more than "Hu-hu, oi-oi, hu-hu, oi-oi!"
+
+The fire from the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps
+with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to
+hear.
+
+In a few minutes the house was a bedlam. Daniel ran up the steps,
+Eleanore close behind him. The women in the lower apartments came
+running up, screaming for water. Daniel and Eleanore turned back, and
+dragged a big pail full of water up the stairs. The fire alarm was
+turned in, the men made their way into the building, and with the help
+of many hands the flames were in time extinguished.
+
+Jordan was the first to see the lifeless Gertrude. Standing in smoke and
+ashes, he sobbed and moaned, and finally fell to the floor as if struck
+on the head with an axe. The men carried Gertrude's body out; her
+clothes were still smoking.
+
+Philippina had vanished.
+
+
+
+
+                               ELEANORE
+
+
+                                   I
+
+It was all over.
+
+The visit of the doctor was over; and so was that of the coroner. The
+investigations of the various boards, including that of the fire
+department, the cross-examination, the taking of evidence, the coming to
+a decision--all this was over.
+
+The cause of the fire remained unexplained; a guilty party could not be
+found. Philippina Schimmelweis had sworn that the fire had already
+started when she reached the attic. It was therefore assumed that the
+suicide had knocked over a lighted candle in her last moments.
+
+The crowd of acquaintances and close friends had disappeared; this was
+over too. Hardened souls expressed their conventional sympathy to
+Kapellmeister Nothafft. That a man who had carried his head so high had
+suddenly been obliged to lower it in humility awakened a feeling of
+satisfaction. The punished evil-doer again gained public favour. Women
+from the better circles of society expatiated at length on the question
+whether a relation which in all justice would have to be designated as a
+criminal one while the poor woman was living could be transformed into a
+legal one after the lapse of a certain amount of time. With pimplike
+generosity and match-making indulgence they decided that it could.
+
+The funeral was also over. Gertrude was buried in St. John's Cemetery on
+a stormy day.
+
+The preacher had preached a sermon, the mourners had stood with their
+hands stuffed in their coat pockets and their furs, for it was cold. As
+the coffin was lowered into the grave, Jordan cried out: "Farewell,
+Gertrude! Until we meet again, my child!"
+
+There was one man who crowded right up to the edge of the grave: it was
+Herr Carovius. He looked over his nose glasses at Jordan and Daniel and
+Eleanore. It seemed to him that the latter, with her pale face and her
+black dress, was more beautiful than the most beautiful Madonna any
+Italian or Spaniard had ever immortalised on imperishable canvas.
+
+He turned his frightened face to one side, and came very nearly falling
+over the heaped-up earth by the grave.
+
+With regard to Daniel's conduct, Pflaum, the apothecary, had this to
+say: "I should have expected more grief and sorrow from him, and not so
+much sullenness."
+
+"A hard-hearted man, an exceedingly hard-hearted man," said Herr
+Seelenfromm in his grief.
+
+Daniel was severely criticised for his discourteous treatment of the
+people from the City Theatre, every one of whom had come to the funeral.
+When several of them shook hands with him, he merely nodded, and blinked
+his eyes behind the round glasses which he had been wearing for some
+time.
+
+Judge Kleinlein said: "He should be very grateful for the Christian
+burial, for despite the evidence that was turned in, it was not
+satisfactorily proved that the woman was in her right mind."
+
+Eleanore looked into the open grave. She thought: "Guilt is being heaped
+upon guilt, deep, serious guilt."
+
+All this was over now. Daniel and Eleanore and Jordan had come back to
+the house.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+They felt lonely and deserted. Jordan shut himself up in his room. It
+was rare now that he took his accustomed evening walks; his coat-sleeves
+and the ends of his trouser legs had become more and more frayed. He
+pined away; his hair became snow white, his walk unsteady, his eye dim.
+But he was never ill, and he never complained of his fate. He never said
+anything at the table; he was a quiet man.
+
+Eleanore moved back up with her father, and Daniel took his old room
+next to the dining room. There was all of a sudden so much space; he was
+surprised that the going of a single person could make such a vast
+difference.
+
+Eleanore spent the whole day with little Agnes until Philippina came and
+relieved her. She also did her work close to Agnes.
+
+When she had finished her writing, she had to look after the house. She
+could not cook, and had no desire to learn how, so she had a woman come
+in three times a week who prepared the midday meals. Twice a week she
+would prepare meals for two days, and once a week she would get them
+ready for three days. She was a modest woman who worked for very little
+money. The food she cooked merely needed to be heated over, and in the
+evening they always had sausage and sandwiches anyhow.
+
+It was a practical arrangement, but no one praised Eleanore for it.
+
+At first she spent her nights in Gertrude's room with the child; she
+could not stand this, however, longer than three weeks. Either she could
+not sleep, or she had such terrible dreams.
+
+Then she took to carrying the child up to her room with her and making a
+little bed for it on the sofa. But the child did not sleep so well
+there; Eleanore noticed that, as a result of all the excitement and hard
+work, she was losing strength.
+
+Often in the night when she would take the child to quiet it--and become
+so tired and uneasy--she would make up her mind to have a talk with
+Daniel. But the next morning she would find it impossible to bring up
+the subject. She felt that the voice of Gertrude was admonishing her
+from beyond the grave and telling her to be patient.
+
+She felt, too, that the time was drawing near when she would succumb to
+over-exertion; it made her anxious. Just then Philippina came in to
+help.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+When Jason Philip heard that Philippina was going to Jordan's daughters
+every day, he told her most emphatically and repeatedly that she had to
+quit it. Philippina paid not the slightest attention to him and did as
+she pleased.
+
+"I'll kill you," cried Jason Philip at the girl.
+
+Philippina shrugged her shoulders and laughed impudently.
+
+Jason Philip saw that a grown person was standing before him; he was
+afraid of the evil look of his daughter.
+
+It was long before he could make out what was taking her to his enemies.
+Then he learned that wherever she chanced to be, at home, or with
+acquaintances, or with strangers, she was spreading evil reports
+concerning Daniel and his family. This tended to make him a bit more
+indulgent: he too wanted to feast his ears on scandal from that quarter.
+At times he would enter into a conversation with Philippina, and when
+she told him the latest news he was filled with fiendish delight. "The
+day will come when I will get back at that music-maker, you see if I
+don't," he said.
+
+Theresa was still confined to her bed. During his leisure hours
+Willibald had to read to her, either from the newspapers or from trashy
+novels. When she was alone she lay perfectly quiet and stared at the
+ceiling.
+
+The time finally came when Willibald left school. He went to Fuerth,
+where he was employed as an apprentice by a manufacturer. There was no
+doubt in any one's mind but that he would become one of those loyal,
+temperate, industrious people who are the pride of their parents, and
+who climb the social ladder at the rate of an annual increase in salary
+of thirty marks.
+
+The one-eyed Markus entered the paternal bookshop, where he soon
+familiarised himself with the novels of the world from Dumas and Luise
+Muehlbach to Ohnet and Zola, and with the popular sciences from Darwin to
+Mantegazza. His brain was a book catalogue, and his mouth an oracle of
+the tastes displayed at the last fair. But in reality he not only did
+not like the books, he regarded all this printed matter as a jolly fine
+deception practised on people who did not know what to do with their
+money. Zwanziger, the clerk, had married the widow of a cheese merchant,
+and was running a shop of his own on the Regensburg Chaussee.
+
+"A rotten business," said Jason Philip at the end of each month. "The
+trouble with me," he invariably added, "is that I have been too much of
+an idealist. If I had worked as hard for myself as I have for other
+people, I would be a rich man to-day."
+
+He went to the cafe and discussed politics. He had developed into a
+perpetual grumbler; he was pleased with nothing, neither the government
+nor the opposition. To hear him talk you would have thought that the
+opposing parties had been forced to narrow their platforms down to the
+differences between the views of Prince Bismarck and Jason Philip
+Schimmelweis. When Kaiser Wilhelm I died, Jason Philip acted as though
+his appointment to the chancellorship was imminent. And when in that
+same memorable year Kaiser Friedrich succumbed to his sufferings, Jason
+Philip resembled the pilot on whose isolated fearlessness the rescue of
+the storm-tossed ship of state depends.
+
+The born hero always finds a sphere of activity, a forum from which to
+express his views. If public life has rejected him, he goes to the cafe,
+where he is sure to find a congenial element.
+
+One day Theresa got up from the bed where she had spent fifteen unbroken
+months, and seemed all of a sudden completely recovered. The physician
+said it was the strangest case that had ever come under his observation.
+But Jason Philip said: "It is the triumph of a good constitution." With
+that he went to the cafe, drank beer, made fiery political speeches, and
+played skat.
+
+But Theresa left her bed not as a woman forty-six years old--that was
+her age--but as a woman of seventy. She had only a few sparsely
+distributed grey hairs left on her square head, her face was full of
+wrinkles, her eye was hard and cold. From that time on, however, she did
+not seem to age. She did not quarrel any more, attended to her affairs
+in a straightforward, self-assured way, and observed her increasing
+impoverishment with unexpected calm.
+
+She lived on herring, potatoes, and coffee; it was the same diet on
+which Philippina and Markus lived, with the one exception that Markus,
+as the child nearest her heart, was allowed a piece of sugar for his
+coffee. Jason Philip was also put on a diet: he never dared open his
+mouth about it, either.
+
+Philippina stood it for a while in silence; finally she said to her
+mother: "I can't stand this chicory brew forever."
+
+"Then you'll have to lap up water, you will," replied Theresa.
+
+"No, I won't," said Philippina. "I am going to hire out."
+
+"Well, hire out. Who cares? It'll be one mouth less to feed." "Your
+daughter is going to hire out," said Theresa to her husband, when he
+came home that evening.
+
+Jason Philip had been playing cards that day, and had lost. He was in a
+terrible humour: "She can go plumb to the Devil so far as I am
+concerned." That was his comment.
+
+The next morning Philippina sneaked up to the attic, and drew out her
+cash from the hole in the chimney: it amounted to nine hundred and forty
+marks, mostly in gold, which she had exchanged in the course of years
+for small coins. Through the opening in the wall the June sun fell upon
+her face, which, never young and bearing the stamp of extended crime,
+looked like that of a witch.
+
+She put the money in a woollen stocking, rolled it up in a knot, stuffed
+it down her corset between her breasts, made the sign of the cross, and
+repeated one of her drivelling formulas. Her clothes, ribbons, and other
+possessions she had already packed in a basket. This she carried down
+the stairs, and, without saying good-bye to a soul, left the house.
+
+Her brother Markus was standing with sprawled legs in the sun before the
+store, whistling. He caught sight of her with his one eye, smiled
+contemptuously at her, and cried: "Happy journey!"
+
+Philippina turned to him, and said: "You branded lout! You're going to
+have a lousy time of it, mark what I tell you!"
+
+In this frame of mind and body she came to Daniel, and said to him: "I
+want to work for you. You don't need to pay nothing if you ain't got
+it."
+
+Daniel had been noticing for some time that Eleanore could not stand the
+exertion required of her by the extra work.
+
+"Will you mind the baby and sleep with it?" Daniel asked. Philippina
+nodded and looked down.
+
+"If you will take care of the child and act right toward it and me, I
+shall be awfully grateful to you," he said, breathing more easily.
+
+Thereupon Philippina threw her hands to her face, and shuddered from
+head to foot. She was not exactly crying; there was something much
+worse, much more despairing, in what she was doing than in mere crying.
+She seemed to be convulsed by some demoniac power; a ghastly dream
+seemed to have seized her in a moment of higher consciousness. She
+turned around and trotted into the room where the child was playing with
+a wooden horse.
+
+She sat down on a foot-stool, and stared at the restless little
+creature.
+
+Daniel stopped, stood perfectly still, and looked at her in a mood of
+solicitous reflection.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+During a rehearsal of "Traviata," Daniel flew into a rage at Fraeulein
+Varini: "Listen, pay attention to your intonation, and keep in time.
+It's enough to make a man lose his mind! What are you squeaking up at
+the gallery for? You're supposed to be singing a song, and not whining
+for a little bit of cheap applause."
+
+The lady stepped out to the foot-lights with heaving bosom. Her offended
+dignity created something like the spread tail of a peacock about her
+hips: "How dare you?" she exclaimed: "I give you your choice: You can
+apologise or leave this place. Whatever you do, you are going to become
+acquainted with the power I have."
+
+Daniel folded his arms, let his eyes roam over the members of the
+orchestra, and said: "Good-bye, gentlemen. Since it is the director's
+place to choose between me and this lady, there is no doubt whatever but
+that my term of usefulness in this position is up. And moreover, in an
+institution where meat is more valuable than music, I feel that I am
+quite superfluous."
+
+The other singers had come running out from the wings, and were
+standing crowded together on the stage looking down at the orchestra.
+When Daniel laid down his baton and walked away, every member of the
+orchestra rose as one man to his feet. It was a voluntary and almost
+overwhelming expression of speechless admiration. Though they had never
+loved this man, though they had regarded him as an evil, alien kill-joy,
+who interfered with their easy-going habits as musicians in that town,
+they nevertheless respected his energy, admired the nobility of his
+intentions, and at least had a vague idea of his genius.
+
+Fraeulein Varini went into hysterics. The director was called in. He
+promised Fraeulein Varini immediate redress, and wrote a letter to Daniel
+requesting that he offer an apology.
+
+Daniel replied in a brief note that he had no thought of changing his
+plans as announced when he left the building. He remarked that it was
+quite impossible for him to get along with Fraeulein Varini, that either
+he or she would have to quit, and that since she intended to remain he
+must consider his resignation as submitted and accepted.
+
+That evening, as he was sitting at the table with Eleanore, he told her,
+after a long silence and in very few words, what had happened. Her
+response to him was a look of astonishment; that was all.
+
+"Oh, it was the only thing I could do," said Daniel, without looking up
+from his plate; "I was so heartily sick of the whole business."
+
+"What are you going to live on, you and your child?" asked Eleanore.
+
+His eye became even darker and harsher: "You know, God who makes the
+lilies grow in the fields ... I can't quote that old proverb exactly, my
+familiarity with the Bible is nothing to boast of."
+
+That was all they said. The window was open; there was a mysterious
+pulsing in the earth; the warm air had a disagreeable taste, somewhat
+like that of sweet oil.
+
+When the clock in the tower struck ten, Eleanore got up and said
+good-night.
+
+"Good-night!" replied Daniel, with bowed head.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+That is the way it was now every evening between the two; for during the
+day they scarcely saw each other.
+
+Daniel would sit perfectly still for hours at a time and brood.
+
+He could not forget. He could not forget the burning, smoking border of
+the dress; nor the shoes that had some street mud on them; nor the face
+with the pinched upper lip, the dishevelled hair, the nervously knitted
+brow.
+
+Under the linen in the clothes press he had found the silver buckle he
+had given her. "Why did she hide it there?" he asked himself. The
+condition of her soul when she opened the press and put the buckle in it
+became vivid, real; it became blended with his own soul, a part of his
+own being.
+
+Then he discovered the harp without the strings. He took it to his room;
+and when he looked at it, he had the feeling that he was looking at a
+face without flesh.
+
+"Am I too melancholy, too heavy for you?" This was the question that
+came to him from the irrevocable past. And that other statement: "I will
+be your mother made young again." And that other one, too: "I, too, am a
+living creature."
+
+He recalled some old letters she had written him and which he had
+carefully preserved. He read them over with the care and caution he
+would have exercised in studying an agreement, the disregard or
+fulfilment of which was a matter of life and death. And there were bits
+of old embroidery from her girlhood which he acquired in order to lock
+them up and keep them as if they were sacred relics.
+
+She stood out in his mind and his soul more vividly with each passing
+hour. If he remembered how she sat and listened when he played or
+discussed his works, he felt something clutching at his throat. He
+recalled how she crept up to him once and pressed her forehead against
+his lips: this picture was enshrouded in the awe of an unfathomable
+mystery.
+
+It was not a sense of guilt that bound him to his deceased wife. Nor was
+it contrition or self-reproach or the longing that finds expression in
+the realisation of accumulated neglect. His fancy warded off all thought
+of death; in its creative defiance it invested the dead woman with a
+reality she never possessed while making her pilgrimage in bodily form
+over this earth.
+
+It was not until now that she really took on form and shape for Daniel.
+And this is the marvellous and the criminal feature of the musician.
+Things and people are not his while they are his. He lives with shadows;
+it is only what he has lost that is his in living form. Dissociated from
+the moment, he reaches out for the moment that is gone; he longs for
+yesterday and storms to-morrow with unassimilative impatience. What he
+has in his hands is withered; what lies behind him is in flower. His
+thinking is a winter between two springs: the true one that is gone, and
+the one that is to come of which he dreams, but when it arrives he fails
+to take it to himself. He does not see; he has seen. He does not love;
+he has loved. He is not happy; he was happy. Dead, lifeless eyes open in
+the grave; and the living eyes that look into the grave, see all things,
+understand all things, and glorify all things, feel as if they are being
+deceived by death and its duration throughout eternity.
+
+Gertrude was transformed into a melody; everything she had done or said
+was a melody. Her silence was awakened, her mute hours were made
+eloquent. Once he had seen her and Eleanore, the one in a brown dress,
+the other in a blue, minor and major, the two poles of his universe. Now
+the major arose like the night, spread out over the lonely earth, and
+enveloped all things in mourning. Grief fed on pictures that had once
+been daily, commonplace occurrences, but which were illumined at present
+by the brightness of visions.
+
+He saw her as she lay in bed with the two braids of hair on either side
+of her face, her face itself looking like a wax figure in an old black
+frame. He could see her as she carried a dish into the room, threaded a
+needle, put a glass to her lips to drink, or laced up her shoe. He could
+see the expression in her eye when she cautioned, besought, was amazed,
+or smiled. How incomparably star-like this eye had all of a sudden
+become! It was always lifted up, always bright with inner meaning,
+always fixed on him. In the vision of this eye he found one evening
+along toward sunset the motif of a sonata in B minor. A gesture he
+remembered--it was the time Eleanore stood before the mirror with the
+myrtle wreath on her head--gave the impulse to the stirring _presto_ in
+the first movement of a quartette. The twenty-second Psalm, beginning
+"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" he sketched on awakening
+from a dream in which Gertrude had appeared before him in perfect
+repose, as pale as death, her chin resting on her hand.
+
+But it could not be said that he worked. The music he wrote under these
+conditions simply gushed forth, so to speak, during fits of fever. When
+the mood came over him, he would scribble the notes on whatever lay
+nearest him; his haste seemed to betray a sense of guilt. He stole from
+himself; tones appealed to him as so many crimes. When the gripping
+melody of the twenty-second Psalm arose in his mind, he trembled from
+head to foot, and left the house as if lashed by Furies, though it was
+in the dead of night. The recurring bass figure of the _presto_ sounded
+to him as though it were a gruesome, awed voice stammering out the fatal
+words: "Man, hold your breath, Man, hold your breath!" And he did hold
+his breath, full of unresting discomfort, while his inspiration hacked
+its way through the ice-locked region into which a passionate spell that
+was becoming more and more a part of his nature had driven it.
+
+He saw humanity forsaking him; he watched the waves of isolation
+widening and deepening around him. Since he felt that time did not
+challenge him to effort of any kind, he took to despising time. It came
+to the point where he regarded his creations as something that never
+were intended for the world; he never spoke about them or cherished the
+remotest desire that men hear of them. The more completely he kept them
+in secret hiding, the more real they appeared to him. The thought that a
+man could write a piece of music and sell it for money appealed to him
+as on a par with the thought of disposing for so much cash of his mother
+or his sweetheart, of his child or one of his own limbs.
+
+He came on this account to cherish a feeling of superb disgust for
+shrewd dealers who were carried along on the wings of fashion. He took a
+dislike to anything that was famous; for fame smelled of and tasted to
+him like money. He shuddered at the mere thought of the chaos that
+arises from opinions and judgments; the disputes as to the merits of
+different schools and tendencies made him ill; he could not stand the
+perambulating virtuosos of all zones and nations, the feathers they
+manage to make fly, the noise they evoke, the truths they proclaim, the
+lies they wade about in and make a splash. He stood aghast at the
+mention of a concert hall or a theatre; he flew into a reasoned rage
+when he heard a neighbour playing a piano; he despised the false
+devotion of the masses, and scorned their impotent, imbecile transports.
+
+All their music smelled of and tasted to him like money.
+
+He had bought the biographies of the great masters. From them he
+familiarised himself with their distress and poverty; he read of the
+petty attitudes and fatuous mediocrity that stood deaf and dumb in the
+presence of immortal genius. But one day he chanced to read that
+Mozart's body had been buried in a pauper's grave. He hurled the book
+from him with an oath that he would never again touch a work of that
+sort. The mordant smoke of misanthropy blew into the fire of
+idolisation; he did not wish to see any one; he left the city, and
+found peace only after he had reached a lonely, unfrequented place in
+the forest, where he felt he was out of the reach of human feet and safe
+from the eyes of men.
+
+At night he would walk rapidly through the streets; his head was always
+bowed. If he became tired, he betook himself to some unknown cafe where
+he was sure he would not meet any of his acquaintances. If some one whom
+he knew met him on the street, he did not speak; if any one spoke to
+him, he was blatant and bizarre in his replies, and hastened off as
+rapidly as he could, with some caustic bit of intended wit on his
+loosened tongue.
+
+To enter the room where Philippina and the child were required much
+effort; at first he was able to do it only with pronounced aversion.
+Later he came somehow to be touched by the form and actions of the
+child: he would come in a few times each day for a minute or two only,
+take it up in his arms, have it poke its tiny hands into his face or
+even jerk at his nose glasses; he listened with undivided interest to
+its baby talk. Philippina would stand in the corner in the meanwhile,
+with her eyes on the floor and her mouth closed. He became painfully
+aware of his obligations to her because of her inexplicable fidelity to
+him, and knew that he would never be able to reward her for her unique
+and faithful assistance. He was grieved at the same time to see the
+child so motherless, so utterly without the attention that ennobles. The
+child's bright eyes, its outstretched arms hurt him: he feared the
+feelings slumbering even then in its breast, and was driven away by the
+thought of what might happen in the future.
+
+One morning in August he arose with the sun, went to the kitchen and got
+his own breakfast, took his walking stick, and left the house. He wanted
+to go to Eschenbach on foot.
+
+He walked the entire day, making only very short stops for rest. At noon
+the heat became intense; he asked a peasant, who chanced to drive up in
+his hay wagon, if he might ride a little. He had no definite end in
+view, no plan. Something drew him on; what it was he did not know.
+
+When he finally reached the little town it was late at night; the moon
+was shining. There was not a soul on the street. The windows of his
+mother's house were all dark. He climbed up the steps, and sat down as
+close to the front door as was physically possible. He imagined he could
+hear his mother and the child she had in her care breathing.
+
+It seemed so strange to him that his mother knew nothing of his
+presence. If she had known he was there, she would have unlocked the
+door and looked at him in astonishment. And if he had not felt like
+talking, he would have been obliged to lay his head in her lap and weep.
+Nothing else was possible; he could not speak. And yet the fear lest he
+talk, lest he be forced to tell everything, took such firm hold on him
+that he decided to start back home without letting his mother know that
+he had been there and without having seen either her or the child. The
+peculiar restlessness that had driven him away from his home and
+impelled him to go on this unusual journey was silenced as soon as he
+sat in the shadow of his mother's little house.
+
+But he was so tired that he soon fell asleep. He dreamed that the child
+and the old lady were standing before him, that the former had a great
+bunch of grapes in her hand and the latter a shovel and was shovelling
+up the earth, her face revealing a soul of sorrows. Eva seemed to him to
+be much more beautiful than she had been a year ago; he felt drawn to
+the child by an uncontrollable power and a painful love that stood in a
+most unusual relation to what his mother was doing. The longer his
+mother shovelled in the earth the heavier his heart became, but he could
+not say anything; he felt as if a glorious song were pouring forth from
+his soul, a song such as he had never heard in his life. Enraptured by
+its beauty, he woke up. At first he thought he could still hear it, but
+it was only the splashing of the water in the Wolfram fountain.
+
+The moon was high in the heavens. Daniel went over to the fountain just
+as the night watchman came along, blew his trumpet and sang: "Listen,
+all men, I wish to tell that it has struck two from the town-hall bell."
+The watchman noticed the lonely man standing by the fountain, was
+startled at first, but then continued on his rounds, repeating from time
+to time the words of his official song.
+
+Often as a child Daniel had read the inscription on the base of the
+Wolfram figure. Now he read the words, irradiated by the light of the
+moon, and they had a totally different meaning:
+
+    Water gives to the trees their life,
+    And makes with fertile vigour rife
+    All creatures of the world.
+    By water all our eyes are purled;
+    It washes clean man's very soul
+    And makes it like an angel, whole.
+
+Simple words, but Daniel read them in the light of a full experience,
+dipped his hands in the basin, and rubbed them over his eyes drunk with
+sleep; then casting one more glance at his mother's house, he turned in
+the direction of the road leading away from the town.
+
+Out in the fields it was too damp for him to lie down to rest. Near an
+isolated farm house he found a hay rick, went up to it, and lay down.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Every time Eleanore looked at Daniel her heart was filled with the same
+anxiety. She did not understand him; she could not comprehend a single
+one of his movements. Such joy as she had arose from meditation on the
+past.
+
+He did not seem to be able to recall her. One word, any word, from him
+would have relieved her of her anguish; but he spoke to her precisely as
+he spoke to Philippina or to Frau Kuett, the woman who came in to do the
+housework.
+
+It was bad enough to live with Philippina, to feel the incessant hatred
+of this secretive person; to suspect that she knew things that would not
+stand the light of day. But to see the child handed over to her, treated
+by her as though it were her own and guarded by her with a jealousy that
+made her face wrinkle with rage if Eleanore presumed to stay with it for
+as much as five minutes, this was infinitely worse.
+
+It was bad enough to have to accept with filial obedience the society of
+the speechless old father who spent his days and nights in his own
+mysterious way, striving without peace of any kind to reach an unknown
+goal. This made it hard for Eleanore. It was spooky in the rooms
+upstairs, and equally spooky in the ones downstairs. Eleanore dreaded
+the coming winter. At times she felt that her own voice had an unreal
+sound, and that her most commonplace remark echoed with the gloom of
+unhappy premonitions.
+
+She sought refuge in the old pictures of her longings--southern
+landscapes with groves and statues and a sea of supernatural blue. But
+she was too mature to find enduring satisfaction in empty dreams; she
+preferred, and felt it were better, to forget her grief in the
+distractions of hard work. It was not until the pen fell from her hand,
+weighed down with distress at the thought of so many unadorned and
+unrelieved hours, that something drew her back into the realm of spirits
+and visions. And then it was that she sought support, that she
+endeavoured to get a footing, in the world of actual objects round about
+her.
+
+She would take a pear, and think herself, so to speak, into the very
+heart of this bit of fruit, just as if it were possible to find
+protection, shelter in so small a space. Or she would take a piece of
+coloured glass, hold it in her hand, and look at the world of reality
+about her, hoping that the commonplace would in this way be made to seem
+more beautiful. Or she looked into the burning fire, and studied, with a
+smile on her face, the romantic tongues of flames. Or she had a longing
+to look at old pictures: she went to the Germanic Museum, and spent an
+entire morning there, standing before a Crucifixion, a Last Supper, her
+eye and her heart filled with flowing emotion.
+
+Her love for flowers became stronger than ever, and she began to study
+them. The most of them she picked herself; those that grew only in
+gardens she bought from the florists, paying very little for them. After
+she had made several purchases, they refused to take any more money from
+her; they gave her just as many flowers as she wanted. She took them
+home, and made bouquets out of them.
+
+One evening she was frightened by Philippina, who came rushing up to her
+just as she was arranging her flowers and told her that little Agnes had
+a high fever. Eleanore went out and got the doctor, who immediately
+reassured her. As she returned, her astonishment was intense and
+unusual. Reaching the door, her eyes fell on the flowers: they seemed
+wonderfully beautiful to her; the harmony and play of their colours was
+so striking that she involuntarily looked around in the illusion that a
+stranger had called during her absence, brought the flowers, and
+arranged them in their artistic bouquets.
+
+In the meantime poverty was haunting the house in very tangible form.
+Neither the butcher nor the baker was willing any longer to deliver
+goods on credit. It was quite impossible for Eleanore to support five
+people with her clerical work, to say nothing of keeping them in clothes
+and paying the rent. However hard she might work, the most she could do
+was to get enough money for the barest necessities. Her cares multiplied
+day by day.
+
+She had always been an implacable foe of debts; she would not make them.
+But after all, the people could not starve, and so she had to contract
+debts now. Bitter humiliations were unavoidable; she looked into the
+future with untempered dread. She racked her brain trying to devise
+plans, deplored her weakness and the gaps in her training, bemoaned the
+neglect both she and Daniel were suffering, and was quite disturbed to
+see that Philippina's heart was filled with joy at the thought that the
+destitution of the household with its accompanying mental anguish was
+rapidly increasing.
+
+Twice a day the druggist sent in his bill; finally he came in person. It
+was along toward evening when he rang. Philippina treated him so
+impolitely that he became impudent, and made such a noise that the
+people on the lower floors came out into the hall and leaned over the
+railing of the stairs. Eleanore ran down and stood before the man with
+folded hands. Jordan also left his room and looked on, sighing.
+
+Others came in and started trouble. Philippina came up to Eleanore, and,
+with a smile on her face as if she were going to tell of some great good
+fortune that had come to the family, said: "There's another down there,
+Eleanore; come down and give him a piece of your mind, or I'm thinking
+he's going to call the police."
+
+After quiet had been restored, Philippina began to rage and rant:
+"Daniel's a dunderhead. He could live like a Kaiser if he'd mix with the
+right people. I know a woman who is lousy with money, and she's going to
+git a lot more; but Daniel, the poor bloke, ain't got a ghost of an idea
+as to how to work people." She laughed furiously; or, in order to
+ventilate her spiteful rage, she picked up some object and smashed it to
+pieces on the floor.
+
+Eleanore did not hear what she had said. Her hope was gone. Daniel had
+been out of work for three months: who could explain his strange
+inactivity? The rent would be due in a short while, and then what?
+
+One morning she went to Daniel's room and said: "Daniel, we are out of
+money."
+
+He was sitting at the table reading; he looked at her as if he had to
+think for a while who she was: "Just have patience," he said, "you are
+not going to starve."
+
+"I am doing all that I possibly can, Daniel," continued Eleanore; "but
+tell me, please, how are you planning to keep the house going? I see no
+way out. Tell me, Daniel, tell me, please, what you are going to do."
+
+"A musician must be poor, Eleanore," replied Daniel, and looked at her
+with eyes that seemed to be frozen.
+
+"But he has got to live, I should think."
+
+"You can't live from husks alone, and I am not going to work my head off
+for husks."
+
+"Daniel, oh Daniel, where is your mind? And where is your heart?" cried
+Eleanore in despair.
+
+"Where I should have been long ago," he replied, without the shadow of a
+ray of hope. He got up, and turning his face away from Eleanore, said in
+a half-audible voice: "Let's have no argument, no cogency, no urgency.
+Not now! Not now when I am creeping along on the earth with such light
+as is left me, trying to grope my way out of the hole. A man doesn't
+give up the ghost so quickly as all that, Eleanore. The stomach is a
+very elastic piece of skin."
+
+He went into the other room, sat down at the piano, and struck a
+slow-moving bass chord.
+
+Eleanore turned to the wall, and buried her feverish brow in her hands.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+It was not in Eleanore's nature to submit to a misfortune without first
+having made every possible effort to evade it.
+
+She wrote for from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, with the result that
+she had finished all that was asked of her long before her time was
+really up.
+
+Then she looked around for a better paying position; it was in vain.
+Women had never been paid well, she had no recommendations, no personal
+connections, nothing on which she could depend or to which she might
+refer.
+
+Finally it occurred to her that she might make some money out of her
+flowers. She went to the florist at St. Lorenz Place, taking with her a
+garland of carnations and mignonettes she had made the day before. She
+told the florist she knew a great deal about flowers and had had
+considerable experience in handling them.
+
+The man laughed at her, and told her he could find no sale for that kind
+of things, and that, even if he could, he would have to ask so little
+for them that it would not pay her to make them. Eleanore took her
+flowers back home; she was profoundly discouraged. She saw herself how
+perishable flowers were; these withered that same evening. Nothing could
+be expected from that source.
+
+She had not noticed that, as she left the florist shop, a man on the
+other side of the street had stopped and looked at her. He was a haggard
+young individual with a pale, peevish expression on his face, a man with
+a chin the unimpressiveness of which was hidden behind a Vandyke beard.
+
+He stood for a long while and looked at Eleanore as she walked down the
+street. There could be no doubt but that something in her general
+bearing and her face had drawn his attention to her; had awakened in him
+a feeling that was nobler than mere curiosity or the satisfaction an
+idler derives from gaping.
+
+The young man finally began to move; he walked rather stiffly across the
+square and entered the florist's shop. A few minutes later the florist,
+a man past middle age, with the typical toper's nose, threw open his
+door and removed his cap, actions which in addition to his fawning bow
+were unmistakable proof to the merchants on either side of him that it
+was no ordinary sale he had just made. The young man went his way,
+ambling along in shiftless indifference to where he was or the time of
+day.
+
+The next morning the florist's errand boy came to Eleanore, and told her
+that his chief had something very important to say to her, and that she
+should come at once. Eleanore followed the call without delay. As she
+entered the shop, the florist greeted her with unusual politeness, and
+told her that a man who took a special fancy to the kind of flowers she
+had shown him the day before had been there and placed an order for two
+such bouquets, or even three, a week at twenty marks each. He advised
+her to exercise all diligence in making the flowers and said that when
+such a rain of good fortune descended upon one it was wise to let other
+things take care of themselves. The only condition the florist imposed
+on her was absolute silence. The customer did not wish his name to be
+known, nor did he wish to be seen. He remarked casually that there was
+manifestly some whim or crotchet back of the man's action, such as is so
+frequently the case with aristocratic people.
+
+Who was happier than Eleanore! She never bothered herself for a minute
+about the illogical and legendary element in the offer of a man who only
+a day before had appeared so shrewd and cautious. She drank in every
+word of the florist's detailed statement, and merely believed that in
+this city, among its inhabitants, there was an eccentric fellow who was
+willing to pay such a princely price for her flowers simply because he
+liked flowers and was pleased with the way she put them up. Though she
+had not been spoiled by fortune, the transformation that had suddenly
+taken place in her circumstances awakened in her not the slightest
+suspicion or surprise. She was too happy to be distrustful, too grateful
+to become inquisitive. Her thoughts were on Daniel, who, she felt, was
+saved. The whole way home she smiled to herself as if lost in dreams.
+
+Evening after evening she sat with the flowers she had gathered in the
+forenoon from the forests, the meadows, and the gardens out by the city
+fortress, where an old gardener went with her and picked out the
+choicest specimens for her. He had a crippled son who fell in love with
+Eleanore and always stood in the door and smiled at her when she came.
+He promised he would get her flowers from the green house during the
+winter.
+
+The butcher was paid, the baker was paid; the druggist was paid, and so
+was the rent. Philippina shook her head, and swore there was something
+wrong. She was convinced that it would all come out some day, even if
+you had to scratch the dung hill to get at the secret. She told the
+people about a ghost that carried on every night up in the attic; and
+once when the moon was shining she came running into the room and swore
+that a bony finger had rapped on the window.
+
+Eleanore bound roses and gilliflowers, tulips and pansies, mosses,
+ferns, and what-not into beautiful tapestried pictures, or wound them
+into wreaths and garlands. She gave herself up to this novel occupation
+with the sacrificial love of a woman of her type; and at times she
+became dizzy from so much fragrance. But this mattered not. She arranged
+her flowers; and then she would lean out of the window, and sing gently
+into the night.
+
+Daniel was ignorant of what she was doing; he had not troubled himself
+about the distressing poverty of past weeks; he did not concern himself
+now with their abundance; where it came from he never asked.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Eberhard von Auffenberg had returned to the city shortly after the death
+of Gertrude Nothafft. The last large sum he had received from Herr
+Carovius, now nearly a year ago, he had almost used up. He found Herr
+Carovius quite changed in his attitude toward him. Herr Carovius
+declared that he was bankrupt, that he could not get any more money for
+him. Instead of complaining or boasting, or flattering his princely
+friend, or trying to incite him to activity of some kind, as he had been
+accustomed to do, he wrapped himself in a silence that could not be
+regarded as a favourable omen.
+
+Eberhard had no desire to beg. Herr Carovius's personality was so
+disagreeable to him that he refused to investigate the cause of his
+novel behaviour. He let his thoughts take their own course; and they
+drifted into other channels.
+
+The gossip afloat concerning Eleanore had naturally reached his ears.
+Herr Carovius had seen to it that there was no lack of insinuations,
+either written or oral. But Eberhard had ignored them. Offensive insults
+that had dared attach themselves to Eleanore seemed to him as incredible
+as litter from the street on the radiant moon.
+
+One day he had to call on Herr Carovius because of a note that had been
+protested. They discussed the affair in a dry, business-like way, and
+then, all of a sudden, Herr Carovius fixed his piercing eyes on the
+Baron, walked around the table time after time, dressed in his sleeping
+gown, and told, without the omission of a single detail, of the
+lamentable death of Daniel Nothafft's young wife.
+
+He became highly excited; why, it would be hard to say. "Let us hope
+that the Kapellmeisterette will come to his senses now," he cried in a
+falsetto voice. "He is already on the point of starvation; ah, believe
+me, he is nearly done for. It will be necessary to take up a collection
+for the unrecognised genius. He has already put one of his women in the
+grave, the other is still kicking. By the way, how do you like her, the
+angel? Are you not a bit sorry for the neat little halo that now hangs
+like a piece of castoff clothing on the bedpost of an adulteress? Of
+course, geniuses are allowed to do as they please. O Eleanore, bloody
+lie that you are, you hypocritical soft, sneaking, slimy lie--Eleanore!"
+
+With that Eberhard stepped up very calmly to the unleashed demon in
+pajamas, seized him by the throat, and held him with such a fierce and
+unrelenting grip that Herr Carovius sank to his knees, while his face
+became as blue as a boiled carp. After this he was remarkably quiet; he
+crept away. At times he tittered like a simpleton; at times a venomous
+glance shot forth from under his eyelids. But that was all.
+
+Eberhard poured some water in a basin, dipped his hands in it, dried
+them, and went away.
+
+The picture of the whining man with the puffed and swollen eyes and the
+blue face was indelibly stamped on Eberhard's memory. He had felt a
+greedy, voluptuous desire to commit murder. He felt he was not merely
+punishing and passing final judgment on his own tormentor and
+persecutor, but on the hidden enemy of humanity, the arch-criminal of
+the age, the destroyer of all noble seed.
+
+And yet the exalted outburst of Herr Carovius had precisely the effect
+that Eberhard had least expected. His confidence in Eleanore's innocence
+had been shaken. There may have been in Herr Carovius's voice, despite
+the slanderous wrath with which his cowardly tongue was coated,
+something that sounded truer than the wretch himself suspected. Eberhard
+saw just then, for the first time in his life, the adored figure of the
+girl as a human being like all other human beings; and as if through a
+distant vision he experienced in his heart what had taken place.
+
+His illusions were destroyed.
+
+In his soul he had gone through the trials of renunciation long ago. His
+passionate wishes of former times had gone through a process of
+weakening from loss of blood. He had learned to bow to the inevitable;
+he had made a special effort to acquire this bit of earthly wisdom. When
+he surveyed the life he had lived in the past five years, it resembled,
+despite its flux and the incessant change from city to city and country
+to country, a sojourn in a room with closed doors and drawn shades.
+
+When he had returned to the city, which he loved simply because Eleanore
+lived in it, he had had no intention of reminding Eleanore of the
+expiration of the time mutually agreed upon. He felt that it would be a
+banal display of poor taste to appear before her once again as an
+awkward, jilted suitor, and try to reconnect the thread where it had
+been so ruthlessly broken five years ago. He had intended not to disturb
+her or worry her in any way. But to go to her and speak with her, that
+had been the one bright ray of hope in all these empty years.
+
+After the scene with Herr Carovius he decided quite firmly to keep away
+from Eleanore.
+
+His ready cash had shrunk to a few hundred marks. He discharged his
+servants, disposed of some of his jewelry, and rented one of those
+little houses that are stuck on the rocks up by the castle like so many
+wasp nests. The house he took had been occupied before him by the
+Pfragners, and with its three rooms was not much larger than a
+fair-sized cage in a menagerie. But he had taken it into his head to
+live there, and that was all there was to it. He bought some old
+furniture, and adorned the slanting walls of the dilapidated barracks
+with such pictures as he had.
+
+One evening there was a knock at the green door of the cottage. Eberhard
+opened, and saw Herr Carovius standing before him.
+
+Herr Carovius entered the Baron's doll house, looked around in
+astonishment, and, pale as a sheet, said: "So help me God, it seems to
+me you are trying to play the role of a hermit. This won't do; this is
+no place for a Baron; I will not stand for it."
+
+Eberhard reached for the book he had been reading, a volume of Carl du
+Prel, and read on without replying to Herr Carovius or even taking
+notice of the fact that he was present.
+
+Herr Carovius tripped from one foot to the other. "Perhaps the Baron
+will be so good as to take a look at his account," he said in a
+beseeching tone. "I am in a tight place. My capital is gone, and my
+debts in the shape of interest have been swelling like the Pegnitz in
+the spring of the year. Would you like to know what I have been living
+on for the last three months? I have been living on turnips, potato
+peelings, and brick cheese; that has been my daily diet; and I have
+submitted to it for the sake of my Baron."
+
+"I am not a bit interested in what you have been eating," said the Baron
+arrogantly, and kept on reading.
+
+Herr Carovius continued with an imbecile sulk: "When you left me
+recently because of that little quarrel we had about the Goose Man, it
+never occurred to me that you were going to take the matter so
+seriously. Lovers like to be teased, I thought. He'll come back, I
+thought, he'll come back just as sure as laughter follows tickling.
+Well, I was mistaken. I thought you were of a more gentle disposition,
+and that you would be more indulgent with an old friend. Yes, we make
+mistakes sometimes."
+
+Eberhard remained silent.
+
+Herr Carovius sighed, and sat down timidly on the narrow edge of the
+sofa that stood next to the whitewashed wall. He sat there for almost an
+hour in perfect silence. Eberhard appreciated neither the ridiculous nor
+the fantastic element in the conduct of his guest. He read on.
+
+And then, all of a sudden, Herr Carovius sprang to his feet, took his
+wallet from his pocket, drew out a thousand-mark note, and laid it,
+together with a blank receipt, across the page Eberhard was reading.
+Before the Baron could recover from his amazement he had already
+disappeared, closing the door behind him. The sound of his footsteps on
+the street could be heard in the room; but he was gone.
+
+What rare living creatures there are, O World, and what rare dead ones,
+too! This is the thought that passed through Eberhard's mind.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+That two men as radically different by nature as Eberhard and Daniel
+chanced to meet and be drawn together at the very period of their lives
+when both had voluntarily renounced human society was due to one of
+those decrees of Providence that contain in them either a law of
+crystallisation or the attraction of polar forces, however much they may
+seem to be matters of pure chance.
+
+Their coming together took place on the day after Daniel had gone to
+Eschenbach. At the break of day, Daniel had decided to return by way of
+Schwabach, both for the sake of variety and because this was the shorter
+route. The sun was hotter than on the day before; and when it had
+reached the height of its ability to dry up the land and scorch a human
+being, Daniel lay down in the forests. Late in the afternoon, just as he
+was approaching Schwabach, great black clouds began to gather in the
+West; a fearful storm was evidently to be expected. Heavy streaks of
+lightning flashed across the sky; and although Daniel tried to hasten
+his steps, the storm overtook him. Before he could reach the shelter of
+a house, he was wet to the skin from head to foot.
+
+The rain came down in torrents. He waited a long while, and then had to
+start out in it again, arriving finally at the station shivering with
+cold. As he went to buy his ticket he noticed a lean, haggard, unusual
+looking individual standing at the ticket window. It is quite probable
+that, vexed by his uncomfortable condition, Daniel treated him none too
+courteously; he pushed up against him, whereupon the man turned around,
+and Daniel recognised the young Baron, Eberhard von Auffenberg. Eberhard
+in turn recognised Daniel. It is unlikely that there was at that time
+another face in the world which could belong so completely to just one
+person as that of Daniel.
+
+The Baron had been attracted to Schwabach by his affection for a certain
+person there, an affection he had preserved from the days of his
+childhood. There lived in Schwabach at the time a woman who had been his
+nurse. Her undivided and resigned love for him was touching. She was as
+proud of him as she might have been had she been able to say that in him
+she had been responsible for the childhood training of the noblest
+specimen of manhood known to human history. And he was fond of her; the
+stories she told him he could still recall, and he did recall them
+frequently and with pleasure. She had married the foreman of a tin mill,
+and had sons and daughters of her own. Eberhard had been planning for
+years to visit her. This visit had now been paid. But Eberhard could not
+say that he had derived extraordinary pleasure from it: it had taken an
+inner figure from his soul. And, on the other hand, whether the nurse
+felt, on seeing the tall, lank, stiff, and ill-humoured foster son, that
+enraptured charm she so much liked to conjure up before her imagination,
+is a question that had better remain unanswered.
+
+When Eberhard became aware of the condition in which Daniel then found
+himself, his feelings of chivalry were moved. With the dauntless courage
+of which he was capable, he subdued the apathy he had cherished toward
+Daniel ever since he first came to know him, and to which actual
+detestation and disquieting jealousy had been added a few weeks ago.
+"You have been out in the rain," said Eberhard courteously, but with a
+reserve that was rigid if not quite forbidding or impenetrable.
+
+"I look like it, don't I?" said Daniel with a scowl.
+
+"You will catch cold if you are not careful. May I offer you my top
+coat?" continued Eberhard more courteously. He felt as if he could see
+the figure of Eleanore rising up behind Daniel, that she was quite
+surrounded by flowers, and that she was smiling at him in joy and
+gratitude. He bit his lips and blushed.
+
+Daniel shook his head: "I am accustomed to all kinds of weather. Thank
+you."
+
+"Well, then, at least wrap this around your neck; the water is running
+down your back." Thereupon Eberhard reached him a white silk kerchief he
+drew from the pocket of his coat. Daniel make a wry face, but took the
+kerchief, threw it about his neck, and tied it in a knot under his chin.
+
+"You are right," he admitted, and drew his head down between his
+shoulders: "It all reminds me of a good warm bed."
+
+Eberhard stared at the locomotive of the in-coming train. "Plebeian," he
+thought, with inner contempt.
+
+Nevertheless he joined this same plebeian in the third-class carriage,
+though he had bought a ticket for first class. Was it the white silk
+kerchief that so suddenly attracted him to the plebeian? What else could
+it have been? For during the entire journey they sat opposite each other
+in absolute silence. It was a remarkable pair: the one in a shabby, wet
+suit with a hat that looked partly as though it belonged to a cheap sign
+painter, and partly as though it were the sole head gear of a gypsy
+bard, and with a big pair of spectacles from which the eyes flashed
+green and unsteady; the other looking as though he had just stepped out
+of a bandbox, not a particle of dust on his clothing, in patent
+leather slippers, English straw hat, and with an American cigarette in
+his mouth.
+
+Next to them sat a peasant woman with a chicken basket on her lap, a
+red-headed girl who held the hind part of pig on her knees, and a
+workman whose face was bandaged.
+
+At times they looked at each other. If they chanced to catch each
+other's eye, the Baron would at once look down, and Daniel, bored as he
+was, would gaze out of the window at the rain. But there must have been
+something unusually communicative and mutually intelligent in the few
+glances with which they involuntarily honoured each other during the
+journey; for when the train pulled into the station, they left together,
+and walked along the street quite peacefully, side by side, just as if
+it were to be taken as a matter of fact that they would remain in each
+other's company.
+
+Man is a gregarious animal; given the right conditions, one man will
+seek out the company of another. Neither defiance nor reserve is of the
+slightest avail; there is something that conquers the strongest man when
+he finds another who will yield. Then it is that what was formerly
+regarded as contentment with loneliness is unmasked and shown to be
+nothing more than ordinary self-deception.
+
+"I presume you wish to go home and change your clothes," said Eberhard,
+standing on the street corner.
+
+"I am already dry," said Daniel, "and I really have no desire to go
+home. Over there on Schuett Island is a little inn called the Peter
+Vischer. I like it because it is frequented only by old people who talk
+about old times, and because it is situated on a bridge, so that you
+have the feeling you are in a ship floating around on the water."
+
+Eberhard went along. From eight o'clock till midnight they sat there
+opposite each other. Their conversation was limited to such remarks as,
+"It is really quite comfortable here."--"It seems to have stopped
+raining."--"Yes, it has stopped."--"That old white-bearded man over by
+the stove who is doing so much talking is a watchmaker from Unschlitt
+Place."--"So? He looks pretty husky."--"He is said to have fought in the
+battle of Woerth."--And so their remarks ran.
+
+When they separated, Eberhard knew that Daniel would again be at the
+Peter Vischer on Wednesday of the following week, and Daniel knew that
+he would find the Baron there.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+Philippina was on her knees by the hearth, cleaning out the ashes;
+Eleanore was sitting by the kitchen table, adding up the week's expenses
+in a narrow note-book.
+
+"You ought-a git married, Eleanore," said Philippina, as she blew on a
+hot coal, "'deed you ought; it's the right time for you."
+
+"Ah, leave me alone," said Eleanore angrily.
+
+Philippina crouched still lower on the hearth: "I mean well by you, I
+do," she said. "You're simply killing yourself here. With your white
+skin and sugary eyes--uhm, uhm! You bet if I had 'em like yours I'd git
+one. Men are all as dumb as shoats outside of a sty."
+
+"Keep quiet," said Eleanore, and went on counting: "Seven from fifteen
+leaves eight...."
+
+"An angel has made your bed," interrupted Philippina with a giggle. "I
+know a fellow," she went on, her face becoming rather sour, "he's just
+the right one. Money? whew! He's stuck on you too, believe me! If I wuz
+to go to him and say, Eleanore Jordan is willing, I believe the old
+codger would give me a bag of gold. Cross my heart, Eleanore, and he's a
+fine man too. He can play the piano just as good as Daniel, if not
+better. When he plays you can see the sparks fly."
+
+Eleanore got up, and closed the book. "Do you want me to give you a
+present for finding me a man, Philippina?" she asked, with a sympathetic
+smile. "And you are trying to sound me? Go on, you fool."
+
+"Come wind and blow my fire hot, so that my soup be not forgot,"
+whispered Philippina with a gloomy face.
+
+Eleanore left the kitchen and went upstairs. Her heart was full of
+longing; it was in truth almost bursting with longing.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+It was at the beginning of October that Daniel for the first time
+visited Eberhard in his doll house up by the castle.
+
+They had met each other in the Peter Vischer on the evening agreed upon,
+but there was a special party there that evening, a sort of a clam-bake;
+the place was crowded; the noise was disagreeable, so that they left
+much earlier than they had intended.
+
+They walked along in silence until they reached the Town Hall, when
+Eberhard said: "Won't you come up and sit awhile with me?" Daniel
+nodded.
+
+Eberhard lighted the six candles of a chandelier in his diminutive room.
+Seeing that Daniel was surprised, he said: "There is nothing I hate
+worse than gas or oil. That is light; gas and oil merely give off
+illuminated stench."
+
+For a while there was complete silence in the room; Daniel had stretched
+out on the sofa.
+
+"Illuminated stench," he repeated with a smile of satisfaction. "That is
+not bad; it is the new age in which we are living. I believe they call
+it _fin de siecle_. The day when things flourish is gone; everything has
+to be manufactured now. Men have become Americans, gruesomely sobered by
+the intoxication of doing a big business; women have lost their nicety
+of instinct; the cities have become colossal steam engines; everybody,
+young and old, is on his belly adoring the so-called wonders of science,
+just as if it really meant anything to humanity that a loafer in Paris
+can sip his morning coffee and crunch his rolls while reading that the
+Pope spent a restful night, or that a gun has been invented which will
+send a bullet through fourteen people one after another, whereas the
+best record up to the present had been only seven to a shot. Who can
+create anything, who can draw anything from his soul under such
+conditions? It is madness, it is immoral discipline."
+
+"Oh, I don't know; I think a man can draw something from within his
+soul," said the Baron, in whose face a bored, peeved expression gave way
+to one of suspense. "It is possible, for example, to conjure the
+invisible spirit into visibility."
+
+Daniel, who had not yet suspected that the Baron was, in a way, speaking
+from another country and in a strange tongue, continued: "The whole
+supply of interest and enthusiasm at the disposal of the nation has been
+used up. The venerable creations of days gone by still have nominal
+value; that is, they are still gaped at and praised, but creative,
+reproductive, and moulding power they no longer have. Otherwise
+hocus-pocus alone prospers, and he who does forgive it is not forgiven.
+But life is short; I feel it every day; and if you do not attend to the
+plant, it soon withers and dies."
+
+"It is not only hocus-pocus," replied Eberhard, who was now completely
+transformed, though he did not grasp the painful indignation of the
+musician. "You see, I have associated but very little with men. My
+refuge has been the realm of departed and invisible spirits who take on
+visible form only when a believing soul makes an unaffected appeal to
+them. It was my task to de-sensualise and de-materialise myself; then
+the spirits took on shape and form."
+
+Daniel straightened up, and saw how pale the Baron had become. It seemed
+to him that they were both quite close together, and at the same time
+poles removed from each other. He could not refrain however from taking
+up the thread of his thought. "Yes, yes," he exclaimed with the same
+short, jerky laugh that accompanied the beginning of the conversation,
+"my little spirits also demand faith, credulity, and whine and cry for
+form and shape. You have expressed yourself in an admirable way, Baron."
+
+"And have you given up in final resignation with regard to your
+spirits?" asked Eberhard, in a serious tone.
+
+"Resignation? To what? Of what? Do you imagine that is necessary in my
+case? I am the counterpart of Cronos. My children devour me; they devour
+my living body. I conjure up spirits and endow them with flesh and
+blood, and in return for what I do they convert me into a shadow. They
+are rebellious fellows, I tell you, quite without mercy. I am supposed
+to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with
+indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I
+am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am
+supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am
+supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is
+something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of
+one's steel there is a distinct pleasure in entering the fray. But my
+little spirits want to be pampered and have a lot of attention paid
+them. The hate, consequently, that is being dammed up within me is
+possibly nothing but rage at my fruitless wooing. No, mine is not an
+honest hate, because I long to get at every ragged beggar who will have
+nothing to do with my spirits, because my entire life consists in
+pleading for an audience with people who do not care to listen, and
+scraping together pennies of love from people who cannot love, because
+two or three are not enough for me, because I must have thousands and am
+nothing if I don't have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress
+if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace
+and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom
+Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the
+name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me
+laugh when he looks me in the face and says, I don't give a damn for
+all your art. And yet there is humanity in such people, and so long as
+this is true I must have them; I must convince them, even if my heart is
+torn from my breast in the attempt. Would you call this life? This
+digging-up of corpses from the graves, and breathing the breath of life
+into them so that they may dance? And doing it with the consciousness
+that this moment is the only one? I am; I exist; here is the table,
+there are the wax candles, and over there sits a man; and when I have
+stopped talking everything is different, everything is as if a year had
+passed by, and everything is irrevocable. Show me a way to humanity, to
+men, and then I will believe in God."
+
+The Baron's head swam; his brain felt close; it seemed to be sultry,
+stuffy in his skull. He could not help but think of certain exciting
+meetings where the people had sat in the dark in trembling expectancy
+and then suddenly heard a voice from beyond the tomb at the sound of
+which the marrow froze in their bones. He hardly dared look at the place
+where Daniel was sitting. The words of the musician caused him infinite
+pain: there lay in them a greediness, a shamelessness, and a
+gruesomeness that filled him with terror.
+
+He could almost have asked: And Eleanore? And Eleanore?
+
+But however much he felt repelled, owing to his training, association,
+and general views of life, there was nevertheless something about the
+whole situation before which he bowed. He could not have said precisely
+what it was, but it seemed to be a compromise between fear and
+convulsion.
+
+As he was pondering over it all, he heard a rattling at the window. He
+looked up, and saw the face of Herr Carovius pressed so tightly against
+the pane that his nose was as flat as a pancake, while his glasses
+looked like two opalescent grease spots on the water.
+
+Daniel also looked up; he too saw the face of Herr Carovius, then
+distorted with wrath and filled with threats. He looked at the Baron in
+amazement; the latter got up and said: "You will have to pardon the
+annoyance; I forgot to draw the blinds."
+
+With that he went to the window, and pulled down the dark shade over the
+face of Herr Carovius.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+That same night, just as Daniel was crossing the hall of his apartment,
+he detected a strong scent of flowers. He had smelt them before, but
+they had never seemed to be so fragrant as at present. Because of the
+season of the year, the sensation was all the more pronounced and
+unusual.
+
+He sniffed around for a while, and then saw that the door to Eleanore's
+room was open: her light was shining out on the stairs.
+
+When Daniel was not at home of an evening, Eleanore always kept her door
+open so that she could hear when he came in. Daniel was unaware of this;
+he had never seen the light on any previous night.
+
+He thought for a moment, then locked the door, and went up the stairs.
+But Eleanore must have heard his approaching footsteps; for she stepped
+hastily out into the vestibule, and said with evident embarrassment:
+"Please stay downstairs, Daniel; Father is asleep. If you wish I will
+come down to the living room."
+
+She did not wait for his answer, but went into her room, got the table
+lamp, and followed Daniel to the living room. Daniel closed the window,
+and shook as if he were cold; for it was a cool night, and there was no
+fire in the stove.
+
+"What is this I smell?" he asked. "Have you so many flowers up in your
+room?"
+
+"Yes, I have some flowers," replied Eleanore, and blushed.
+
+He looked at her rather sharply, but was disinclined to make any further
+inquiry, or he was not interested in knowing what this all meant. He
+walked around the room with his hands in his pockets.
+
+Eleanore had sat down on a chair; she never once took her eyes off
+Daniel.
+
+"Listen, Daniel," she said suddenly, and the violin tone of her voice
+lifted him from his mute and heavy meditations, "I know now what Father
+is doing."
+
+"Well, what is the old man doing?" asked Daniel distractedly.
+
+"He is working at a doll, Daniel."
+
+"At a doll? Are you trying to poke fun at me?"
+
+Eleanore, whose cheeks had turned pale, began to tell her story:
+"Yesterday afternoon, Father took advantage of the beautiful weather,
+and went on a walk for the first time in a long while. During his
+absence, I went to his room to straighten it up a little. I noticed that
+the door to the large cabinet was not closed as usual, but was standing
+ajar. He probably forgot to lock it. I did not suspect anything, and
+knew that there was no harm in what I was going to do, so I opened the
+door, and what did I see? A big doll, about the size of a four-year-old
+child, a wax figure with big eyes and long, yellow hair. But there were
+no clothes on it: the lower part of the back and the front from the neck
+to the legs had been removed. Inside, there where a person's heart and
+entrails are, was a network of wheels and screws and little tubes and
+wires, all made of real metal."
+
+"That is strange, really strange. Well?"
+
+"He is making something," continued Eleanore, "that much is clear. But
+if I could tell you how I felt when I saw the thing! I never felt so sad
+in my life. I have shown him so little love, just as Fate has been so
+unlovely to him. And everything--the air and the light and the people
+and how one feels towards the people and how they feel towards you, all
+seemed to me to be so hopelessly without love that I could not help it:
+I just sat down before that doll and cried. The poor man! The poor old
+man!"
+
+"Strange, really strange," repeated Daniel.
+
+After a while, as if conscious of his guilt, he took a seat by the
+table. Eleanore however got up, went to the window, and leaned her
+forehead against the glass.
+
+"Come here to me, Eleanore," said Daniel in a changed tone of voice.
+
+She came. He took her hand and looked into her face. "How in the world
+have you been keeping the house going all this time?" he asked, viewing
+the situation in the light of his guilty conscience.
+
+Eleanore let her eyes fall to the floor. "I have done my writing, and I
+have had considerable success with the flowers. I have even been able to
+save a little money. Don't look at me like that, Daniel. It was nothing
+wonderful I did; you have no reason to feel especially grateful to me."
+
+He drew her down on his knees, and threw his arms around her shoulders.
+"You probably think I have forgotten you," he said sorrowfully, and
+looked up, "that I have forgotten my Eleanore. Forget my Eleanore? My
+spirit sister? No, no, dear heart, you have known for a long while that
+we have begun our common pilgrimage--for life, for death."
+
+Eleanore lay in his arms; her face was perfectly white; her body was
+rigid; her eyes were closed.
+
+Daniel kissed her eyes: "You must hold me, keep me, even when it seems
+that I have left you," he murmured.
+
+Then he carried her in his arms through the door into his room.
+
+"I have so longed, I have been so full of longing," she said, pressing
+her lips to his neck.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+Before one could realise it, winter had come, and the Place with the
+Church was covered with snow.
+
+Eleanore had gone skating; when she returned she sat down in the living
+room to wait for Daniel. There she sat with her fur cap on her head,
+holding her skates in her hand by the cord: she was tired--and she was
+thinking.
+
+Daniel entered the room and greeted her; she looked up, and said with a
+gentle voice: "I am with child, Daniel; I found it out to-day."
+
+He fell on his knees, and kissed the tips of her fingers. Eleanore drew
+a deep breath; a smile of dream-like cheerfulness spread over her face.
+
+The following day Daniel went to the Town Hall, and made arrangements to
+have the banns posted.
+
+Hardly had Philippina heard that Daniel and Eleanore were to get married
+in February when she disappeared; she did not leave a trace of her
+whereabouts behind her. Little Agnes cried in vain for her "Pina." Six
+days after Philippina had left, she came back just as mysteriously as
+she had gone away. She was desperately gloomy; her hair was towsled, her
+clothes were wrinkled, there were no soles on her shoes; she was as
+speechless as a clod, and remained so for weeks.
+
+No one knew, nor has any one ever found out, what she did during those
+six days or where she had been.
+
+Eleanore insisted on a church wedding; this caused Daniel a great deal
+of worry; it made him run many a vexatious errand. But he consented to
+do as Eleanore had asked; for he did not wish to deprive her of any
+pleasure she might imagine such a ceremony would give her. Eleanore made
+her own white dress and her veil. Gisela Degen, a younger sister of
+Martha Ruebsam, and Elsa Schneider, the daughter of the rector of the
+Church of St. AEgydius, were to be her bridesmaids. Marian Nothafft and
+Eva were also to come over from Eschenbach; Eleanore had already sent
+them the money for the tickets.
+
+"Help me with my sewing, Philippina," said Eleanore one evening, and
+handed her silent house companion the veil, the border of which had to
+be made.
+
+Philippina took her seat opposite Eleanore, and began to sew; she was
+silent. In the meanwhile, little Agnes, tottering about on the floor,
+fell and began to cry in a most pitiable fashion. Eleanore hastened over
+and picked the child up. Just then she heard a sound as if cloth were
+being torn. She looked around, and saw that the veil had an ugly rip in
+it: "You wicked thing! What do you mean, Philippina?" she exclaimed.
+
+"I didn't do it; it tore itself," growled Philippina, taking every
+precaution to see that Eleanore might not catch her cowardly eye.
+
+"You just leave that alone! Keep your hands off of it! You will sew evil
+thoughts into my veil," replied Eleanore, filled with forebodings.
+
+Philippina got up. "Well, it's torn anyway, the veil," she said in a
+defiant tone; "if harm is to come it will come; you can't keep it off by
+sending me away." Philippina left the room.
+
+The injury to the veil was not as great as Eleanore had feared. It was a
+relatively easy matter to cut off the torn piece entirely, and still use
+the remainder.
+
+But from that hour Eleanore was filled with sadness: her face might be
+compared to a beautiful landscape on which the first fog of autumn has
+settled. It is probable that the tearing of her veil had nothing to do
+with her depression: there was not a shimmer of superstition in her.
+Perhaps it was merely happiness and fulfilment: it may be that she felt
+the end had come, that happiness and fulfilment leave nothing more to be
+desired, that life from then on would be nothing but a hum-drum
+existence which does not give but only takes.
+
+Perhaps her mind was darkened and weighed down with grief because of the
+life within her body; for that which is to come sends out its rays of
+melancholy just as well as that which has come and gone. What was there
+to hinder a pure soul from having an inner premonition of the fate that
+was in store for it? Why should this soul not learn in its dreams of the
+inevitable that was not so far ahead?
+
+It was impossible to notice any change in Eleanore; her eyes were
+bright; she seemed peaceful. She would often sit before the mask of
+Zingarella; she hung it with fresh flowers every day: to her the mask
+was a mysterious picture of all that her own being, her own life,
+embraced.
+
+Marian Nothafft came to the wedding alone. Just as in the case of
+Daniel's wedding to Gertrude, she had left the child with a neighbour.
+She told Daniel and Eleanore that she could not think of taking the
+child out on such a journey in the dead of winter. She mentioned Eva's
+name or talked about her only in a half audible, subdued voice, a tender
+smile playing gently about her lips.
+
+Among those present at the wedding in the AEgydius Church were Judge and
+Frau Ruebsam, Councillor Bock, Impresario Doermaul, Philippina
+Schimmelweis, Marian Nothafft, and Inspector Jordan. On the very last
+bench sat Herr Carovius; underneath one of the pillars, unseen by most
+of the people in the church, stood Baron Eberhard von Auffenberg.
+
+Philippina walked along in an ugly, crouched, cowering fashion by the
+side of Jordan; had it not been that she was constantly chewing her
+finger nails, one would have thought she was asleep.
+
+As the bridal couple was marching up to the altar, the sun broke out,
+and shone through the windows of the old church. The effect was
+touching; for just then Eleanore raised her head, stroked her veil back
+from her forehead, and caught the full light of the sun in her radiant
+face.
+
+Old Jordan had laid his forehead on the prayer-desk; his back was
+quivering.
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+Late at night and in senseless excitement--for he was thinking of a
+bridal bed that filled him with the most intense pangs of jealousy--Herr
+Carovius sat in his room playing Chopin's _etude_ of the revolution. He
+would begin it again and again; he struck the keys with ever-increasing
+violence; the time in which he played the _etude_ became wilder and
+wilder; the swing of his gestures became more and more eloquent; and his
+face became more and more threatening.
+
+He was squaring accounts with the woman he had been unable to bring
+before his Neronic tribunal in bodily form; and all the pent-up hatred
+in his heart for the musician Nothafft he was emptying into the music of
+another man. The envy of the man doomed to limit his display of talent
+to the appreciation of what another had created laid violent hands on
+the creator; the impotence of the taster was infuriated at the cook. It
+was as if a flunked and floored comedian had gone out into the woods to
+declaim his part with nothing but the echo of his own voice to answer
+back.
+
+His hatred of things in general, of the customs of human society, of
+order and prosperity, of state and family, of love and marriage, of man
+and woman, had burst out into lurid flames. It was rare that a man had
+so cut, slashed, and vilified himself as did this depatriated citizen
+while playing the piano. He converted music into an orgy, a debauch, a
+debasing crime.
+
+"Enough!" he bellowed, as he closed with an ear-splitting discord. He
+shut the piano with a vituperative bang, and threw himself into a
+rickety leather chair.
+
+What his inner eye saw mocks at language and defies human speech. He was
+in that house over there; it lay in his power to murder his rival; he
+could abuse the woman who had been denied him by the wily tricks of
+circumstances; he chastised her; he dragged her from her bed of pleasure
+by the hair. He feasted on her sense of shame and on the angry
+twitchings of the musician, tied, bound, and gagged. He spared them no
+word of calumniation. The whole city stood before his court, and
+listened to the sentence he passed. Everybody stood in awe of him.
+
+Thus it is that the citizen of the moral stature of Herr Carovius
+satisfies his thirst for revenge. Thus does the Nero of our time punish
+the crimes mankind commits against him in that it creates pleasures and
+enjoyments of which he is not in a position to partake.
+
+But because he felt more abandoned to-day than ever, and more fearful in
+his abandonment, and because he felt so keenly the injustice done him by
+the man on whom he had hung for years with dog-like fidelity, and who
+avoided him to-day as one avoids an old dog that is no longer fit for
+anything, he decided in the depths of his embittered soul to avenge
+himself, and to do it by a means that would be quite different from
+playing the piano in accordance with the rules of his own perverted
+fancy.
+
+With this decision in mind he sought sleep--at last.
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+Jordan was now living all alone in the two attic rooms. He had asked of
+his own will that he be permitted to take over the clerical work
+Eleanore had been doing, and her employers had agreed to this
+arrangement. He was consequently enabled to pay the rent and a little on
+his board.
+
+Daniel and Eleanore slept in the corner room in the front. Daniel moved
+his piano into the living room, and did all his work there. Philippina
+and Agnes remained in the room next to the kitchen.
+
+Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancy price
+for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her
+flowers in Daniel's presence, or even near him; she did this in the old
+room up next to the roof.
+
+Her father would sit by her, and look at her thoughtfully. She had the
+feeling that he knew of everything that had taken place between her and
+Gertrude and Daniel, but, out of infinite delicacy and modesty, and also
+in grief and pain, had never said a word about it. For previous to her
+marriage with Daniel, he had never been with her; he had never sat and
+looked at her so attentively; he had always passed by her in great
+haste, and had always shown an inclination to be alone.
+
+She had the feeling that he knew a great deal in general about men and
+things, but rarely said anything because of his superior sense of
+gentleness and compassion.
+
+Daniel lived about as he did before the wedding. He would sit at the
+table until late at night and write. It often happened that Eleanore
+would find him sitting there with his pen in his hand, sound asleep,
+when she got up early in the morning. She always smiled when this took
+place, and wakened him by kissing him on the forehead.
+
+He wrote the notes direct from his memory, from his head, just as other
+people write letters. He no longer needed an instrument to try what he
+had composed or to give him an inspiration for a new theme.
+
+Once he showed Eleanore eighteen variations of the same melody. He had
+spent the whole night making changes in a single composition. Eleanore's
+heart was heavy: she came very nearly asking, "For whom, Daniel? For
+what? The trunk up in the attic?"
+
+She slowly began to perceive that it is not brooding reason that climbs
+and conquers the steps of perfection, but moral will. Like a flash of
+lightning she recognised one day the demoniacal element in this impulse,
+an impulse she had been accustomed to ascribe to his everlasting
+fidgeting, fumbling, and grumbling. She shuddered at the hitherto
+unsuspected distress of the man, and took pity on him: he was burying
+himself in darkness in order to give the world more light.
+
+The world? What did it know about the creations of her Daniel! The big
+trunk was full of _opus_ upon _opus_, and not a soul troubled itself
+about all these musical treasures resting in a single coffin.
+
+There was something wrong here, she thought. There must be a lost or
+broken wheel in the clock-work of time; there was some disease among
+men; some poison, some evil, some heinous oversight.
+
+She could think of nothing else. One day she decided to visit old
+Herold. At first he acted as though he would chew her to pieces, but
+afterwards he became more civil, at least civil enough to listen to her.
+Her features were remarkably brilliant and agile as she spoke. He
+expressed himself as follows later on: "If some one had promised me
+eternal blessedness on condition that I forget the picture of this
+pregnant woman, as she stood before me and argued the case of Daniel
+Nothafft _vs._ The Public, I would have been obliged to forego the
+offer, for I could never have fulfilled my part of the agreement. Forget
+her? Who would demand the impossible?"
+
+Old Herold begged her to send him one of Daniel's latest compositions,
+if she could. She said she would, and the next morning she took from the
+trunk the quartette in B minor for strings, and carried it over to the
+professor. He laid the score before him, and began to read. Eleanore
+took a seat, and patiently studied the many little painted pictures that
+hung on the wall.
+
+The hour was up. The white-haired man turned the last leaf and struck
+his clenched fist on the paper, while around his leonine mouth there was
+a play partly of wrath and partly of awe. He said: "The case will be
+placed on the calendar, you worthiest of all Eleanores, but I am no
+longer the herald."
+
+He walked back and forth, wrung his hands, and cried: "What structure!
+What colourful tones! What a wealth of melody, rhythm, and originality!
+What discipline, sweetness, power! What a splendid fellow he is! And to
+think that a man like that lives right here among us, and plagues and
+tortures himself! A disgrace and a shame it is! Come, my dear woman, we
+will go to him at once. I want to press him to my bosom...."
+
+But Eleanore, whose face burned with the feeling of good fortune,
+interrupted him, and said: "If you do that, you will spoil everything.
+It will be much better to tell me what to do. He will become more and
+more obstinate and bitter, if some ray of light does not soon fall on
+what he has thus far created."
+
+The old man thought for a while: "You leave the score with me; I'll see
+what I can do with it; I have an idea," he replied, after a short time
+had elapsed.
+
+Eleanore went back home full of hope.
+
+The quartette was sent to Berlin, and placed in the hands of a man of
+influence and discrimination. Some professional musicians soon became
+acquainted with it and its merits. Professor Herold received a number of
+enthusiastic letters, and answered them with characteristic and
+becoming shrewdness. A cycle of sagas was soon afloat in Berlin
+concerning the habits and personality of the unknown master. It was said
+that he was an anchorite who lived in the Franconian forests and
+preached renunciation of all earthly pleasures.
+
+In Leipzig the quartette was played before an invited audience. The
+applause was quite different from what it ordinarily was in the case of
+a public that is surfeited with musical novelties.
+
+Thereby Daniel finally learned what had been done. One day he received a
+letter from the man who had arranged the concert, a certain Herr
+Loewenberg. The letter closed as follows: "A community of admirers is
+anxious to come into possession of your compositions. They send you
+their greetings at present with cordial gratitude."
+
+Daniel could scarcely believe his own eyes; it was like magic. Without
+saying a word he handed the letter to Eleanore. She read it, and looked
+at him quietly.
+
+"Yes, I am guilty," she said, "I stole the quartette."
+
+"Is that so? Do you realise, Eleanore, what you have done to me?"
+
+Eleanore's face coloured with surprise and fear.
+
+"You ought to know; probably in the future you will lose interest in
+such womanish wiles."
+
+He walked back and forth, and then stepped up very close to her: "You
+probably think I am an idiotic simpleton, a dullard. You seem to feel
+that I am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen
+once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting
+and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong.
+There was a period when I felt more or less like that, but that time is
+no more."
+
+He started to walk back and forth again; again he stopped: "It is not
+because I think they are too good, nor is it because I am too inert or
+cowardly, that I keep my compositions under lock and key. I would have
+to have wheels in my head if I did not have sense enough to know that
+the effect of a piece is just as much a part of it as heat is a part of
+fire. Those people who claim that they can quite dispense with
+recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is
+no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the
+world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear?
+_provided_ it is a living thing."
+
+"Well then, Daniel," said Eleanore, somewhat relieved.
+
+"That is where the trouble lies," he continued, as though he had never
+been interrupted, "it all depends on whether the piece has life,
+reality, the essence of true being in it. What is the use of feeding
+people with unripe or half-baked stuff? They have far too much of that
+already. There are too many who try and even can, but what they create
+lacks the evidence that high heaven insisted on its being created: there
+is no divine _must_ about it. My imperfect creations would merely serve
+as so many stumbling blocks to my perfect ones. If a man has once been
+seduced by the public and its applause, so that he is satisfied with
+what is only half perfect, his ear grows deaf, his soul blind before he
+knows it, and he is the devil's prey forever. It is an easy matter to
+make a false step, but there is no such thing as turning back with
+corrective pace. It cannot be done; for however numerous the
+possibilities may be, the actual deed is a one-time affair. And however
+fructifying encouragement from without may be, its effects are in the
+end murderous if it is allowed to drown out conscience. What I have
+created in all these years is good enough so far as it goes, but it is
+merely the preparatory drill to the really great work that is hovering
+before my mind. It is possible that I flatter myself; it may be that I
+am being cajoled by fraud and led on by visions; but it is in me, I feel
+certain of it, and it must come to light. Then we shall see what sort of
+creature it is. Then all my previous works will have ceased to exist;
+then I will bestir myself in a public way; I will come out and be the
+man that I really am. You can depend on it."
+
+Daniel had never talked to Eleanore in this way before. As she looked at
+him, overcome almost by the passion of his words, and saw him standing
+there so utterly fearless, so unyielding and unpitying, her breast
+heaved with a sigh, and she said: "God grant that you succeed, and that
+you live to enjoy the fruits of your ambition."
+
+"It is all a matter of fate, Eleanore," he replied.
+
+He demanded the quartette; it was sent back to him.
+
+From then on Eleanore suppressed even the slightest sense of discontent
+that arose in her heart. She felt that he needed cruelty and harshness
+for his small life in order to preserve love and patience for the great
+life.
+
+Yes, she prayed to Heaven that she might leave him harsh and cruel.
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+"Eleanore is my wife," said Daniel every now and then; he would even
+stop in the middle of the street in order to enjoy to the full, and
+preserve if possible, the blessed realisation of this fact.
+
+He always knew it. Yet when he was with Eleanore he frequently forgot
+her presence. There were days when he would pass by her as though she
+were some chance acquaintance.
+
+Then there were other days when his happiness made him sceptical; he
+would say: "Is it then really happiness? Am I happy? If so, why is it
+that I do not feel my happiness more fervently, terribly?"
+
+He would frequently study her form, her hands, her walk, and wish that
+he had new eyes, so that he might see her anew. He went away merely in
+order that he might see her better. In the night he would take a candle,
+and go up to her bed: a gentle anguish seemed to disappear from her
+features, his own pulse beat more rapidly. This was caused by the
+flame-blue of her eyes.
+
+There is a point where the most demure and chaste woman differs in no
+wise from a prostitute. This is the source of infinite grief to the man
+who loves. No woman suspects or can understand it.
+
+It was one day while he was brooding and musing and quarrelling without
+definite reason, in the arms of his beloved, that the profound,
+melancholy motif in the first movement of his symphony in D minor came
+to him. This symphony gradually grew into the great vision of his life,
+and, many years later, one of his women admirers gave it the modifying
+title of Promethean. The first time the theme sounded in his ears he
+roared like a wild beast, but with joy. It seemed to him that music was
+really born at that moment.
+
+He pressed Eleanore so tightly to his bosom that she could not breathe,
+and murmured between his teeth: "There is no choice left: we have got to
+remain lifeless and irresponsive to each other's presence or wound one
+another with love."
+
+"The mask, the mask," whispered Eleanore anxiously, and pointed over to
+the corner from which the mask of Zingarella, with the dim light falling
+on it, shone forth like the weirdly beautiful face of a spectre.
+
+Philippina stood before the door, and listened to what they were saying.
+She had caught a rat, killed it, and laid the cadaver in the door. The
+next morning, as Eleanore was going into the kitchen, she saw the dead
+rat, screamed, and went back to her room trembling with fright.
+
+Daniel stroked her hair, and said: "Don't worry, Eleanore. Rats belong
+to married life just as truly as salty soup, broken dishes, and holes in
+the stockings."
+
+"Now listen, Daniel, is that meant as a reproach?" she asked.
+
+"No, my dear, it is not a reproach; it is merely a picture of the world.
+You have the soul of a princess; you know nothing about rats. Look at
+those black, staring, pearly eyes: they remind me of Jason Philip
+Schimmelweis and Alfons Diruf and Alexander Doermaul; they remind me of
+the reserved table, the _Kaffeeklatsch_, smelly feet, evenings at the
+club, and everything else that is unappetising, vulgar, and base. Don't
+look at me in such astonishment, Eleanore, I have just had an ugly
+dream; that is all. I dreamt that a miserable-looking wretch came up to
+me and kept asking me what your name is, and I couldn't tell him. Just
+think of it: I could not recall your name. It was terribly annoying.
+Farewell, farewell."
+
+He had put on his hat and left. He ran out in the direction of Feucht,
+and stayed the entire day in the open fields without taking a single bit
+of nourishment except a piece of black bread and a glass of milk. But
+when he returned in the evening his pockets were bulging with notes he
+had jotted down while out there by himself.
+
+He came back by way of the Castle, and knocked at Eberhard's door. Since
+there was no one at home, he sauntered around for a while along the old
+rampart, and then returned about nine o'clock. But the windows were
+still dark.
+
+He had not seen Eberhard for two months. He could still recall the
+Baron's depression and worry the last time he had talked with him--it
+was toward the end of March: he had spoken very little at that time and
+had gazed into space with remarkably lifeless eyes. He gave the
+impression of a man who is on the point of doing something quite out of
+the ordinary if not distinctly terrible.
+
+Daniel did not become aware of this until now; the Baron's troubles,
+whatever they were, had not occurred to him during the past weeks; he
+was sorry for having neglected him so.
+
+
+                                 XVII
+
+When he came home Eleanore was suffering from premature birth pains.
+Philippina greeted him with the words: "There is going to be an
+increase in the family, Daniel." Whereat she burst out in a coarse
+laugh.
+
+"Shut up, you beast," cried Daniel: "How long has she been suffering?
+Why didn't you get the nurse?"
+
+"Can I leave the child here alone? Don't growl so!" replied Philippina
+angrily. She went out for the nurse. In a half an hour she came back
+with her: it was Frau Hadebusch.
+
+Daniel had a disagreeable feeling. He wanted to raise some questions and
+make some objections, but Frau Hadebusch's nimble tongue anticipated
+him. She grinned, curtsied, rolled her eyes, and went through the entire
+category of acquired mannerisms on the part of a woman of her type, and
+then unloaded her life history: Her duly wedded husband had said
+farewell to this vale of tears three years ago, and since then she had
+been supporting, as well as she could, herself and her poor Henry, the
+idiot, by hiring out as a midwife. She seemed already to have come to
+an understanding with Eleanore, for when she entered the room, Eleanore
+greeted her as though she were an old acquaintance.
+
+While Daniel was alone with Eleanore for a few minutes, he asked her in
+an indignant tone: "How did you ever come to get that vicious woman?"
+
+Eleanore replied in a gentle and unsuspecting tone: "She came to me one
+day, and asked to be called in when the child was born. She said she was
+awfully fond of you, and that you had once lived in her house. Well, I
+thought, what difference does it make who comes, so I engaged her, and
+there she is."
+
+It was only with the greatest difficulty that she finished saying what
+was on her mind. Her face, white as a sheet, was pinched with an
+expression of terrific pain. She reached for Daniel's hand, and held it
+so tightly that he became rigid with anxiety.
+
+When she began to groan, Daniel turned away and pressed his fists
+together. Frau Hadebusch came in with a tub of hot water: "This is no
+place for men," she exclaimed with a kindly twisting of her face, took
+Daniel by the shoulder, and pushed him out the door.
+
+Little Agnes was standing in the hall. "Father," she said.
+
+"Put that child to bed!" said Daniel, turning to Philippina.
+
+Jordan came out of the kitchen. He held an earthen bowl of soup in his
+hand. It had been saved for him, and all he had to do was to hold it
+over the fire and heat it up. He went up to Daniel, and said, as his
+chin quivered: "May God protect her, and be merciful to her!"
+
+"Quit that kind of talk, Father," said Daniel impatiently. "God rules
+with reservations that make me insane."
+
+"Won't you say good-night to little Agnes?" asked Philippina in a rude,
+rough tone from the other room.
+
+He went in; the child looked at him timidly. The more it grew, the
+greater his own shyness became in its presence. And the constant
+association of Eleanore with the child had always been a source of worry
+to him. There was one thing of which he was mortally certain: he could
+not see Eleanore in bodily form and precisely as she was, when Agnes,
+with her Gertrude eyes and her arched Eleanore mouth, was present in the
+room with Eleanore. He felt that Eleanore had been transformed into the
+sister of Agnes, that she was still only a sister. And this he felt was
+something fatal.
+
+Both of the sisters looked at him out of Agnes's big childish eyes; in
+her they were both melted and moulded into a single being. A presageful
+horror crept over him. Sisters! The word had a solemn sound in his ears;
+it seemed full of mysterious meaning; it took on mythical greatness.
+
+"Sleep, baby, sleep, outside are two sheep, a black one and a white
+one ..." sang Philippina in her imbecile way. It was astonishing the
+amount of malevolence there was in her sing-song.
+
+Daniel could not stand it in the house; he went out on the street, and
+wandered around until midnight. If he made up his mind to go home, the
+thought occurred to him at once that Frau Hadebusch would prevent him
+from going into Eleanore's room. He felt like lying down on the pavement
+and waiting until some one came and told him how Eleanore was getting
+along.
+
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+It struck one just as he came home. The maid from the first floor and
+the maid from the second were standing on the stairs. They had not been
+able to sleep; they had heard the cries of the young woman from their
+rooms, had come out, joined each other, listened, trembled, and
+whispered.
+
+Daniel heard one of them say: "The Kapellmeister should send for the
+doctor."
+
+The other sobbed and replied: "Yes, but a doctor can't work miracles."
+
+"Lord, Lord," they cried, as a nerve-racking cry from Eleanore rang
+through the bleak house.
+
+Daniel sprang up the steps. "Run for Dr. Mueller just as fast as your
+feet can carry you," said Daniel to Philippina, who was then standing in
+the kitchen in her bare feet with her hair hanging down her back. Daniel
+was breathing heavily; Philippina was making some tea. Daniel then
+hastened into Eleanore's room; Frau Hadebusch tried to keep him out, but
+he pushed her to one side, gritted his teeth, and threw himself on the
+floor by Eleanore's bed.
+
+She raised her head; she was a pale as death; the perspiration was
+pouring down over her face. "You shouldn't be here, Daniel, you
+shouldn't see me," she said with much effort, but her tone was so
+commanding and final that Daniel got up and slowly left the room. He was
+seized with a strange, violent anger. He went out into the kitchen and
+drank a glass of water, and then hurled the glass on the floor: it broke
+into a hundred pieces.
+
+Frau Hadebusch had followed him; she looked very much discouraged. When
+he noticed the frame of mind she was in, he became dizzy; he had to sit
+down in order to keep from falling. "Ah, the doctor will come," he said
+in a brusque tone.
+
+"My God, it makes you sick at the stomach to see how women suffer
+to-day," said the old lady in her shrillest, one-tooth voice; it was
+quite plain that she was pleased to know that the doctor was coming. The
+present case had got her into serious trouble, and she wanted to get out
+of it. "The devil to these women who are so delicately built," she had
+said about an hour ago to the grinning Philippina.
+
+Philippina came back with the announcement that Dr. Mueller was on a
+vacation: "Well, is he the only physician in the city, you dumb ox?"
+howled Daniel, "go get Dr. Dingolfinger; he lives here close by: right
+over there by the Peller House. But wait a minute! You stay here; I'll
+go get him."
+
+Dr. Dingolfinger was a Jewish physician, a rather old man, and Daniel
+had to ring and ring to get him out of his bed. But finally he heard the
+bell, got up, and followed Daniel across the square. Daniel had left the
+lantern burning at the front gate, and with it he lighted the doctor
+through the court and up the stairs.
+
+Then he sat down on the bench in the kitchen; how long he sat there he
+did not know; he bent his body forward and buried his head in his hands.
+The screams became worse and worse: they were no longer the cries of
+Eleanore but of some unsouled, dehumanised being. Daniel heard them
+all; he could think of nothing, he could feel nothing but that voice. At
+times the terrible cry ran through his heart: Sisters! Sisters!
+
+Frau Hadebusch came out several times to get hot water. The yellow tooth
+in her lower jaw stuck out like a cracked, lecherous remainder and
+reminder of her past life. Once Dr. Dingolfinger himself came out,
+rummaged around in his leather case, which he had left in the hall,
+looked at Daniel, and said: "It is going to come out all right; it will
+all be over in a short while." At that Philippina poked at the fire, and
+put on fresh coals. She looked at Daniel out of one corner of her eye,
+and went on her way. From time to time old Jordan rapped on the wall to
+have Philippina come up and tell him how things were going.
+
+It must have been about four o'clock in the morning; the gloomy, grey
+stones in the walls of the court yard were already being covered with
+rosy tints from the East. There was a cry so fearful, so like that of a
+voice from the wilds of the heart, that Daniel sprang to his feet and
+stood trembling in every limb.
+
+Then it became quiet, mysteriously, uncannily quiet.
+
+
+                                  XIX
+
+He sat down again; after a while his eyes closed, and he fell asleep.
+
+He must have slept about half an hour when he was wakened by the sound
+of footsteps.
+
+Standing around him were the physician, Frau Hadebusch, and Philippina.
+The doctor said something at which Daniel shook his head. It sounded
+like: "Unfortunately I cannot keep the sad news from you." Daniel did
+not understand him; he drew his lips apart, and thought: "The idea of
+dreaming such disordered stuff!"
+
+"Mother and child are both dead," said the old physician, with tears in
+his eyes. "Both dead. It was a boy. Science was powerless; nature was
+hostile and the stronger of the two."
+
+"So delicately built," murmured Frau Hadebusch, in a tone of
+disapproval, "as delicate as the stem of a plant."
+
+When Daniel at last realised that he was not dreaming, that these were
+in bitter truth Philippina's glistening eyes and Frau Hadebusch's
+goatish tooth and Dr. Dingolfinger's silvery beard, and that these were
+actual words that were being spoken to him, he fell over and became
+unconscious.
+
+
+                                  XX
+
+Pain, grief, despair, such terms do not describe his condition.
+
+He knew nothing about himself; he had no thoughts; he lay on the sofa in
+the living room day and night, ate nothing, said nothing, and never
+moved.
+
+When they carried the empty coffin into the death chamber, he burrowed
+his face into the corner of the sofa. Old Jordan tottered through the
+room to take a last look at his dead daughter. "He has sinned," Jordan
+sobbed, "sinned against God in Heaven."
+
+In the hall some people were whispering. Martha Ruebsam and her husband
+had come in. Martha was crying. Her slender figure with her pale face
+appeared in the doorway; she looked around for Daniel.
+
+"Don't you want to see your Eleanore before the coffin is closed?" asked
+Philippina in a hollow voice.
+
+He never moved; the twitchings of his face were terrible to behold.
+
+Beside him on the table was some cold food; also some bread and apples.
+
+They carried the coffin out. He felt that where his heart once was there
+was now a dark, empty space. The church bell rang, the rain splashed
+against the window panes.
+
+During the second night he felt his soul suddenly become incoherent,
+lax. This was followed by a brief flaring up within him, whereupon his
+eyes were filled with hot, burning tears. He resigned himself to the
+situation without audible display of grief; he felt all of a sudden that
+he had now for the first time in his life really sensed the beauty of
+the pure triad in the major key.
+
+Another day passed by. He could hear old Jordan walking about in the
+room above him, ceaselessly and with heavy tread. He felt cold;
+Philippina came in; he asked her to get him a blanket. Philippina was
+most eager to be of service to him. The door bell rang; Philippina
+opened.
+
+Before her stood a lady and a gentleman. There was something so refined
+about them that Philippina did not dare raise any objections when they
+quietly came in and went straight to the living room: the door had not
+been closed, and they could see Daniel lying on the sofa.
+
+Daniel looked at them quite indifferently. Gradually he began to collect
+his thoughts, to compose himself, to come to himself.
+
+His guests were Eberhard von Auffenberg and his cousin, Sylvia von
+Erfft. They were betrothed.
+
+Taken up as he had latterly been with the marked changes and
+transformations in his life, Eberhard had not heard of the death of
+Eleanore until a few hours ago.
+
+It was a rare visit. None of the three said a word. Daniel lay wrapped
+in his blanket; he never moved. Finally, when his friends were about to
+leave, Sylvia got up, and turning to Daniel, said: "I did not know
+Eleanore, but I feel as if I had lost one of my own dear friends."
+
+Eberhard tossed his chin in the air, turned pale, and was as silent as
+the tomb.
+
+They repeated their visit on the following day, and then on the next
+day, and so on. The presence of the two people came in time to have a
+beneficent effect on Daniel.
+
+
+
+
+                  THE ROOM WITH THE WITHERED FLOWERS
+
+
+                                   I
+
+A few days later, Herr Carovius carried out the scheme he had decided
+upon at the time his heart became so embittered at Eleanore's marriage.
+
+It was the end of March. Herr Carovius had learned that the old Baron
+had just returned from Berlin. He went around to his house, and sent in
+his card. The butler came out, and told him that the Baron could receive
+no one, that he should state his business in writing.
+
+Herr Carovius, however, wanted to see his debtor face to face: this was
+the heart of his dream. When he came back a second time and was again
+told that he could not see the Baron, he began to storm and bluster, and
+insisted that they should at least let him talk with the Baroness.
+
+The Baroness was just then taking her music lesson. The fifteen-year-old
+Dorothea Doederlein, who gave promise of developing into a remarkable
+virtuoso on the violin, was playing some sonatas with the Baroness.
+
+Andreas Doederlein had recognised her talents when she was a mere child.
+Since her tenth year, she had been obliged to practise six hours every
+day. She had had a great number of different teachers, all of whom had
+been brought to the point of despair by her intractability. In the
+presence of her father, however, she was meek: to him she bowed.
+
+Andreas Doederlein had recommended his daughter to the Baroness in words
+replete with objective recognition. The Baroness declared her
+willingness to play with Dorothea. Andreas Doederlein had said to her:
+"Now you have a chance to rise in the world through powerful influence;
+don't neglect it! The Baroness loves the emotional; be emotional. At
+times she will demand the demoniac; be obedient. Like all rich people,
+she is pampering some grief _de luxe_; don't disturb her!"
+
+Dorothea was docile.
+
+They were playing Beethoven's spring sonatas, when the altercation began
+out in the vestibule. The maid came in and whispered something to her
+mistress. The Baroness arose and went to the door. Dorothea laid her
+violin in her lap, and looked around in affected astonishment, as though
+she were coming out of a dream.
+
+At a sign from the Baroness the old servant gave Herr Carovius a free
+path. He went in: his face was red; he made a quite ridiculous bow. His
+eyes drank in the velvet portieres, the cut glass mirrors, the crystal
+vases, and the bronze statuettes. In the meantime, and without fail, he
+had placed his right hand against his hip, giving the fine effect of
+right akimbo, and set one foot very elegantly a trifle more to the fore
+than the other: he looked like a provincial dancing-master.
+
+He complained of the presumptuousness of the servants, and assured the
+Baroness that she was in complete enjoyment of his deference. He spoke
+of his good intentions and the pressure of circumstances. When the
+impatient bearing of his sole but distinguished auditor at last obliged
+him to come to the real purpose of his visit, the Baroness twitched; for
+from his flood of words there emerged, as she heard them, nothing but
+the name of her son.
+
+With panting sounds she came up to Herr Carovius, and took him by the
+coat-sleeve. Her dim, black eyes became as round as little bullets; the
+supplicating expression in them was so much balm to the soul of her
+visitor.
+
+Herr Carovius was enchanted; he was having the time of a scurvy life; he
+became impudent; he wanted to take vengeance on the mother against the
+son. He saw that the Baroness did not correspond to the picture he had
+made of a creature who belonged to the aristocracy. In his imagination
+she had lived as a domineering, imperious, inaccessible phenomenon: and
+now there stood before him an old, obese, worried woman. On this account
+he gave his voice a shriller tone, his face a more scurrilous expression
+than was his wont. Then he launched forth on a graphic narration of the
+unhappy plight in which he now found himself as a result of his
+association with Baron von Eberhard, Jr.
+
+He claimed that it was nothing but his own good nature that had got him
+into this trouble. And yet, what was he to do? The Baron would have
+starved to death, or become morally depraved, if he had not come to his
+spiritual and pecuniary rescue, for the young man was sadly wanting in
+the powers of moral resistance. And what had he gained by all this
+altruism? Ingratitude, bitter ingratitude!
+
+"He plundered me; he took my last cent, and then acted as if it were my
+damned duty to go through fire for his baronical excellency," screamed
+Herr Carovius. "Before I came to know him I was a well-to-do man; I
+could enjoy myself; I could reap the higher pleasures of human
+existence. To-day I am ruined. My money is wasted, my house is burdened
+with mortgages, my peace of mind has gone plumb to the Devil. Two
+hundred and seventy-six thousand marks is what the young man owes me and
+my business friends. Yes--two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks,
+including interest and interest on the interest, all neatly noted down
+and signed up by the duly authorised parties. Am I to let him slam the
+door in my face because of his indebtedness to me? I think you will see
+yourself that that cannot be expected of me. He at least owes me a
+little respect for what I have done for him."
+
+The Baroness had listened to all this with folded hands and unfixed
+eyes. But the close of the story was too much for her: she threw herself
+on a great divan, overcome--for the time being--with worry and maternal
+weakness. A grin strayed across Herr Carovius's face. He twirled his
+Calabrian headpiece in his hands, and let his leery eyes wander about
+the walls. Then it was that he caught sight of Dorothea, whom he had
+thus far failed to see in his intoxication of wrath and rapture.
+
+When Herr Carovius entered, Dorothea, out of discretion rather than with
+serious intent, had made herself as small as possible in the most remote
+corner of the room. Trembling with curious excitement, she had wished to
+evade the eye of her uncle Carovius, for in very truth she was ashamed
+of him.
+
+She regarded him as a sort of comic freak, who, though he had enough to
+live on, could not be said to be in the best of circumstances. When he
+rolled the sum the Auffenberg family owed him from his tongue, she was
+filled with astonishment and delight, and from then on she took a
+totally different view of him.
+
+During the last few years Herr Carovius had seen very little of
+Dorothea. Whenever he had met her, she had passed by him in great haste.
+He knew that she was taking violin lessons: he had often heard her
+screechy fiddling on the stairs and out in the hall.
+
+He fixed his eyes on her, and exclaimed: "Well I'm a son-of-a-gun if
+there isn't Doederlein's daughter! How did you get here? Aha, you are
+going about and showing the people what you can do! I should think you
+and your creator would have had enough of music by this time."
+
+The Baroness, recalling that the young girl was present, raised her
+eyes and looked at Dorothea reproachfully. For the first time in her
+life she felt that the resources she had managed to extract from a life
+of neglect were about exhausted; for the first time in her life she felt
+a shudder at the thought of her musical stupefactions.
+
+She asked Herr Carovius to have patience, adding that he would hear from
+her in a few days--as soon as she had talked the matter over with her
+husband. She nipped in the bud a zealous reply he was about to make, and
+nodded a momentary farewell to Dorothea, who put her violin in the case,
+took the case in her hand, curtsied, and followed her uncle out of the
+room.
+
+She remained at his side; they went along the street together. Herr
+Carovius turned to her from time to time, and made some rancorous
+remark. She smiled modestly.
+
+With that began the strange relation that existed between the two from
+then on.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+It had looked for some time as though the Baron von Auffenberg had
+retired from the political stage. In circles in which he had formerly
+been held in unqualified esteem he was now regarded as a fallen hero.
+
+His friends traced the cause of his failure to the incessant friction
+from which the party had suffered; to the widespread change that was
+taking place in the public mind; to the ever-increasing pressure from
+above and the never-ceasing fermentation from below; to the feverish
+restlessness that had come over the body politic, changing its form, its
+ideals, and its convictions; and to the more scrupulous and sometimes
+reactionary stand that was being taken on all matters of national
+culture.
+
+But this could not explain the hard trace of repulsion and aversion
+which the Baron's countenance had never before revealed when in the
+presence of men; it threw no light, or at most an inadequate light, on
+the stony glare, gloomy impatience, and reticence which he practised now
+even in those circles and under those circumstances in which he had
+formerly been noted for his diverting talents as a conversationalist and
+companion.
+
+In his heart of hearts he had, as a matter of fact, always despised his
+political constituents, their speeches, their action, their enthusiasm,
+and their indignation. But he had never kicked over the traces, for
+during the course of a rather eventful life he had made the discovery
+that contempt and an icy disposition are invaluable adjuncts to any one
+who wishes to control men.
+
+Even though he had fought at the beginning of his career with all the
+eloquence and buoyancy at his command for freedom and tolerance, it
+remained a fact that he regarded liberalism as nothing more than a
+newspaper term, a means of keeping men busy who were too indolent to
+think for themselves, and a source of obstructive annoyance to the
+openly hated but secretly admired Bismarck.
+
+He had wielded a power in full consciousness of the lie he was acting,
+and had done it solely by gestures, calculations, and political
+adroitness. This will do for a while, but in time it eats into the
+marrow of one's life.
+
+In his eyes nothing was of value except the law, unwritten to be sure,
+but of immemorial duration, that subjects the little to the big, the
+weak to the strong, the immature to the experienced, the poor to the
+rich. In accordance with this law humanity for him was divided into two
+camps: those who submitted to the law, and the undesirable citizens who
+rebelled against the law.
+
+And of these undesirable citizens his son Eberhard was the most
+undesirable.
+
+With this stinging, painful thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling
+of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and
+filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and
+consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the
+figure of his son a picture of evil incarnate.
+
+He visualised him in dissipation and depravity of every kind and degree;
+he saw him sinking lower and lower, a traitor to his family name; as if
+in a dream that appeases the sense of obscene horror, he saw him in
+league with the abandoned and proscribed, associating with thieves,
+street bandits, high-flying swindlers, counterfeiters, anarchists,
+prostitutes, and literati. He saw him in dirty dives, a fugitive from
+justice wandering along the highway, drunk in a gambling den, a beggar
+at a fair, and a prisoner at the bar.
+
+His determination to wait until the degenerate representative of the
+human family had been stigmatised by all the world he finally abandoned.
+His impatience to find peace, to throw off the mask, to rid himself
+completely of all entanglements, dissimulation, and the life of luxury
+to which he had been accustomed became so great, that he looked forward
+to the day that would eventually mark his release as the day of a new
+birth.
+
+But why did he hesitate? Was there still an element of doubt in his
+breast? Was there still slumbering, deep down in the regions of his
+heart that were inaccessible to bitterness and revenge, another picture
+of his son? Why did he hesitate from week to week, from month to month?
+
+In the meantime he had donated great fortunes to poor houses, hospitals,
+foundations, and similar causes. He wanted to give away other millions,
+at least so much that his heirs would receive only the gleanings of what
+had once been a field of riches. Emilia was to be given the income from
+the breweries and the country estates.
+
+To this extent he had firmly made up his mind. Now that his wife had
+told him of the actual condition in which Eberhard found himself, he
+felt justified in going ahead and carrying out his pre-determined plans.
+The proofs of dishonourable conduct on the part of his son could now be
+brought forward. The debts he had contracted, either through flippancy
+or downright deception, in the name of his father were sufficient to
+condemn him forever. And if not, then let them fight it out after he was
+dead and gone; let his last will and testament be a ghost, a spectre
+that would strike terror into their hearts and embitter such pleasure as
+they might otherwise derive from life.
+
+His will had been drawn up seven years ago; all that was needed was the
+signature of the notary public.
+
+But why did the Baron hesitate? Why did he pace back and forth in his
+room with pinched lips? Why did he ring for the butler with the idea of
+sending this functionary for the notary, and then suddenly change his
+mind and give the butler something else to do?
+
+_"Depeche-toi, mon bon garcon_," screeched the parrot.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+In the course of three days the Baroness had five talks with her
+husband. Each time he rejected her petition to have the affairs of their
+son straightened out; and when she became insistent and seemed minded to
+keep up her fight, he became silent, speechless.
+
+It was during her last attempt that the servants heard her speaking with
+extraordinary passion and violence. When she left the Baron's room her
+whole body was quivering with emotion and excitement. She came out, and
+ordered the house servants to pack her trunk and her coachman to be
+ready to leave in a few minutes.
+
+An hour later she was on her way to the estate at Siegmundshof, about
+ten miles from the baronial residence. Her maid accompanied her. But she
+was utterly unable to find peace there. During the day she would pace
+back and forth through the rooms, crying and wringing her hands; at
+night she would lie down, but not to sleep. On the fourth day she
+returned to the city, had the carriage driven to the residence of Count
+Urlich, and sent her coachman in to get the Countess. Emilia came down,
+terrified, to know what her mother wanted. The Baroness told her that
+she wished her to accompany her to Herr Carovius, whose address she had
+found in the city directory.
+
+Herr Carovius had waited in vain for the news the Baroness had promised
+him. His anger got the best of him: he decided to make an example of the
+Auffenberg family, and, with this end in view, entered their house as
+the personal embodiment of punitive justice. When he was told that he
+could not be admitted, he began once more to start trouble; he raged and
+stormed like a madman. The servants came running out from all quarters;
+finally a policeman appeared on the scene and questioned him. The porter
+then dragged him from the house and out through the big gate at the
+entrance to the grounds, where he stood surrounded by a crowd of curious
+but not entirely disinterested people, bare-headed, waving his arms and
+striking an imaginary adversary with his fists--a picture, all told, of
+anger intensified to the point of insanity.
+
+His backers at once got wind of his fruitless attempts to collect. They
+became uneasy, gave Herr Carovius himself a deal of trouble, and finally
+appointed a lawyer to take charge of the case. In the meantime Herr
+Carovius had learned through a spy that it had come to a complete break
+between the Baron and the Baroness, that the latter had left within two
+days with bag and baggage, and that great consternation prevailed among
+the servants and friends of the family.
+
+A voluptuous light crept across Herr Carovius's face: here was defeat
+and despair, weeping and gnashing of teeth; what more could he wish? He
+felt that he was personally the annihilator of the collective
+aristocracy. And if it is possible to take a fiendish delight in
+witnessing the destruction of what one after all despises, how much
+greater may this joy be when the thing destroyed is something one loves
+and admires!
+
+It was while in this mood that the Baroness and her daughter came to see
+him. The sight of the two women left him momentarily speechless. He
+forgot to say good-day to them; to ask them in never once occurred to
+him.
+
+The Baroness wanted to know where Eberhard was: she was determined to
+see him. When Herr Carovius stuttered out the astounding information to
+her that he was living hardly more than three hundred paces from where
+she was then standing, she began to tremble and leaned against the wall.
+She was not prepared for this: she had always imagined that he was
+staying at some mysterious place in some mysterious distance.
+
+Herr Carovius at once insisted that he accompany the ladies to the
+Baron's diminutive residence. But the Baroness felt that she was not
+capable of this: she feared it would mean her death. "Take me home with
+you, Emilia," she said to her daughter, "and you go over and have a talk
+with Eberhard first."
+
+But Emilia had not seen Eberhard once during the nine years of her
+married life, and was even less inclined than her mother to meet him
+now. Nor was it possible to take the Baroness to her home. The old lady
+had evidently forgotten that she had told Count Urlich never to show his
+face in her presence again. The occasion of this inexorable request was
+the time she learned that the governess of his child was in a family way
+and that he was responsible for her disgrace.
+
+Since the Baroness stoutly refused to return either to her town
+residence or to Siegmundshof, there was nothing for Emilia to do but to
+take her to a hotel. Herr Carovius, who had accompanied the two women on
+the street and had enjoyed to the full their pitiable distress,
+suggested that they go to the Bavarian Court. He climbed up on the seat
+by the coachman, told him how to get there, and looked down in regal
+triumph on the pedestrians.
+
+Countess Emilia, quite at her wits' end, sent a telegram to her Aunt
+Agatha. The next Wednesday Frau von Erfft with her daughter Sylvia
+arrived. "Clotilda acts as if she had lost her mind," she said to Emilia
+after having spent an hour in the room with her sister. "I am going to
+see your father. I must have a long talk with Siegmund."
+
+The Baron received his sister-in-law with marked coolness, though he had
+always had a great deal of respect for her.
+
+Frau von Erfft was quite careful to avoid any reference to the family
+affairs. She talked about Sylvia, remarking that she was now
+twenty-seven years old, and that she had rejected all her suitors, a
+fact which was causing her parents a measure of concern. "She simply
+will not be contented," said Frau Agatha. "She is bent on securing a
+special mission in her marriage, and fears nothing so much as the loss
+of her personal liberty. That is the way our children are, dear
+Siegmund; and if we had brought them into the world differently, they
+would be different. In our day the ideal was obedience; but now children
+have discovered the duty they owe themselves."
+
+"Then they should look out for themselves," replied the Baron gloomily.
+He had fully appreciated what his sister-in-law was driving at.
+
+From the confused and incoherent remarks of her sister, Agatha had
+learned what had taken place between the Baron and the Baroness. She was
+familiar with the painful past; and when she looked into the old Baron's
+eyes, she saw what was necessary. She made up her mind then and there to
+have Eberhard meet his mother.
+
+She wished above everything else to quiet Clotilda and persuade her to
+return home. The task, owing to the weakness and instability of the
+Baroness, was not difficult. Sylvia remained with her aunt, and her
+quiet, resolute disposition had a wholesome effect upon her. In the
+meantime Agatha had got Eberhard's address. After some search she found
+the house: Eberhard was at home.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+The first talk she had with him passed off without results of any kind.
+He evaded her courageous remarks, and failed to hear what he did not
+care to hear. He was stiff, polite, and annoyingly listless. Agatha,
+full of vexation, told her daughter of her disappointment. Sylvia said
+she would like to go with her mother the next time she visited Eberhard.
+Agatha shook her head, though she was in no way minded to abandon her
+purpose.
+
+There was no change at the Baron's house. Baroness Clotilda was in a
+perpetual state of nervous excitement that was anything but reassuring
+either to herself or those about her. The Baron was a disquieting riddle
+to the entire household: he never left his room; he paced up and down
+hours at a time, with his hands folded across his back.
+
+Agatha called on her nephew a second, a third, a fourth time. Even
+though Eberhard's Arctic impenetrability seemed made for all time,
+though yielding seemed to be no part of his nature, she finally
+succeeded in jolting him loose from his bearings. And when Sylvia
+accompanied her mother--Sylvia generally won her point with her
+mother--he shook off his armour with unexpected suddenness; you could
+see the struggles that were going on in his soul.
+
+Falteringly, and in the affected and finical tone he not infrequently
+adopted, he told the story of his youth, commenting on the everlasting
+discord between his father and his mother and the disagreeable quarrels
+that used to take place at home. He said that just as soon as his mother
+would ask that something be done, his father would demand the opposite.
+The children soon saw that father was going his way and mother hers;
+they were not unaware of the fact that their parents cordially
+distrusted each other and even went so far as to lay traps for each
+other. He insisted that his mother, with all her amiability and
+gentleness, was obsessed with the idea of teasing, annoying, and
+wounding his father on that very point where she had already and so
+often teased, annoyed, and wounded him before; and that this lack of
+reason and consideration on her part, coupled with the absence of
+kindness and candour on his, had made the paternal home a hell, torn at
+the hearts of the growing children, and in time so hardened them that
+they suspected every friendly face they saw, and withdrew, as if so from
+something vile, from every hand that was reached out to them. He related
+further that in this loveless wilderness brother and sister had been
+drawn to each other, that in Emilia's heart, and his own as well, this
+mutual friendship was cherished as a sacred, inviolable possession, so
+sacred that it impelled them in time to establish a league against all
+the rest of the world. How did they conduct themselves once this league
+had been founded? If they read a book it was in common; they kept no
+secrets from each other, advised each other, and shared their happiness
+and sorrow equally, until one fine day Emilia's father appeared before
+her, and informed her that Count Urlich had asked for her hand and that
+he had promised that he should have it.
+
+At this point in the story, Eberhard became silent; he bit his lips; his
+ashen face, that had never before reminded Agatha so much of the old
+Baron, betrayed an incurable grief.
+
+Agatha was familiar with this incident, in rough outline; but as
+Eberhard related it, it stirred her soul to the very depths. "One must
+try to forget," she said.
+
+"Forget? No, that I cannot do; never have been able to do. Be it a
+matter of virtue or of vice, I cannot forget. Emilia, then still half
+child and only half woman, was made flexible in time. But that my mother
+did not do everything in her power to prevent this gruesome deed, and
+that it caused her to sink deeper and deeper into the coils of domestic
+anguish by reason of her innate and gnawing weakness--that was the
+bitterest experience of my entire life."
+
+"But she is your mother, Eberhard. Never in the history of the human
+family has a son had the right to condemn his mother."
+
+"That is news to me," replied Eberhard coldly. "Mothers are human beings
+like any one else. Even mothers can commit a sin by filling their
+children with the poison of distrust and disgust with life. Father and
+mother, parents: they are a symbol, a glorious one when they hover above
+us and around us, worthy of respect and calling for filial veneration.
+But if I am bound to them only by the ties of duty, they are not
+symbols; they are mere phantoms, conceptions of human speech. There is
+no duty but the duty of love."
+
+Sylvia had sat in perfect silence. Unconsciously she had followed the
+most beautiful law of harmonious souls: to wield an influence, to have
+power, not through the use of words and the elaboration of reasons, but
+by a pure life, an unquestioned existence. Agreement and disagreement
+lay like a play of light and shadow on her brow.
+
+In this way she reminded Eberhard more and more of Eleanore.
+
+Perhaps it was the power of this memory that moved him to promise that
+he would go with Agatha on the following day to his mother. The sole
+condition he imposed was that he be assured that he would not meet his
+father.
+
+Seeing that he was relentless in this request, Frau von Erfft conceded
+it, though she had a reassuring premonition that the events and the hour
+would be stronger than will and purpose.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+On entering his mother's boudoir, Eberhard's eyes fell at once on the
+alabaster clock, the face of which was supported by three figures
+representing the daughters of time. In his childhood days the clock had
+always had a highly poetic meaning to him: it seemed to symbolise the
+fulfilment of his most ardent wishes.
+
+The Baroness had been prepared for his coming by her sister. While
+Eberhard and Sylvia had been standing in the corner room waiting, a few
+of the servants had gathered at the door, where they whispered to each
+other timidly.
+
+Eberhard went up to his mother and kissed her hand. The Baroness's face
+was the colour of lead; her eyes were opened as wide as possible, and
+yet she seemed hardly conscious. Emilia stood at one side; her hands
+were pressed to her bosom, her fingers were twitching convulsively.
+
+Frau Agatha endeavoured to relieve the situation of its solemnity and
+unnaturalness by making a few humorous remarks about Eberhard's hiding
+place on the hill by the Castle. Baroness Clotilda looked at her son in
+anxious and uneasy suspense: "I scarcely recognise him," she said with a
+hoarse voice, "he has changed so."
+
+"You have changed, too, Mother," said Eberhard, as his chin sought
+refuge between the lapels of his coat. He was as stiff as a poker.
+Agatha looked at him full of vexation and annoyance. He acted as though
+he were being bored by the meeting.
+
+But it was only a mask. As he looked at the old, indistinct, tired,
+bullied face, he became conscious of his mistake: he felt that he was
+wrong in saying that "Mothers are also human beings." He saw at once
+that amends had to be made, that action was necessary; he felt that his
+next step would lead to inevitable self-contempt if he neglected the
+moral deed of repentance.
+
+As he struggled with himself and stared, as if paralysed, into the
+rebellion of his own soul, a certain pair of eyes had forced their way
+behind the seeming apathy. A sudden blush came to Sylvia's cheeks: she
+went up to her cousin, and took him by the hand. He quivered; he saw at
+once that she had divined what was going on in his soul, and now she was
+determined to bring his fight to a close, a final, definite close. She
+took him out of the room; he followed her; she led him through the
+dining room, the reception room, the smoking room, the library, and on
+to his father's room. Agatha, Emilia, and the Baroness looked at each
+other in amazement. They went to the door of the room, and listened in
+breathless suspense.
+
+Sylvia opened the door rather boldly. The old Baron was sitting on the
+leather chair before the stove. His legs were wrapped in a blanket; the
+expression on his face was of stony coldness.
+
+Hardly had he noticed the two when he sprang to his feet as if the
+lightning had struck close by him. He shook; he faltered; he groped
+about for a physical support; and from his throat there came a stifled
+gurgle. That was all.
+
+Eberhard walked over to him, and reached out his hand.
+
+For a moment it seemed as if the old man would collapse. A last flash of
+hatred and revenge shot from his blue eyes; then he too reached out his
+hand. His arm trembled; thick knots of quivering muscles formed on his
+cheeks. Sylvia had gently closed the door and vanished.
+
+Anxious minutes passed by and nothing happened, except that each held
+the hand of the other and each looked into the eyes of the other. The
+silence was broken only by the crackling of the fire in the stove.
+
+"Just at the right time," murmured the old Baron, without looking up and
+as if lost in meditation, "just at the right time."
+
+Eberhard made no reply. He stood as still, as motionless, as silent, and
+with his heels as close together as if he were a young officer facing
+his superior in command.
+
+After a while he wheeled about and slowly left the room.
+
+Sylvia was waiting in the library. In the twilight it was possible to
+see only the vague outline of her body.
+
+Eberhard took hold of her and whispered: "I really believe that I no
+longer have a father."
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+That same night the old Baron had left. He got up in the middle of the
+night; at four o'clock his valet accompanied him to the station.
+
+The next morning two letters were found lying on his writing desk: one
+was addressed to Eberhard, the other to the Baroness. The latter
+contained nothing more than a few words of farewell. The former was more
+detailed. It expressed the Baron's satisfaction at the fact that
+Eberhard, whom he welcomed as the head of the house, had returned, and
+plainly indicated that all the necessary legal steps would be taken in a
+very short while to give him complete authority as his heir and
+successor. The letter closed with this surprising sentence: "So far as I
+am personally concerned, I am planning to enter the Catholic Church, in
+order to spend the remainder of my misapplied life at Viterbo in the
+Dominican Convent of Della Guercia."
+
+There was no explanation, no unusual display of feeling, no confession,
+nothing but the naked fact.
+
+The Baroness was neither surprised nor shocked. She fell into a mute,
+melancholy brooding, and then said: "He never was happy, never in his
+whole life. I never heard him laugh a really whole-souled laugh; and
+living with him has made me forget how to laugh myself. His heart has
+been from time immemorial a sort of convent, an abode of darkness, a
+place of sternness. He has found his way home at last, and is probably
+tired from the long journey on the way to his soul."
+
+"Nonsense, Clotilda!" cried Frau von Erfft. "What you say about his
+laughing may be true, and a man who cannot laugh is half animal. But do
+you mean to tell me that an intelligent man must resort to such means to
+find peace with himself and his God? A man who is under obligations to
+set an example for others? Is there not enough darkness in men's heads
+already? Is it necessary to put out the torches of those who stand
+guard? My sense of pardon is not so elaborate. I prefer to be a child of
+the world and associate with those who are regarded as heathens, and who
+have given us works of light and illumination."
+
+At these words Eberhard entered. As she looked into his face, Frau von
+Erfft thought: "There is another who can't laugh."
+
+The Baron's change of religious views caused the greatest excitement
+throughout the entire country. The liberal newspapers published
+fulminatory articles; flaming protests were made in the clubs against
+the surreptitious propaganda of Rome. The ultramontane party leaders
+rejoiced and made capital out of the marvellous return of such a sceptic
+to the bosom of the Church which alone can save the souls of men: they
+used the case as a bait for fresh recruits and as a means to fill the
+old regulars with greater fire and enthusiasm. Through the homes blew a
+breath of a tyrannical priesthood and spiritual gagging.
+
+Eberhard adapted himself to his changed condition quickly and with but
+little apparent effort: the chaos of opinions left him virtually
+unmoved. To become the master of so much and so many people, and to do
+it so suddenly, necessitated dignity, a clear eye, and a firm hand. His
+being was in no danger from an excess of zeal or up-start conceit,
+suffer though he might from too great seriousness and his preference for
+a place in the shadow. Strangely enough, the abundance of his
+responsibilities made him more cheerful. And where he was unable to take
+his part in the world of outward unrest, Sylvia's influence interceded
+and made it possible for him to do what was expected of him.
+
+In May he accompanied her and her mother to Erfft. There they took long
+walks together every day, and talked a great deal about Eleanore. At
+first he spoke with noticeable reserve. But when he felt that he had
+gained the confidence of his auditor, and she his, he spoke quite
+candidly, so candidly in truth that Sylvia came to look upon his action
+as one of inner liberation.
+
+When he told of Eleanore's marriage to Daniel Nothafft, Sylvia
+interrupted him, and asked a number of questions concerning Daniel. "Oh,
+yes, he was our guest once; he is the Kapellmeister," she said. And then
+she told him all about Daniel's visit at Erfft, and did it with a smile
+in which there were both indulgence and re-awakened astonishment.
+
+Her smile made the same appeal to Eberhard that Eleanore's had. And yet,
+when he was in Sylvia's company, he seemed to recognise more distinctly
+than ever what had drawn him with such irresistible power to Eleanore,
+possibly because Sylvia was of a less ardent and forceful nature. He
+could not exactly express it in words; he merely felt that it was the
+unknown realm of tones, the unknown melting of melodies, the ringing
+order of the music transformed into soul.
+
+At the beginning of June, Sylvia went back to Nuremberg with Eberhard
+and her parents. A few days later the betrothal took place in the
+baronial residence.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Herr Carovius had been paid. The consortium of silent backers had been
+dissolved.
+
+Never in the history of finance had there been a satisfied creditor
+who was so unhappy as Herr Carovius. He was without a goal, and the
+sign posts had been destroyed. He had received his money; so far so
+good. His share of the profit was something over sixty thousand marks.
+But what was this in comparison with the great noise? What comparison
+was there between living in ease and the gorgeous sight of falling
+stars? What attraction could the world offer him after this hopeful
+affair, which had begun as a tragedy, and had increased in interest and
+suspense until one was justified in believing that all the contradictory
+forces in human nature were going to collide with one mighty bang, when,
+in reality, the whole incident flattened out into an ordinary drama of
+emotion, with the curtain going down on reconciliation all around?
+
+But this was not the sole reason why Herr Carovius, up until this time a
+most elastic figure, one of those imperturbable bachelors for whom no
+hurdle was too high, suddenly felt that he was growing old. His soul was
+filled with unrest; he was seeing bad omens; he feared there was going
+to be a change in the weather.
+
+He felt an inner hunger, and yet he somehow lacked appetite for his
+kind of things. "Down and out, lost and no good," he sighed within. But
+those who had got rich at his expense could not possibly succeed. This
+much he knew.
+
+He began to lose his hair; he became rheumatic. As soon as the
+thermometer began to fall he shivered; if it rained he stayed at home.
+He began to study medicine, all by himself. He took up the various
+remedies of our remote ancestors. He read the works of Paracelsus, and
+declared that all those who had written on medicine since Paracelsus
+were quacks and poison-mixers.
+
+His ideas with regard to music became also more and more strange and
+bizarre. He had discovered an old Nuremberg composer by the name of
+Staden. His opera entitled "Seelewig"--the first of all German operas,
+by the way--he insisted was the very zenith of musical art, eminently
+superior to Mozart and Bach. He played arias and melodies from
+"Seelewig" to Dorothea.
+
+"Now, when you can get that," he exclaimed, "when you come to the point
+where I can see from your playing what is in it and at the bottom of it,
+Heaven and Hell in one stroke of the bow, then, you little jackanapes,
+I'm going to make you my heiress."
+
+That was precisely what Dorothea had been longing to hear; it confirmed
+her calculations and crowned her dreams. To hear these words roll from
+her uncle's tongue had been her ambition; and she had spared no pains to
+arrive at her goal.
+
+Herr Carovius was not spoiled. Since the days his sister had kept house
+for him, no woman had ever concerned herself about him in the least. But
+at that time he was young; and he had wheedled himself into believing
+that the women were merely waiting for him, that all he had to do was to
+beckon to them with his finger and they would come rushing up to him in
+battalions. But because he had dreaded the idea of making an unhappy
+selection, and by reason of the expense of the enterprise, he had
+neglected to give the necessary signal, and hence had been so generous
+as to leave them in complete possession of their freedom.
+
+He never knew until now that the soft, little hand of a woman could
+bring out effects as if they had come from the touch of a magic wand.
+"What a pleasant little phiz Doederlein's offspring has," he thought. And
+if Dorothea, who had made him believe that she was visiting him on the
+sly, though her father had given his consent long ago, chanced to remain
+away for a few days, he would become wild with rage, and go into the
+kitchen and chop wood merely to enjoy the sensation of destroying
+something.
+
+Moreover, the music lessons Dorothea was taking at Herr Carovius's
+expense gave the girl a new conception of her art, and awakened in her a
+measure of wholesome ambition. Satisfied as he was with her docility and
+her progress, Herr Carovius referred to her at times as the coming
+female Paganini, and pictured himself in the role of a demoniacal
+impresario.
+
+But the thing about Dorothea that struck him most forcibly and filled
+him with such astonishment was her relation to mirrors.
+
+A mirror exercised a tremendous influence on her. If she passed by one,
+her face became coloured with a charming blush of desire; if she stood
+before one and saw her picture reflected in it, she was filled, first
+with sexual unrest, and then with retreating uncertainty. In the
+brightness of her eyes there was always a longing for the mirror. Her
+gait and her gestures seemed to have duties imposed on them by the
+mirror; it seemed to be their task to prepare surprises. Her whole body
+seemed to live in common with a spectral mirror sister, and to catch
+sight of this beloved sister was her first wish, fulfilment of which she
+effected as often as possible.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Dorothea had succeeded in making it clear to her father that it would be
+highly advantageous to her, as the nearest relative, to show Herr
+Carovius every conceivable favour. Andreas Doederlein baulked at first;
+but he could not refuse recognition to the far-seeing penetration of his
+daughter.
+
+When she told him of her appearance in the baronial residence, and
+mentioned the enormous sum Herr Carovius had collected with the mien of
+an undaunted victor, Doederlein became serious; he stared into space and
+did some hard thinking. Recalling the now superannuated feud, he
+preserved the appearance of inapproachability, and said: "We will not
+debase ourselves for the sake of Mammon."
+
+A few days later, however, he said, quite of his own free will, sighing
+like a man who has gone through some great moral struggle and come out
+of it victorious, "Well, do as you think best, my child, but don't let
+me know anything about it."
+
+His argument, had he expressed it in so many words, would have been
+something like the following: We are poor; we are living from hand to
+mouth. The negligible dowry Herr Carovius gave his sister has been used
+up. Marguerite would have been perfectly justified in putting in her
+claim for thirty thousand marks, but Herr Carovius settled with her for
+only twelve thousand, and there was no possibility of redress. For Herr
+Carovius had wheedled his sister into giving him a written statement
+that she was satisfied with the sum of twelve thousand: the remaining
+eighteen thousand was the price he demanded in return for her consent to
+have his sister, who was slavishly submissive to him, marry the man of
+her choice.
+
+"I have been duped," said Andreas Doederlein, and bore up under his
+grudge with becoming dignity.
+
+The director of the conservatory died, and Andreas Doederlein, who, by
+virtue of his achievements and his personality, had the first right to
+the vacant position, was appointed to it. His former colleagues were
+stout in their contention that the appointment cost him many a bitter
+visit to the powers that be. Doederlein read envy in their eyes and
+smiled to himself.
+
+But it was a hard life. "Art cannot live without bread," said Doederlein,
+with a heroic glance into the future. "But oh, what works I could bring
+out if I only had time! Give me time, time, and," swinging his hands
+cloudward, "the eagles above would greet me!"
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+Herr Carovius and death were intimate friends. Whenever death had an
+errand to run, it always knocked on Herr Carovius's door, as if to find
+a person who approved of its deeds and who had a just appreciation of
+them, for there were so many of the other kind.
+
+But when Herr Carovius heard that Eleanore Nothafft had died, he felt
+that his old friend had gone a bit too far. He was touched. He was
+seized with griping pains in the abdominal region, and locked himself up
+for the period of one whole day in his court room. There he was taken
+down with catalepsy; his face went through a horrible transformation: it
+came to look as if all the wickedness, hopelessness, and despair of the
+man who had never become reconciled to life through love had been
+concentrated in it and petrified.
+
+His forebodings had come true.
+
+Eleanore's funeral took place on a rainy June day. Herr Carovius,
+dressed in his shabby old yellow raincoat with its big pockets, was
+present. There were also many others present. Every face was touched
+with grief; every eye was filled with tears, like the earth round about.
+Those who had not known her had at least heard of her. They had known
+that she had been there in some capacity, just as one hears of some
+unusual phenomenon among the celestial bodies, and that she was gone;
+that she was no more to be seen. For one moment at least all these
+people were changed into deep, seeing, feeling beings; for one moment
+they laid aside their fruitless activities, their petty misdeeds,
+desires, anxieties, and vanities, and became conscious of the fact that
+the truth, purity, love, and loveliness of this earth had been
+decreased.
+
+Herr Carovius went home and made a lime-blossom tea; such a tea had
+often helped him when he had not felt well.
+
+The rain dripped down on the kitchen window sill. Herr Carovius said to
+himself: "That is my last funeral."
+
+Along in the evening Dorothea came in and after her Philippina
+Schimmelweis. Herr Carovius had paid her many a penny for her services
+as a spy, and now she wanted to hear what he had to say to this last and
+greatest of misfortunes. His infatuated interest in everything Eleanore
+did had been a source of unmitigated pleasure to her, though she had
+been exceedingly cautious never to let him see how she felt about it
+all. On the contrary, she never failed to affect a hypocritical
+seriousness in the face of all his questions, orders, instructions, and
+caustic observations. She had egged him on; she had flattered him; she
+had used every opportunity to fan the flames of his ridiculous hopes.
+Owing to this the confidence between the two had grown to considerable
+proportion; the man's senile madness, born of his love for Eleanore, had
+even aroused Philippina's lewd lasciviousness.
+
+She said she would have to be going home; the child was asleep; and
+though she had locked the front door, you could never tell what was
+going to happen over there. "My God," she said, "things take place in
+that house that are never heard of in any other home."
+
+The presence of Dorothea disturbed and annoyed her. She sat down on the
+kitchen bench, and looked at the young girl with poison in her eyes.
+Dorothea on the other hand found it painfully difficult to conceal her
+disgust at the mere sight of Philippina: her ugliness defied descriptive
+adjectives. Dorothea never took her eyes off the creature who sat there
+talking in a screeching voice, and who, as if her normal
+unattractiveness were not enough, had her head bandaged.
+
+The fact is that Philippina had the toothache; for this reason her face
+was wrapped in a loud, checkered cloth, while out from underneath her
+hat stuck two little tassels.
+
+She told the story of Eleanore's death with much satisfaction to
+herself, and with that delight in the tragic in which she revelled by
+instinct. "And now," she said, "old Jordan sits over there in his attic
+rooms and sobs, and Daniel goes moping about, refusing to eat any food
+and looking at you with eyes that would fill you with fear even if
+everything else was as it should be."
+
+This is the point to which Daniel has brought things, she showed in her
+gratuitous report, in which there was an attempt to chide him for his
+waywardness: He has put two women under the ground, has a helpless child
+in the house, is out of a job, is not making a cent. Now what could this
+kind of doings lead to? Judge Ruebsam's wife had paid the funeral
+expenses. Why, you know, Daniel didn't even know what they were talking
+about when the bill came in, and old Jordan, he didn't have twenty marks
+to his name. She swore she wasn't going to stand for it much longer, and
+if Daniel didn't quit his piano-strumming--he wasn't getting a cent for
+it--she was going to know a thing or two.
+
+Quite contrary to his established custom, Herr Carovius failed to show
+the slightest interest in her gabble; at least he made no concessions to
+her. Nor did he fuss and fume; he gazed into space, and seemed to be
+thinking about many serious things all at the same time. His silence
+made Philippina raging mad. She jumped up and left without saying
+good-bye to him, slamming first the room door and then the hall door
+behind her.
+
+Dorothea was standing by the piano rummaging around in some note books.
+Her thoughts were on what she had just been hearing.
+
+She remembered Daniel Nothafft quite well. She knew that there was an
+irreconcilable feud between him and her father. She had seen him; people
+had pointed out the man with the angry looking eyes to her on the
+street. She had felt at the time as if she had already talked with him,
+though she could not say when or where. She had a vague idea as to what
+people said about him, and she knew that he was looked upon in the city
+as the adversary of evil himself.
+
+Her breast was filled with an aimless longing. Her blood began to run
+warm, the fusty _milieu_ in which she just then chanced to be cleared up
+and began to bestir itself. She took her violin and began to play a
+Hungarian dance, while an enlivening smile flitted across her face, and
+her eyes shone with the audacity of an ambitious and temperamental girl.
+
+Herr Carovius raised his head: "Tempo!" he exclaimed, "Tempo!" and began
+to beat time with his hands and stamp the floor with his feet.
+
+Dorothea smiled, shook her head, and played more and more rapidly.
+
+"Tempo," howled Herr Carovius. "Tempo!"
+
+The barking of a sad dog was wafted into the room from the court below.
+It was Caesar: he was on his last legs.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+Daniel's mother had come; she had brought little Eva along.
+
+Marian had learned of Eleanore's death through the newspaper. No one had
+thought of her; no one had written to her. She had not read it in the
+newspaper herself. The doctor in Eschenbach, who had subscribed to the
+_Fraenkischer Herold_, had read it one morning, and had given her the
+paper with considerable hesitation, calling her attention to the death
+notice.
+
+She was not present at the funeral. But she went out to the cemetery and
+prayed by Eleanore's grave.
+
+She appreciated Daniel's loss. When she met him he was precisely as she
+thought he would be. She recognised her son in his great grief and mute
+despair: he was nearer to her then than at any other time of his life.
+She honoured his grief; she did not need to decrease it or divert it.
+She was silent, just as Daniel himself was silent. All she did was to
+lay her hand on his forehead occasionally. He murmured: "Mother, oh
+Mother!" She replied: "Now don't! Don't think of me!"
+
+She said to herself: "When an Eleanore dies in the full bloom of youth,
+one must mourn until the soul of its own accord again grows hungry for
+life."
+
+At first Eva had tried to play with her little step-sister; but
+Philippina had chased her from the room. Once she turned against the
+enraged daughter of Jason Philip Schimmelweis, and said: "I'll tell my
+father on you!"
+
+"Yes? You'll tell your father? Well, tell him! Who cares?" replied
+Philippina scornfully. "But who is your father? What is he? Where is he?
+In Pomerania perhaps?" Whereupon she added in a sing-song voice:
+"Pomerania is burnt to the ground. Fly, cockchafer, fly!"
+
+"My father? He's in the room there," replied Eva surprised and
+offended: "I am in his house, and little Agnes is my sister."
+
+Philippina tore open her eyes and her mouth: "Your father--is in the
+room--" she stammered, "and little Agnes--is your sister?" She got up,
+seized Eva by the shoulders, and dragged her across the floor into the
+room where Daniel and Marian were sitting. With an outburst of laughter
+that sounded as though she were not quite in her right mind, and with an
+expression of impudence and rage on her face, she panted forth her
+indignation in the following terms: "This brat says Daniel is her father
+and Agnes is her sister! A scurvy chit--I'll say!"
+
+Marian, terrified, sprang to her feet, ran over to Eva, and began to
+scream: "Let her go, take your hands off that child!" Eva was pale, the
+tears were rolling down her cheeks, her little arms were stretched out
+as if in urgent need of help from an older hand. Philippina let go of
+her and stepped back. "Is it really true?" she whispered, "is it really
+true?" Marian knelt down and picked up her foster child: "Now you mind
+your own business, you rogue," she said to Philippina.
+
+"Daniel?" Philippina turned to Daniel with uplifted arms, and repeated,
+"Daniel?" She seemed to be challenging him to speak; and to be
+reproaching him for having deceived her. There was something quite
+uncanny about the way she said, "Daniel? Daniel?"
+
+"You go back and mind Agnes!" said Daniel, worried as he had never been
+before: he felt more than ever under obligations to Philippina. And what
+could he do now without her? She was the sole guardian of his child. His
+mother could not remain in the city; she had to make her living, and
+that she could do only over in Eschenbach. Her business was located
+there; and there Eva was growing up in peace and happiness. On the other
+hand, he did not feel that it would be possible or advisable to take
+Agnes away from Philippina, even if his mother saw fit to adopt her too.
+Philippina was attached to the child with an ape-like affection. And
+more than this: Who would take care of old Jordan if Philippina were
+discharged? Daniel could not make his bed or get his meals.
+
+Philippina went out. "The damned scoundrel!" she said as soon as she had
+left the room. She clenched her horny fists, and continued Daniel's life
+history: "The brute has a bastard, he has. You wait, you little chit,
+and the first chance I get I'll scratch your eyes out!"
+
+Taking the child on her lap, Marian sat down by Daniel's side. "Don't
+cry, Eva, don't cry; we're going back home now in a minute."
+
+Daniel looked at his mother most attentively, and told her how
+Philippina had chanced to come into his family. He told her all about
+Jason Philip's attempt to rob him of his inheritance, and how his own
+daughter had betrayed him; how his father had taken three thousand
+talers to Jason Philip; how Jason Philip had been forced to hand over a
+part of the money when Jordan was in trouble because of his son; and how
+he had waived his claims to the rest of the money.
+
+Marian's head sank low on her breast. "Your father was a remarkable man,
+Daniel," she said after a long silence, "but he never did understand
+people; and the person whom he misunderstood most of all was his wife.
+He was like a man who is blind, but who does not want to let it be known
+that he is blind: he walks around, but where does he go? He stands still
+and has not the faintest idea where he is. And by the way, Daniel, it
+seems to me that you are a little bit like him. Open your eyes, Daniel,
+I beg you, open your eyes!"
+
+The child in her lap had fallen asleep. Daniel looked into Eva's
+face--yes, he opened his eyes--and as he saw this delicate, sweet,
+charming countenance so close before him, he could no longer control
+himself. He turned to the wall, and cried as if his heart would break:
+"I am a murderer!"
+
+"No, Daniel," said Marian gently, "or if you are, then everybody who
+lives is a murderer, the dead of the past being the victims."
+
+Daniel writhed in agony and gnashed his teeth.
+
+"Father is in the room there," whispered Eva in her dreams.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+The hardest of all for Marian was to get along with old Jordan; for he
+was only a shadow of his former self. He never entered Daniel's room; if
+Marian wanted to see him she went upstairs, and there he sat, quiet,
+helpless, extinguished, a picture of utter dereliction.
+
+He never mentioned his sorrows; it made him restless to see that Marian
+sympathised with him. When she did, he became quite courteous; he even
+tried to act the part of a man of the world. The effect of this assumed
+sprightliness, seen from the background of his physical impoverishment
+and spiritual decay, was terrifying.
+
+Marian hoped to hear something from him concerning Daniel's present
+situation. She knew, in a general way, that he was in profound distress,
+that he was living in most straightened circumstances, and this worried
+her tremendously. But she wanted to know how he stood in the world;
+whether people felt there was anything to him; and whether music was
+something from which a man could make a decent living. On this last
+point her distrust was as strong as ever; her fear showed no signs of
+weakening. It was Eleanore, and she only, that had given her a measure
+of confidence: it seemed that Eleanore's disposition, her very presence,
+had inspired her with a vague, far-away idea of music. But now Eleanore
+was gone, and all her old doubts returned.
+
+Jordan however became painfully secretive whenever she referred to
+Daniel. He seemed to be grieved at the mere mention of his name. He
+would merely look at the door, tuck his hands up his coat-sleeves, and
+draw his head down between his shoulders.
+
+Once he said: "Can you explain to me, my good woman, why I am alive? Can
+you throw any light on such a preposterous paradox as my present
+existence? My son--a wretch, vanished without a trace, so far as I am
+concerned no longer living. My daughters, both of them, in the grave; my
+dear wife also. I have been a man, a husband, and a father; that is, I
+have _been_ a father! My existence scorns the laws and purposes of
+nature. To eat, to drink, to sleep--oh, what repulsive occupations! And
+yet, if I do not eat, I get hungry; if I do not drink, I get thirsty; if
+I do not sleep, I get sick. How simple, how aimless it all is! For me
+the birds no longer sing, the bells no longer ring, the musicians have
+no more music."
+
+Owing to her desire to find consolation of some kind and at any price,
+she turned to Eberhard and Sylvia; they were now visiting Daniel almost
+every day. She liked them; there was so much consideration for other
+people in their behaviour, so much delicacy and refinement in their
+conversation. Sylvia was not in the least offended by Daniel's sullen
+silence; she treated him with a respect and deference that made Marian
+feel good; for it was proof to her that in the eyes of good and noble
+people Daniel stood in high esteem. The Baron seemed in some mysterious
+way to be continually talking about Eleanore, though he never mentioned
+her name. There was a sadness in his eyes that reminded her of Eleanore;
+there was something supersensuous in its power. Marian often felt as
+though this strange nobleman and her son were brothers and at the same
+time enemies, as seen in the light of painful memories. Sylvia also
+seemed to have the same feeling; but she found nothing objectionable in
+the relation.
+
+One day, as Marian accompanied the two to the hall door, she decided to
+pick up her courage; and she did. "Well, how do you think he is going to
+make out?" she asked; "he has no work; as a matter of fact he never
+speaks of work. What will that lead to?"
+
+"We have been thinking about that," replied Sylvia, "and I believe a way
+has been found to help him. He will hear about it in a short while. But
+he must not suspect that we have anything to do with it." She looked at
+her fiance; he nodded approvingly.
+
+Eberhard and Sylvia knew perfectly well from the very beginning that
+there could be no thought of lending Daniel money. Gifts, large or
+small, merely humiliated him; they disgraced him. It was a case where
+eagerness to serve on the part of those who have meets with
+insurmountable obstacles, whether they wish to be lavish in their
+generosity or of seeming calculation. There was no use to appeal to
+delicacy; attenuating provisos would not help; small deceptions
+practised in the spirit of love would prove ineffectual. Riches stood
+face to face with poverty, and was as helpless as poverty usually is
+when obliged to enter the lists against riches. The case was striking,
+but not unique.
+
+Having made up her mind to come to the assistance of the musician,
+Sylvia turned to her mother. But it was idle to count on the backing of
+the Baroness: Andreas Doederlein had so poisoned her mind against Daniel
+that the mere mention of his name caused her brow to wrinkle, her lips
+to drop.
+
+Agatha von Erfft got in touch, by letter, with some business people who
+were in a position to give her some practical advice. Their assistance
+was helpful in that it at least saved her the invaluable time she might
+have lost by appealing to the wrong people. One day she appeared before
+Eberhard and Sylvia with her plans all drawn up.
+
+One of the most reputable music houses of Mayence had been nursing the
+idea for years of bringing out a pretentious collection of mediaeval
+church music. A great deal of material had already been assembled under
+the supervision of a writer on musical subjects who had recently died.
+But there was still much to be collected. To do this, it would be
+necessary to go on long journeys, and these would entail the expenditure
+of a good deal of money. Moreover, it was necessary to find a man who
+would not be afraid of the work attached to the undertaking, and on
+whose judgment one could rely without doubt or cavil. Owing to the fact
+that the expenses up to the present had far exceeded the initial
+calculations, and since it seemed impossible to engage the right sort of
+man to place in charge of the work, the publisher had become first
+sceptical and then positive; positive that he would invest no more money
+in it.
+
+Agatha had heard of this some time ago. That the enterprise might be
+revived she learned from direct inquiry; indirect investigation
+confirmed what she had been told. But the publisher was unwilling to
+assume all the financial responsibility; he was looking for a patron who
+would be disposed to invest capital in the plan. If such a person could
+be found, he was willing to place Daniel Nothafft, whose name was now
+known to him, in the responsible position of making the collections and
+editing them. There would be a good deal of work connected with the
+undertaking: the treasures of the archives, libraries, and convents
+would have to be investigated; corrections would have to be made; notes
+would have to be written; and the entire work would have to be seen
+through the press. To do this would take several years. The publisher
+consequently insisted that whoever was placed in charge should sign a
+contract to remain until the work had been finished, he in turn agreeing
+to pay the editor a salary of three thousand marks a year.
+
+Eberhard made careful inquiries as to the standing of the firm, and
+finding that it enjoyed a rating well above the average, he agreed to
+furnish the requisite capital.
+
+A few days after the conversation between Sylvia and Marian, Daniel
+received a letter in the morning mail from Philander and Sons,
+requesting him to accept the position, a detailed description of which
+was given. In the event of his acceptance, all he had to do was to sign
+the enclosed contract.
+
+He read the letter carefully and quietly from beginning to end. His face
+did not brighten up. He walked back and forth in the room a few times,
+and then went to the window and looked out. "It seems to rain every day
+this summer," he said.
+
+Marian had returned to the table. She took the letter with the enclosed
+contract and read both of them. Her heart beat with joy, but she was
+exceedingly careful not to betray her state of mind to Daniel: she was
+afraid of his contradictory and crotchety disposition. She hardly dared
+look at him, as she waited in anxious suspense to see what he would do.
+
+Finally he came back to the table, made a wry face, stared at the
+letter, and then said quite laconically: "Church music? Yes, I will do
+it." With that he took his pen, and scrawled his name to the contract.
+
+"Thank God," whispered Marian.
+
+That afternoon they left Daniel. Eva hung on her father's neck, quite
+unwilling to leave him. Without the least display of shyness, she kissed
+him many times, laughing as she did so. She was overflowing with a
+natural and whole-hearted love for him. Daniel offered no resistance. He
+looked serious. As his eye caught that of the child, he shuddered at the
+abundant fulness of her life; but he was aware at the same time of a
+promise, and against this he struggled with all the power there was in
+him.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+It was a sunny day in September. Eberhard, who had spent the entire
+August at Erfft, had returned to the city to attend to some urgent
+business--and also to hasten the arrangements for his coming wedding.
+
+As the streets were filled with playing children, he sauntered along on
+his way up to the Castle on the hill. He wanted to look up his little
+house; he had not been in it for months. He had a feeling that he would
+enjoy the quiet up there; he longed to look back over and into scenes
+from the past; he wanted to pass in review the shadowy pictures of his
+former self; pictures he saw before him wherever he went, wherever he
+was. One of these was always with him; if he found himself in a certain
+room it was there; if he went on a long journey it was with him. He even
+found it on the faded pages of books he had taken to himself as
+companions in his loneliness.
+
+He hesitated from time to time, stopped, and seemed quite irresolute.
+All of a sudden he turned around, and started back with hasty steps to
+AEgydius Place. Just as he was entering the hall of Daniel's apartment,
+he met Daniel coming out. He greeted Eberhard and gave him his hand.
+
+"I was just going to call for you," said the Baron. "Won't you come with
+me up to my old hermitage?"
+
+Daniel looked out through his glasses at a swallow that was just then
+circling around over the square; there was something fabulous in its
+flight. "To tell you the truth, Baron, I have very little inclination to
+gossip at present." He made the remark with as much consideration for
+the laws of human courtesy as lay within his power.
+
+"There must be no gossiping," said Eberhard. "I have a great secret, one
+that I can tell you without saying a word."
+
+Daniel went along with him.
+
+The air in the little house was dead, stuffy. But Eberhard did not open
+the windows; he wished to have it as quiet as it was when they entered.
+Daniel took a seat on one of the chairs in the former living room of the
+Baron. Eberhard thought he had sat down because he was tired; he
+therefore took a seat opposite him. The evening sun cast a slanting ray
+on an old copper engraving based on a scene from pastoral life. A mouse
+played around in the corner.
+
+"Well, what is your secret?" asked Daniel brusquely, after they had sat
+in perfect silence for some time.
+
+Eberhard got up, and made a gesture which meant that Daniel was to
+follow him. They crossed the narrow hall, climbed up a pair of small
+steps, and then Eberhard opened a door leading into the attic room.
+
+A stupefying, deadening odour of decayed flowers struck them in the
+face. Involuntarily Daniel turned to go, but the Baron pointed at the
+walls in absolute silence.
+
+"What is this? What kind of a room is this?" asked Daniel, rather
+forcibly.
+
+The four walls of the room were completely covered with bouquets,
+garlands, and wreaths of withered flowers. The leaves had fallen from
+most of them, and were now lying scattered about the floor. Leaves that
+had once been green had turned brown; the grasses and mosses were in
+shreds, the twigs were dry and brittle. Many of the bouquets had had
+ribbons attached to them; these, once red or blue, were now faded.
+Others had been bound with gold tinsel; this had rusted. The slanting
+rays of the sun fell on others, and lighted them as it had shone on the
+copper engraving in the room below. Through the purple rays could be
+seen a dancing stream of dust.
+
+It was a flower mausoleum; a vault of bouquets, a death-house of
+memories. Daniel suspected what it all meant. He felt his tongue
+cleaving to the roof of his mouth; a chill ran over him. And when
+Eberhard at last began to speak, his eyes filled with hot, gushing
+tears.
+
+"The flowers were all picked and bound by her hands, by Eleanore's
+hands," said Eberhard. And then, after a pause: "She prepared the
+bouquets for a florist, and I bought them; she had no idea who bought
+them." That was all he said.
+
+Daniel looked back into his past life, as if an invisible arm were
+drawing him to the pinnacle of some high mountain. He looked, and his
+soul was dissolved in anxiety, torture, and repentance.
+
+What had he left? Two graves: that was all. No, he had, aside from the
+two graves, a broken harp, some withered flowers, and a mask of
+terracotta.
+
+He looked at the dead stems and withered chalices: Eleanore's fingers
+had once touched all of these. Her fingers were even then hovering over
+the dead buds like figures from the realm of spirits. In the dusty
+spider webs hung caught at present unused moments, kind words that were
+never spoken, consolation that was never expressed, encouragement,
+consideration, and happiness that were allowed to pass unclaimed and
+unapplied. Oh, this living and not knowing what the present contains!
+Oh, this being with a living life, and remaining unaware of it! This
+failure to avail one's self of a wonderful day, a breathing, pulsing
+hour! This dragging, falling, plunging into the night of desire and
+delusion, this proud, vain, criminal discontent! O winged creature,
+winged creature, where art thou! Where can one call out to thee!
+
+There was nothing left but two graves, a broken harp, withered flowers,
+and a mask! And a fair child here, a foul one there, and a third that
+had come into life only to die! And up above all this, up above even the
+tip of the mountain top, the gigantic, the inexpressible, the sea of
+dreams and dreamed melodies, the breath of God, the annunciation of
+infernal darkness, the message of eternity, the wonders of temporal
+existence, dance and dancing pipes, peals of thunder, and sweet weavings
+of sound--Music!
+
+It was evening. The Baron closed the door. Daniel reached him his hand
+in silence, and then went home.
+
+
+
+
+                        THE PROMETHEAN SYMPHONY
+
+
+                                   I
+
+During the following autumn and winter, Daniel lived a quiet, lonely
+life. In the spring, Sylvia von Auffenberg wrote him a letter, asking
+him to come over to Siegmundshof and spend a few weeks with her and
+Eberhard. He declined, though he promised to come later.
+
+Old Herold visited him occasionally. He told all about the friction in
+the conservatory since Doederlein had been in charge, and contended that
+the world was on the point of turning into a pig-stye.
+
+Herr Seelenfromm also came in from time to time, while among other
+visitors were the architect who had a defect in his speech and Martha
+Ruebsam. Toward the close of the winter Herr Carovius also called.
+Socially he had become more nearly possible than he had been in former
+years. He still held, however, some very remarkable views about music.
+
+Whatever any of the visitors said went in one of Daniel's ears and out
+of the other. It would often happen that there would be a number of
+people in his presence, and he would seem to be listening to them; and
+yet if you watched his face, you could see that he was completely
+absent-minded. If some one turned to him with a question, he would not
+infrequently smile like a child, and make no effort whatsoever to
+respond. No one had ever noticed him smile this way before.
+
+He returned the money Philippina had loaned him at the time the piano
+was pawned. Philippina said: "Oi, oi, Daniel, you seem to be swimming in
+money!" She brought him the receipt, and then took the money to her
+room, where she did a lot of figuring to see whether the interest had
+been accurately calculated.
+
+Little Agnes was sitting on the floor, sucking a stick of candy. She was
+always happy when Philippina was around; she was afraid of her father.
+
+Friends had told him that his apartment was too large now; he was
+advised to give it up and take a smaller one. He became enraged; he
+said he would never do this voluntarily, for the house meant a great
+deal more to him than merely so many rented rooms; and he insisted that
+everything be left just as it was.
+
+One day at the beginning of spring he said to Philippina: "I am going
+away for a long time. Watch the child, and don't let the old man
+upstairs suffer for anything. I will send you the money to keep up the
+house on the first day of each month, and you will be held responsible
+for everything that takes place. Moreover; I want to pay you a set wage:
+I will give you five talers a month. There is no reason why you should
+work for me for nothing."
+
+The shaking and shuddering that Daniel had often had occasion to notice
+in Philippina returned. She shrugged her shoulders, looked as mean as
+only she could, and said: "Save your coppers; you'll need 'em; you
+mustn't try to act so rich all of a sudden; it ain't good for your
+health. If you have any money to spend, go out and git Agnes a pair of
+shoes and a decent dress." Daniel made no reply.
+
+Her greediness in money matters had certainly not diminished since the
+day she began to pilfer from her parents. She loved money; she adored
+the shining metal; she liked to see it and feel it; she liked to take
+bank notes in her hands and caress them. It gave her intense pleasure to
+think that people looked upon her as being poor when she was actually
+carrying more than a thousand marks around in an old stocking stuffed
+down in her corset between her breasts. She loved to hear people
+complain of hard times. When a beggar reached out his hand to her on the
+street, she felt that he was doing it as an act of homage to her; she
+would cause her bosom to heave so that she might feel the presence of
+the stocking more keenly. She was pleased to think that one so young had
+made herself so secure against future eventualities of any kind.
+
+She felt, despite all this, like scratching Daniel's eyes out when he
+spoke of paying her regular monthly wages. This she regarded as base
+ingratitude. If it were at all possible for grief to find ineradicable
+lodgment in her envious, unenlightened, malicious soul, Daniel's offer
+of so much per month made it so.
+
+She ran into the kitchen, and hurled knives and forks in the sink. She
+went to old Jordan's room, knocked on his door, and made him open it;
+then she told him with all the anger at her resourceful command that
+Daniel was going away. "There is hardly a cent in the house, and he's
+going on a jamboree!" she exclaimed. "There is some damned wench back
+of this. Go tell him, Herr Inspector, go tell him what a dirty thing it
+is he's doing--going away and leaving his child and his old father in
+the lurch. Do it, Herr Inspector, and you'll get potato dumplings,
+ginger-bread, and sauce for dinner next Sunday."
+
+Jordan looked at Philippina timidly. His mouth watered for the food she
+had promised him; for she was holding him down to a near-starvation
+diet. He was often so hungry that he would sneak into the delicatessen
+shop, and buy himself ten pfennigs' worth of real food.
+
+"I will make inquiry as to the reason for his going," murmured Jordan,
+"but I hardly believe that I will be able to move him one way or the
+other."
+
+"Well, you go out and take a little walk; git a bit of fresh air,"
+commanded Philippina; "I've got to straighten up your room. Your windows
+need washing; you can't see through 'em for dirt."
+
+Late that evening Daniel came up to say good-bye to Jordan.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked the old man.
+
+"I want to see a little of the German Empire," replied Daniel. "I have
+some business to attend to up in the North, in the cities and also out
+in the country."
+
+"Good luck to you," said Jordan, much oppressed, "good luck to you, my
+dear son. How long are you going to be gone?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know yet; possibly for years."
+
+"For years?" asked Jordan. He looked at the floor; he tried to keep his
+eyes on the floor under his feet: "Then I suppose we might as well say
+good-bye forever."
+
+Daniel shook his head. "It makes no difference when I return, I will
+find you here," he said with a note of strange assurance in his voice.
+"When fate has treated a man too harshly, there seems to come a time
+when it no longer bothers him; it evades him, in fact. It seems to me
+that this is the case with you: you are quite fateless."
+
+Jordan made no reply. He opened his eyes as if in fear, and sighed.
+
+The next morning Daniel left home. He wore a brown hunting jacket
+buttoned close up to his neck with hartshorn buttons. Over this hung a
+top-coat and a cape. His broad-brimmed hat overshadowed his face, which
+looked young, although so serious and distracted that voices, glances,
+and sounds of any kind seemed to rebound from it like swift-running
+water from a smooth stone wall.
+
+Philippina carried his luggage to the station. Her dress was literally
+smothered in garish, gaudy ribbons. The women in the market-place
+laughed on seeing her until they got a colic.
+
+When Daniel took leave from her and boarded the train, she did not open
+her mouth; she wrinkled her forehead, rubbed the ends of her fingers
+against each other, stood perfectly quiet, and looked at the ground.
+Long after the train had left the station, she was still to be seen
+standing there in that unique position. A station official went up to
+her, and, with poorly concealed ridicule at the rare phenomenon, asked
+her what she was waiting for.
+
+She turned her back on him, and started off. She came back by way of St.
+James's Place, and talked for a quarter of an hour with her friend Frau
+Hadebusch. It was Sunday. Benjamin Dorn was just coming home from
+church. Seeing Philippina, he made a profound bow.
+
+Frau Hadebusch slapped Philippina on the hip, and smiled at her
+knowingly.
+
+Herr Francke was no longer living at Frau Hadebusch's: he was in jail.
+He had promised to marry the cook of a certain distinguished family; but
+instead of hastening the coming of the happy day, he had gambled away
+the savings of his bride-to-be.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Daniel had a letter of introduction to the Prior of the Monastery at
+Loehriedt. He was looking for a manuscript that was supposed to have been
+written by a contemporary of Orlando di Lasso, if not by Di Lasso
+himself.
+
+He remained for over two months, working at his collection. He found his
+association with the monks quite agreeable, and they liked him. One of
+them, who held him in especially high regard because of his ability as
+an organist, gave him to understand that it was a matter of unaffected
+regret to him that he could not greet him, Protestant that he was, with
+the confidence that a man of his singular distinction deserved.
+
+"So! I wish I were a Jew," said Daniel to him, "then you would have a
+really unqualified opportunity to see what God can do without your
+assistance."
+
+The monk in question was called Father Leonhard; he was a short, wiry
+fellow with black eyes and a dark complexion. He seemed to have had a
+great deal of experience with the world, and to have no little cause for
+contrition and repentance: there was nothing conventional about his
+religious practices; they were, on the contrary, of almost redundant
+fervour and renunciation. Daniel was impressed by the man's faith,
+though his soul shuddered when in his presence: he regarded him as an
+enemy, a Philistine, and preferred not to look at him at all.
+
+He lived close by the monastery in the house of a railroad official.
+Father Leonhard came in to visit him once. Daniel was sitting by the
+window busily engaged in making some corrections. The Father looked
+about the room: his eyes fell on a round, wooden box lying on a chair;
+it looked like a cake box.
+
+"The people at home have sent you something to nibble at," remarked the
+Father, as Daniel got up.
+
+Daniel riveted his eyes on the monk, took the box, hesitated for a
+while, and then opened it. In it, carefully packed in sawdust, was the
+mask of Zingarella. It was a part of Daniel's meagre luggage; wherever
+he went it followed him.
+
+Father Leonhard sprang back terrified. "What does that mean?" he asked.
+
+"It means sin and purification," said Daniel, holding the mask up in the
+light of the setting sun. "It means grief and redemption, despair and
+mercy, love and death, chaos and form."
+
+From that day on, Father Leonhard never said another word to Daniel
+Nothafft. And whenever the strange musician chanced to play the organ,
+the monk arose as quickly as possible, left the church, and sought out
+some place where the tones could not reach him.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+That summer Daniel came to Aix-la-Chapelle and the region of Liege,
+Louvain, and Malines. From there he wandered on foot to Ghent and
+Bruges.
+
+In places where he had to make investigations, he was obliged to depend
+upon the letters he received from his publisher to make himself
+understood. Condemned to silence, he lived very much alone; he was a
+stranger in a strange land.
+
+He had no interest in sights. It was rare that he looked at old
+paintings. The beautiful never caused him to stop unless it actually
+blocked his way. He went about as if in between two walls. He followed
+his nose, turned around only with the greatest reluctance, and never
+felt tired until he was ready to lie down to sleep.
+
+And even when he was tired the feeling that he was being robbed of
+something gnawed at his soul; he was restless even when he slept. Haste
+coloured his eye, fashioned his step, and moulded his deeds. He ate his
+meals in haste, wrote his letters in haste, and talked in haste.
+
+It pained him to feel that men were looking at him. Although he
+invariably sought out the most deserted corner of whatever inn he
+chanced to stop at, and thereby avoided becoming, so far as he might,
+the target of the curious, he was nevertheless gaped at, watched, and
+studied wherever he went. For everything about him was conspicuous: the
+energy of his gestures, the agility of his mimicry, the way he showed
+his teeth, and the nervous, hacking step with which he moved through
+groups of gossiping people.
+
+He had anticipated with rare pleasure the sight of the sea. He was
+prepared to behold the monstrous, titanic, seething, and surging
+element, the tempest of the Apocalypse. He was disappointed by the
+peaceful rise and fall of the tide, the harmless rolling back and forth
+of the waves. He concluded that it were better for one not to become
+acquainted with things that had inspired one's fancy with reverential
+awe.
+
+He could quarrel with nature just as he could quarrel with men. The
+phases of nature which he regarded as her imperfections excited his
+anger. He was fond, however, of a certain spot in the forest; or he
+liked a tree in the plain, or sunset along the canal.
+
+He liked best of all the narrow streets of the cities, when the gentle
+murmurings of song wafted forth from the open windows, or when the light
+from the lamp shone forth from the windows after they had been closed.
+He loved to pass by courts and cellars, gates and fences; when the face
+of an old man, or that of a young girl, came suddenly to view, when
+workmen went home from the factories, or soldiers from the barracks, or
+seamen from the harbours, he saw a story in each of them; he felt as one
+feels on reading an exciting book.
+
+One day when he was in Cleve he walked the streets at night all alone.
+He noticed a man and a woman and five children, all poorly dressed,
+standing near a church. Lying before them on the pavement were several
+bundles containing their earthly possessions. A man came up after a
+while and addressed them in a stern, domineering tone; they picked up
+their bundles and followed him: it was a mournful procession. They were
+emigrants; the man had told them about their ship.
+
+Daniel felt as if a cord in his soul had been made taut and were
+vibrating without making a sound. The steps of the eight people, as
+they died away in the distance, developed gradually into a rhythmical,
+musical movement. What had been confused became ordered; what had been
+dark shone forth in light. Weighed down with heaviness of soul, he went
+on, his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were looking for something. He
+no longer saw, nor could he hear. Nor did he know what time it was.
+
+After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more
+began to blow in his soul.
+
+But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His
+immediate goal was the cloister of Oesede at Osnabrueck, and from there he
+wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway
+carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went
+from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack
+strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from
+eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the
+mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were
+wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked,
+sought and sought, often until late at night, passionately absorbed in
+himself.
+
+When he came to the coal and iron district, he raised his head more and
+more frequently. The houses were black, the earth and the air were
+black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog
+and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles
+blew--it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and
+accursed star.
+
+One evening he left a little inn which he had entered to get something
+to eat and drink. It was eight miles to Dortmund, where he planned to
+stay over night. He had left the main road, when all of a sudden the
+fire from the blast-furnaces leaped up, giving the mist the appearance
+of a blood-red sea. Miners were coming in to the village; in the light
+of the furnaces their tired, blackened faces looked like so many
+demoniac caricatures. Far or near, it was impossible to say, a horse
+could be seen drawing a car over shining rails. On it stood a man
+flourishing his whip. Beast, man, and car all seemed to be of colossal
+size; the "gee" and "haw" of the driver sounded like the mad cries of a
+spectre; the iron sounds from the forges resembled the bellowing of
+tormented creatures.
+
+Daniel had found what he had been looking for: he had found the mournful
+melody that had driven him away the day Eleanore died. He had, to be
+sure, put it on the paper then and there, but it had remained without
+consequence: it had been buried in the grave with Eleanore.
+
+Now it had arisen, and its soul--its consequence--had arisen with it; it
+was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and
+filled as the world is full.
+
+Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of
+machinery.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the
+museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a
+mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a
+cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house
+in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.
+
+Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he
+become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary
+nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits
+without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and
+editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a
+nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip
+had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on
+approval; he was placed on the black list.
+
+He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that
+the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects
+of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.
+
+But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent;
+in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought
+his stock and furnishings at brokers' prices, and the firm of Jason
+Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.
+
+In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted
+of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von
+Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending
+upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock
+together.
+
+Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he
+tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to
+understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his
+convictions, with the result that the Masons would have none of him.
+
+For some time he found actual difficulty in earning his daily bread. He
+had resigned his position with the Prudentia Insurance Company long ago.
+Ever since a certain interpellation in the Reichstag and a long lawsuit
+in which the Prudentia became involved, and which was decided in favour
+of its opponents, the standing of the company had suffered irreparably.
+
+Jason Philip had no other choice: he had to go back to bookbinding; he
+had to return to pasting, cutting, and folding. He returned in the
+evening of his life, downcast, impoverished, and embittered, to the
+position from which he had started as an ambitious, resourceful,
+stout-hearted, and self-assured man years ago. His eloquence had proved
+of no avail, his cunning had not helped him, nor his change of political
+conviction, nor his familiarity with the favourable turns of the market,
+nor his speculations. He had never believed that the order of things in
+the world about him was just and righteous, neither as a Socialist nor
+as a Liberal. And now he was convinced that it was impossible to write a
+motto on the basis of business principles that would be fit material for
+a copy book in a kindergarten.
+
+Willibald was still the same efficient clerk. Markus had got a job in a
+furniture store, where he spent his leisure hours studying Volapuek,
+convinced as he was that all the nations of the earth would soon be
+using this great fraternal tongue.
+
+Theresa moved into the house on the Corn Market with as much peace and
+placidity as if she had been anticipating such a change for years. There
+was a bay window in the house, and by this she sat when her work in the
+kitchen was done, knitting socks for her sons. At times she would
+scratch her grey head with her knitting needle, at times she would reach
+over and take a sip of cold, unsugared coffee, a small pot of which she
+always kept by her side. Hers was the most depressed face then known to
+the human family; hers were the horniest, wrinkliest peasant hands that
+formed part of any citizen of the City of Nuremberg.
+
+She thought without ceasing of all that nice money that had passed
+through her hands during the two decades she had stood behind the
+counter of the establishment in the Plobenhof Street.
+
+She tried to imagine where all the money had gone, who was using it now,
+and who was being tormented by it. For she was rid of it, and in the
+bottom of her heart she was glad that she no longer had it.
+
+One day Jason Philip came rushing from his workshop into her room. He
+had a newspaper in his hand; his face was radiant with joy. "At last, my
+dear, at last! I have been avenged. Jason Philip Schimmelweis was after
+all a good prophet. Well, what do you say?" he continued, as Theresa
+looked at him without any noticeable display of curiosity, "what do you
+say? I'll bet you can't guess. No, you will never be able to guess
+what's happened; it's too much for a woman's brain." He mounted a chair,
+held the paper in his hand as if it were the flag of his country, waved
+it, and shouted: "Bismarck is done for! He's got to go. The Kaiser hates
+him! Now let come what may, I have not lived in vain."
+
+Jason Philip had the feeling that it was due to his efforts that the
+reins of government had been snatched from the hands of the Iron
+Chancellor. His satisfaction found expression in blatancy and in actions
+that were thoroughly at odds with a man of his age. He held up his
+acquaintances on the street, and demanded that they offer him their
+congratulations. He went to his favourite cafe, and ordered a barrel of
+beer for the rejuvenation of his friends. He delivered an oration,
+spiced with all the forms of sarcasm known to the art of cheap politics
+and embellished with innumerable popular phrases, explaining why he
+regarded this as the happiest day of his eventful life.
+
+He said: "If fate were to do me the favour of allowing me to stand face
+to face with this menace to public institutions, this unscrupulous
+tyrant, I would not, believe me, mince matters in the slightest: I would
+tell him things no mortal man has thus far dared say to him."
+
+Several months passed by. Bismarck, then staying at his country place in
+Sachsenwald and quarrelling with his lot, decided to visit Munich. There
+was tremendous excitement in Nuremberg when it was learned that he would
+pass through the city at such and such an hour.
+
+Everybody wanted to see him, young and old, aristocrats and humble folk.
+Early in the morning the whole city seemed to be on its feet, making its
+way in dense crowds out through the King's Gate.
+
+This was a drama in which Jason Philip had to play his part: without him
+it would be incomplete. "To look into the eyes of a tiger whose claws
+have been chopped off and whose teeth have been knocked out is a
+pleasure and a satisfaction that my mother's son dare not forego," said
+he.
+
+His elbows stood him in good stead. When the train pulled into the
+station, our rebel was standing in the front row, having pushed his way
+through the seemingly impenetrable mass of humanity.
+
+The train stopped for a few minutes. The Iron Chancellor left his
+carriage amid deafening hurrahs from the assembled multitude. He shook
+hands with the Mayor and a few high-ranking army officers.
+
+Jason Philip never budged. It never occurred to him to shout his own
+hurrah. An acidulous smile played around his mouth, his white beard
+quivered when he dropped the corners of his lips in satanic glee. It
+never occurred to him to take off his hat, despite the threatening
+protests all too audible round about him. "I am consistent, my dear
+Bismarck, I am incorruptible," he thought to himself.
+
+And yet--the satisfaction which we have described as satanic seemed
+somehow or other to be ill founded: it was in such marked contrast to
+the general enthusiasm. What had possessed this imbecile pack? Why was
+it raging? It saw the enemy, the hangman, right there before it, immune
+to the law, dressed in civilian clothes, and yet it was acting as though
+the Messiah had come to town on an extra train!
+
+Jason Philip had the feeling that Bismarck was looking straight at him.
+He fancied that the fearfully tall man with the unusually small head and
+the enormously blue eyes had taken offence at his silence. He feared
+some one had told him all about his political beliefs.
+
+The scornful smile died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency
+creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his
+forehead. Involuntarily he kneed his way closer to the edge of the
+platform, threw out his chest, jerked his hat from his head, opened his
+mouth, and cried: "Hurrah!"
+
+He cried hurrah. The Prince turned his face from him, and looked in
+another direction.
+
+But Jason Philip had cried hurrah.
+
+He sneaked home shaking with shame. He drew his slippers, "For the tired
+Man--Consolation," on his feet. They had become quite worn in the course
+of his tempestuous life. He lay down on the sofa with his face to the
+wall, his back to the window and against the world.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+Daniel had been in Berlin for weeks. He had been living a lonely life on
+the east side of the gigantic city. One of the managers of Philander and
+Sons came to see him. He returned the call, and in the course of two
+hours he was surrounded, contrary to his own will, by a veritable swarm
+of composers, directors, virtuosos, and musical critics.
+
+Some had heard of him; to them he appeared to be a remarkable man. They
+threw out their nets to catch him, but he slipped through the meshes.
+Unprepared, however, as he was for their schemes, he could not help
+being caught in time. He had to give an account of himself, to unveil
+himself. He found himself under obligations, interested, and so forth,
+but in the end they could not prevail against him: he simply passed
+through them.
+
+They laughed at his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was
+his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they
+found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to associate
+with him, he would disappear entirely from them for months at a time.
+
+A divorced young woman, a Jewess by the name of Regina Sussmann, fell in
+love with him. She recognised in Daniel an elemental nature. The more he
+avoided her the more persistent she became. At times it made him feel
+good to come once again into intimate association with a woman, to hear
+her bright voice, her step more delicate, her breathing more ardent than
+that of men. But he could not trust Regina Sussmann; she seemed to know
+too much. There was nothing of the plant-like about her, and without
+that characteristic any woman appealed to him as being unformed and
+uncultured.
+
+One winter day she came to see him in his barren hall room in Greifswald
+Street. She sat down at the piano and began to improvise. At first it
+was all like a haze to him. Suddenly he was struck by her playing. What
+he heard made a half disagreeable, half painful impression on him. He
+seemed to be familiar with the piece. She was playing motifs from his
+quartette, his "Eleanore Quartette" as he had called it. It came out
+that Regina Sussmann had been present at the concert given in Leipzig
+three years ago when the quartette was performed.
+
+After a painful pause Regina began to ask some questions that cut him to
+the very heart. She wanted to know what relation, if any, the
+composition bore to actual life. She was trying to lift the veil from
+his unknown fate. He thrust her from him. Then he felt sorry for her: he
+began to speak, with some hesitation, of his symphony. There was
+something bewitching, enchanting in the woman's passionate silence and
+sympathy. He lost himself, forgot himself, disclosed his heart. He built
+up the work in words before her, pictured the seven movements like seven
+stairs in the tower of a temple, a glorious promenade in the upper
+spheres, a tragic storm with tragically cheerful pauses of memory and
+meditation, all accompanied by laughing genii that adorned and crowned
+the pillars of the structure of his dreams.
+
+He went to the piano, began playing the melancholy leading motif and the
+two subsidiary themes, counterpointed them, ran into lofty crescendos,
+introduced variations, modulated and sang at the same time. The pupils
+of his eyes became distended until they shone behind his glasses like
+seas of green fire. Regina Sussmann fell on her knees by the piano. It
+may be that she was so affected by his playing that she could not act
+otherwise; and it may be that she wished thereby to give him visible
+proof of her respect and adoration. All of a sudden the woman became
+repulsive to him. The unleashed longing of her eyes filled him with
+disgust. Her kneeling position appealed to him as a gesture of mockery
+and ridicule: a memory had been desecrated. He sprang to his feet and
+rushed out of the room, leaving her behind and quite alone. He never
+said a word; he merely bit his lips in anger and left. When he came back
+home late that night, he was afraid he might meet her again; but she was
+not there. Only a letter lay on the table by the lamp.
+
+She wrote that she had understood him; that she understood he had been
+living in the past as if in an impregnable fortress, surrounded by
+shadows that were not to be dispelled or disturbed by the presumption of
+any living human being. She remarked that she had neither intention nor
+desire to encroach upon his peace of mind, that she was merely concerned
+for his future, and was wondering how he would fight down his hunger of
+body and soul.
+
+"Shameless wretch," cried Daniel, "a spy and a woman!"
+
+She remarked, with almost perverse humility, that she had recognised his
+greatness, that he was the genius she had been waiting for, and that her
+one desire was to serve him. That is, she wished to serve him at a
+distance, seeing that he could not endure her presence. She implored him
+to grant her this poor privilege, not merely for his own sake, but for
+the sake of humanity as well.
+
+Daniel threw the letter in the stove. In the night he woke up with a
+burning desire for delicate contact with an untouched woman. He dreamed
+of a smile on the face of a seventeen-year-old girl innocently playing
+around him--and shuddered at himself and the thought of himself.
+
+Shortly after this he went to Dresden, where he had some work to do in
+the Royal library.
+
+People came to him anxious to place themselves at his service. Many
+signs told him that Regina Sussmann was making fervent propaganda for
+him.
+
+One day he received a letter from a musical society in Magdeburg, asking
+him to give a concert there. He hesitated for a long while, and then
+agreed to accede to their wish. Outwardly it could not be called an
+unusually successful evening, but his auditors felt his power. People
+with the thinnest smattering of music forgot themselves and became
+infatuated with his arms and his eyes. An uncertain, undetermined
+happiness which he brought to the hearts of real musicians carried him
+further along on his career. For two successive winters he directed
+concerts in the provincial towns of North Germany. He was the first to
+accustom the people to strictly classical programmes. It is rare that
+the first in any enterprise of this kind reaps the gratitude of those
+who pay to hear him. Had he not desisted with such Puritanical severity
+from feeding the people on popular songs, opera selections, and
+favourite melodies, his activity would have been much better rewarded.
+As it was, his name was mentioned with respect, but he passed through
+the streets unacclaimed.
+
+Regina Sussmann was always on hand when he gave a concert. He knew it,
+even if he did not see her. At times he caught sight of her sitting in
+the front row. She never approached him. Articles redolent with
+adulation appeared in the papers about him: it was manifest that she had
+been influential in having them written. Once he met her on the steps of
+a hotel. She stopped and cast her eyes to the ground; she was pale. He
+passed by her. Again he was filled with longing to come into intimate
+contact with an untouched woman. Was his heart already hungry, as she
+had predicted? He bit his lips, and worked throughout the whole night.
+He felt that he was being fearfully endangered by the prosy insipidity
+of the age and the world he was living in. But could he not escape the
+terrors of such without having recourse to a woman? The shadows receded,
+enveloped in sorrow, Gertrude and Eleanore, wrapped in the embrace of
+sisters.
+
+"Don't!" they cried. He saw at once that his provincial concerts were
+leading him to false goals, enflaming false ambitions, robbing him of
+his strength. He no longer found it possible to endure the sight of
+brilliantly lighted halls, and the over-dressed people who came empty
+and left untransformed. It all seemed to him like a lie. He desisted; he
+threw it all overboard just as the temptation was strongest, just as the
+Berlin Philharmonic invited him to give a concert of his own works in
+its hall.
+
+He had suddenly disappeared. In less than three months his name had
+become a saga.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+He spent the summer, autumn, and winter of 1893 wandering around. Now he
+was in a remote Thuringian village, now in some town in the Rhoen region,
+now in the mountains of Saxony, now in a fishing village on the Baltic.
+Throughout the day he worked on his manuscripts, in the evening he
+composed. No one except the members of the firm of Philander and Sons
+knew where he was. He did not dare hide himself from the people who were
+sending him the cheque at the end of the month.
+
+He gradually became so unaccustomed to talking that it was only with
+difficulty that he could ask a hotel-keeper about the price of his room.
+This unrelieved silence chiselled his lips into ghastly sharpness.
+
+He never heard from his mother or his children. He seemed to have
+forgotten that there were human beings living who thought of him with
+affection and anxiety.
+
+The only messages he received from the world were letters that were
+forwarded to him at intervals of from four to five weeks by the musical
+firm in Mayence. These letters were written by Regina Sussmann, though
+they were not signed in her name: the signature at the close of each one
+was "The Swallow." She addressed Daniel by the familiar _Du_, and not by
+the more conventional and polite _Sie_.
+
+She told him of her life, wrote of the books she had read, the people
+she had met, and gave him her views on music. Her communications became
+in time indispensable to him; he was touched by her fidelity; he was
+pleased that she did not use her own name. She had a remarkable finesse
+and power of expression, and however ungenuine and artificial she may
+have appealed to him in personal association, everything she wrote
+seemed to him to be natural and convincing. She never expressed a wish
+that he do something impossible and never uttered a complaint. On the
+other hand, there was a passion of the intelligence about her that was
+quite new to him; she was unlike the women he had known. And there was a
+fervour and certainty in her appreciation of his being before which he
+bowed as at the sound of a higher voice.
+
+Though he never answered her letters, he looked forward to receiving
+them, and became impatient if one were overdue. He often thought of the
+swallow when he would step to the window on a dark night. He thought of
+her as an all-seeing spirit that hovered in the air. The swallow--that
+was fraught with meaning--the restless, delicate, swift-flying swallow.
+And in his mind's eye he saw the swallow that hovered over AEgydius Place
+when Eberhard came to take him up to the room with the withered flowers.
+
+He wrote to Philippina: "Decorate my graves. Buy two wreaths, and lay
+them on the graves."
+
+"You must mount to the clouds, Daniel, otherwise you are lost," was one
+passage in one of the letters from the Swallow. Another, much longer,
+ran: "As soon as you feel one loneliness creeping over you, you must
+hasten into another, an unknown one. If your path seems blocked, you
+must storm the hedges before you. If an arm surrounds you, you must tear
+yourself loose, even though it cost blood and tears. You must leave men
+behind and move above them; you dare not become a citizen; you dare not
+allow yourself to be taken up with things that are dear to you; you must
+have no companion, neither man nor maid. Time must hover over you cold
+and quiet. Let your heart be encased in bronze, for music is a flame
+that breaks through and consumes all there is in the man who created it,
+except the stuff the gods have forged about their chosen son."
+
+Why should the picture of this red-haired Jewess, from whom Daniel had
+fled in terror, not have vanished? There was a Muse such as poets dream
+of! "Jewess, wonderful Jewess," thought Daniel, and this
+word--Jewess--took on for him a meaning, a power, and a prophetic flight
+all its own.
+
+"The work, Daniel Nothafft, the work," wrote this second Rahel in
+another letter, "the rape of Prometheus, when are you going to lay it at
+the feet of impoverished humanity? The age is like wine that tastes of
+the earth; your work must be the filter. The age is like an epileptic
+body convulsed with agonies; your work must be the healing hand that
+one lays on the diseased brow. When will you finally give, O
+parsimonious mortal? when ripen, tree? when flood the valley, stream?"
+
+But the tree was in no hurry to cast off the ripened fruit; the stream
+found that the way to the sea was long and tortuous; it had to break
+through mountains and wash away the rocks. Oh, those nights of torment
+when an existing form crashed and fell to the earth in pieces! Oh, those
+hundreds of laborious nights in which there was no sleep, nothing but
+the excited raging of many voices! Those grey mornings on which the sun
+shone on tattered leaves and a distorted face, a face full of suffering
+that was always old and yet new! And those moonlight nights, when some
+one moved along singing, not as one sings with joy, but as the heretics
+who sat on the martyr benches of the Inquisition! Then there were the
+rainy nights, the stormy nights, the nights when it snowed, and when he
+chased after the phantom of a melody that was already half his own, and
+half an incorporeal thing wandering around in boundless space under the
+stars.
+
+Each landscape became a pale vision: bush and grass and flower, like
+spun yarn seen in a fever, the people who passed by, and the clouds
+fibrillated above the forests were of one and the same constituency.
+Nothing was tangible; the palate lost its sense of taste, the finger its
+sense of touch. Bad weather was welcome; it subdued the noises, made men
+quieter. Cursed be the mill that clappers, the carpenter who drives the
+nails, the teamster who calls to his jaded pair, the laughter of
+children, the croaking of frogs, the twittering of birds! An insensate
+man looks down upon the scene, one who is deaf and dumb, one who would
+snatch all clothing and decorations from the world, to the end that
+neither colour nor splendour of any description may divert his eye, one
+who mounts to heaven at night to steal the eternal fire, and who burrows
+in the graves of the dead by day--an outcast.
+
+In the beginning of spring, he started on the third movement, an andante
+with variations. It expressed the gruesome peace that hovered over
+Eleanore's slumbering face one night before her death. The springs
+within him were all suddenly dried up; he could not tell why his hand
+was paralysed, his fancy immobile.
+
+One evening he returned from a long journey to Arnstein, a little place
+in Lower Franconia, where he had then pitched his tent. He was living in
+the house of a seamstress, a poor widow, and as he came into the room he
+noticed her ten-year-old daughter standing by the open box in which he
+had kept the mask of Zingarella. Out of a perfectly harmless curiosity
+the child had removed the lid, and was standing bewitched at the
+unexpected sight.
+
+When Daniel's eyes fell on her, she was frightened; her body shook with
+fear; she tried to run away. "No, no, stay!" cried Daniel. He felt the
+emaciated body, the timidly quivering figure, and a distant memory sunk
+its claws deep into his breast. The mouth of the mask seemed to speak;
+the cheeks and forehead shone with a brilliant whiteness. And as he
+turned his eyes away there was a little elf dancing over him; and this
+little elf aroused a guilty unrest in his heart.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Philippina would not permit little Agnes to play with other children.
+
+One day the child went out on to the square, and stood and watched some
+other children playing a game known as "Tailor, lend me the scissors."
+She was much pleased at the sight of them, as they ran from tree to tree
+and laughed. She would have been only too happy to join them, but no one
+thought of asking the pale, shy little creature to take part.
+Philippina, seeing her, rushed out like a fury, and cried in her very
+meanest voice: "You come back here in the house, or I'll maul you until
+your teeth will rattle in your mouth for three days to come!"
+
+Philippina also disliked to have Jordan pay any attention to Agnes. If
+he did not notice that he was making her angry by talking with the
+child, she would begin to sing, first gently, and then more and more
+loudly. If this did not drive the old man away, she would unload some
+terrific abuse on him, and keep at it until he would get up, sigh, and
+leave. He did not dare antagonise her, for if he did, she would penalise
+him by giving him poor food and reduced portions. And he suffered
+greatly from hunger. He was making only a few pennies a week, and had to
+save every bit of it, if possible, so as to defray the expenses he was
+incurring while working on his invention.
+
+He had unbounded faith in his invention; his credulity became stronger
+and stronger as the months rolled by. He could not be discouraged by
+seeming failure. He was convinced, on the contrary, that each failure
+merely brought him so much nearer the desired goal.
+
+He said to Philippina: "Why is it that you object to my playing once in
+a while with my little grand-daughter? It gives me so much pleasure; it
+diverts me; it takes my mind off of my troubles."
+
+"Crazy nonsense," replied Philippina. "Agnes has had trouble enough with
+her father. Her grandfather? whew! That beats me!"
+
+Another time the old man said: "Suppose we make an agreement: let me
+have the child a half-hour each day, and in return for that I'll run
+your errands down town."
+
+Philippina: "I'll run my own errands. Agnes belongs to me. That settles
+it."
+
+And yet Philippina was in an especially good humour about this time.
+Benjamin Dorn, like Herr Zittel, had left the Prudentia, and obtained a
+position with the Excelsior. He was taking unusual interest in
+Philippina. In a dark hour, Philippina had told her friend, Frau
+Hadebusch, that she had saved a good deal of money, and, equipped with
+this bit of earthly wisdom, Frau Hadebusch had gone to the Methodist,
+told him all about it, and put very serious matrimonial ideas in his
+head.
+
+Benjamin Dorn took infinite pains to gain Philippina's good graces. He
+was, to be sure, somewhat dismayed at having her blasphemous system of
+theology dinned into his ears. He shook his head wearily when she called
+him a sky-pilot and declared right out that all this sanctimonious stuff
+was damned rot, and that the main thing was to have a fat wallet. In
+this philosophy Frau Hadebusch was with her to the last exclamation
+point. She had told Benjamin Dorn that a doughtier, bonnier, more
+capable person than Fraeulein Schimmelweis was not to be found on this
+earth, and that the two were as much made for each other as oil and
+vinegar for a salad. She said: "You simply ought to see the dresses the
+girl has and how she can fix herself up when she wants to go out.
+Moreover, she comes of a good family. In short, any man who could get
+her would be a subject for real congratulations."
+
+To Philippina Frau Hadebusch said: "Dorn--he can write as no one else on
+this earth. Oh, you ought to see him swing a pen! He limps a little, but
+what of it? Just think how many people go around on two sound legs, but
+have their heads all full of rubbish! But Dorn! He's whole cloth and a
+yard wide! He's as soft as prune juice. Why, when a dog barks at him, he
+gives the beast a lump of sugar. That's the kind of a man he is."
+
+In October Benjamin Dorn and Philippina went to the church fair, and
+naturally took Agnes along. Benjamin Dorn knew what was expected of him.
+He had Philippina take two rides on the merry-go-round, paid her way
+into the cabinet of wax figures, and took a chance on the lottery. It
+was a blank. He then explained to Philippina that it was immoral to have
+anything to do with lotteries, and bought her a bag of ginger snaps; and
+that was solid pleasure.
+
+Philippina acted very nicely. She laughed when nothing amusing had taken
+place, rolled her eyes, spoke with puckered lips, shook her hips when
+she walked, and never lost a chance to show her learning. As they were
+coming home on the train, she said she felt she would like to ride in a
+chaise, but there would have to be two horses and a coachman with a tile
+hat. Benjamin Dorn replied that that was not an impossible wish,
+suggesting at the same time in his best brand of juvenile roguishness
+that there was a certain solemn ceremony that he would not think of
+celebrating without having a vehicle such as she had described.
+Philippina giggled, and said: "Oi, oi, you're all right." Whereupon
+Benjamin Dorn, grinning with embarrassment, looked down.
+
+Then they took leave of each other, for Agnes had fallen asleep in
+Philippina's arms.
+
+How Philippina actually felt about the attention he was showing her
+would be extremely difficult to tell, though she acted as if she felt
+honoured and flattered. Benjamin Dorn was by no means certain of
+himself. Frau Hadebusch did all she could to bring Philippina around,
+but every time she made a fresh onslaught Philippina put her off.
+
+But Philippina had never sung as she had been singing recently, nor had
+she ever been so light and nimble of foot. Every day she put on her
+Sunday dress and trimmed it with her choicest ribbons. She washed her
+hands with almond soap, and combed her hair before the mirror. Bangs had
+gone out of fashion, so she built her hair up into a tower and looked
+like a Chinese.
+
+She visited Herr Carovius occasionally, and always found him alone, for
+Dorothea Doederlein had been sent by her father to Munich to perfect
+herself in her art. In broken words, with blinking eyes, from a grinning
+mouth and out of a dumb soul, she told Herr Carovius all about her
+affair with Benjamin Dorn, evidently believing that he was all fire and
+flame to know how she was getting along and what she had _in petto_.
+Herr Carovius had long since grown sick and tired of her, though he did
+not show her the door. He had reached the point where he heaved a sigh
+of relief when he heard a human voice, where he began to dread the
+stillness that ruled supreme within his four walls. No one came to see
+him, no one spoke to him, and he in turn no longer had the courage to
+speak to any one. His arrogance of former days had died a difficult
+death, and now he saw no way of making friends. If he went to the cafe,
+there was no one there whom he knew. The brethren of the Vale of Tears
+had been scattered to the four corners of the earth; a new generation
+was having its fling; new customs were being introduced, new topics
+discussed, and he was old.
+
+He found it hard to get along without Dorothea. He counted the days,
+waiting for her to return. He never opened the piano, because all music,
+and especially the music he loved, caused a melancholy depression to
+arise that filled the room with miasma.
+
+The Nero of our day was suffering from Caesar sadness. The private
+citizen had sunk to the very bottom of the ditch which he himself had
+dug with the idea of burying all that was new and joyful, and all winged
+creatures in it.
+
+The worst of it all was that he had nothing to do, and no brain racking
+could devise a position he could fill. The world went on its way,
+progress was made, and, strangely enough, it was made without his
+criticism, his adulation, his opinions, or his crepe-hanging.
+
+Philippina was annoyed at the grudging squints cast at her by the old
+stay-at-home; her visits became rarer and rarer. She did not feel like
+opening her heart to Frau Hadebusch, for she did not appeal to her as a
+disinterested party. This completed her list of friends; she was obliged
+to restrain her impatience and excitement.
+
+It was Christmas. On Christmas Eve they had bought a tree for Agnes,
+trimmed it, and lighted it with candles. Agnes's Christmas gifts were
+placed under the tree: a big piece of ginger-bread, a basket with apples
+and nuts, and a cheap doll. For Old Jordan she had bought a pair of
+boots which he badly needed. He had been going around on his uppers
+since autumn.
+
+Jordan was sitting by the door holding his boots on his knees. Agnes
+looked at the doll with unhappy eyes; she did not dare touch it. After
+gazing for a while into the light of the fluttering candles, Jordan
+said: "I thank you, Philippina, I thank you. You are a real
+benefactress. I also thank you for remembering the child. It is a paltry
+makeshift you have bought there at the bazaar, but any one who gives
+gifts to children deserves the reward of Heaven, and in such giving we
+do not weigh the value or count the cost."
+
+"Don't whine all the time so!" shrieked Philippina. She was chewing her
+finger nails, hardly able to conceal her embarrassment. Frau Hadebusch
+had told her that Benjamin Dorn was coming around that evening to make a
+formal proposal of marriage.
+
+"Just wait, Agnes, just wait!" continued old Jordan, "you'll soon get to
+see a wonder of a doll. A few short years, and the world will be
+astonished. You are going to be the first to see it when it is finished.
+You'll be the first, little Agnes, just wait. What have we got to eat on
+this holy evening?" asked Jordan, turning with fear and trembling to
+Philippina.
+
+"Cold hash and broiled meal-beetles," said Philippina scornfully.
+
+"And ... and ... no letter from Daniel?" he asked in a sad voice,
+"nothing, nothing at all?"
+
+Philippina shrugged her shoulders. The old man got up and tottered to
+his room.
+
+A little later Philippina heard some one stumbling around in the hall,
+and then the bell rang. "Open the door," she said to Agnes, who did as
+she was told and returned with Benjamin Dorn. The Methodist wore a black
+suit, and in his hand he had a black felt hat that was as flat as a
+pancake. He bowed to Philippina, and asked if he was disturbing any one.
+Philippina pushed a chair over to him. He sat down quite
+circumstantially, and laughed a hollow laugh. As Philippina was as
+silent as the tomb and looked at him so tensely, he began to speak.
+
+First he expatiated on the general advantages of a married life, and
+then remarked that what he personally wished first of all was to be able
+to take a good, true woman into his own life as his wife. He said that
+he had gone through a long struggle over the matter, but God had finally
+shown him the light and pointed the way. He no longer hesitated, after
+this illumination from above, to offer Fraeulein Schimmelweis his heart
+and his hand forever and a day, insist though he must that she give the
+matter due consideration, in the proper Christian spirit, before taking
+the all-important step.
+
+Philippina was restless; she rocked back and forth, first on one foot
+and then on another--and then burst out laughing. She bent over and
+laughed violently. "No, you poor simpleton, what you want is my money,
+hey? Be honest! Out with it! You want my money, don't you?"
+
+Her anger grew as Benjamin Dorn sat and looked on, his asinine
+embarrassment increasing with each second of silence. "Listen! You'd
+like to git your fingers on it, wouldn't you? Money--it would taste
+good, wouldn't it? You think I'm crazy? Scrape a few coppers together
+and lose my mind and marry some poor fool, and let him loaf around and
+live on me. Nothing doin'! They ain't no man livin' what can catch
+Philippina Schimmelweis so easy as all that. She knows a thing or two
+about men, she does. D'ye hear me! Get out!" She sawed the air with her
+arms like a mad woman, and showed him the door.
+
+Benjamin Dorn rose to his feet, stuttered something unintelligible,
+moved backwards toward the door, reached it, and left the place with
+such pronounced speed that Philippina once again broke out in a shrill,
+piercing laughter. "Come here, Agnes," she said, sat down on the step in
+the corner, and took the child on her lap.
+
+She was silent for a long while; the child was afraid to speak. Both
+looked at the lights on the Christmas tree. "Let us sing something,"
+said Philippina. She began with a hoarse, bass voice, "Stille Nacht,
+heilige Nacht," and Agnes joined in with her high, spiritless notes.
+
+Another pause followed after they had finished singing.
+
+"Where is my father?" asked Agnes suddenly, without looking at
+Philippina. It sounded as if she had waited for years for an opportunity
+to ask this question.
+
+Philippina's face turned ashen pale; she gritted her teeth. "Your
+father, he's loafing around somewhere in the country," replied
+Philippina, and blew out one of the candles that had burned down and was
+ready to set the twig on fire. "He's done with women, it seems, but you
+can't tell. He strums the music box and smears good white paper full of
+crow-feet and pot-hooks. A person can rot, and little does he worry."
+Whereat she set the child on the floor, hastened over to the window,
+opened it, and put her head out as if she were on the point of choking
+with the heat.
+
+She leaned out over the snow-covered window sill.
+
+"I'm getting cold," said Agnes; but Philippina never heard her.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Daniel wrote to Eberhard and Sylvia asking them if he might visit them.
+He thought: "There are friends; perhaps I need friends again."
+
+He received a note in a strange, secretarial hand informing him that the
+Baroness was indeed very sorry but she could not receive him at
+Siegmundshof: she was in child-bed. She sent her best greetings, and
+told him that the newest born was getting along splendidly, as well as
+his brother who was now three years old.
+
+"Everywhere I turn, children are growing up," thought Daniel, and packed
+his trunk and started south as slowly as he could go, so slowly indeed
+that it seemed as if he were approaching a goal he was afraid to reach
+and yet had to.
+
+He arrived in Nuremberg one evening in April. As he entered the room,
+Philippina struck her hands together with a loud bang, and stood as if
+rooted to the floor.
+
+Agnes looked at her father shyly. She had grown slim and tall far beyond
+her age.
+
+Old Jordan came down. "You don't look well, Daniel," he said, and seemed
+never to let go of his hand. "Let us hope that you are going to stay
+home now."
+
+"I don't know," replied Daniel, staring absent-mindedly around the
+walls. "I don't know."
+
+On the third day he was seized with a quite unusual sense of fear and
+anxiety. He felt that he had made a mistake; that he had lost his way;
+that something was driving him to another place. He went into the
+kitchen. Philippina was cooking potato noodles in lard; they smelt good.
+
+"I am going to Eschenbach," he said, to his own astonishment, for the
+decision to do so had come with the assertion.
+
+Philippina jerked the pan from the stove; the flames leaped up. "You can
+go to Hell, so far as I'm concerned," she said in a furious rage. With
+the light from the fire flaring up through the open top of the stove and
+reflected in her face, she looked like a veritable witch.
+
+Daniel gazed at her questioningly. "What is the matter with Agnes?" he
+asked after a while. "The child seems to try to avoid me."
+
+"You'll find out what's the matter with her," said Philippina
+spitefully, and placed the pan on the stove again. "She don't swallow
+people whole."
+
+Daniel left the kitchen.
+
+"He is going over to see his bastard, the damned scoundrel," murmured
+Philippina. She crouched down on the kitchen stool, and gazed into
+space.
+
+The potato noodles burned up.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+Daniel entered his mother's little house in Eschenbach late at night. As
+soon as he saw her, he knew that some misfortune had taken place.
+
+Eva was gone. She had disappeared one evening four weeks ago. A troupe
+of rope dancers had given an exhibition in the city, and it was
+generally suspected that they had abducted the child. The people of
+Eschenbach were still convinced of their suspicion after the police had
+rounded up the dancers without finding a trace of the child.
+
+A general alarm had been sent out, and investigations were being made
+even at the time of Daniel's arrival. But they were in vain; it was
+impossible to find the slightest clue. To the authorities, indeed to
+every one, the case was a hopeless riddle.
+
+They made a thorough search of the forests; the canals were drained;
+vagabonds were cross-questioned. It was all in vain; Eva had apparently
+been spirited away in some mysterious fashion. Then the Mayor received
+an anonymous letter that read as follows: "The child you are looking for
+is in safe keeping. She was not forced to do what she has done; of her
+own free will and out of love for her art she went off with the people
+with whom she is at present. She sends her grandmother the tenderest of
+greetings, and hopes to see her some time again, after she has attained
+to what she now has in mind."
+
+To this Eva had added in a handwriting which Marian Nothafft could be
+reasonably certain was her own: "This is true. Good-bye, grandmother!"
+
+The people who mourned with Marian the loss of the child were convinced
+that if Eva had really written these words herself, she had been forced
+to do it by the kidnappers.
+
+The letter bore the postmark of a city in the Rhenish Palatinate. A
+telegram brought the reply that a company of jugglers had been there a
+short while ago, but that they had already gone. It was impossible to
+say in what direction, but it was most likely that they had gone to
+France.
+
+Marian was completely broken up. She no longer had any interest in life.
+She did not even manifest joy or pleasure at seeing Daniel.
+
+Daniel in turn felt that the brightest star had fallen from his heaven.
+As soon as he had really grasped the full meaning of the tragedy, he
+went quietly into the attic room, threw himself across the bed of his
+lost daughter, and wept. "Man, man, are you weeping at last?" a voice
+seemed to call out to him.
+
+Of evenings he would sit with his mother, and they would both brood over
+the loss. Once Marian began to speak; she talked of Eva. She had always
+been made uneasy by the child's love for mimicry and shows of any kind.
+Long ago, she said, when Eva was only eight years old, a company of
+comedians had come to the village, and Eva had taken a passionate
+interest in them. She would run around the tent in which they played,
+from early in the morning until late in the evening. She had made the
+acquaintance of some of them at the time, and one of them took her along
+to a performance. Whenever the circus came to town, it was impossible to
+keep her in the house. "At times I thought to myself, there must be
+gipsy blood in her veins," said Marian sadly, "but she was such a good
+and obedient child."
+
+Another time she told the following story. One Sunday in spring she took
+a walk with Eva. It had grown late, night had come on, and on the return
+journey they had to go through the forest. Marian became tired, and sat
+down on the stump of a tree to rest. The moon was shining, and there was
+a clearing in the forest where they had stopped. All of a sudden Eva
+sprang up and began to dance. "It was marvellous the way she danced,"
+said Marian, at the close of her story. "The girl's slender, delicate
+little figure seemed to glide around on the moss in the moonlight of its
+own accord. It was marvellous, but my heart grew heavy, and I thought to
+myself at the time, she is not going to be with me much longer."
+
+Daniel was silent. "Oh, enchanting and enchanted creature!" he thought,
+"heredity and destiny!"
+
+He remained with his mother for three weeks. Then he began to feel
+cramped and uneasy. The house and the town both seemed so small to him.
+He left and went to Vienna, where the custodian of the Imperial
+Institute had some invaluable manuscripts for him.
+
+Six weeks later he received a letter that had followed him all over
+south Europe informing him of the death of his mother. The school
+teacher at Eschenbach had written the letter, saying, among other
+things, that the aged woman had died during the night, suddenly and
+peacefully.
+
+A second letter followed, requesting him to state what disposition
+should be made of his mother's property. He was asked whether the house
+was to be put on the market. A neighbour, the green-grocer, had
+expressed his willingness to look after Daniel's interests.
+
+Daniel wrote in reply that they should do whatever seemed best. There
+was a heavy mortgage on the house, and the amount that could reasonably
+be asked for it was not large.
+
+He retired to a desolate and waste place.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+While living in little towns and villages on the Danube, Daniel
+completed the third movement of the Promethean symphony. When he awoke
+as if from a delirious fever, it was autumn.
+
+One morning in October he heard a saint playing the organ. It was in the
+Church of St. Florian near Enns. The great artist had lived in former
+years in the monastery, and now had the habit of coming back once in a
+while to hold communion with his God. In his rapture, Daniel felt as if
+his own crowned brother were at the organ. He sat in a corner and
+listened, meekly and with overwhelming delight. Then when a man passed
+by him, a stooped, haggard, odd-looking old fellow with a wrinkled face
+and dressed in shabby clothes, he was terror-stricken at the reality,
+the corporeality of genius: he wondered whether he himself were not a
+ghost.
+
+The Swallow wrote: "There is only one who can redeem us: the musician.
+The day of founders of religion, builders of states, military heroes,
+and discoverers is gone. The poets have only words, and our ears have
+grown tired of words, words, words. They have only pictures and figures,
+and our eyes are tired beholding. The soul's last consolation is to be
+found in music; of this I am certain. If there is any one thing that can
+make restitution for the lost illusions of religious faith, provide us
+with wings, transform us, and save us from the abyss to which we are
+rushing with savage senses, it is music. Where are you, O redeemer? You
+are wandering about over the earth, the poorest, the most abandoned, the
+guiltiest of men. When are you going to pay your debts, Daniel
+Nothafft?"
+
+Daniel spent seven months in Ravenna, Ferrara, Florence, and Pisa. He
+was looking for some manuscripts by Frescobaldi, Borghesi, and Ercole
+Pasquini. Having found the most important ones he could regard his
+collection as complete.
+
+Men seemed to him like puppets, landscapes like paintings on glass. He
+longed for forests; his dreams became disordered.
+
+From Genoa he wandered on foot through Lombardy and across the Alps. He
+slept on hard beds in order to keep his hot blood in check, and lived on
+bread and cheese. His attacks of weakness, sometimes of complete
+exhaustion, did not worry him at first; he paid no attention to them.
+But in Augsburg he swooned, falling headlong on the street. He was taken
+to a hospital, where he lay for three months with typhus. From his
+window he could see the tall chimneys of factories and an endless
+procession of wandering clouds. It had become winter; the ground was
+covered with snow.
+
+Two years after his last visit he again entered the house on AEgydius
+Place. When Philippina saw him, so pale and emaciated, she uttered a cry
+of horror.
+
+Agnes had grown still taller, thinner, and more serious. At times when
+she looked at her father he felt like crying out to her in anger: "What
+do you mean by your everlasting questions?" But he never said a word of
+this kind to her.
+
+When Philippina saw that Daniel had returned as lonesome and
+uncommunicative as he was when he went away, she took it upon herself to
+display a great deal of gentleness, kindness, sympathy in his presence.
+Old Jordan was living the same life he had been living for years.
+Everything in fact was just the same; it seemed that the household was
+run according to a prescribed routine. It seemed as if Daniel had been
+away, not six years, but six days.
+
+He did not feel strong yet, but he worked day and night. The fourth
+movement of the symphony gave promise of being a miracle of polyphony.
+Daniel felt primeval existence, the original of all longing, the basic
+grief of the world urging and pulsing in him, and this he was
+translating into the symphony. The eternal wanderer had arrived at the
+gates of Heaven and was not admitted. Supernal harmonies had borne him
+aloft. Muffled drum beats symbolised his beseeching raps on closed
+doors. Within resounded the terrible "no" of the trumpets. The pleading
+of the violins was in vain; in vain the intercession of the one angel
+standing at the right, leaning on a harp without strings; in vain the
+melodious chants of the other angel at the left, crowned with flowers
+and all together lovely; in vain the elfin chorus of the upper voices,
+in vain the foaming lament of the voices below. No path here for him,
+and no space!
+
+One evening Daniel noticed a strange girl at his window. She was
+beautiful. Struck by her charms, he got up to go to her. She had
+vanished. It was an hallucination. He became afraid of himself, left
+the house, and wandered through the streets as in days of long ago.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+It was Carnival Week, and the people had resumed their wonted gaiety.
+Masked boys and girls paraded the streets, making merry wherever they
+went.
+
+As Daniel was passing through The Fuell he was startled: the windows in
+the Benda house were lighted. He suddenly recalled that Herr Seelenfromm
+had told him that Frau Benda had returned from Worms some time ago, and
+was living with her niece; she had become totally blind.
+
+He went up the steps and rang the bell. A grey-haired,
+distressed-looking woman came to the door. He thought she must be the
+niece. He told her his name; she said she had heard of him.
+
+"You probably know that Friedrich has disappeared," she said in a
+sleepy, sing-song voice. "It is eight years since we have heard from
+him. The last letter was from the interior of Africa. We have given up
+all hope. Not even the newspapers say anything more about him."
+
+"I have read nothing about it," murmured Daniel. "But Friedrich cannot
+be dead," he continued, shaking his head, "I will never believe it,
+never." Partly in distraction and partly in anxiety, he riveted his eyes
+on the woman, who stared at his glasses as if held by a charm.
+
+"We have done everything that was humanly possible," she said. "We have
+written to the consulates, we have inquired of the military outposts and
+missionary stations, and all to no purpose." After a pause she said with
+a little more vivacity: "You do not wish me to ask you in, I hope. It is
+so painful to my aunt to hear a strange voice, and I cannot think of
+letting you talk to her. If I did, it would merely open her old wounds,
+and she has a hard enough time of it as it is."
+
+Daniel nodded and went on his way. A coarse laugh could be heard down in
+the entrance hall; it was painfully out of harmony with the depressed
+atmosphere of the Benda apartment. He felt his heart grow faint; he felt
+a burning desire for something, though he was unable to say precisely
+what, something sweet and radiant.
+
+On the last landing he stopped, and looked with utter amazement into
+the hall below.
+
+Herr Carovius was dancing like a Merry-Andrew around the door of his
+residence. He had a crown of silver paper on his head, and was trying to
+ward off the importunate advances of a young girl. His smiles were
+tender but senile. The girl wore a carnival costume. Her dark blue
+velvet dress, covered with threads of silver, made her robust figure
+look slenderer than it actually was. A black veil-like cloth hung from
+her shoulders to the ground, and then draped along behind her for about
+three paces. It was sprinkled with glittering tinsel. In her hand she
+held a hideous wax mask of the face of an old sot with a red nose. She
+was trying to fit the mask to Herr Carovius's face.
+
+She was working hard to make him yield; she said she was not going to
+leave until she had put the mask on his face. Herr Carovius shook the
+door, which in the meantime had closed, fumbled about in his pockets for
+the key, but the girl gave him no peace.
+
+"Come now, Teddy," she kept crying, "come, Uncle, don't be such an old
+bore." She kept getting closer and closer to him.
+
+"You wait, I'll show you how to make a fool of respectable people,"
+croaked Herr Carovius in well-meaning anger. He resembled an old dog,
+hopping about and getting ready to make the plunge when his master
+throws his walking stick into the water. In his zeal, however, to
+prevent the girl from offending his dignity, he had forgotten the paper
+crown on his head. It wabbled and shook so when he hopped around, that
+the girl nearly split her sides laughing.
+
+A maid came in just then with an apronful of snow. The girl with the
+sweeping train ran up to her, got some of the snow, and threatened to
+pelt Herr Carovius with it. He begged for mercy; and rather than undergo
+a bombardment with this cold stuff, he ceased offering resistance,
+whereupon the girl walked up to him and placed the mask on his face.
+Then, exhausted from laughter, she laid her head on his shoulder. The
+maid--it was Doederlein's maid--was delighted at the comedy, and made a
+noise that resembled the cackling of a hen.
+
+The scene was dimly lighted by a lamp attached to the adjacent wall, and
+had on this account, quite apart from the sight of Herr Carovius with
+the paper crown and the toper's mask, something fantastic about it.
+
+Daniel did not know that the girl was Dorothea Doederlein, though he
+half suspected as much. But whoever she was, he was impressed by her
+jollity, her actual lust for laughter, her complete lack of restraint.
+He had never known that sort of mirthful hilarity; and if he had known
+it, he could not recall it. Her youthful features, her bright eyes, her
+white teeth, her agile gestures filled him with deferential respect; his
+eyes swam with emotion. He felt so old, so foreign; he felt that where
+he was the sun was not shining, the flowers were not budding. He felt
+that life had appeared to him all of a sudden and quite unexpectedly in
+a new, kindly, bewitching light.
+
+He came slowly down the steps.
+
+"Is it possible!" cried Herr Carovius, tearing the mask from his face.
+"Can I trust my own eyes? It is our _maestro_! Or is it his ghost?"
+
+"It is both he and his ghost," replied Daniel drily.
+
+"This is no place for ghosts," cried Dorothea, and threw a snow ball,
+hitting him square on the shoulder.
+
+Daniel looked at her; she blushed, and looked at Herr Carovius
+questioningly. "Don't you know our Daniel Nothafft, you little
+ignoramus?" said Herr Carovius. "You know nothing of our coryphaeus? Hail
+to the Master! Welcome home! He is here, covered with fame!"
+
+At any other time Herr Carovius's biliary sarcasm would have aroused
+Daniel's whole stock-in-trade of aversion and indignation. To-day he was
+unimpressed by it. "How young she is," he thought, as he feasted his
+eyes on the embarrassed, laughing Dorothea, "how gloriously young!"
+
+Dorothea was angry because she did not have on the red dress she had had
+made in Munich.
+
+"Dorothea!" called a strong voice from the first floor.
+
+"Oh, there's father!" whispered Dorothea. She was frightened. She ran up
+the steps on her tiptoes, dragging her long veil after her. The maid
+followed her.
+
+"A devil, a regular little devil, _Maestro_," said Herr Carovius turning
+to Daniel. "You must come in some time and hear how she can draw the
+bow. She's a regular little devil, I say."
+
+Daniel bade Herr Carovius adieu, and went walking down the street with
+bowed head.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+In the province, Dorothea Doederlein, fresh from the Bavarian capital,
+was a phenomenon that attracted general attention. Her conduct seemed,
+to be sure, a bit liberal, but then she was an artist, and her name
+appeared in the newspapers every now and then, so it was only natural to
+make allowances for her. When she gave her first concert, Adler Hall was
+almost completely sold out.
+
+The musical critic of the _Herold_ was captivated by her capricious
+playing. He called her an extraordinary talent, and predicted a
+brilliant future for her. Andreas Doederlein accepted the congratulations
+in the spirit of a seasoned patron of the arts; Herr Carovius was in the
+seventh heaven of joy. He who had formerly been so captious never
+uttered a critical word. He had taken to worshipping the Dorothea cult,
+and this had made him quite indiscriminating.
+
+At first Dorothea never suffered from want of invitations to all manner
+of clubs, dances, and family gatherings. She was much adored by the
+young men, so much so that other daughters of the city of matrimonial
+age could not sleep from envy. In a short while, however, the youth of
+more sterling character, warned while there was yet time by their
+mothers, sisters, cousins, and aunts, withdrew in fear.
+
+Dorothea reaped the disapproval of her acquaintances by walking with her
+admirers in public, unchaperoned. Moreover she could frequently be seen
+in the company of officers in the Eisenbeiss pastry shop, drinking
+chocolate and having a good time generally. Once she had been seen in
+the society of a big blonde Swede from Schuckert's factory coming out of
+the Music Hall. The rumour was spread that she had lived an irregular
+life in Munich, had gadded about the streets at night, contracted a
+number of bad debts, and flirted with all kinds of men.
+
+Yet there were a few serious wooers who, duped by Andreas Doederlein's
+diplomacy, fell into the habit of coming around on Sunday evenings and
+taking dinner with father and daughter. Dorothea, however, always
+managed to play off one against the other; and as they were all serious
+and provincial, they did not know precisely what to make of it. In order
+to instil patience into them, Doederlein took to delivering them lectures
+on the intricate complications of the artistic temperament, or he made
+mysterious allusions to the handsome legacy to which Dorothea would one
+day fall heir.
+
+It was this very fact, however, that made him exercise caution with
+regard to Dorothea. Knowing her spirit of defiance, and appreciating her
+youthful lack of judgment, he was afraid she might make some _faux pas_
+that would offend that old fool of a Carovius. He was already giving her
+a little spending money, and the Doederleins found this a highly
+advantageous arrangement.
+
+The state of Doederlein's own finances was hopeless. It was with the
+greatest difficulty that he kept up the appearance of a well-to-do man.
+The chief cause of his pecuniary embarrassment was his relation of
+long standing with a woman by whom he had had three children. To support
+this second family, of whose existence not a soul in his immediate
+surroundings knew a thing, burdened him with a care that made it hard
+for him to preserve his cheerful, Jove-like disposition.
+
+He had been leading a double life for fourteen years. His regular visits
+to the woman he loved--she lived very quietly out in the remote suburbs
+of the city--had to be made without attracting attention. To conceal his
+connection with her from the vigilant eyes of his fellow citizens made
+constant dissimulation, discretion, and shrewdness a necessary part of
+his character. But to practise these traits year in and year out and
+suffer at the same time from economic pressure filled him with
+suppressed anger and fear.
+
+He was afraid of Dorothea. There were moments when he would have liked
+to maul her; and yet he saw himself obliged to hold her in check with
+kind words. He could not see through her. But she was always around,
+always adding to his troubles with her plans, wishes, engagements and
+intrigues. He thought he had her under control, only to discover that
+she was a tyrant, lording it over him. Now she would burst out crying
+because of some bagatelle, now she was laughing as though nothing had
+ever happened. The roses her serious and moneyed admirers brought her
+she picked to pieces in their very presence, and threw the pieces in the
+waste-paper basket. Doederlein would lecture her in the kindest and most
+intelligent way on good morals and gentle manners, and she would listen
+as though she were a saint. Five minutes later she would be hanging out
+of the window, flirting with the barber's boy across the street.
+
+"I am an unfortunate father," said Andreas Doederlein to himself, when,
+apart from all his other multifarious worries, he began to be sceptical
+about Dorothea's artistic ability. Shortly after her success in
+Nuremberg, she gave a concert in Frankfort, but everything was pretty
+quiet. Then she toured the small towns of central Germany, and was
+received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm. But what of it? How
+much critical acumen is to be found in such places?
+
+One evening she was at the home of a certain Frau Feistelmann, a woman
+whose past had some connection with nearly every scandal of the city.
+While there she met an actor by the name of Edmund Hahn. Herr Hahn had
+soft, blonde hair and a pale, bloated face. He was rather tall and had
+long legs. Dorothea raved about long legs. There was a thoroughly
+sensual atmosphere about the man; he devoured Dorothea with his impudent
+eyes. His build, his bearing, his half blase, half emphatic way of
+speaking made an impression on Dorothea. He sat next to her at the
+table, and began to rub his feet against hers. Finally he succeeded in
+getting his left foot on her slipper. She tried to pull her foot back,
+but the more she tried the harder he bore down on it. She looked at him
+in amazement; but he smiled cynically, and in a few minutes they were
+desperately intimate. After dinner they withdrew to a hidden corner, and
+you could hear Dorothea giggling.
+
+They arranged to meet each other on a certain street corner in the dark.
+He sent her free tickets to "Maria Stuart" and "Die Raeuber." He played
+the roles of Mortimer and Kosinsky; he roared till you thought the roof
+would fall in. He introduced Dorothea to a number of his friends, and
+these brought their girl friends along, and they all sat in the Nassau
+Cellar till break of day. Among them was a certain Samuelsky, an employe
+of the Reutlinger Bank. He had the manners of a man about town, drank
+champagne, and went mad over Dorothea. She submitted to his attention,
+welcomed it in fact, and accepted presents from him, though, as it
+seemed, not until she had received the permission from Edmund Hahn. Once
+he tried to kiss her: she gave him a ringing box on the ears. He wiped
+his cheek, and called her a siren.
+
+She liked the expression. At times she would stand before the mirror,
+and whisper: "Siren."
+
+When Andreas Doederlein heard of what was going on, he had an attack of
+mad rage. "I will put you out of the house," he exclaimed, "I will beat
+you until you are a helpless, despicable cripple." But in his eyes there
+was again the trace of that suppressed fear that gave the lie to his
+seeming berserker rage.
+
+"An artist does not need to adapt her morals to the code of the
+Philistine," remarked Dorothea, with complete imperturbability. "Those
+are all nice people with whom I am going. Every one of them is a
+gentleman."
+
+A gentleman: that was an argument against which it was futile to enter a
+caveat. In her eyes that man was a gentleman who ran risks, impressed
+waiters and coachmen, and wore creased trousers. "No one dares come too
+close to me," she said with much pride. That was the truth; no one had
+thus far awakened her deepest curiosity, and she had determined to put a
+high price on herself. Edmund Hahn was the only one who had any
+influence on her; and this was true of him because he was absolutely
+devoid of feeling, and had a type of shamelessness that completely
+disarmed and terrified her.
+
+Andreas Doederlein had to let her have her way. If he had any consolation
+at all, it lay in the belief on his part that a real Doederlein would
+never voluntarily come to grief. If Dorothea was a genuine Doederlein,
+she would march straight to her objective, and take by storm the good
+and useful things of life. If she failed, it would be proof that there
+was a flaw somewhere in her birth. This was his logic; and having
+applied it, theoretically, he enshrouded himself in the clouds of his
+Olympus.
+
+Dorothea gave her uncle Carovius, however, detailed accounts of how she
+was making her suitors, young and old, walk the war-path. They all had
+to do it, the actor and the banker, the candle manufacturer and the
+engineer. She said she was leading the whole pack of them around by the
+nose. Herr Carovius's face beamed with joy when he heard her say this.
+He called her his little jackanapes, and said she was the fortune of his
+old age. To himself he said that she was a genuine Carovius destined to
+great deeds.
+
+"You don't have to get married," he said with the urge of a zealot of
+old, and rubbed his hands. "Oh, of course, if a Count comes along with a
+few millions and a castle in the background, why, you might think it
+over. But just let some greasy comedian get it into his head that he is
+going to steal you away from me! Or let some wabbly-hipped office-boy
+imagine for a minute that he is going to drag you into his circle along
+with his other unwashed acquaintances! If this ever happens, Dorothea,
+give it to 'em hot and heavy! Show the wanton satyrs what kind of blood
+you have in you."
+
+"Ah, Uncle," said Dorothea, "I know you mean well by me. You are the
+only one who does. But if I were only not so poor! Look at me! Look at
+this dress I have on! It's a sight!" And she put her head in her
+uplifted arm and sobbed.
+
+Herr Carovius pulled at his moustaches, moved his eyebrows up and down,
+went to his writing desk, opened his strong box, took out a hundred-mark
+bill, and gave it to her with turned head, as if he were afraid of the
+wrath of the protecting spirit of the money chest.
+
+This was the state of affairs when Daniel met the youthful Dorothea in
+Herr Carovius's home, and went away with an unforgettable,
+unextinguishable picture of her in his soul.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+Daniel's approaching fortieth birthday seemed like a sombre portal
+leading to the realm of spent ambition. "Seize what remains to be
+seized," a voice within him cried. "Grass is growing on the graves."
+
+His senses were at war with his intellect and his heart. He had never
+looked on women as he was looking on them now.
+
+One day he went out to Siegmundshof. Eberhard was not at home. Sylvia's
+face showed traces of subdued sadness. She had three children, each one
+more beautiful than the other, but when her eyes rested on them her
+heart was filled with grief. Women whose married life is unhappy have
+dull, lifeless features; their hands are transparent and yellow.
+
+Daniel took leave more quickly than he had wished or intended. He felt
+an egoistic aversion to the joyless sons of man.
+
+He went to see Herr Carovius. The laughing one whom he sought was not at
+home.
+
+Herr Carovius looked at him at times distrustfully. The face of his
+former foe set him to thinking. It was furrowed like a field under
+cultivation and burnt like a hearthstone. It was the face of a criminal,
+crabbed, enervated, tense, and breathed upon, it seemed, by threatening
+clouds. Herr Carovius was a connoisseur of faces.
+
+In order to avoid the discomfort of fatuous conversation, Daniel played
+a number of old motetts for Herr Carovius. Herr Carovius was so pleased
+that he ran into his pantry, and got a half dozen Boxdorf apples and put
+them in Daniel's pockets. He bought these apples every autumn by the
+peck, and cherished them as so many priceless treasures.
+
+"At the sound of such music it would not be difficult to become a real
+Christian," he said.
+
+"There is spring in them," said Daniel, "they are art that is as
+innocent as new seed in the soil. But your piano needs tuning."
+
+"Symbolic, symbolic, my dear friend," cried Herr Carovius, and puffed
+out his cheeks. "But you come back another time, and you will find it in
+the pink of condition. Come frequently, please. You will reap the reward
+of Heaven if you do."
+
+Herr Carovius begging for company; it was touching. Daniel promised to
+bring some of the manuscripts he had been collecting along with him.
+When he returned a few days later, Dorothea was there; and from then on
+she was always there. His visits became longer and longer. When Herr
+Carovius noticed that Dorothea was coming to see him more frequently
+now, he moved heaven and earth to persuade Daniel to come more
+frequently. He rained reproach and abuse on him if he failed to come; if
+he was late, he greeted him with a sour face and put indiscreet
+questions to him. When he was alone of an afternoon, time stood still.
+He was like a drinker tantalised by seeing his accustomed portion of
+brandy on the table but just beyond his reach. The company of these two
+people, Daniel and Dorothea, had become as indispensable to his
+happiness as in former years the reading of the newspapers, the brethren
+of the Vale of Tears, the troubles of Eberhard and the funerals were
+indispensable if he were to feel at ease. It is the way of the small
+citizen: each of his customs becomes a passion.
+
+When Daniel played the old chorals, Dorothea listened quietly, though it
+could not be said that she was perfect at concealing her tedium.
+
+One time they began talking about Dorothea's violin playing. Herr
+Carovius asked her to play something. She declined without the slightest
+display of affectation. Daniel said nothing to encourage her; he found
+that this modesty was becoming to her; he believed that he detected
+wisdom and resignation in her behaviour; he smiled at her graciously.
+
+"Tell us a story, Daniel," she said, "that would be better." It
+eventually came out that that was what she had wanted all along.
+
+"I am a poor raconteur," said Daniel. "I have a thick tongue."
+
+She begged him, however, with stammering words and beseeching gestures.
+Herr Carovius tittered. Daniel took off his glasses, polished them, and
+looked at the young girl with squinting eyes. It seemed as if the
+glasses had made it difficult for him to see Dorothea distinctly, or as
+if he preferred to see her indistinctly. "I really don't know what I
+could tell in the way of a story," he replied, shaking his head.
+
+"Tell us everything, anything," cried Dorothea, seized with a veritable
+fit of eagerness to hear him talk. She stretched out her hands toward
+him: that seemed to him to be so like a child. He had never told stories
+to a child; he had never in truth told stories to any one. Gertrude and
+Eleanore had, to be sure, forced a confession or a complaint from him at
+times, but that was all, and all that was necessary or appropriate.
+
+Suddenly he was drawn on by the word in which his fate would be quietly
+reflected; by the fiery young eye in the brilliancy of which the complex
+became simple, the dark bright; by the wicked old man to whom the whole
+world, as seen from his mire, had become a poisonous food.
+
+And with his brittle, staccato voice he told of the countries through
+which he had journeyed; of the sea and the cities by the sea; of the
+Alps and the Alpine lakes; of cathedrals, palaces, and marvellous
+monasteries; of the queer people he had met, of his work and his
+loneliness. It was all incoherent, arid, and loveless. Though sorely
+tempted, he desisted from mentioning things that came close to his soul;
+things that moved his heart, fired his brain. When he told of the
+Jewess, the Swallow, he did not even finish the sentence. He made a long
+pause, and then shifted to the account of his visit to Eschenbach. Here
+he stopped again before he was through.
+
+But Dorothea began to ask questions. It was all too general and
+therefore unsatisfactory. "What was there in Eschenbach? Why did you go
+there?" she asked boldly.
+
+He was in error concerning the hot desire that burned in her eyes to
+know about Eschenbach. Her question made him feel good; he believed that
+he was on the scent of warm-heartedness; he thought he had found a soul
+that was eager to help through knowledge. He was seized with the desire
+of the mature man to fashion an untouched soul in harmony with the
+picture of his dreams. "My mother used to live there," he replied
+hesitatingly, "she has died."
+
+"Yes--and?" breathed Dorothea. She saw that that was not all.
+
+He felt that this uncompromising reticence was not right; he felt a
+sense of guilt. With still greater hesitation--and immediate
+repentance--he added: "A child of mine also lived there; she was eleven
+years old. She has disappeared; no one knows where she is."
+
+Dorothea folded her hands, "A child? And disappeared? Simply vanished?"
+she whispered excitedly.
+
+Herr Carovius looked like a man sitting on a hot iron. "Eleven years
+old?" he asked, hungry for sensation, "why--that was, then--before the
+time ..."
+
+"Yes, it was before the time," said Daniel gloomily and by way of
+confirmation. He had betrayed himself, and was angry at himself for
+having done so. He became silent; it was impossible to get him to say
+another word.
+
+Herr Carovius noticed how Dorothea hung on Daniel's eyes. A tormenting
+suspicion arose in him. "Yesterday out on St. Joseph's Place, I was
+talking with one of your admirers, the fellow who shatters the wings of
+the stage with his ranting," he began with malice aforethought. "The
+blade had the nerve to say to me: 'You'd better hurry up and get
+Dorothea Doederlein a husband, or people will talk their tongues loose in
+their throats.'"
+
+"That is not true," cried Dorothea indignantly, blushing to the roots of
+her hair. "He didn't say that."
+
+Herr Carovius laughed malevolently. "Well, if it is not true, it is
+pretty well put together," he said with his usual bleat.
+
+When Daniel left, Dorothea accompanied him to the outside door.
+
+"It's a pity," murmured Daniel, "a pity!"
+
+"Why a pity? I am free. There isn't a soul in the world who has any
+claim on me." She looked at him with the courage of a real woman.
+
+"There are remarks that are just like grease spots," he replied.
+
+"Well, who can keep from the dirt these days?" she asked, almost wild
+with excitement.
+
+Daniel let his eyes rest on her as though she were some material object.
+He said slowly and seriously: "Keep your hands and your eyes off of me,
+Dorothea. I will bring you no happiness."
+
+Her lips opened, thirsty. "I should like to take a walk with you some
+time," she whispered, and her features trembled with an ecstasy which he
+was dupe enough to believe was meant for him; in reality Dorothea was
+thinking of the adventurer and the disclosure of the secret.
+
+"Many years ago," said Daniel, "you will scarcely recall it, I protected
+you here in this very same gateway from a big dog. Do you remember?"
+
+"No! Or do I? Wait a minute! Yes, I remember, that is, quite
+indistinctly. You did that?" Dorothea seized his hands with gratitude.
+
+"Fine! Then we will go walking to-morrow morning. Where? Oh, it doesn't
+make much difference," said Daniel.
+
+"But you must tell me everything, you hear? everything." Dorothea was as
+insistent as she had been in the room a short while ago; and she was
+more impetuous and impatient.
+
+They agreed upon the place where they would meet.
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+At first they took short walks in remote parts of the city; then they
+took longer ones. On Mid-Summer Day they strolled out to Kraftshof and
+the grove of the Pegnitz shepherds. Daniel made unconscious effort to
+avoid the places where he had once walked with Eleanore.
+
+There came moments when Dorothea's exuberance made him pensive and sad;
+he felt the weight of his forty years; they were inclined to make him
+hypochondriacal. Was it the vengeance of fate that made him slow up when
+they came to a hill, while Dorothea ran on ahead and waited for him,
+laughing?
+
+She did not see the flowers, the trees, the animals, or the clouds. But
+when she saw people a change came over her: she would become more
+active; or she would mobilise her resources; or she seemed to strike up
+a spiritual liaison with them. It might be only a peasant boy on an
+errand or a vagabond going nowhere; she would shake her hips and laugh
+one note higher.
+
+"Her youth has gone to her head, like wine," Daniel thought to himself.
+
+Once she took a box of chocolate bon-bons along. Having had enough of
+them herself and seeing that Daniel did not care for them, she threw
+what was left away. Daniel reproached her for her wastefulness. "Why
+drag it along?" she asked with perfect lack of embarrassment, "when you
+have enough of a thing you throw it away." She showed her white teeth,
+and took in one deep breath of fresh air after another.
+
+Daniel studied her. "She is invulnerable," he said to himself; "her
+power to wish is invincible, her fulness of life complete." He felt that
+she bore a certain resemblance to his Eva; that she was one of those
+elves of light in whose cheerfulness there is occasionally a touch of
+the terrible. He decided then and there not to let mischievous chance
+have its own way: he was going to put out his hand when he felt it was
+advisable.
+
+"When are you going to begin to tell me the stories?" she asked: "I
+must, I must know all about you," she added with much warmth of
+expression. "There are days and nights when I cannot rest. Tell me! Tell
+me!"
+
+That was the truth. In order to penetrate his life history, which she
+pictured to herself as full of passionate, checkered events, she had
+done everything that he had demanded of her.
+
+Daniel refused; he was silent; he was afraid he would darken the girl's
+pure mind, jeopardise her unsuspecting innocence. He was afraid to
+conjure up the shadows.
+
+One day she was talking along in her easy way, and while so doing she
+tripped herself up. She had begun to tell him about the men she had been
+going with; and before she knew what she was doing, she had fallen into
+the tone she used when she talked with her Uncle Carovius. Becoming
+suddenly aware of her indiscretion, she stopped, embarrassed. Daniel's
+serious questions caused her to make some confessions she would
+otherwise never have thought of making. She told a goodly number of
+rather murky and ugly stories, and it was very hard for her to act as
+though she were innocent or the victim of circumstances. At last, unable
+longer to escape from the net she had woven, she made a clean breast of
+her whole life, painted it all in the gaudiest colours, and then waited
+in breathless--but agreeable--suspense to see what effect it would have
+on Daniel.
+
+Daniel was silent for a while; then he made a motion with his
+outstretched hand as if he were cutting something in two: "Away from
+them, Dorothea, or away from me!"
+
+Dorothea bowed her head, and then looked at him timidly from head to
+foot. The decisiveness with which he spoke was something new to her,
+though it was by no means offensive. A voluptuous shudder ran through
+her limbs. "Yes," she whispered girlishly, "I am going to put an end to
+it. I never realised what it all meant. But don't be angry, will you?
+No, you won't, will you?"
+
+She came closer to him; her eyes were filled with tears. "Don't be angry
+at me," she said again, "poor Dorothea can't help it. She is not
+responsible for it."
+
+"But how did you come to do it?" asked Daniel. "I can't see how it was
+possible. Weren't you disgusted to the very bottom of your soul? How
+could you go about under God's free heavens with such hyenas? Why,
+girl, the very thought of it fills me with scepticism about everything."
+
+"What should I have done, Daniel?" she said, calling him by his
+baptismal name for the first time. She spoke with a felicitous mixture
+of submissiveness and boldness that touched and at the same time
+enchanted him. "What should I have done? They come and talk to you, and
+spin their nets about you; and at home it is so dreary and lonely, and
+your heart is so empty and Father is so mean, you haven't got anybody
+else in the world to talk to." Such was her defence, effective even if
+more voluble than coherent.
+
+They walked on. They were passing through a valley in the forest. On
+either side were tall pine trees, the crowns of which were lighted by
+the evening sun.
+
+"You can't play with Fate, Dorothea," said Daniel. "It does not permit
+smudging or muddling, if we are to stand the test. It keeps a faultless
+ledger; the entries it makes on both sides are the embodiment of
+accuracy. Debts that we contract must always be paid, somehow,
+somewhere."
+
+Dorothea felt that he was getting started; that the great, good story
+was about to come. She stopped, spread her shawl on the ground, and took
+a graceful position on it, all eyes and ears. Daniel threw himself on
+the moss beside her.
+
+And he told his story--into the moss where little insects were creeping
+around. He never raised either his eye or his voice. At times Dorothea
+had to bend over to hear him.
+
+He told about Gertrude, her torpor, her awakening, her love, her
+resignation. He told about Eleanore; told how he had loved her without
+knowing it. He told how Eleanore, out of an excess of passion and
+suffering, became his, how Gertrude wandered about dazed, unhappy, lost,
+until she finally took her life: "Then we went up to the attic, and
+found it on fire and her lifeless body hanging from the rafter."
+
+He told how Gertrude had lived on as a shadow by the side of Eleanore,
+and how Eleanore became a flower girl, and how Philippina the
+inexplicable, and still inexplicable, had come into his family, and how
+Gertrude's child lived there like an unfed foundling, and how the other
+child, the child he had had by the maid, had found such a warm spot in
+his heart.
+
+He told of his meeting the two sisters, their speaking and their
+remaining silent, his seeing them in secret trysts, the moving about
+from house to house and room to room, the singing of songs, his
+experiences with the Doermaul opera company, the light thrown on his
+drab life by a mask, his friend and the help he had received from him,
+his separation from him, the brush-maker's house on St. James's Place,
+the three queer old maids in the Long Row, the days he spent at Castle
+Erfft, the old father of the two sisters and his strange doings--all of
+this he described in the tone of a man awakening from a deep sleep.
+There was a confidence in what he said and the way he said it that
+mayhap terrified the hovering spirits of the evening, though it did not
+fill Dorothea's eyes, then glistening like polished metal, with a more
+intimate or cordial light.
+
+When he looked up he felt he saw two sombre figures standing on the edge
+of the forest; he felt he saw the two sisters, and that they were
+casting mournful, reproachful glances at him.
+
+He got up. "And all that," he concluded, "all that has been drunk up,
+like rain by the parched earth, by a work on which I have been labouring
+for the past seven years. For seven years. Two more years, and I will
+give it to the world, provided this unsteady globe has not fallen into
+the sun by that time."
+
+Dorothea had a confused, haphazard idea as to the type of man that was
+standing before her. She was seized with a prickling desire for him such
+as she had thus far never experienced. She began to love him, in her
+way. Something impelled her to seek shelter by him, near him, somewhat
+as a bird flies under the crown of a tree at the approach of a storm.
+Daniel interpreted the timidity with which she put her arm in his as a
+sign of gratitude.
+
+And in this mood he took her back to the city.
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+It was in this pulsing, urging, joyful mood that Daniel worked at and
+completed the fifth movement of his symphony, a _scherzo_ of grand
+proportions, beginning with a clarinet figure that symbolised laughing
+_sans-souci_. All the possibilities of joy developed from this simple
+motif. Nor was retrospection or consolation lacking. If the main themes,
+mindful of their former pre-eminence, seemed inclined to widen the bed
+of their stream, they were appeased and forced back into their original
+channel by artistic and capriciously alternating means. Once all three
+themes flowed along together, gaining strength apparently through their
+union, rose to a wonderful fugue, and seemed to be just on the point of
+gaining the victory when the whole orchestra, above the chord in D
+sevenths, was seized by the waltz melody, those melancholy
+sister-strains were taken up by the violins, and fled, dirge-like, to
+their unknown abodes. Just before the jubilant crescendo of the finale,
+a bassoon solo held one of them fast on its distant, grief-stricken
+heights.
+
+Daniel sketched the sixth movement in the following fourteen nights.
+
+He was fully aware of the fact that he had never been able to work this
+way before. When a man accomplishes the extraordinary, he knows it. It
+seizes him like a disease, and fills him like a profound dream.
+
+At times he felt as though he must tell some one about it, even if it
+were only Herr Carovius. But once the flame had died down, he could not
+help but laugh at the temptation to which he had felt himself subjected.
+"Patience," he thought, feeling more assured than ever, "patience,
+patience!"
+
+Since his work on the manuscripts was completed and his connection with
+the firm of Philander and Sons dissolved, he began to look around for
+another position. He had saved in the course of the last few years four
+thousand marks, but he wished to keep this sum intact.
+
+He learned that the position of organist at the Church of St. AEgydius
+was vacant; he went to the pastor, who recommended him to his superiors.
+It was decided that he should play something before the church
+consistory. This he did one morning in October. The trial proved
+eminently successful to his exacting auditors.
+
+He was appointed organist at St. AEgydius's at a salary of twelve hundred
+marks a year. When he played on Sundays and holidays, the people came
+into the church just to hear him.
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+Among the suitors for the hand of Dorothea on whom Andreas Doederlein
+looked with special favour was the mill owner, a man by the name of
+Weisskopf. Herr Weisskopf was passionately fond of music. He had greatly
+admired Dorothea when she gave her concert, and had sent her a laurel
+wreath.
+
+One day Herr Weisskopf came in and took dinner with the Doederleins. When
+he left, Doederlein said to his daughter: "My dear Dorothea, from this
+day on you may consider yourself betrothed. This admirable man desires
+to have you as his lawfully wedded wife. It is a great good fortune; the
+man is as rich as Croesus."
+
+Instead of making a reply, Dorothea laughed heartily. But she knew that
+the time had come when something had to be done. Her mobile face
+twitched with scorn, fear, and desire.
+
+"Think it over; sleep on it. I have promised Herr Weisskopf to let him
+know to-morrow," said Doederlein, black-browed.
+
+A week before this, Andreas Doederlein, confidently expecting that Herr
+Weisskopf would ask for the hand of his daughter, had borrowed a
+thousand marks from him. The miller had loaned him the money believing
+that he was thereby securing a promissory note on Dorothea. Doederlein
+had placed himself under obligations, and was consequently determined to
+carry out his plans with regard to the marriage of his daughter.
+
+But Dorothea's behaviour made it safe to predict that objections would
+be raised on her part. Doederlein was in trouble; he sought distraction.
+Sixteen years ago he had begun an _opus_ entitled "All Souls: a
+Symphonic Picture." Five pages of the score had been written, and since
+then he had never undertaken creative work. He rummaged around in his
+desk, found the score, went to the piano, and tried to take up the
+thread where he had lost it sixteen years ago. He tried to imagine the
+intervening time merely as a pause, an afternoon siesta.
+
+It would not go. He sighed. He sat before the instrument, and stared at
+the paper like a schoolboy who has a problem to solve but has forgotten
+the rule. He seemed to lament the loss of his artistic ability. He felt
+so hollow. The notes grinned at him; they mocked him. His thoughts
+turned involuntarily to the miller. He improvised for a while. Dorothea
+stuck her head in the door and sang: "Rhinegold, Rhinegold, pu-re gold."
+
+He was enraged; he got up, slammed the lid of the piano, took his hat
+and top coat, left the house, and went out to see his friend in the
+suburbs.
+
+When he returned that night, he saw Dorothea standing in the door with a
+man. It was the actor, Edmund Hahn. They were carrying on a heated
+conversation in whispers. The man was holding Dorothea by the arm, but
+when Doederlein became visible from the unlighted street, he uttered an
+ugly oath and quickly disappeared.
+
+Dorothea looked her father straight, and impudently, in the face, and
+followed him into the dark house.
+
+When they were upstairs and had lighted the lamp, Doederlein turned to
+her, and asked her threateningly: "What do you mean by these immodest
+associations? Tell me! I want an answer!"
+
+"I don't want to marry your flour sack. That's my answer," said
+Dorothea, with a defiant toss of her head.
+
+"Well, we'll see," said Doederlein, pale with rage and ploughing through
+his hair with his fingers, "we'll see. Get out of here! I have no desire
+to lose my well-earned sleep on account of such an ungrateful hussy.
+We'll take up the subject again to-morrow morning."
+
+The next morning Dorothea hastened to Herr Carovius. "Uncle," she
+stammered, "he wants to marry me to that flour sack."
+
+"Yes? Well, I suppose I'll have to visit that second-rate musician in
+his studio again and give him a piece of my mind. In the meantime be
+calm, my child, be calm," said he, stroking her brown hair, "Old
+Carovius is still alive."
+
+Dorothea nestled up to him, and smiled: "What would you say, Uncle," she
+began with a knavish and at the same time unusually attentive expression
+in her face, "if I were to marry Daniel Nothafft? You like him," she
+continued in a flattering tone, and held him fast by the shoulder when
+he started back, "you like him, I know you do. I must marry somebody;
+for I do not wish to be an old maid, and I can't stand Father any
+longer."
+
+Herr Carovius tore himself loose from her. "To the insane asylum with
+you!" he cried. "I would rather see you go to bed with that meal sack.
+Is the Devil in you, you prostitute? If your skin itches, scratch it, so
+far as I am concerned, but take a stable boy to do it, as Empress
+Katherine of blessed memory did. Buy fine dresses, bedizen yourself with
+tom-foolery of all shades and colours, go to dances and lap up
+champagne, make music or throw your damn fiddle on the dung heap, do
+anything you want to do, I'll pay for it; but that green-eyed phantast,
+that lunk-headed rat-catcher, that woman-eater and music-box bird, no,
+no! Never! Send him humping down the stairs and out the front door! For
+God's sake and the sake of all the saints, don't marry him! Don't, I
+say. If you do, it's all off between you and me."
+
+There was such a look of hate and fear in Herr Carovius's face that
+Dorothea was almost frightened. His hair was as towsled as the twigs of
+an abandoned bird's nest; water was dripping from the corners of his
+mouth; his eyes were inflamed; his glasses were on the tip of his nose.
+
+Nothing could have made Dorothea more pleased with the story Daniel had
+told her than Herr Carovius's ravings. Her eyes were opened wide, her
+mouth was thirsty. If she had hesitated at times before, she did so no
+more. She loved money; greed was a part of her make-up from the hour
+she was born. But if Herr Carovius had laid the whole of his treasures
+at her feet, and said to her, "You may have them if you will renounce
+Daniel Nothafft," she would have replied, "Your money, my Daniel."
+
+Something terribly strange and strong drew her to the man she had just
+heard so volubly cursed. That sensual prickling was of a more dangerous
+violence and warmth in his presence than in that of any other man she
+had ever known; and she had known a number. To her he was a riddle and a
+mystery; she wanted to solve the one and clear up the other. He had
+possessed so many women, indubitably more than he had confessed to her;
+and she wished now to possess him. He was so quiet, so clever, so
+resolute: she wanted his quietness, his cleverness, his resoluteness.
+She wanted everything he had, his charm, his magic, his power over men,
+all that he displayed and all that he concealed.
+
+She thought of him constantly; she thought in truth of no one else, and
+nothing else. Her thoughts fluttered about his picture, shyly, greedily,
+and as playfully as a kitten. He had managed to bring will power and
+unity into her senses. She wanted to have him.
+
+The rain beat against the window. Terrified at Dorothea's
+thoughtfulness, Herr Carovius pressed his hands to his cheeks. "I see, I
+see, you want to leave me all alone," he said in a tone that sounded
+like the howling of a dog in the middle of the night. "You want to
+deceive me, to surrender me to the enemy, to leave me nothing, nothing
+but the privilege of sitting here and staring at my four walls. I see, I
+see."
+
+"Be still, Uncle, nothing is going to happen. It is all a huge joke,"
+said Dorothea with feigned good humour and kind intentions. She walked
+to the door slowly, looking back every now and then with a smile on her
+face.
+
+
+                                 XVII
+
+It was early in the morning when Dorothea rang Daniel's bell. Philippina
+opened the door, but she did not wish to let Dorothea in. She forced an
+entrance, however, and, standing in the door, she inspected Philippina
+with the eye of arrogance, always a clear-sighted organ.
+
+"Look out, Philippin', there's something rotten here," murmured
+Philippina to herself.
+
+Daniel was at work. He got up and looked at Dorothea, who carefully
+closed the door.
+
+"Here I am, Daniel," she said, and breathed a sigh of relief, like a
+swimmer who has just reached the land.
+
+"What is it all about?" asked Daniel, seemingly ill inclined to become
+excited.
+
+"I have done what you wanted me to do, Daniel: I have broken away from
+them. I cannot tolerate Father a minute longer. Where should I go if not
+to you?"
+
+Daniel went up to her, and laid his hands on her shoulders. "Girl,
+girl!" he said as if to warn her. He felt uneasy.
+
+They looked into each other's eyes for what seemed like an eternity.
+Daniel was apparently trying to peer into the innermost recesses of her
+soul. Dorothea's eyes sparkled with daring; she did not lower her lids.
+Suddenly, as if moved from within, Daniel bent over and kissed her on
+the forehead.
+
+"You know who I am," he said, and walked back and forth in the room.
+"You know how I have lived and how I am living at present. I am a guilty
+man, and a lonely man. My nature craves tenderness, but is unable to
+give tenderness in return. My lot is a hard one, and whoever decides to
+share it with me must be able to bear her part of this hardness. I am
+frequently my own enemy and the enemy of those who mean well by me. I am
+not a humourist, and make a poor impression in society. I can be gruff,
+offensive, spiteful, irreconcilable, and revengeful. I am ugly, poor,
+and no longer young. Are you not afraid of your twenty-three years,
+Dorothea?"
+
+Dorothea shook her head vigorously.
+
+"Test yourself, Dorothea, examine yourself," he continued urgently,
+"don't be too inexact, too careless with me, nor with yourself. Study
+the situation from all sides, so that we may make no false calculations.
+Fate, you know, is fate. Love can get control of me more than I can get
+control of myself, and when this takes place I will do everything in my
+power. But I must have confidence, unlimited confidence. If I were to
+lose confidence, I should be like a mortal proscribed to Hell, an
+outcast, an evil spirit. Examine yourself, Dorothea. You must know what
+you are doing; it is your affair, and it is a sacred one."
+
+"I cannot do otherwise, Daniel!" cried Dorothea, and threw herself on
+his bosom.
+
+"Then God be merciful to us," said Daniel.
+
+
+                                 XVIII
+
+Daniel took Dorothea over to Sylvia von Erfft's at Siegmundshof. He had
+written to her, given her all the details, explained the entire
+situation, and begged her to take Dorothea in and entertain her until
+the day of the wedding. Sylvia had shown herself most obliging in the
+matter; she met his requests with unaffected cordiality.
+
+Dorothea had spent two nights at home, during which she had succeeded in
+evading all explanations with her father. She did this by having him
+agree to give her three days to think it over. On the morning of the
+third day, after her father had gone to the conservatory, she packed up
+her belongings and left the house.
+
+Andreas Doederlein found the following letter from her: "Dear Father:
+Abandon all your hopes with regard to my marrying Herr Weisskopf. I am
+of age and can marry whomsoever I wish. I have already made my choice.
+The man who is going to lead me to the altar is called Daniel Nothafft.
+He loves me perhaps even more than I deserve, and I will make him a good
+wife. This is my unalterable decision, and you yourself will certainly
+come to see that it is nobler to obey the impulses of one's own heart
+than to allow one's self to be led on and blinded by material
+considerations. Your loving daughter, Dorothea."
+
+Andreas Doederlein had a sinking spell. The letter slipped from his
+fingers and fell to the floor. Trembling in his whole body, he walked up
+to the covered table, took a glass and hurled it against the wall. The
+glass broke into a thousand pieces. "I will choke you, you impious
+toad!" he panted, shook his clenched fist, went to Dorothea's room, and,
+seized with boundless wrath, upset the chairs and the little dressing
+table.
+
+The maid, terrified, ran into the living room. She saw Dorothea's letter
+lying on the floor, picked it up, and read it. When she heard her mad
+master returning, she ran down stairs to the ground floor, rang Herr
+Carovius's bell, and showed him the letter. His face turned yellow as he
+read it. The maid uttered a shrill, piercing cry, snatched the letter
+from Herr Carovius's hands, and ran out into the court, for she heard
+Andreas Doederlein stumbling down the steps. He wanted to call the police
+and have them lock up the abductor of his daughter. Catching sight of
+Herr Carovius in the hall, he stopped and fixed his eyes on him. In them
+there was a sea of anger; and yet it was obvious that Andreas Doederlein
+was eager to ask a question or two. It seemed indeed that just one
+conciliatory statement, even a single gesture on the part of the man
+whom he had scrupulously avoided for years, would make bye-gones be
+bye-gones and convert two implacable foes into friends, colleagues
+indeed in the business of revenge and punishment.
+
+But Herr Carovius was done with the world. His face was distorted;
+grimaces of unrelieved meanness furrowed his brow; his contempt knew no
+bounds. He turned about and slammed the door leading into his apartment
+with a bang that showed his intention of shutting himself up in his own
+stronghold.
+
+Andreas Doederlein got as far as the entrance to the Town Hall. There he
+was suddenly seized with grave doubts. He stared at the pavement for a
+while, sad and sinister, and then started back home. His steps were not
+half so impetuous as they had been on the way over; they gave evidence
+of weakened will and fading energy.
+
+Hardly had he reached home when Daniel was announced. "You have the
+boldness, Sir," he cried out to Daniel on his entering. "You have the
+boldness to appear in my sight? By the gods above, you are going far!"
+
+"I will accept any challenge you make," said Daniel, with the chilly
+dignity that was characteristic of him in such circumstances and that
+never failed to have a sobering effect on his potential antagonist. "I
+have nothing to fear. I should like to live in peace with the father of
+my wife, and for this reason I have come to you."
+
+"Do you know what you are doing to me? You have stolen my daughter,
+man!" cried Doederlein with pathos. "But just wait. I will checkmate your
+plans. I will make you feel the full measure of my power."
+
+Daniel smiled contemptuously. "I am certain of that," he replied. "I
+will feel your power as long as I live; I have always felt it. But I
+have never submitted to it, and up to the present I have always been
+able to break it. Think it over! Recall my past history! And devote a
+few of your meditative moments to your child. Adieu!" With that Daniel
+left.
+
+Andreas Doederlein was ill at ease. The man's smile followed him wherever
+he went. What could the desperado be planning? A bad conscience
+paralyses evil determinations. For more than a week, Doederlein waged
+perpetual war with his pride. And then? Daniel did not allow himself to
+be seen; he received no news of any kind from Dorothea; and, climax of
+it all, Herr Weisskopf notified him that his note for one thousand
+marks, with interest, was due. Doederlein saw that there was nothing to
+be done about it all except to recognise the denouement as a fact and
+not as a stage scene. And one day he hobbled up the steps of the house
+on AEgydius Place.
+
+"I am glad to see you," said Daniel as he reached out his hand to his
+visitor.
+
+Andreas Doederlein spoke of a father's bleeding heart, of the crushing of
+proud hopes, of the impiety of youth, and the lonesomeness of old age.
+And then, rather disconnectedly, beating a tattoo with the fingers of
+his big hand on the top of the table, he spoke of the constraint in
+which he found himself with reference to the opulent owner of the mill.
+He told Daniel he had gone on a man's note, had been suddenly obliged to
+redeem the note, and not having so much ready money at his disposal, had
+accepted a loan from the rich aspirant for Dorothea's hand.
+
+Daniel was forced to admit that his troubles were humiliating and that
+the money would have to be raised. Doederlein said it amounted to fifteen
+hundred marks. He was surprised himself when he mentioned the sum which
+assured him a clear gain of fifty per cent. It had been a clever idea,
+serving as it did to put the generosity of his future son-in-law to
+test. At the bottom of his heart he felt that his action was
+dishonourable, and was consequently touched when Daniel, giving this
+inroad on his savings but a moment's thought, promised to send him the
+money the following day.
+
+"You make me feel ashamed of myself, Daniel, really you do. Let us bury
+the hatchet! We are after all colleagues in Apollo. Or aren't we? Call
+me Father, and I will call you Son! Address me with _Du_, and I will
+follow your example."
+
+Daniel gave him his hand without saying a word.
+
+Doederlein asked about Dorothea; and when Daniel told him where she was,
+he seemed quite contented. "Tell her my house and my arms are open to
+her; tell her of the change in the constellation," he said softly. "We
+have both done each other injustice and have both repented."
+
+Daniel replied quite conventionally that he thought it better to leave
+Dorothea with Sylvia von Auffenberg.
+
+"As you wish, my son," said Andreas Doederlein, "I bow to the claims of
+your young happiness. Now we should have a bottle of Malvoisie or
+Moselle, so that I can drink to the health of my dear, unruly daughter.
+Or don't you care to?"
+
+Daniel went to send Philippina to the Golden Posthorn. But Philippina
+had gone out with Agnes. He saw one of the maids from one of the other
+apartments standing on the steps, and got her to run the errand. It was
+a long while before she returned, and when the wine was finally poured
+out, Doederlein had not time to drink: he was scheduled to give a lecture
+in the conservatory at seven. He drank about half of his glass, and then
+took hasty leave of Daniel, shaking his hand with unwonted fervour.
+
+Daniel sat for a while thinking it all over. There was a knock at the
+door, and old Jordan came in. "May I?" he asked.
+
+Daniel nodded. Jordan took a seat on the chair Doederlein had been
+sitting on. He looked into Daniel's face quizzically. "Is it true,
+Daniel, that you are going to get married again? That you are going to
+marry the Doederlein girl?"
+
+"Yes, Father, it is true," replied Daniel. He got a fresh glass, filled
+it, and pushed it over to the old man. "Drink, Father!" he said.
+
+The old man sipped the wine with an air of adoration. "It must be nine
+or ten years since I have had any wine," he said more or less to
+himself.
+
+"You have not had a happy life," replied Daniel.
+
+"I will not complain, Daniel. I bear it because I have to. And who
+knows? Perhaps there is still a measure of joy in store for me. Perhaps;
+who knows?"
+
+The two men sat in silence and drank. It was so still that you could
+hear the fluttering of the light in the lamp.
+
+"Where can Philippina be?" asked Daniel.
+
+"Yes, Philippina. I had forgot to tell you," began old Jordan
+sorrowfully. "She came to me this afternoon, and told me she was going
+over to Frau Hadebusch's with Agnes and was going to stay there until
+after the wedding. But she spoke in such a confused way that I couldn't
+make out just what she planned to do. It sounded in fact as though she
+were thinking of leaving the house for good and all. I wonder whether
+the girl isn't a little off in her head? Day before yesterday I heard an
+awful racket in the kitchen; and when I went down, I saw at least six
+plates lying on the floor all smashed to pieces. And as if this was not
+enough, she threatened to throw the dishwater on me. She was swearing
+like a trooper. Now tell me: how is this? Can she go over to Frau
+Hadebusch's, and take Agnes with her without getting any one's consent?"
+
+Daniel made no reply. The thought of Philippina filled him with
+anguish; he feared some misfortune. He felt that he would have to let
+her have her way.
+
+
+                                  XIX
+
+In the night Daniel became very much excited. He left the house, and,
+despite the darkness and the snow storm, wandered out to the country
+quite unmindful of the cold and snow and the wind.
+
+He listened to the whisperings of his soul; he took council with
+himself. He looked up at the great black vaulted arch of heaven as
+though he were beseeching the powers above to send him the light he felt
+he needed. The morning of the approaching day seemed bleaker, blacker to
+him than the night that was passing. He was lost in anxiety: he went
+over to his graves.
+
+He did not stop to think until well on his way that the gate to the
+cemetery would be closed; but he kept on going. He looked around for a
+place in the wall where he might climb over. Finally he found one,
+climbed up, scratched his hands painfully, leaped down into some
+snow-covered hedges, and then wandered around with his burden of grief
+over the stormy, desolate field of the dead. As he stood before
+Gertrude's grave he was overwhelmed with the feeling of the hour: there
+were voices in the storm; he felt that the horror and the memory of it
+all would hurl him to the ground. But when he stood by the grave of
+Eleanore, he felt his peace return. The clouds suddenly opened on the
+distant horizon, and a moonbeam danced about him.
+
+It was almost morning when he reached home.
+
+A week later he went over to Siegmundshof and got Dorothea.
+
+Sylvia and Dorothea came down through a snow-covered alley to meet him.
+They were walking arm in arm, and Sylvia was laughing at Dorothea's
+easy-flowing conversation. They seemed to be getting along perfectly
+together: there could be no mistaking the picture he saw before him.
+Sylvia told Daniel when she was alone with him that she had taken a
+great liking to Dorothea. She remarked that her cheerfulness was
+irresistible and contagious, and that when she was with children she
+became a child herself.
+
+Yet, despite all this, Sylvia studied Daniel. And when Dorothea was
+present she studied her too: she cast fleeting, searching, unassured
+glances at them--at Daniel and at Dorothea.
+
+Daniel and Dorothea were married on a sunny day in December.
+
+
+
+
+                               DOROTHEA
+
+
+                                   I
+
+For the past fortnight, Philippina and Agnes had been living at Frau
+Hadebusch's. A message came from Daniel telling Philippina that she and
+Agnes should return, or, if she preferred to stay with Frau Hadebusch,
+she should send Agnes home at once.
+
+"There you have it," said Frau Hadebusch, "the master speaks."
+
+"Ah, him--he's been speakin' to me for a long while. Much good it does
+him," said Philippina. "The child stays with me, and I'm not going back.
+That settles it! What, Agnes? Yes?"
+
+Agnes was sitting on the bench by the stove with Henry the idiot,
+reading the greasy pages of a cheap novel. When Philippina spoke to her,
+she looked up in a distracted way and smiled. The twelve-year-old child
+had a perfectly expressionless face; and as she never got out of the
+house for any length of time, her skin was almost yellow.
+
+"It ain't no use to try to buck him," continued Frau Hadebusch, who
+looked as old as the mountains and resembled generally a crippled witch,
+"he c'n demand the kid, and if he does he'll git her. If you ain't
+careful, I'll get mixed up in the mess before long."
+
+"Well, how do you feel about it, Agnes? Do you want to go back to your
+daddy?" said Philippina, turning to the girl, and looking at Frau
+Hadebusch in a knowing way.
+
+Agnes's face clouded up. She hated her father. This was the point to
+which Philippina had brought matters by her incessant whisperings and
+ugly remarks behind Daniel's back. Agnes was convinced that she was a
+burden to her father, and his marriage had merely confirmed what she
+already felt she knew. Deep in her silent soul she carried the picture
+of her prematurely deceased mother, as if it were that of a woman who
+had been murdered, sacrificed. Philippina had told her how her mother
+had committed suicide; it was a fearful tale in her language. It had
+been the topic of conversation between her and her charge on many a
+cold, dark winter evening. Agnes always said that when she was big and
+could talk, she would take vengeance on her father.
+
+When she could talk! That was her most ardent wish. For she was
+silent-born. Her soul pined in a prison that was much harsher and harder
+than that in which her mother's soul had been housed and harassed.
+Gertrude had some bright moments; Agnes never. She was incapable of
+enthusiasm; she could not look up. For her heart, her soul was not
+merely asleep, torpid, lethargic; it was hopelessly dried up, withered.
+Life was not in it.
+
+"I am not going to those Doederleins," she said, crying.
+
+But in the evening Daniel came over. He took Philippina to one side, and
+had a serious talk with her. He explained the reasons for his getting
+married a third time as well as he could without going too deeply into
+the subject. "I needed a wife; I needed a woman to keep house for me; I
+needed a companion. Philippina, I am very grateful to you for what you
+have done, but there must also be a woman in my home who can cheer me
+up, turn my thoughts to higher things. I have a heavy calling; that you
+cannot appreciate. So don't get stubborn, Philippina. Pack up your
+things, and come back home. How can we get along without you?"
+
+For the first time in his life he spoke to her as though she were a
+woman and a human being. Philippina stared at him. Then she burst out
+into a loud, boisterous laugh, and began to show her whole supply of
+scorn. "Jesus, Daniel, how you c'n flatter a person! Who'd a thought it!
+You've always been such a sour dough. Very well. Say: 'Dear Philippina!'
+Say it real slow: 'D-e-a-r Philippina,' and then I'll come."
+
+Daniel looked into the face of the girl, who never did seem young and
+who had aged fearfully in the last few months. "Nonsense!" he cried, and
+turned away.
+
+Philippina stamped the floor with her foot. Henry, the idiot, came out
+into the hall, holding a lamp above his head.
+
+"Does the sanctimonious clerk still live here?" asked Daniel, looking up
+at the crooked old stairway, while a flood of memories came rushing over
+him.
+
+"Thank God, no!" snarled Philippina. "He'd be the last straw. I feel
+sick at the stomach when I see a man."
+
+Daniel again looked into her detestable, ugly, distorted, and wicked
+face. He was accustomed to question everything, eyes and bodies, about
+their existence in terms of tones, or their transformation into tones.
+Here he suddenly felt the toneless; he had the feeling one might have on
+looking at a deep-sea fish: it is lifeless, toneless. He thought of his
+Eva; he longed for his Eva. Just then Agnes came out of the door to look
+for Philippina.
+
+He laid his hand on Agnes's hair, and said good-naturedly, looking at
+Philippina: "Well, then--d-e-a-r Philippina, come back home!"
+
+Agnes jerked herself away from him; he looked at the child amazed; he
+was angry, too. Philippina folded her hands, bowed her head, and
+murmured with much humility: "Very well, Daniel, we'll be back
+to-morrow."
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Philippina arrived at the front door at ten o'clock in the morning. In
+one hand she carried her bundle; by the other she led Agnes, then
+studying her _milieu_ with uneasy eyes.
+
+Dorothea opened the door. She was neatly and tastefully dressed: she
+wore a blue gingham dress and a white apron with a lace border. Around
+her neck was a gold chain, and suspended from the chain a medallion.
+
+"Oh, the children!" she cried cheerfully, "Philippina and Agnes. What do
+you think of that! God bless you, children. You are home at last." She
+wanted to hug Agnes, but the child pulled away from her as timidly as
+she had pulled away from her father yesterday. In either case, she
+pulled away!
+
+Philippina screwed her mouth into a knot on hearing a woman ten years
+her junior call her a child; she looked at Dorothea from head to foot.
+
+Dorothea scarcely noticed her. "Just imagine, Philippin', the cook
+didn't come to-day, so I thought I would try my own hand," said Dorothea
+with glib gravity, "but I don't know, the soup meat is still as hard as
+a rock. Won't you come and see what's the matter?" She took Philippina
+into the kitchen.
+
+"Ah, you've got to have a lid on the pot, and what's more, that ain't a
+regular fire," remarked Philippina superciliously.
+
+Dorothea had already turned to something else. She had found a glass of
+preserved fruit, had opened it, taken a long-handled spoon, dived into
+it, put the spoon to her mouth, and was licking away for dear life.
+"Tastes good," she said, "tastes like lemon. Try it, Philippin'." She
+held the spoon to Philippina's lips so that she could try it. Philippina
+thrust the spoon rudely to one side.
+
+"No, no, you have got to try it. I insist. Taste it!" continued
+Dorothea, and poked the spoon tightly against Philippina's lips. "I
+insist, I insist," she repeated, half beseechingly, half in the tone of
+a command, so that Philippina, who somehow or other could not find her
+veteran power of resistance, and in order to have peace, let the spoon
+be shoved into her mouth.
+
+Just then old Jordan came out into the hall, and with him the
+chimney-sweeper who wished to clean the chimney.
+
+"Herr Inspector, Herr Inspector," cried Dorothea, laughing; and when the
+old man followed her call, she gave him a spoonful, too. The
+chimney-sweep likewise; he had to have his. And last but not least came
+Agnes.
+
+They all laughed; a faint smile even ventured across Agnes's pale face,
+while Daniel, frightened from his room by the hubbub, came out and stood
+in the kitchen door and laughed with the rest.
+
+"Do you see, Daniel, do you see? They all eat out of my hand," said
+Dorothea contentedly. "They all eat out of my hand. That's the way I
+like to have things. To your health, folks!"
+
+
+                                  III
+
+One afternoon Dorothea, with an open letter in her hand, came rushing
+into Daniel's room, where he was working.
+
+"Listen, Daniel, Frau Feistelmann invites me over to a party at her
+house to-morrow. May I go?"
+
+"You are disturbing me, my dear. Can't you see you are upsetting me?"
+asked Daniel reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, I see," breathed Dorothea, and looked helplessly at the stack of
+scores that lay on the top of the table. "I am to take my violin along
+and play a piece or two for the people."
+
+Daniel gazed into space without being able to comprehend her remarks. He
+was composing.
+
+Dorothea lost her patience. She stepped up to the place on the wall
+where the mask of Zingarella had been hanging since his return home.
+"Daniel, I have been wanting for some time to ask you what that thing
+is. Why do you keep it there? What's it for? It annoys me with its
+everlasting grin."
+
+Daniel woke up. "That is what you call a grin?" he asked, shaking his
+head; "Is it possible? That smile from the world beyond appeals to you
+as a grin?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dorothea defiantly, "the thing is grinning. And I don't
+like it; I can't stand that silly face; I don't like it simply because
+you do like it so much. In fact, you seem to like it better than you do
+me."
+
+"No childishness, Dorothea!" said Daniel quietly. "You must get your
+mind on higher things; and you must respect my spirits."
+
+Dorothea became silent. She did not understand him. She looked at him
+with a touch of distrust. She thought the mask was a picture of one of
+his old sweethearts. She made a mouth.
+
+"You said something about playing at the party, Dorothea," continued
+Daniel. "Do you realise that I never heard you play? I will frankly
+confess to you that heretofore I have been afraid to hear you. I could
+tolerate only the excellent; or the promise of excellence. You may show
+both; and yet, what is the cause of my fear? You have not practised in a
+long while; not once since we have been living together. And yet you
+wish to play in public? That is strange, Dorothea. Be so good as to get
+your violin and play a piece for me, won't you?"
+
+Dorothea went into the next room, got her violin case, came out, took
+the violin, and began to rub the bow with rosin. As she was tuning the
+A string, she lifted her eyebrows and said: "Do you really want me to
+play?"
+
+She bit her lips and played an _etude_ by Fiorillo. Having finished it
+but not having drawn a word of comment from Daniel, she again took up
+the violin and played a rather lamentable selection by Wieniawski.
+
+Daniel maintained his silence for a long while. "Pretty good, Dorothea,"
+he said at last. "You have, other things being equal, a very pleasant
+pastime there."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Dorothea with noticeable rapidity, a heavy
+blush colouring her cheeks.
+
+"Is it anything more than that, Dorothea?"
+
+"What do you mean?" she repeated, embarrassed and indignant. "I should
+think that my violin is more than a pastime."
+
+Daniel got up, walked over to her, took the bow gently from her hands,
+seized it by both ends, and broke it in two.
+
+Dorothea screamed, and looked at him in hopeless consternation.
+
+With great earnestness Daniel replied: "If the music I hear is not of
+unique superiority, it sounds in my ears like something that has been
+hashed over a thousand times. My wife must consider herself quite above
+a reasonably melodious dilettantism."
+
+Tears rushed to Dorothea's eyes. Again she was unable to grasp the
+meaning of it all. She even imagined that Daniel was making a conscious
+effort to be cruel to her.
+
+For her violin playing had been a means of pleasing--pleasing herself,
+the world. It had been a means of rising in the world, of compelling
+admiration in others and blinding others. This was the only
+consideration that made her submit to the stern discipline her father
+imposed upon her. She possessed ambition, but she sold herself to praise
+without regard for the praiser. And whatever an agreement of unknown
+origin demanded in the way of feeling, she fancied she could satisfy it
+by keeping her mind on her own wishes, pleasures, and delights while
+playing.
+
+Daniel put his arms around her and kissed her. She broke away from him
+in petulance, and went over to the window. "You might have told me that
+I do not play well enough for you," she exclaimed angrily and sobbed;
+"there was no need for you to break my bow. I never play. It never
+occurred to me to bother you by playing." She wept like a spoiled child.
+
+It cost Daniel a good deal of persuasion to pacify her. Finally he saw
+that there was no use to talk to her; he sighed and said nothing more.
+After a while he took her pocket handkerchief, and dried the tears from
+her eyes, laughing as he did so. "What was really in my mind was that
+party at Frau Feistelmann's. I did not want you to go. For I do not put
+much faith in that kind of entertainment. They do not enrich you, though
+they do incite all kinds of desires. But because I have treated you
+harshly, you may go. Possibly it will make you forget your troubles, you
+little fool."
+
+"Oh, I thank you for your offer; but I don't want to go," replied
+Dorothea snappishly, and left the room.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+Yet Dorothea said the next day at the dinner table that she was going to
+accept the invitation. It would be much easier just to go and have it
+over with, she remarked, than to stay away and explain her absence. She
+said this in a way that would lead you to believe that it had cost her
+much effort to come to her decision.
+
+"Certainly, go!" said Daniel. "I have already advised you to do it
+myself."
+
+She had had a dark blue velvet dress made, and she wanted to wear it for
+the first time on this occasion.
+
+Toward five o'clock Daniel went to his bedroom. He saw Dorothea standing
+before the mirror in her new dress. It was a tall, narrow mirror on a
+console. Dorothea had received it from her father as a wedding present.
+
+"What is the matter with her?" thought Daniel, on noticing her complete
+lack of excitement. She was as if lost in the reflection of herself in
+the mirror. There was something rigid, drawn, transported about her
+eyes. She did not see that Daniel was standing in the room. When she
+raised her arm and turned her head, it was to enjoy these gestures in
+the mirror.
+
+"Dorothea!" said Daniel gently.
+
+She started, looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled a heady smile.
+
+Daniel was anxious, apprehensive.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+"I am related to Daniel, and we must address each other by the familiar
+_Du_," said Philippina to Dorothea. Daniel's wife agreed.
+
+Every morning when Dorothea came into the kitchen Philippina would say:
+"Well, what did you dream?"
+
+"I dreamt I was at the station and it was wartime, and some gipsies came
+along and carried me off," said Dorothea on one occasion.
+
+"Station means an unexpected visit; war means discord with various
+personalities; and gipsies mean that you are going to have to do with
+some flippant people." All this Philippina rattled off in the High
+German of her secret code.
+
+Philippina was also an adept in geomancy. Dorothea would often sit by
+her side, and ask her whether this fellow or that fellow were in love
+with her, whether this girl loved that fellow and the other girl
+another, and so on through the whole table of local infatuations.
+Philippina would make a number of dots on a sheet of paper, fill in the
+numbers, hold the list up to the light, and divulge the answer of the
+oracle.
+
+In a very short while the two were one heart, one soul. Dorothea could
+always count on Philippina's laughter of approval when she fell into one
+of her moods of excessive friskiness. And if Agnes failed to show the
+proper amount of interest, Philippina would poke her in the ribs and
+exclaim: "You little rascallion, has the cat got your tongue?"
+
+Agnes would then sneak off in mournful silence to her school books, and
+sit for hours over the simplest kind of a problem in the whole
+arithmetic. Dorothea would occasionally bring her a piece of taffy. She
+would wrap it up, put it in her pocket, and give it the next day to a
+schoolmate from whose note book she had copied her sums in subtraction.
+
+Herr Seelenfromm stopped Philippina on the street, and said to her:
+"Well, how are you getting along? How is the young wife making out?"
+
+"Oi, oi, we're living on the fat of the land, I say," Philippina
+replied, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. "Chicken every day, cake
+too, wine always on hand, and one guest merely opens the door on
+another."
+
+"Nothafft must have made a pile of money," remarked Herr Seelenfromm in
+amazement.
+
+"Yes, he must. Nobody works at our house. The wife's pocket-book at
+least is always crammed."
+
+The sky was blue, the sun was bright, spring had come.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+Andreas Doederlein always took Sunday dinner with his children. He loved
+a juicy leg of pork, a salad garnished with greens and eggs, and a tart
+drowned in sugar. Old Jordan, who was privileged to sit at the table,
+let the individual morsels dissolve on his tongue. He had never had such
+delicacies placed before him in his life. At times he would cast a
+glance of utter astonishment at Daniel.
+
+He very rarely took part in the conversation. As soon as the dishes had
+been removed, he would get up and quietly go to his room.
+
+"A very remarkable old man," said Andreas Doederlein one Sunday, as he
+sat tipped back on his chair, picking his teeth.
+
+"Ah, we have our troubles with him," said Dorothea abusively, "he is an
+incorrigible pot-watcher. He comes to the kitchen ten times a day,
+sticks his nose up in the air, asks what we are going to have for
+dinner, and then goes out and stands in the hall, with the result that
+our guests come and stumble over him."
+
+Andreas Doederlein emitted a growl of lament.
+
+"How are your finances, my son?" he asked, turning to Daniel with an air
+of marked affability. "Would you not like to bolster up your income by
+taking a position in the conservatory? You would have time for it; your
+work as organist at St. AEgydius does not take up all your time. Herold
+is going to be retired, you know. He is seventy-five and no longer able
+to meet the requirements. All that we will have to do will be for me to
+give you my backing. Three thousand marks a year, allocation to your
+widow after ten years of service, extra fees--I should think you would
+regard that as a most enticing offer. Or don't you?"
+
+Dorothea ran up to her father in a spirit of unrestrained jubilation,
+threw her arms around his bulky body, and kissed him on his flabby
+cheek.
+
+"No thanks to me, my child," said the Olympian; "to stand by you two is
+of course my duty."
+
+"What sort of a swollen stranger is that, anyhow?" thought Daniel to
+himself. "What does he want of me? Why does he come into my house and
+sit down at my table? Why is he so familiar with me? Why does he blow
+his breath on me?" Daniel was silent.
+
+"I understand, my dear son, that you would abandon your leisure hours
+only with the greatest reluctance," continued Doederlein with concealed
+sarcasm, "but after all, who can live precisely as he would like to
+live? Who can follow his own inclinations entirely? The everyday feature
+of human existence is powerful. Icarus must fall to the earth. With your
+wife anticipating a happy event, you cannot, of course, hesitate in the
+face of such an offer."
+
+Daniel cast an angry look at Dorothea.
+
+"I will think it over," said Daniel, got up, and left the room.
+
+"It is unpleasant for him," complained Dorothea; "he values his leisure
+above everything else in the world. But I will do all in my power to
+bring him around, Father. And you keep at him. He will resist and
+object. I know him."
+
+Thus it was brought to light that Daniel was no longer a mysterious and
+unfathomable individual in her estimation. She had found him out; she
+had divined him, in her way to be sure. He was much simpler than she had
+imagined, and at times she was really a bit angry at him for not
+arousing her curiosity more than he did. What she had fancied as highly
+interesting, thrilling, intoxicating, had proved to be quite simple and
+ordinary. The charm was gone, never to return. Her sole diversion lay in
+her attempts to get complete control over him through the skilful
+manipulation of her senses and her priceless youth.
+
+Daniel felt that she was disappointed; he had been afraid of this all
+along. His anxiety increased with time, for it was evident that
+everything he said or did disappointed her. His anxiety caused him to be
+indulgent, where he had formerly been unbending. The difference in their
+ages made him patient and tractable. He feared he could not show her the
+love that she in her freshness and natural, unconsumed robustness
+desired. On this account he denied himself many things which he formerly
+could not have got along without, and put up with, many things that
+would have been intolerable to him as a younger man.
+
+It needed only a single hour at night to make him promise to accept the
+position old Herold was leaving. He, as parsimonious with words as in
+the expression of feelings, succumbed to her cat-like cuddling. He
+capitulated in the face of her unpitying ridicule, and surrendered all
+to the prurient agility of a young body. Dark powers there are that set
+up dependencies between man and woman. When they rule, things do not
+work out in accordance with set calculation or inborn character. It
+takes but a single hour of the night to bend the most sacred truth of
+life into a lie.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+In the course of time Daniel had to provide for an increase in his
+annual salary. Dorothea had made a great many innovations that cost
+money. She had bought a dressing table, a number of cabinets, and a
+bath tub. The lamps, dishes, bed covers, and curtains she found
+old-fashioned, and simply went out and bought new ones.
+
+Nothing gave her greater pleasure than to go shopping. Then the bills
+came in, and Daniel shook his head. He begged her to be more saving, but
+she would fall on his neck, and beseech and beseech until he acceded to
+every single one of her wishes.
+
+She rarely came home with empty hands. It may have been only little
+things that she bought, a manikin of porcelain with a tile hat and an
+umbrella, or a pagoda with a wag-head, or even merely a mouse-trap--but
+they all cost money.
+
+Philippina would be called in; Philippina was to admire the purchases.
+And she would say with apparent delight: "Now ain't that sweet!" Or,
+"Now that's fine; we needed a mouse-trap so bad! There was a mouse on
+the clothes rack just yesterday, cross my heart, Daniel."
+
+As to hats, dresses, stockings, shoes, laces, and blouses--when it came
+to these Dorothea was a stranger to such concepts as measure or modesty.
+She wanted to compete with the wives of the rich people whose parties
+she attended, and next to whom she sat in the pastry shop or at the
+theatre.
+
+She was given free tickets to the theatre and the concerts. But once
+when she had told Daniel that the director had sent her a ticket, he
+learned from Philippina that she had bought the ticket and paid for it
+with her own money. He did not call her to account, but he could not
+get the thought out of his mind that she had believed she had deceived
+him.
+
+He did not accompany her on her pleasure jaunts; he wanted to work and
+not double even the smallest expenditure by going with her. Dorothea had
+become accustomed to this. She looked upon his apathy toward the theatre
+and his dislike of social distractions as a caprice, a crotchet on his
+part. She never considered what he had gone through in the way of
+theatricals and concerts; she had completely forgotten what he had
+confessed to her in a decisive hour.
+
+When she came home late in the evening with burning cheeks and glowing
+eyes, Daniel did not have the courage to give her the advice he felt she
+so sorely needed. "Why snatch her from her heaven?" he thought. "She
+will become demure and quiet in time; her wild lust for pleasure will
+fade and disappear."
+
+He was afraid of her pouting mien, her tears, her perplexed looks, her
+defiant running about. But he lacked the words to express himself. He
+knew how ineffectual warning and reproach might be and were. Empty
+talking back and forth he could not stand, while if he made a really
+human remark it found no response. She did not appreciate what he said;
+she misunderstood, misinterpreted everything. She laughed, shrugged her
+shoulders, pouted, called him an old grouch, or cooed like a dove. She
+did not look at him with real eyes; there was no flow of soul in what
+she did.
+
+Gloom filled his heart.
+
+The waste in the household affairs became worse and worse from week to
+week. Daniel would have felt like a corner grocer if he had never let
+her know how much he had saved, or had given her less than she asked
+for. And so his money was soon all gone. Dorothea troubled herself very
+little about the economic side of their married life. She told
+Philippina what to do, and fell into a rage if her orders were not
+promptly obeyed.
+
+"It's too dull for her here. My God, such a young woman!" said
+Philippina to Daniel with simulated regret. "She wants to have a good
+time; she wants to enjoy her life. And you can't blame her."
+
+Philippina was the mistress of the house. She went to the market, paid
+the bills, superintended the cook and the washwoman, and rejoiced with
+exceeding great and fiendish joy when she saw how rapidly everything was
+going downhill, downhill irresistibly and as sure as your life.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+As the time approached for Dorothea's confinement she very rarely left
+the house. She would lie in bed until about eleven o'clock, when she
+would get up, dress, comb her hair, go through her wardrobe, and write
+letters.
+
+She carried on a most elaborate correspondence; those who received her
+letters praised her amusing style.
+
+After luncheon she would go back to bed; and late in the afternoon her
+visitors came in, not merely women but all sorts of young men. It often
+happened that Daniel did not even know the names of the people. He would
+withdraw to the room Eleanore had formerly occupied, and from which he
+could hear laughter and loud talk resounding through the hall.
+
+By evening Dorothea was tired. She would sit in the rocking chair and
+read the newspaper, or the _Wiener Mode_, generally not in the best of
+humour.
+
+Daniel confidently believed that all this would change for the better as
+soon as the child had been born; he believed that the feeling of a
+mother and the duties of a mother would have a broadening and subduing
+effect on her.
+
+Late in the autumn Dorothea gave birth to a boy, who was baptised
+Gottfried. She could not do enough by way of showing her affection for
+the child; her transports were expressed in the most childish terms; her
+display of tenderness was almost excessive.
+
+For six days she nursed the child herself. Then the novelty wore off,
+friends told her it would ruin her shape to keep it up, and she quit.
+"It makes you stout," she said to Philippina, "and cow's milk is just as
+good, if not better."
+
+Philippina opened her mouth and eyes as wide as she could when she saw
+Dorothea standing before the mirror, stripped to the hips, studying the
+symmetry of her body with a seriousness that no one had ever noticed in
+her before.
+
+Dorothea became coldly indifferent toward her child; it seemed that she
+had entirely forgotten that she was a mother. The baby slept in the room
+with Philippina and Agnes, both of whom cared for it. Its mother was
+otherwise engaged.
+
+As if to make up for lost time and to indemnify herself for the
+suffering and general inconvenience to which she had been put in the
+last few months, Dorothea rushed with mad greediness into new pleasures
+and strange diversions. Soon however she found herself embarrassed from
+a lack of funds. Daniel told her, kindly but firmly, that the salaries
+he was drawing as organist and teacher were just barely enough to keep
+the house going, and that he was curtailing his own personal needs as
+much as possible so that there would be no cause to discontinue or
+diminish the home comforts they had latterly been enjoying. "We are not
+peasants," he said, "and that we are not living from the mercy of chance
+is a flaw in me rather than in my favour."
+
+"You old pinch-penny!" said Dorothea. Ugly wrinkles appeared on her
+brow. "If you had not made me disgusted with my art, I might have been
+able to make a little money too," she added.
+
+He looked down at the floor in complete silence. She however began
+thinking about ways and means of getting her hands on money. "Uncle
+Carovius might help me," she thought. She took to visiting her father
+more frequently, and every time she came she would stand out in the hall
+for a while hoping to see Herr Carovius. One day he appeared. She wanted
+to speak to him, smile at him, win him over. But one look from that
+face, filled with petrified and ineradicable rage, showed her that any
+attempt to approach the old man and get him in a friendly frame of mind
+would be fruitless.
+
+On the way home she chanced to meet the actor Edmund Hahn. She had not
+seen him since she had been married. The actor seemed tremendously
+pleased to see her. They walked along together, engaged in a zealous
+conversation, talking at first loudly and then gently.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+The day Dorothea got married, Herr Carovius had gone to his lawyer to
+have the will he had drawn up the night before attested to. He had
+bequeathed his entire fortune, including his home and the furniture, to
+an institution to be erected after his death for the benefit of orphans
+of noble birth. Baron Eberhard von Auffenberg had been named as first
+director of the institution and sole executor of his will.
+
+Herr Carovius refused to have anything more to do with music. He had a
+leather cover made for his long, narrow grand piano, and enshrouded in
+this, the instrument resembled a stuffed animal. He looked back on his
+passion for music as one of the aberrations of his youth, though he
+realised that he was chastising his spirit till it hurt when he took
+this attitude.
+
+The method he employed to keep from having nothing to do was
+characteristic of the man: he went through all the books of his library
+looking for typographical errors. He spent hours every day at this work;
+he read the scientific treatises and the volumes of pure literature with
+his attention fixed on individual letters. When, after infinite search,
+he discovered a word that had been misspelled, or a grammatical slip, he
+felt like a fisherman who, after waiting long and patiently, finally
+sees a fish dangling on the hook.
+
+Otherwise he was thoroughly unhappy. The beautiful evenness of his hair
+on the back of his neck had been transformed into a shaggy wilderness.
+He could be seen going along the street in a suit of clothes that was
+peppered with spots, while his Calabrian hat resembled a war tent that
+has gone through a number of major offensives.
+
+He had again taken to frequenting the Paradise Cafe two or three times a
+week, not exactly to surrender himself to mournful memories, but because
+the coffee there cost twenty pfennigs, whereas the more modern cafes
+were charging twenty-five. His dinner consisted of a pot of coffee and a
+few rolls.
+
+It came about that old Jordan likewise began to frequent the Paradise.
+For a long while the two men would go there, sit down at their chosen
+tables, and study each other at a distance. Finally the day came when
+they sat down together; then it became a custom for them to take their
+places at the same table, one back in the corner by the stove, where a
+quiet comradeship developed between them. It was rare that their
+conversation went beyond external platitudes.
+
+Herr Carovius acted as though he were merely enduring old Jordan. But he
+never really became absorbed in his newspaper until the old man had come
+and sat down at the table with him, greeting him with marked respect as
+he did so. Jordan, however, did not conceal his delight when, on
+entering the cafe and casting his eyes around the room, they at last
+fell on Herr Carovius. While he sipped his coffee, he never took them
+off the wicked face of his _vis-a-vis_.
+
+
+                                   X
+
+Philippina became Dorothea's confidential friend.
+
+At first it was nothing more than Dorothea's desire to gossip that drew
+her to Philippina. Later she fell into the habit of telling her
+everything she knew. She felt no need of keeping any secret from
+Philippina, the inexplicable. The calm attentiveness with which
+Philippina listened to her flattered her, and left her without a vestige
+of suspicion. She felt that Philippina was too stupid and uncultivated
+to view her activities in perspective or pass judgment on them.
+
+She liked to conjure up seductive pictures before the old maid's
+imagination; for she loved to hear Philippina abuse the male of the
+species. If some bold plan were maturing in her mind, she would tell
+Philippina about it just as if it had already been executed. In this way
+she tested the possibility of really carrying out her designs, and
+procured for herself a foretaste of what was to follow.
+
+It was chiefly Philippina's utter ugliness that made her trust her. Such
+a homely creature was in her eyes not a woman, hardly a human being of
+either sex; and with her she felt she could talk just as much as she
+pleased, and say anything that came into her head. And since Philippina
+never spoke of Daniel in any but a derogatory and spiteful tone,
+Dorothea felt perfectly safe on that ground.
+
+She would come into the kitchen, and sit down on a bench and talk: about
+a silk dress she had seen for sale; about the fine compliments Court
+Councillor Finkeldey had paid her; about the love affairs of these and
+the divorce proceedings of those; about Frau Feistelmann's pearls,
+remarking that she would give ten years of her life if she also had such
+pearls. In fact, the word she used most frequently was "also." She
+trembled and shook from head to foot with desires and wishes, low-minded
+unrest and lusts that flourish in the dark.
+
+Often she would tell stories of her life in Munich. She told how she
+once spent a night with an artist in his studio, just for fun; and how
+on another occasion she had gone with an officer to the barracks at
+night simply on a wager. She told of all the fine-looking men who ran
+after her, and how she dropped them whenever she felt like it. She said
+she would let them kiss her sometimes, but that was all; or she would
+walk arm in arm with them through the forest, but that was all. She
+commented on the fact that in Munich you had to keep an eye out for the
+police and observe their hours, otherwise there might be trouble. For
+example, a swarthy Italian kept following her once--he was a regular
+Conte--and she couldn't make the man go on about his business, and you
+know he rushed into her room and held a revolver before her face, and
+she screamed, of course she did, until the whole house was awake, and
+there was an awful excitement.
+
+When Daniel endeavoured to put a stop to her wastefulness, she went to
+Philippina and complained. Philippina encouraged her. "Don't you let him
+get away with anything," said she, "let him feel that a woman with your
+beauty didn't have to marry a skinflint."
+
+When she began to go with Edmund Hahn, she told Philippina all about it.
+"You ought to see him, Philippina," she whispered in a mysterious way.
+"He is a regular Don Juan; he can turn the head of any woman." She said
+he had been madly in love with her for two years, and now he was going
+to gamble for her; but in a very aristocratic and exclusive club, to
+which none but the nicest people belonged. "If I win, Philippina, I am
+going to make you a lovely present," she said.
+
+From then on her conversation became rather tangled and incoherent. She
+was out a great deal, and when she returned she was always in a rather
+uncertain condition. She had Philippina put up her hair, and every word
+she spoke during the operation was a lie. One time she confessed that
+she had not been in the theatre, as Daniel had supposed, but at the
+house of a certain Frau Baeumler, a good friend of Edmund Hahn. They had
+been gambling: she had won sixty marks. She looked at the door as if in
+fear, took out her purse, and showed Philippina three gold pieces.
+
+Philippina had to swear that she would not give Dorothea away. A few
+days later Dorothea got into another party and got out of it
+successfully, and Philippina had to renew her oath. The old maid could
+take an oath with an ease and glibness such as she might have displayed
+in saying good morning. In the bottom of her heart she never failed to
+grant herself absolution for the perjury she was committing. For the
+time being she wished to collect, take notes, follow the game wherever
+it went. Moreover, it tickled and satisfied her senses to think about
+relations and situations which she knew full well she could never
+herself experience.
+
+Dorothea became more and more ensnared. Her eyes looked like
+will-o'-the-wisps, her laugh was jerky and convulsive. She never had
+time, either for her husband or her child. She would receive letters
+occasionally that she would read with greedy haste and then tear into
+shreds. Philippina came into her room once quite suddenly; Dorothea,
+terrified, hid a photograph she had been holding in her hand. When
+Philippina became indignant at the secrecy of her action, she said with
+an air of inoffensive superiority: "You would not understand it,
+Philippina. That is something I cannot discuss with any one."
+
+But Philippina's vexation worried her: she showed her the photograph.
+It was the picture of a young man with a cold, crusty face. Dorothea
+said it was an American whom she had met at Frau Baeumler's. He was said
+to be very rich and alone.
+
+Every evening Philippina wanted to know something about the American.
+"Tell me about the American," she would say.
+
+One evening, quite late, Dorothea came into Philippina's room with
+nothing on but her night-gown. Agnes and little Gottfried were asleep.
+"The American has a box at the theatre to-morrow evening. If you call
+for me you can see him," she whispered.
+
+"I am bursting with curiosity," replied Philippina.
+
+For a while Dorothea sat in perfect silence, and then exclaimed: "If I
+only had money, Philippin', if I only had money!"
+
+"I thought the American had piles of it," replied Philippina.
+
+"Of course he has money, lots of it," said Dorothea, and her eyes
+flashed, "but--"
+
+"But? What do you mean?"
+
+"Do you think men do things without being compensated?"
+
+"Oh, that's it," said Philippina reflectively, "that's it." She crouched
+on a hassock at Dorothea's feet. "How pretty you are, how sweet," she
+said in her bass voice: "God, what pretty little feet you have! And what
+smooth white skin! Marble's got nothing on you." And with the carnal
+concupiscence of a faun in woman's form she took Dorothea's leg in her
+hand and stroked the skin as far as the knee.
+
+Dorothea shuddered. As she looked down at the cowering Philippina, she
+noticed that there was a button missing on her blouse. Through the
+opening, just between her breasts, she saw something brown. "What is
+that on your body there?" asked Dorothea.
+
+Philippina blushed. "Nothing for you," she replied in a rough tone, and
+held her hand over the opening in her blouse.
+
+"Tell me, Philippina, tell me," begged Dorothea, who could not stand the
+thought of any one keeping a secret from her: "Possibly it is your
+dowry. Possibly you have made a savings bank out of your bosom?" She
+laughed lustily.
+
+Philippina got up: "Yes, it is my money," she confessed with reluctance,
+and looked at Dorothea hostilely.
+
+"It must be a whole lot. Look out, or some one will steal it from you.
+You will have to sleep on your stomach."
+
+Daniel came down from his study, and heard Dorothea laughing. Grief was
+gnawing at his heart; he passed hastily by the door.
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+One evening, as Philippina came into the hall from the street, she saw a
+man coming up to her in the dark; he called her by name. She thought she
+recognised his voice, and on looking at him more closely saw that it was
+her father.
+
+She had not spoken to him for ten years. She had seen him from time to
+time at a distance, but she had always made it a point to be going in
+another direction as soon as she saw him; she avoided him, absolutely.
+
+"What's the news?" she asked in a friendly tone.
+
+Jason Philip cleared his throat, and tried to get out of the light in
+the hall and back into the shadow: he wished to conceal his shabby
+clothes from his daughter.
+
+"Now, listen," he began with affected naturalness, "you might inquire
+about your parents once in a while. The few steps over to our house
+wouldn't make you break your legs. Honour thy father and thy mother, you
+know. Your mother deserves any kindness you can show her. As for me,
+well, I have dressed you down at times, but only when you needed it. You
+were a mischievous monkey, and you know it."
+
+He laughed; but there was the fire of fear in his eyes. Philippina was
+the embodiment of silence.
+
+"As I was saying," Jason Philip continued hastily, as if to prevent any
+inimical memories of his daughter from coming to his mind, "you might
+pay a little attention to your parents once in a while: Can't you lend
+me ten marks? I have got to meet a bill to-morrow morning, and I haven't
+got a pfennig. The boys, you know, I mean your brothers, are conducting
+themselves splendidly. They give me something the first of each month,
+and they do it regularly. But I don't like to go to them about this
+piddling business to-morrow. I thought that as you were right here in
+the neighbourhood, I could come over and see you about it."
+
+Jason Philip was lying. His sons gave him no help whatsoever. Willibald
+was living in Breslau, where he had a poorly paid position as a
+bookkeeper and was just barely making ends meet. Markus was good for
+nothing, and head over heels in debt.
+
+Philippina thought the matter over for a moment, and then told her
+father to wait. She went upstairs. Jason Philip waited at the door,
+whistling softly. Many years had passed by since he first attacked the
+civil powers, urged on by a rebellion of noble thoughts in his soul.
+Many years had passed by since he had made his peace with these same
+civil powers. Nevertheless, he continued to whistle the "Marseillaise."
+
+Philippina came waddling down the steps, dragged herself over to the
+door, and gave her father a five-mark piece. "There," she bellowed, "I
+haven't any more myself."
+
+But Jason Philip was satisfied with half the amount he had asked for. He
+was now equipped for an onslaught on the nearest cafe with its corned
+beef, sausages, and new beer.
+
+From this time on he came around to the house on AEgydius Place quite
+frequently. He would stand in the hall, look around for Philippina, and
+if he found her, beg her for money. The amounts Philippina gave him
+became smaller and smaller. Finally she took to giving him ten pfennigs
+when he came.
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+It frequently happened that Daniel would not answer when any one asked
+him a question. His ear lost the words, his eye the pictures, signs,
+faces, gestures. He was in his own way; he was a torment to himself.
+
+Something drew him there and then here. He would leave the house, and
+then be taken with a longing to return. He noticed that people were
+laughing at him; laughing at him behind his back. He read mockery in the
+eyes of his pupils; the maids in the house tittered when he passed by.
+
+What did they know? What were they concealing? Perhaps his soul could
+have told what they knew and what they concealed; but he was unwilling
+to drag it all out into the realm of known, nameable things.
+
+As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him,
+leave him in peace, his despair increased. "What have you done, Daniel!"
+a voice within him cried, "what have you done!" The shades of the
+sisters, arm in arm, arose before him.
+
+The feeling of having made a mistake, a mistake that could never be
+rectified, burned like fire within him. His work, so nearly completed,
+had suddenly died away.
+
+For the sake of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of
+mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his
+presentient soul into peace.
+
+The thing that troubled him worst of all was the way Philippina looked
+at him.
+
+Since the birth of the child he had been living in Eleanore's room. Old
+Jordan was consideration itself: he went around in his stocking feet so
+as not to disturb him.
+
+One night Daniel took the candle, and went downstairs to Dorothea's
+room. She woke up, screamed, looked at him bewildered, recognised him,
+became indignant, and then laughed mockingly and sensually.
+
+He sat down on the side of her bed, and took her right hand between his
+two. But he had a disagreeable sensation on feeling her hand in his, and
+looked at her fingers. They were not finely formed: they were thicker at
+the ends than in the middle; they could not remain quiet; they twitched
+constantly.
+
+"This can't keep up, Dorothea," he said in a kindly tone, "you are
+ruining your own life and mine too. Why do you have all these people
+around you? Is the pleasure you derive from associating with them so
+great that it benumbs your conscience? I have no idea what you are
+doing. Tell me about it. The household affairs are in a wretched
+condition; everything is in disorder. And that cigar smoke out in the
+living room! I opened a window. And your child! It has no mother. Look
+at its little face, and see how pale and sickly it looks!"
+
+"Well, I can't help it; Philippina puts poppy in the milk so that it
+will sleep longer," Dorothea answered, after the fashion of guilty
+women: of the various reproaches Daniel had cast at her, she seized upon
+the one of which she felt the least guilty. But after this, Daniel had
+no more to say.
+
+"I am so tired and sleepy," said Dorothea, and again blinked at him out
+of one corner of her eye with that mocking, sensual look. As he showed
+no inclination to leave, she yawned, and continued in an angry tone:
+"Why do you wake a person up in the middle of the night, if all you want
+is to scold them? Get out of here, you loathsome thing!"
+
+She turned her back on him, and rested her head on her hand. Opposite
+her bed was a mirror in a gold frame. She saw herself in it; she was
+pleased with herself lying there in that offended mood, and she smiled.
+
+Daniel, who had been so cruel to noble women now become shades, saw how
+she smiled at herself, infatuated with herself: he took pity on such
+child-like vanity.
+
+"There is a Chinese fairy tale about a Princess," he said, and bent down
+over Dorothea, "who received from her mother as a wedding present a set
+of jewel boxes. There was a costly present in each box, but the last,
+smallest, innermost one was locked, and the Princess had to promise
+that she would never open it. She kept her promise for a while, but
+curiosity at last got the better of her, she forgot her vow, and opened
+the last little box by force. There was a mirror in it; and when she
+looked into it and saw how beautiful she was, she began to abuse her
+husband. She tortured him so that he killed her one day."
+
+Dorothea looked at him terrified. Then she laughed and said: "What a
+stupid story! Such a tale of horror!" She laid her cheek on the pillow,
+and again looked in the mirror.
+
+The following morning Daniel received an anonymous letter. It read as
+follows: "You will be guarding your own honour if you keep a sharp
+lookout on your wife. A Well-wisher."
+
+A cold fever came over him. For a few days he dragged his body from room
+to room as if poisoned. He avoided every one in the house. One night he
+again felt a desire to go down to Dorothea. When he reached the door to
+her room, he found it bolted. He knocked, but received no answer. He
+knocked again, this time more vigorously. He heard her turn her head on
+the pillow. "Let me sleep!" cried Dorothea angrily.
+
+"Open the door, Dorothea," he begged.
+
+"No, I will not; I want to sleep." These were the words that reached his
+ear from behind the bolted door.
+
+He pressed three or four times on the latch, implored her three or four
+times to let him come in, but received no answer. He did not wish to
+make any more noise, looked straight ahead as if into a dark hole, and
+then turned and went back to his room in the attic.
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+Friedrich Benda was again in Europe. All the newspapers contained
+accounts of the discoveries made on the expedition. Last autumn Arab
+dealers in ivory had found him in the land of Niam-Niam, taken an
+interest in him, and finally brought him, then seemingly in the throes
+of imminent death, back to the Nile. In England he was celebrated as a
+hero and a bold pioneer; the Royal Geographical Society had made him an
+honorary member; and the incidents of his journey were the talk of the
+day.
+
+Toward the close of April he came to Nuremberg to visit his mother. The
+blind old woman had been carefully and cautiously prepared for his
+coming. She nevertheless came very near dying with joy; her life was in
+grave danger for a while.
+
+Benda had not wished to stay more than a week: his business and his
+work called him back to London; he had lectures to deliver, and he had
+to see a book through the press, a book in which he had given a
+description of the years spent in Africa.
+
+At the urgent request of his mother he had decided to stay longer.
+Moreover, during the first days of his visit to Nuremberg, he suffered
+from a severe attack of a fever he had brought with him from the
+tropics, and this forced him to remain in bed. The news of his presence
+in the city finally became generally known, and he was annoyed by the
+curiosity of many people who had formerly never concerned themselves
+about him in the slightest.
+
+He was eager to see Daniel; every hour of delay in meeting his old
+friend was an hour of reproach. But his mother insisted that he stay
+with her; he had to sit near her and tell of his experiences in Africa.
+
+When he heard of the outer events in Daniel's life he was filled with
+terror. The fact that made the profoundest impression on him was
+Daniel's marriage to Dorothea Doederlein. People told him a great many
+things about their life and how they were getting along, and with each
+passing day he felt that it would be more difficult to go to Daniel. One
+evening he got his courage together and decided to go. He got as far as
+AEgydius Place, when he was seized with such a feeling of sadness and
+discomfort at the thought of all the changes that time and fate had made
+that he turned back. He felt as if he might be deceived by a picture
+which would perhaps still show the features of Daniel as he looked in
+former years, but that he would be so changed inwardly that words would
+be unable to bring the two together.
+
+He longed to talk with some one who loved Daniel and who had followed
+his career with pure motives. He had to think for a long while: where
+was there such a person? He thought of old Herold and went to him. He
+directed the conversation without digression to a point that was of
+prime importance to him. And in order to put the old man in as
+confidential a frame of mind as possible, he reminded him of a night
+when the three of them, Daniel, Herold, and Benda, had sat in the Mohren
+Cellar drinking wine and discussing things in general, important and
+unimportant, that have a direct bearing on life.
+
+The old man nodded; he recalled the evening. He spoke of Daniel's genius
+with a modesty and a deference that made Benda's heart swell. He raised
+his finger, and said with a fine fire in his eye: "I'll stand good for
+him. I prophesy on the word of the Bible: A star will rise from Jacob."
+
+Then he spoke of Eleanore; he was passionately fond of her. He told how
+she had brought him the quartette, and how she had glowed with
+inspiration and the desire to help. He also had a good deal to say about
+Gertrude, especially with regard to her mental breakdown and her death.
+
+Benda left the old man at once quiet and disquieted. He walked along the
+street for a long while, rapt in thought. When he looked up he saw that
+he was standing before Daniel's house. He went in.
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+Daniel knew that Benda had returned: Philippina had read it in the
+newspaper and told him about it. Dorothea, who had learned of his return
+from her father, had also spoken to him about it. He had also heard
+other people speak of it.
+
+The first time he heard it he was startled. He felt he would have to
+flee to his friend of former days. Then he was seized with the same fear
+that had come over Benda: Is our relation to each other the same? The
+thought of meeting Benda filled him with a sense of shame, to which was
+added a touch of bitterness as day after day passed by and Benda never
+called or wrote. "It is all over," he thought, "he has forgotten me." He
+would have liked to forget too; and he could have done it, for his mind
+was wandering, restless, strayed.
+
+One evening as he crossed the square he noticed that the windows of his
+house were all brilliantly lighted. He went to the kitchen, where he
+found Agnes at the table seeding plums.
+
+"Who is here again?" he asked. One could hear laughter, loud and
+boisterous, in the living room.
+
+Agnes, scarcely looking up, reeled off the names: Councillor Finkeldey,
+Herr von Ginsterberg, Herr Samuelsky, Herr Hahn, a strange man whose
+name she did not know, Frau Feistelmann and her sister.
+
+Daniel remained silent for a while. Then he went up to Agnes, put his
+hand under her chin, lifted her head, and murmured: "And you? And you?"
+
+Agnes frowned, and was afraid to look into his face. Suddenly she said:
+"To-day is the anniversary of mother's death." With that she looked at
+him fixedly.
+
+"So?" said Daniel, sat down on the edge of the table, and laid his head
+in his hand. Some one was playing the piano in the living room. Since
+Daniel had taken the grand piano up to his room, Dorothea had rented a
+small one. The rhythmical movement of dancing couples could be heard
+quite distinctly.
+
+"I'd like to leave this place," said Agnes, as she threw a worm-eaten
+plum in the garbage can. "In Beckschlager Street there is a seamstress
+who wants to teach me to sew."
+
+"Why don't you go?" asked Daniel. "It would be a very sensible thing to
+do. But what will Philippina say about it?"
+
+"Oh, she doesn't object, provided I spend my evenings and Sundays with
+her."
+
+The front door bell rang, and Agnes went out: there was some one to see
+Daniel. He hesitated, started toward the door, shook and stepped back,
+seized with trembling hand the kitchen lamp in order to make certain
+that he was not mistaken, for it was dark, but there could be no
+mistake. It was Benda.
+
+They looked at each other in violent agitation. Benda was the first to
+reach out his hand; then Daniel reached out his. Something seemed to
+snap within him. He became dizzy, his tall, stiff body swung back and
+forth. Then he fell into the arms of his friend, whom he had lived
+without for seventeen years.
+
+Benda was not prepared for such a scene; he was unable to speak. Then
+Daniel tore himself loose from the embrace of his old comrade, pushed
+the dishevelled hair back from his forehead, and said hastily: "Come
+upstairs with me; no one will disturb us up there."
+
+Daniel lighted the lamp in his room, and then looked around to see
+whether old Jordan was at home. Jordan's room was dark. He closed the
+door and took a seat opposite Benda. He was breathing heavily.
+
+What meaning can be attached to the preliminary questions and answers
+that invariably accompany such a meeting after such a long separation?
+"How are you? How long are you going to stay in town? You still have the
+same old habits of life? Tell me about yourself." What do such questions
+mean? They mean virtually nothing. The protagonists thereby simply
+remove the rubbish from the channels which have been choked up in the
+course of years, and try to build new bridges carrying them over abysses
+that must be crossed if the conversation is to be connected and
+coherent.
+
+Benda had grown somewhat stout. His face was brownish yellow, about the
+colour of leather. The deep wrinkles around his forehead and mouth told
+of the hardships he had gone through. His eye was completely changed: it
+had the strong, vivacious, and yet quiet appearance of the eye of a
+hunter or a peasant.
+
+"You may well imagine that I have already told the story of my
+adventures in Africa a hundred times and in the same way," said Benda.
+"It has all been written down, and will shortly appear in book form,
+where you can read it. It was an unbroken chain of toil and trouble.
+Frequently I was as close to death as I am to this wall. I devoured
+enough quinine to fill a freight car, and yet it was always the same old
+story, fever to-day, to-morrow, for six months in the year. I have, I
+fear, ruined my health; I am afraid my old heart will not last much
+longer. The eternal vigilance I was obliged to exercise, the incessant
+fight for so simple a thing as a path, or for more urgent things such as
+food and drink, has told on me. I suffered terribly from the sun; also
+from the rain. I had very few of the comforts of life; I was often
+forced to sleep on the ground. And there was no one to talk to, no sense
+of security."
+
+"And yet," he continued, "I had my reward. When I look back on it all,
+there is not an hour that I would care to have wiped from my memory. I
+accomplished a great deal. I made some important discoveries, brought
+back enough work to keep me busy for years to come, thirty-six boxes of
+plant preparations, and this despite the fact that the entire fruit of
+my first seven years of effort was burned in a tent near Nembos. But
+apart from what I have actually done, there is something so real and
+solemn about such a life. You live with the sky above you and savages
+round about you. These savages are like children. This state of affairs
+is, to be sure, being rapidly changed: Europe is breathing its pest into
+the paradise. The wiles and weaknesses of these savages are in a way
+touching; you feel sorry for them as you feel sorry for a dumb, harassed
+beast. I had taken a boy along with me from the boundless, primeval
+forests north of the Congo. He was a little bit of a fellow, almost a
+dwarf. I liked him; I even loved him. And obedient! I merely had to make
+a sign, and he was ready. Well, we came back to the Italian lakes, where
+I wished to remain for a while for the sake of the climate before
+returning to England. What happened? At the sight of the snow-covered
+mountain peaks he was seized with deathly fear; he became homesick; and
+in a few days he died of pneumonia."
+
+"Why is it that there was such a long period that we never heard from
+you?" asked Daniel, with a timidity and shyness that made Benda's heart
+ache.
+
+"That is a long story," said Benda. "It took me two years to get through
+that fearful forest and out to a lake called Albert-Nyanza. From there I
+wanted to get over to Egypt, but the country was in a state of
+revolution and was occupied by the soldiers of the Mahdi. I was forced
+to take the route to the Northwest, ran into a pathless wilderness, and
+for five years was a captive of a tribe of the Wadai. The Niam-Niam, who
+were at war with the Wadai, liberated me. I could move about with
+relative freedom among them, but I could not go beyond their boundaries,
+for they held me in high esteem as a medicine man and were afraid I
+would bewitch them if I ever got out of their personal control. I had
+lost my guides, and I had no money to hire new ones. The things I
+needed, because of the delicacy of my constitution, as compared with
+theirs, I secured through the chieftain from a band of Arabian
+merchants. This was all very well so far as it went, but the chieftain
+was careful to keep me concealed from the Arabs. I finally succeeded in
+coming into personal touch with a Sheik to whom I could make myself
+understood. It was high time, for I could not have stood it another
+year."
+
+Daniel was silent. It was all so strange; he could hardly adapt himself
+to Benda's voice and manner. Memory failed him. The world of Benda was
+all too foreign, unknown to him. What he himself felt had no weight with
+his friend; it did not even have meaning. With the old sense of dim
+defiance, he coaxed the ghost of disappointment into his soul; and his
+soul was weighed down by the nocturnal darkness like the glass of his
+window.
+
+"Now I am enjoying my home," said Benda thoughtfully, "I am enjoying a
+milder light, a more ordered civilisation. I have come to look upon
+Germany as a definite figure, to love it as a composite picture. Nature,
+really great, grand nature such as formerly seemed beyond the reach of
+my longings, such as constituted my idea, my presentiment of perfection,
+I have experienced in person; I have lived it. It enticed me, taught me,
+and almost destroyed me. All human organisation, on the contrary, has
+developed more and more into an idea. In hours that were as full of the
+feeling of things as the heart is full of blood, I have seen the scales
+of the balance move up and down with the weight of two worlds. The
+loneliness, the night, the heavens at night, the forest, the desert
+have shown me their true faces. The terribleness that at times proceeds
+from them has no equal in any other condition of existence. I understood
+for the first time the law that binds families, peoples, states
+together. I have repudiated all thought of rebellion, and sworn to
+co-operate, to do nothing but co-operate.
+
+"I want to make a confession to you," he continued. "I never had the
+faintest conception of the rhythm of life until I went to Africa. I had
+known how long it takes to grow a tree; I was familiar with the
+metamorphoses through which a plant must pass before it attains to
+perfection and becomes what it is; but it had never occurred to me to
+apply these laws and facts to our own lives; this had never entered my
+mind. I had demanded too much; I had been in too much of a hurry.
+Egoistic impatience had placed false weights and measures in my hands.
+What I have learned during these seventeen years of trial and hardship
+is patience. Everything moves so slowly. Humanity is still a child, and
+yet we demand justice of it, expect right and righteous action from it.
+Justice? Oh, there is still a long, long road to be travelled before we
+reach Justice! The way is as long and arduous as that from the primeval
+forest to the cultivated garden. We must exercise patience--for the
+benefit of the many generations of men that are to come after us."
+
+Daniel got up and began to walk back and forth. After a silence that was
+exceedingly painful to Benda, he said: "Let's go out. Let's go to a
+cafe, or take a long walk on the streets, or go wherever you would like
+to go. Or if I am a burden to you, I will accompany you for a short
+stretch and then remain alone. The point is, I cannot stay here any
+longer; I cannot stand it here."
+
+"A burden to me?" replied Benda reproachfully. That was the tone, the
+look of years gone by. Daniel felt at once that he was personally under
+no obligation to talk. He saw at once that Benda knew a great deal and
+suspected the rest. He felt his heart grow lighter.
+
+They went downstairs.
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+Daniel asked Benda to wait on the stairs, locked the door, and took his
+hat from the hook. In the living room there was a great deal of noise
+punctuated with laughter. Philippina came out of her room, and snarled:
+"The way they're carrying on in there! You'd think they wuz all drunk!"
+
+"What is going on?" asked Daniel timidly, merely to have something to
+say.
+
+"They are playing blindfold," replied Philippina contemptuously, "every
+one of them is an old bird, and they're playing blindfold!"
+
+There was a sound as if a plate had been broken; a piercing scream
+followed, and then silence. But the silence was of momentary duration:
+that vulgar, slimy laughter soon broke out again.
+
+Above the din of screaming voices, Daniel heard Dorothea's. He hastened
+to the door and opened it.
+
+His enraged eye fell on the table covered with pots, empty cups, and
+pastry. The chairs had been pushed to one side; the new gas chandelier
+with its five frosted globes was functioning at full force; there were
+seven or eight persons grouped around Dorothea, laughing and looking at
+something that had fallen on the floor.
+
+Dorothea had pushed the white sash she had been wearing while playing
+blindfold back on her forehead. She was the first to see Daniel; she
+exclaimed: "There is my husband. Now don't get angry, Daniel; it's
+nothing but that idiotic plaster mask."
+
+Councillor Finkeldey, a white-bearded man, nodded at Daniel, or at least
+at the spot where he was standing, with marked enthusiasm. It was his
+way of paying homage to Dorothea: everything she said he accompanied
+with an inspired nod of approval.
+
+Daniel saw that the mask of Zingarella had been broken to pieces.
+
+Without greeting a single person present, without even looking at a
+single one of them, he stepped into the circle, knelt down, and tried to
+put the broken pieces of the mask together. But there were too many
+small shreds. The nose, the chin, parts of the glorious forehead, a
+piece with the mouth arched in sorrow, another piece of the cheek--there
+were too many; they could not be put together.
+
+He hurled the fragments to one side, and straightened up. "Philippina!
+The broom!" His command was given in a loud tone. And when Philippina
+came in with the broom, he added: "Sweep the dirt up on a pile, and then
+throw it in the garbage can."
+
+Philippina swept up, while Daniel, as silent and unsocial on going as he
+had been on coming, left the room.
+
+Frau Feistelmann made an indignant face, Edward Hahn breathed through
+his nose, Herr Samuelsky, a fat man with a red beard, made a
+contemptuous remark, Dorothea, vexed and annoyed, stood and looked on
+while the tears took their unrestrained course.
+
+Benda had been waiting down at the front door. "She has broken my mask,"
+said Daniel with a distorted smile, as he came down to his old friend,
+"the mask you gave me. You remember! Strange that it should have been
+broken to-day of all days, the very day you come to see me after so long
+a separation."
+
+"Possibly it can be glued together again," said Benda, trying to console
+Daniel.
+
+"I am not in favour of glueing things together," replied Daniel. His
+eyes flashed green behind his glasses.
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+When the guests left, Philippina came in and cleaned up the room.
+Dorothea sat on the sofa. Her hands were lying in her lap; she was
+unusually serious.
+
+"Why don't your American ever come to see us?" asked Philippina, without
+apparent motive.
+
+Dorothea was terrified. "Lock the door, Philippina," she whispered, "I
+have something to tell you."
+
+Philippina locked the door, and went over to the sofa. "The American has
+to see me," continued Dorothea, as her eyes roamed about the room in
+timid waywardness. "He says he wants to talk to me about something that
+will be of very great importance to me the rest of my life. He is living
+in a hotel, but I can't go to a hotel. It will not do to have him come
+here, nor do I wish to be seen on the street with him. He has suggested
+a place where we might meet, but I am afraid: I do not know the people.
+Can't you help me out, Philippina? Don't you know some one to whom we
+can go and in whose house we can meet?"
+
+Philippina's eyes shone with their veteran glitter. She thought for a
+second or two, and then replied: "Oh, yes, I'll tell you what you can
+do. Go down to Frau Hadebusch's! She's a good friend of mine, and you
+c'n depend on her. It don't make no difference what takes place in her
+house; it won't bother even the cat. You know Frau Hadebusch! Of course
+you do. What am I talking about! She is a widow, and lives all alone in
+a little house. She won't rent; she says she don't want the trouble. You
+know she's no young woman any more. She is all alone, mind you. No one
+there but her son, and he's cracked. Honest, the boy ain't right."
+
+"Well, you go and talk it over with Frau Hadebusch, Philippina," said
+Dorothea timidly.
+
+"Very well, I'll go see her to-morrow morning," replied Philippina,
+smiled subserviently, and laid her horny hand on Dorothea's tender
+shoulder.
+
+"But listen, Philippina, be very, very careful. Do you hear?" Dorothea's
+eyes became big and threatening. "Swear that you will be as silent as
+the tombs."
+
+"As true as I'm standing here!" said Philippina. Just then she bent over
+to pick up a hair pin from the floor.
+
+The next morning Philippina ran over to Frau Hadebusch's. The whole way
+she kept humming to herself; she was happy; she was contented.
+
+
+
+
+                 THE DEVIL LEAVES THE HOUSE IN FLAMES
+
+
+                                   I
+
+Despite the rain, Daniel and Benda strolled around the city moat until
+midnight.
+
+The very thing that lay heaviest on Daniel's heart, as was obvious from
+the expression on his face, he never mentioned. He told of his work, his
+travels in connection with the old manuscripts, his position as organist
+and in the conservatory, but all in such a general, detached, and
+distraught way, so tired and bewildered, that Benda was filled with an
+embarrassed anguish that made courteous attention difficult if not
+impossible.
+
+In order to get him to talk more freely, Benda remarked that he had not
+heard of the death of Gertrude and Eleanore until his return. He said he
+was terribly pained to hear of it, and, try as he might, he could not
+help but brood over it. But he had no thought of persuading Daniel to
+give him the mournful details. He merely wished to convince himself that
+Daniel had become master of the anguish he had gone through,--master of
+it at least inwardly.
+
+Instead of making a direct and logical reply, Daniel said with a
+twitching of his lips: "Yes, I know, you have been here for quite a
+while already. Inwardly I was surprised at your silence. But it is not
+easy to start up a renewed friendship with such a problematic creature
+as I am."
+
+"You know you are wrong when you say that," responded Benda calmly, "and
+therefore I refuse to explain my long waiting. You never were
+problematic to me, nor are you now. I find you at this moment just as
+true and whole as you always were, despite the fact that you avoid me,
+crouch before me, barricade yourself against me."
+
+Daniel's breast heaved as if in the throes of a convulsion. He said
+falteringly: "First let that old confidence return and grow. I must
+first become accustomed to the thought that there is a man near me who
+feels with me, sympathises with me, understands me. To be sure, you want
+me to talk. But I cannot talk, at least not of those things about which
+you would like to hear. I am afraid: I shudder at the thought; I have
+forgotten how; words mock me, make me feel ashamed. Even when I have
+good dreams, I personally am as happily and blessedly silent in them as
+the beast of the field. I shudder at the thought of reaching down into
+my soul and pulling out old, rusty things and showing them to
+you--mouldy fruit, slag, junk--showing them to you, you who knew me when
+all within me was crystal."
+
+He fixed his eyes on the clouds and then continued: "But there is
+probably another means, Friedrich. Look, friend, look! It was always
+your affair to look, to behold. Look, but see to it that you do not make
+me writhe before you like a worm in the dust! And when you have
+looked--wisdom needs only one spoken word for ten that are unspoken.
+This one word you will surely draw from me."
+
+Benda, deeply moved, remained silent: "Is it the fault of a woman?" he
+asked gently, as they crossed the drawbridge and entered the desolate
+old door leading to the castle.
+
+"The fault of a woman? No! Not really the fault of a woman. It is rather
+the fault of a man--my fault. Many a fate reaches the decisive point in
+happiness, many not until coloured with guilt. And guilt is bitter. The
+fault of a woman!" he repeated, in a voice that threw off a gruesome
+echo in the vaulted arch of the gateway to the castle. "There is to be
+sure a woman there; and when one has anything to do with her, he finds
+himself with nothing left but his eyes for weeping."
+
+They left the gateway. Benda laid one hand on Daniel's shoulder, and
+pointed in silence at the sky with the other. There were no stars to be
+seen; nothing but clouds. Benda however had the stars in mind. Daniel
+understood his gesture. His eyelids closed; around his mouth there was
+an expression of vehement grief.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+Benda was convinced, not merely that one great misfortune had already
+taken place, but that a still greater was in the making.
+
+Whenever he thought of Dorothea, the picture that came to his mind was
+one that filled him with fear. And yet, he thought, she must have some
+remarkable traits, otherwise Daniel would never have chosen her as his
+life companion. He wanted to meet her.
+
+He had Daniel invite him in to tea. He called one evening early in the
+afternoon.
+
+She received him with expressions of ostentatious joy. She said she
+could hardly wait until he came, for there was nothing in the world that
+made such an impression on her as a man who had really run great risks,
+who had placed his very life at stake. She could not become tired of
+asking him questions. At each of his laconic replies she would shake her
+head with astonishment. Then she rested her elbows on her knees, placed
+her head in her hands, bent over and stared at him as though he were
+some kind of prodigy--or monster.
+
+She asked him whether he had been among cannibals, whether he had shot
+any savages, whether he had hunted lions, and whether it was really true
+that every Negro chieftain had hundreds of wives. When she asked this
+question she made an insidious face, and remarked that Europeans would
+do the same thing if the law allowed.
+
+Thereupon she said that she could not recall having seen him, when still
+a child, in her father's house, and she was surprised at this, for he
+had such a striking personality. She devoured him with her eyes; they
+began to burn as they always did when she wanted to make some kind of
+human capture, and blind greed came over her. She unbent; she spoke in
+her very sweetest voice; in her laugh and her smile there was, in fact,
+something irresistible, something like that trait we notice in good,
+confiding, but at times obstinate children.
+
+But she noticed that this man studied her, not as if she were a young
+married woman who were trying to please him and gain his sympathy,
+rather as a curious variety of the human species. There was something in
+his face that made her tremble with irritation, and all of a sudden her
+eyes were filled with hate and distrust.
+
+Benda felt sorry for her. This everlasting attempt to make a seductive
+gesture, this fishing for words that would convey a double meaning, this
+self-betrayal, this excitement about nothing, made him feel sad.
+Dorothea did not seem to him a bad woman. Whatever else she might be
+accused of, it did not seem to him that she was guilty of downright
+immoral practices. He felt that she was merely misguided, poisoned, a
+phantom and a fool.
+
+His mind went back to certain Ethiopian women in the very heart of
+Africa; he thought of their noble walk, the proud restfulness of their
+features, their chaste nudeness, and their inseparability from the earth
+and the air.
+
+He nevertheless understood his friend: the musician could not help but
+succumb to the charms of the phantom; the lonely man sought the least
+lonely of all human beings.
+
+As he was coming to this conclusion, Daniel entered the room. He greeted
+Benda, and said to Dorothea: "There is a girl outside who says she has
+some ostrich feathers for you. Did you order any feathers?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Dorothea hastily, "it is a present from my friend,
+Emmy Buettinger."
+
+"Who's she?"
+
+"You don't know her? Why, she is the sister of Frau Feistelmann. You
+must help me," she said, turning to Benda, "for you must know all about
+this kind of things. There where you have been ostriches must be as
+thick as chickens here at home." Laughing, she went out, and returned in
+due time with a big box, from which, cautiously and with evident
+delight, she took two big feathers, one white, one black. Holding them
+by the stem, she laid them across her hair, stepped up to the mirror,
+and looked at herself with an intoxicated mien.
+
+In this mien there was something so extraordinary, indeed uncanny, that
+Benda could not help but cast a horrified glance at Daniel.
+
+"This is the first time I ever knew what a mirror was," he said to
+himself.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+That evening Daniel visited Benda in his home. Benda showed him some
+armour and implements he had brought back with him from Africa. In
+explaining some of the more unusual objects, he described at length the
+customs of the African blacks.
+
+Then he was seized with a headache, sat down in his easy chair, and was
+silent for a long while. He suddenly looked like an old man. The ravages
+his health had suffered while in the tropics became visible.
+
+"Did you ever see Dorothea's mother?" he asked, by way of breaking the
+long silence.
+
+Daniel shook his head: "It is said that she is vegetating, a mere shadow
+of her former self, in some kind of an institution in Erlangen," he
+replied.
+
+"I have been told that neither Andreas Doederlein nor his daughter has
+ever, in all these years, taken the slightest interest in the
+unfortunate woman," continued Benda. "Well, as to Andreas Doederlein, I
+have always known what to expect of him."
+
+Daniel looked up. "You hinted once that Doederlein was guilty of
+reprehensible conduct with regard to his wife. Do you recall? Is that in
+any way connected with Dorothea and her life? Do you care to discuss the
+matter?"
+
+"I have no objection whatever to throwing such light on the incident as
+I have," replied Benda. "It does have to do with Dorothea, and it
+explains, perhaps, some things about her. That is, it is possible that
+her character is in part due to the kind of father she grew up under and
+the kind of mother she lost when a mere child. It is strange the way
+these things work out: I am myself, in a way, interwoven with your own
+fate."
+
+He was silent for a while; memories were rushing to his mind. Then he
+began: "If you had ever known Marguerite Doederlein, she would have been
+just as unforgettable to you as she is to me. She and Eleanore--those
+were the two really musical women I have known in my life. They were
+both all nature, all soul. Marguerite's youth was a prison; her brother
+Carovius was the jailer. When she married Doederlein, she somehow fancied
+she would escape from that prison, but she merely exchanged one for the
+other. And yet she hardly knew how it all came about. She accepted
+everything just as it came to her with unwavering fidelity and
+gentleness. Her soul remained unlacerated, unembittered."
+
+He rested his head on his hand; his voice became gentler. "We loved one
+another before we had ever spoken a word to each other. We met each
+other a few times on the street, once in a while in the park; and a
+number of times she stole up to me in the theatre. I was not reserved: I
+offered her my life, but she always insisted that she could not live
+without her child and be happy. I respected her feelings and restrained
+my own. For a while things went on in this way. We tortured ourselves,
+practised resignation, but were drawn together again, and then Doederlein
+suddenly began to be suspicious. Whether his suspicion was due to
+whisperings or to what he himself had at some time seen his wife do--it
+was impossible for her to play the hypocrite--I really do not know. At
+any rate he began to abuse her in the most perfidious manner. He tried
+to disturb her conscience. One night he went to her bed with a crucifix
+in his hand, and made her swear, swear on the life of her child, that
+she would never deceive him. He used all manner of threats and unctuous
+fustian. She took the oath."
+
+"Yes, my friend, she took the oath. And this oath seemed to her much
+more solemn and serious than the oath she had taken at the altar the day
+they were married. I knew nothing about it; she kept out of my sight. I
+could not endure it. One day she came to me again to say good-bye. There
+followed a moment when human strength was no longer of avail, and human
+deliberation the emptiest of words. The fatal situation developed. The
+delicately moulded woman succumbed to a sense of guilt; her heart grew
+irresponsive to feelings, her mind dark. She was stricken with the
+delusion that her child was slowly dying in her arms, and one day she
+collapsed completely. The rest is known."
+
+Benda got up, went over to the window, and looked out into the darkness.
+
+Daniel felt as if a rope were being tightened about his neck. He too got
+up, murmured a farewell, and left.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+He had reached the Behaim monument when he began to walk more slowly. A
+short distance before him he saw a man and a woman. He recognized
+Dorothea.
+
+They were speaking very rapidly and in subdued tones. Daniel followed
+them; and when they reached the door of his house and turned to go in,
+he stopped in the shadow of the church.
+
+The man seemed to be angry and excited: Dorothea was trying to quiet
+him. She was standing close by him; she held his hand in hers until she
+unlocked the door. First she whispered, looked up at the house
+anxiously, and then said out loud: "Good night, Edmund. Sweet dreams!"
+
+The man went on his way without lifting his hat. Dorothea hastened in.
+
+Daniel was trembling in his whole body. There was something in his eyes
+that seemed to be beseeching; and there was something mystic about them.
+He watched until the light had been lighted upstairs and the window
+shade drawn. He was tortured by the stillness of the Square; when the
+clock in the tower struck eleven he thought he could hear the blood
+roaring in his ears.
+
+It was only with difficulty that he dragged himself into the house.
+Dorothea, already in her night-gown, was sitting at the table in the
+living room, sewing a ribbon on the dress she had just been wearing: it
+had somehow got loose.
+
+They spoke to each other. Daniel stood behind her, near the stove, and
+looked over at the back of her bared neck as if held by a spell. One
+cold shiver after another was running through his body.
+
+"Who gave you those ostrich feathers?" he asked, suddenly and rather
+brusquely. The question slipped from his lips before he himself was
+aware of it. He would have liked to say something else.
+
+Dorothea raised her head with a jerk. "I thought I told you," she
+replied, and he noticed that she coloured up.
+
+"I cannot believe that a perfect stranger, and a woman at that, is
+making you such costly presents," said Daniel slowly.
+
+Dorothea got up, and looked at him rather undecidedly. "Very well, if
+you simply must know, I bought them myself," she said with unusual
+defiance. "But you don't need to try to browbeat me like that; I'll get
+the money that I paid for them. And you needn't think for a minute that
+I am going to let you draw up a family budget, and expect to make me
+live by it."
+
+"You didn't buy those feathers," said Daniel, cutting her off in the
+middle of her harangue.
+
+"I didn't buy them, and they were not given to me! How did I get them
+then? Stole them perhaps?" Dorothea was scornful; but cowardice made it
+impossible for her to look Daniel in the face.
+
+"I have never in my life talked to any one in this way, nor has any one
+ever spoken to me like that," thought Daniel to himself. He turned
+deathly pale, went up to her, and placed his hand like an iron vise
+about her arm. "I shall permit you to waste my money; I shall not object
+if you fritter your time away in the company of good-for-nothing people;
+if you regard my health and peace of mind as of no consequence whatever,
+I shall say nothing; if you let your poor little child suffer and pine
+away, I shall keep quiet. I shall submit to all of this. And why
+shouldn't I? Why should I want to have my meals served at regular hours?
+Why should I insist that my morning coffee be warm and my rolls fresh
+from the baker? Why should I be so exacting as to ask that my clothes be
+mended, my windows washed, my room swept, and my table in order? I was
+not born with a silver spoon in my mouth; I have never known what it was
+to be comfortable."
+
+"Oh, listen, Daniel, it's too bad about you," said Dorothea in an
+anxious tone, "but let go of my arm."
+
+He loosened his grip on her arm, but did not let it go. "You may
+associate with whomsoever you please. Let those people treasure you to
+whom you are a treasure. So far as money is concerned, you can have all
+that I have. Here it is, take it." He drew from his pocket an
+embroidered purse filled with coins, and hurled them on the table. "So
+that you can wear fine dresses, I will play the organ on Sundays. So
+that you can go to masquerade balls and parties of all kinds, I will try
+to beat a little music into some twenty-odd unmusical idiots. I will do
+more than that: I will promise never to bother myself about your
+behaviour: I will never ask you where you have been or where you are
+going. But listen, Dorothea," he said, as his face flushed with anger
+and anxiety, his voice rising as if by unconscious pressure, "don't you
+ever dare dishonour my name! It is the only thing I have. I owe humanity
+an irreparable debt for it. It invests me not simply with what is known
+as civic honour, it gives me also the honour I feel and enjoy when I
+stand in the presence of what I have created. Lie, and you besmirch my
+name! Lie, and you sully and debase it! I am probably not as much afraid
+as you think I am of being regarded as a cuckold, though I admit that
+the thought of it makes my blood boil. But I want to say to you here and
+now, that when I think of you in the arms of another man I feel within
+me a deep desire, a real lust for murder. But you would throw me into
+the last pit of hell and damnation, if you were to repay the truths I
+have told you and given you with lies, lies, lies. You must not, you
+dare not, imagine for a minute that I am so selfish and vulgar as not to
+be able to understand that a change might come over your heart. But that
+is one thing; telling a lie and living a lie is quite another. It is
+impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except
+in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is in me of the
+divine. A lie to me is carrion and corruption. Tell me, then, whether
+you have been and are true to me! Don't be afraid, Dorothea, and don't
+be ashamed. Everything may be right yet and work out as it should. But
+tell me: Have you been deceiving me?"
+
+"I--deceiving you?" breathed Dorothea, and looked into his face as if
+hypnotised, never so much as moving an eyelash. "What do you mean?
+Deceiving you? Do you really think that I would be capable of such
+baseness?"
+
+"You have no lover? No other man has touched you since you have been my
+wife?"
+
+"A lover? Some other man has touched me?" she repeated with that same
+hypnotic look. In her child-like face there was the glow of
+unadulterated honour and undiluted innocence.
+
+"You have been having no secret _rendezvous_, you have not been
+receiving treacherous letters, nor writing them, you have promised no
+man anything, not even in jest?"
+
+"Ah, well now, Daniel, listen! In jest. That's another matter. Who
+knows? You know me, and you know how one talks and laughs."
+
+"And you assure me that all this mysterious abuse that is being
+whispered into my ears and to which your conduct has given a certain
+amount of plausibility is nothing in the world but wickedness on the
+part of people who know us, nothing but calumny?"
+
+"Yes, Daniel: it is merely wickedness, meanness, and calumny."
+
+"You are willing that God above should never grant you another minute of
+peace, if you have been lying to me? Do you wish that, Dorothea?"
+
+Dorothea balked; she blinked a little. Then she said quite softly:
+"Those are terrible words, Daniel. But if you insist upon it, I am
+willing to abide by the curse you have made a possibility."
+
+Daniel breathed a breath of relief. He felt that a mighty load had been
+taken from his heart. And in grateful emotion he went up to his wife,
+and pressed her to his bosom.
+
+But at the same time he was repelled by something. He felt that the
+creature he was pressing to his heart was without rhythm, or vibration,
+or law, or order. He began again to be gnawed at by torture, this time
+of a new species and coming from another direction.
+
+As he opened the door to the hall, he heard a rustle; and he saw a dark
+figure hastening over to the room that opened on the court.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+Left alone, Dorothea stared for a while into space, as motionless as a
+statue. Then she took her violin and bow from the case--she had bought a
+new bow to take the place of the one that had been broken--and began to
+play: a cadence, a trill, a waltz. Her face took on a hardened, resolute
+expression.
+
+She soon let the instrument fall from her hands, and began to think. She
+laid the violin to one side, took off her slippers, sneaked out of the
+room in her stocking feet and across the hall, and listened at the door
+to Philippina's room. She opened it cautiously and heard a sound snoring
+from Philippina's bed, which stood next to the door.
+
+The lamp had almost burned down; it gave so little light that the bed
+clothes could hardly be seen.
+
+She stole up to Philippina's couch of repose, step by step, without
+making the slightest noise, bent down, stretched out her arm, groped
+around over the body of the inexplicable creature who was sleeping
+there, and was on the point of raising the covers and reaching for
+Philippina's breast. Philippina ceased snoring, woke up as if she had
+been struck in the face by the rays of a magic lantern, opened her eyes,
+and looked at Dorothea with a speechless threat. Not a muscle of her
+face moved.
+
+Dorothea collected her thoughts instantly. With the expression on her
+face of one who has just succeeded in carrying out some good joke, she
+threw her whole body on Philippina and pressed her face to her cheek,
+nauseated though she was by the stench of her breath and the bed
+clothes.
+
+"Listen, Philippina, the American wants to give you something," she
+whispered.
+
+"Jesus, you're punching my belly in," replied Philippina, and gasped for
+breath. When Dorothea had straightened up, she said: "Well, has he
+already given you something? That's the main thing."
+
+"He gave me the feathers. Isn't that something?" replied Dorothea, "and
+he is going to give me a set of rubies."
+
+"I wish you already had 'em. It seems to me that your American don't
+exactly hail from Givetown. I've been told that he ain't so damn rich
+after all. When are you goin' to meet him again, your lover?"
+
+"To-morrow evening, between six and seven. Oh, I am so glad, so glad,
+Philippina. He is so young."
+
+"Yes, young! That's a lot, ain't it?" murmured Philippina
+contemptuously.
+
+"He has such a pretty mole on his neck, way down on his neck, down
+there," she said, pointing to the same spot on Philippina's neck. "Right
+there! Does it tickle you? Does it make you feel good?"
+
+"Don't laugh so loud, you'll waken little Gottfried," said Philippina in
+a testy, morose tone. "And get out of here! I'm sleepy."
+
+"Good-night, then, you pesky old dormouse," said Dorothea, in seemingly
+good-natured banter, and left the room.
+
+Hardly had she closed the door behind her when Philippina sprang like an
+enraged demon from her bed, clenched her fist, and hissed: "Damned
+thief and whore! She wanted to rob me, that's what she did, the dirty
+wench! You wait! Your days in this place are numbered. Somebody's going
+to squeal, believe me, and when they do, they'll get you right."
+
+She drew her red petticoat over her legs, tied it tightly, and went to
+the door to lock it. The lock had been out of order for some time; she
+could not budge it. She carried a chair over to the door, placed it
+directly underneath the lock, folded her arms, sat down on it, and
+remained sitting there for an hour or so blinking her evil eyes.
+
+When no longer able to keep from going to sleep, she got up, placed the
+folding table against the door, and got back into bed, murmuring
+imprecations such as were second nature to her.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+The following day began with a heavy rain storm. Daniel had had a
+restless night; he went to his work quite early. But his head was so
+heavy that he had to stop every now and then, and rest it on his hand.
+There was no blood, no swing to his ideas.
+
+Toward eight o'clock the postman came, and asked for Inspector Jordan.
+The old man had to sign a receipt in acknowledgment of a solemnly sealed
+money order.
+
+In the letter the postman gave him were two hundred dollars in bills and
+a note from Benno. The letter had been mailed in Galveston. Benno wrote
+that he had made inquiries and found that his father was still living.
+He said he had been quite successful in the New World, and as a proof of
+his prosperity he was sending him the enclosed sum, with the best of
+greetings, in payment for the trouble he had cost his father.
+
+It was a cold epistle. But the old man was beside himself with joy. He
+ran to Daniel and then to Philippina, held the crisp notes in the air,
+and stammered: "Look, people! He is rich. He has sent me two hundred
+dollars! He has become an honest man, he has. He remembers his old
+father, he does! Really this is a great day! A great day, Daniel,
+because of something else that has just been finished." He added with a
+mysterious smile: "A blessed day in the history of a great cause!"
+
+He dressed and went down town; he wanted to tell his friends the news.
+
+Daniel called down to know if his breakfast was ready; nobody answered.
+Thereupon he went to the kitchen, and got himself a bottle of milk and
+a loaf of bread. Philippina came in a little later. Her hair looked as
+though a hurricane had struck it; she was in her worst humour. She
+snarled at Daniel, asking him why in the name of God he couldn't wait
+till the coffee had been boiled.
+
+"Leave me in peace, Philippina," he said, "I need peace."
+
+"Peace!" she roared, "peace, the same old story: you want peace!" She
+threw a wild, contemptuous glance at the open chest containing Daniel's
+scores, leaned against the table, put the tips of her dirty fingers on
+the score he was then studying, and shrieked: "There is the cause of the
+whole _malheur_! The whole _malheur_, I say, comes from this damned
+note-smearing of yours! The idea of a man settin' down and dabbing them
+pot-hooks on good white paper, day after day, year in and year out! What
+does it all mean? Tell me! While you're doin' it, everything else is
+moving--like a crab, backwards. Jesus, you're a man, and yet you spend
+your time at that kind of stuff! I'd be ashamed to admit it."
+
+Not prepared for this enigmatic outburst of anger and hate, Daniel
+looked at Philippina utterly dazed. "Get out of here," he cried
+indignantly. "Get out of here, I say," and pointed to the door.
+
+She got out. "The damned dabbery!" she bellowed with reinforced
+maliciousness.
+
+From ten to twelve, Daniel had to lecture at the conservatory. His heart
+beat violently, though he was unable to explain his excitement. It was
+more than a foreboding: he felt as if he had heard a piece of terribly
+bad news and the real nature of it had slipped his memory.
+
+He did not go home for luncheon; he ate in the cafe at the Carthusian
+Gate. Then he took a long walk out over the fields and meadows. It had
+stopped raining, and the brisk wind refreshed him. He stood for a long
+while on the banks of the canal, and watched some men piling bricks at a
+brick-kiln. From time to time he took a piece of paper from his pocket,
+and wrote something on it with his pencil: it was notes.
+
+Once he wrote alongside of a motif: "Farewell, my music!" His eyes were
+filled with dreadful tears.
+
+He returned to the city just as the sun was setting; it looked like a
+huge ball of fire in the west. The sky shone out between two great black
+clouds like the forge of a smithy. He could not help but think of
+Eleanore.
+
+He entered his living room, and paced back and forth. Philippina came
+in, and asked him whether she should warm up his soup for him. Her
+unnatural, singing tone attracted his attention; he looked at her very
+closely.
+
+"Where is my wife?" he asked.
+
+Philippina's face betrayed an abysmally mean smile, but she never said a
+word.
+
+"Where is my wife?" he asked a second time, after a pause.
+
+Philippina's smile became brighter. "Is it cold out?" she asked, and in
+a moment she had left the room. Daniel stared at her as if he feared she
+had lost her mind. In a few minutes she came back. In the meantime she
+had put on a cloak that was much too short for her, and beneath which
+the loud, freakish skirt of her checkered dress could be seen.
+
+"Daniel, come along with me," she said in an anxious voice. To Daniel
+her voice sounded mysterious and fearful. "Come along with me, Daniel! I
+want to show you something."
+
+He turned pale, put on his hat, and followed her. They crossed the
+square in silence, went through Binder Street, Town Hall Street, and
+across the Market. Daniel stopped. "What are you up to?" he asked with a
+hoarse voice.
+
+"Come along! You'll see," whispered Philippina.
+
+They walked on, crossed the Meat Bridge, went through Kaiser Street and
+the White Tower to St. James's Place. Some people looked at the odd
+couple in amazement. When they reached Frau Hadebusch's little house, it
+was dark. "Listen, Philippina, are you ever going to talk?" said Daniel,
+gritting his teeth.
+
+"Psh!" Philippina knew what she was doing. She put her mouth to Daniel's
+ear, and whispered: "Go up two flights, quick, you know the house, bang
+on the door, and if it's locked, bust it in. In the meantime I'll go to
+Frau Hadebusch so that she can't interfere."
+
+Then Daniel understood.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Everything became blood-red before his eyes; he was seized with a
+feverish chill.
+
+He had followed Philippina with a dejected, limp feeling of disgust,
+fear and coercion. Now he knew what it was all about. At the very
+beginning of the events he saw the middle and the end. He saw before the
+bolted door what was going on behind it. His soul was seized with
+horror, rage, woe, contempt, and terror. He felt dizzy; he feared lie
+might lose consciousness.
+
+He sprang up the creaking stairs by leaps and bounds. He stood before
+the door behind which he had gone hungry, been cold, and glowed with
+enthusiasm as a young man. Silence should have reigned there now, so
+that the devotion of retrospective spirits might not be molested on the
+grave of so many, many hopes.
+
+He jerked at the latch; a scream was heard from within. The door was
+bolted. He pressed his body against the fragile wood so violently that
+both hinges, and the latch, gave way, and the door fell on to the middle
+of the floor with a mighty crash.
+
+The scream was repeated, this time in a more piercing tone. Dorothea was
+lying on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch,
+pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a
+half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been
+amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was
+lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily worn by men when in the
+presence of women. He was sitting astride on a chair, smoking a
+short-stemmed pipe.
+
+When Daniel, with bloody hands--he had scratched himself while breaking
+in the door--with his hair flying wild about his face, panting, and pale
+as death, stepped over the door, Dorothea again began to scream; she
+screamed seven or eight times. She was filled with despair and terrible
+anxiety.
+
+Daniel rushed at the young man, and seized him by the throat. While he
+held the American in a death-like grip, while he saw Dorothea, as if in
+a roseate haze, with uplifted arms, leave the bed screaming at the top
+of her voice, while an extraordinary power of observation, despite his
+insane rage, came over him, while he watched the cherries as they rolled
+across the bed and saw the green stems, some of which were withered,
+showing that the cherries were half rotten, while he felt a taste on his
+tongue as if he too had eaten cherries--while he saw all these things
+and had this sensation, he thought to himself without either doubt or
+relief: "This is the downfall; this is chaos."
+
+The American--it later became known that he was a wandering artist who
+had, with an equal amount of nerve and adroitness, worked his way into
+the private social life of the city--thrust his antagonist back with all
+his might, and struck up the position of a professional boxer. Daniel,
+however, gave him no time to strike; he fell on him, wrapped his arms
+tight about him, threw him to the floor, and was trying to choke him. He
+groaned, struggled, got his fist loose, struck Daniel in the face, and
+cried, "You damned fool!" But it was the cry of a whipped man.
+
+Loud noise broke out downstairs. A crowd of people collected on the
+sidewalk. "Police, police!" shrieked the shrill voice of a woman. The
+people began to make their way up the stairs.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" moaned Dorothea. In half a minute she had her dress on.
+"Out of this place and away," she said, as she looked for her gloves and
+umbrella.
+
+Frau Hadebusch appeared in the hall, wringing her hands. Behind her
+stood Philippina. Two men forced their way in, ran up to Daniel and the
+American, and tried to separate them. But they had bitten into each
+other like two mad dogs; and it was necessary to call for help. A
+soldier and the milkman gave a hand; and finally two policemen appeared
+on the scene.
+
+"I must go home," cried Dorothea, while the other women shrieked and
+carried on. "I must go home, and get my things and leave."
+
+With the face of one possessed and at the same time dumb, Philippina
+stole out from among the excited crowd and followed Dorothea. She did
+not feel that she was walking; she could not feel the pavement under her
+feet; she was unconscious of the air. That wild inspiration returned to
+her which she had experienced once before in her life--the time she went
+up in the attic and saw Gertrude's lifeless body hanging from a rafter.
+
+Her veins pulsed with a hot lust for destruction. "Swing the torch!"
+That was the cry she heard running through her brain. "Swing the torch!"
+But she wanted to do something much more pretentious this time than
+merely start a fire in some rubbish. The farther she went the more
+rapidly she walked. Finally she began to run and sing with a loud,
+coarse voice. Her cloak was not buttoned; it flew in the air. The people
+who saw her stopped and looked at her, amazed.
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+Herr Carovius and Jordan were sitting in the Paradise Cafe.
+
+"How things change, and how everything clears up and straightens out!"
+remarked Jordan.
+
+"Yes, the open graves are gaping again," said Herr Carovius cynically.
+
+"So far as I am concerned," continued Jordan, without noticing the
+aversion his affability had aroused in Herr Carovius, "I can now face
+death with perfect peace of mind. My mission is ended; my work is done."
+
+"That sounds as if you had discovered the philosopher's stone," remarked
+Herr Carovius sarcastically.
+
+"Perhaps," replied Jordan gently and bent over the table. "You are after
+all not entirely wrong, my honoured friend. Do you wish to be convinced?
+Will you honour me with a visit?"
+
+Herr Carovius had become curious. They paid their bills and left for
+AEgydius Place.
+
+Having entered Jordan's room, the old man lighted a lamp and bolted the
+door. He then opened the door of the great cabinet by the wall, and took
+out a big doll. It was dressed like a Swiss maid, had on a flowered
+skirt, a linen waist, and a little pink apron. Its yellow hair was done
+up in braids, and on its head was a little felt hat.
+
+"All that is my handiwork," said Jordan, with much show of pride. "I
+myself took all the measurements and made the clothes, including even
+the shoes. And now watch, my dear friend."
+
+He placed the doll in the middle of the room. "She will speak," he
+continued, his face radiant with joy, "she will sing. She will sing a
+song native to her beloved Tyrol. Will you be so good as to take this
+chair? I would rather not have you so close to it, if I may, for there
+are certain noises which I still have to correct. The illusion is
+stronger when you are some distance away."
+
+He crouched down behind the doll, did something at its back, and the
+buzzing of wheels became audible. The old man then stepped out to the
+front of the doll, and said: "Now, my little girl, let's hear what you
+can do!"
+
+An uncanny, hoarse, somewhat cooing voice rang out from the body of the
+doll. It sounded like the vibrations of metallic strings accompanied by
+the low tones of a water whistle. If you closed your eyes, you could at
+least imagine you were hearing a song sung by some one in the distance.
+But if you looked at the thing closely with its lifeless, mask-like
+kindly, waxen face, and heard the shrill, muffled sounds, without either
+articulation or rhythm, coming from within, it took on a ghostly aspect.
+Herr Carovius in fact felt a cold chill creep down his back.
+
+When the machine ran down, the doll's eyelids and lips closed. Jordan
+was looking at Herr Carovius in great suspense. "Well, what do you think
+of it?" he asked. "Be quite frank; I can stand any amount of criticism."
+
+Herr Carovius had great difficulty to keep from bursting out laughing.
+His mouth and chin itched. Suddenly, however, scorn and contempt left
+him; he fell into a disagreeably serious frame of mind, and a softness,
+a mildness such as he had not felt since time immemorial stole over his
+heart. He said: "That is a perfectly splendid invention! Perfectly
+splendid! Though it does need some improvement."
+
+Jordan nodded zealously and with joyous approval. He was on the point of
+going into a detailed description of the mechanism and its artistic
+construction, when the two men heard a strange noise in the adjoining
+room. They stopped and listened. They could hear some one moving the
+furniture; there were steps back and forth; they heard a hammering and
+pounding as if some one were trying to open a box. This was followed by
+a sound that resembled the falling of paper on the floor; it lasted for
+some time, bunch apparently following bunch. Listen! Some one is talking
+in an abusive voice! What's that? A gruesome, sing-song voice repeating
+unintelligible words: "I-oi! huh, huh! I-oi, huh-huh!" There is a sound
+as if of crackling fire. The flames cannot be seen; but they can be
+heard!
+
+Old Jordan jerked the door open, and cried like a child.
+
+Philippina was standing in the midst of a pile of burning papers. She
+had forced Daniel's trunk open, thrown every one of his scores on the
+floor, and set them on fire. She was a fearful object to behold. Her
+hair hung down loose and straggly over her shoulders, she was swinging
+her arms as if she were working a pump-handle, and from her mouth poured
+forth a volley of loud, babbling, gurgling tones that bore not the
+faintest resemblance to anything human. Her face, lightened by the
+flames, was coloured with the trace of fearful voluptuousness. Herr
+Carovius and old Jordan stood in the doorway as if paralysed. Seeing
+them, she began to hop about, and stretched out her upraised arms to the
+flames, which were leaping higher and higher.
+
+Herr Carovius, awakening from his torpidity, saw that it was high time
+to make some effort to escape. Shielding his face with his hands, he
+fled as fast as his feet could carry him to the hall door and down the
+steps. Tears were gushing down Jordan's cheeks; fear had made it
+impossible for him to reflect. He ran back into his room, opened the
+window, and called out to the people on the square. Then he chanced to
+think of his beloved doll. He rushed up to it and took it under his arm.
+But when he tried to leave the room, the smoke blew into his face,
+benumbing and burning him. He staggered, reached the top of the stairs,
+made a misstep, fell headlong down the steps, still holding the doll in
+convulsive embrace, twitched a few times, and then lay lifeless on the
+hall floor.
+
+Heart failure had put an end to his life.
+
+Dorothea, who had been in the house packing her things, hastened,
+luggage in hand, past the corpse. Her face was ashen; she never looked
+at the dead body of Inspector Jordan. She was soon lost in the crowd of
+excited people. She had vanished.
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+The police had at last separated Daniel and the American in Frau
+Hadebusch's house. Daniel fell on a chair, and gazed stupidly into
+space. Frau Hadebusch brought him some water. The American put on his
+clothes, while the spectators looked on and laughed.
+
+The two men were then taken to the police station, where the lieutenant
+in charge took such depositions as were necessary for court action.
+Daniel saw a gas lamp, a quill pen, several grinning faces, his own
+bloody hand, and nothing more. The American was held in order to protect
+him from further attacks; Daniel was released. He heard the young man
+tell his story in a mangled German and with a voice that was nearly
+choked with rage, but did not absorb anything he said.
+
+He heard a dog bark, a wagon rattle, a bell strike; he heard people
+talking, murmuring, crying; he heard the scraping of feet. But it all
+sounded to him like noises that were reaching his ears through the walls
+of a prison. He went on his way; his gait was unsteady.
+
+As he reached the Church of Our Lady, Daniel turned to the right toward
+the Market Place, and saw the Goose Man standing before him.
+
+"Go home," the Goose Man seemed to say with a sad voice. "Go home!"
+
+"Who are you? what do you wish of me?" A voice within him asked. But
+then it seemed that the figure had become invisible, and that it could
+not be seen again until it was far off in the distance, where it was
+being shone upon by a bright light.
+
+People were running across AEgydius Place; some of them were crying
+"Fire!" Daniel turned the corner; he could see his house. Flames were
+leaping up behind his window. He pressed his hands to his temples, and,
+with eyes wide open and filled with terror, he forced his way through
+the crowd up to his house. "For God's sake, for Heaven's sake!" he
+cried, "save my trunk!"
+
+Many looked at him. A figure appeared at the window; many arms were
+pointed at it. "The woman! Look, look, the woman!" came a cry from the
+crowd. And then again: "She has set the house on fire! She has swung the
+torch and started the fire!"
+
+Daniel rushed into his house. Firemen overtook him. There he saw in the
+hall, lighted by the lanterns being carried back and forth so swiftly,
+and placed in the corner with no more care or consideration than was
+possible under such circumstances, the dead body of old Jordan. His
+body, and close beside it, as if in supernatural mockery of all things
+human, the doll, the Swiss maid with the machine in her stomach. Sighing
+and sobbing, he fell down; his forehead touched the dead hand of the old
+man.
+
+As if in a dream he heard the hissing of the hoses, the commands, the
+hurried running back and forth of the firemen. Then he felt as if a
+shadow, a figure from the lower world, suddenly rose before him. A
+clenched fist, he thought, opened and hurled shreds of paper into his
+face. When he looked up he could see nothing but the firemen rushing
+around him. The shadow, the figure, had pushed its way in among them,
+and in the confusion no one had paid any attention to it.
+
+With an absent-minded gesture, Daniel reached out and picked up the
+paper that was lying nearest him. It had fallen on the face of the doll.
+He unfolded it and saw, written in his own hand, the music to the
+"Harzreise im Winter." Under the notes were the words:
+
+    But aside, who is it?
+    His path in the bushes is lost,
+    Behind him rustle
+    The thickets together,
+    The grass rises again,
+    The desert conceals him.
+
+The melody and rhythm that interpreted the words were of a grandiose
+gloominess, like a song of shades pursued in the night, across the sea.
+Daniel recalled the hour he had written this music; he recalled the
+expression on Gertrude's face the time he played it for her. Eleanore
+was there, too, wearing a white dress, with a myrtle wreath in her hair.
+The tones dissolved the web of infinite time. "But aside, who is it?"
+came forth like a great, deep dirge. In the question there was something
+prophetically great. He covered his face and wept; he felt as if his
+heart would break.
+
+The dead man and the doll were lying there, motionless, lifeless.
+
+In half an hour the fire was under control. The two attic rooms had been
+burned out completely. Further than this no damage had been done.
+
+Philippina had vanished without a trace. Since no one had seen her leave
+the house, the first theory was that she had been burned to death. But
+investigation proved this assumption to be incorrect. The police looked
+for her everywhere, but in vain; she was not to be found. A few people
+who had known her rather intimately insisted that she had been burned up
+so completely that there was nothing left of her but a little pile of
+black ashes.
+
+However this may be, and whatever the truth may be, Philippina never
+again entered the house. No one ever again saw or heard a thing of her.
+
+
+
+
+                         BUT ASIDE, WHO IS IT?
+
+                                   I
+
+
+Late in the evening Benda came. He had been tolerably well informed of
+everything that had taken place. In the hall he met Agnes. Though
+generally quite monosyllabic, Agnes was now inclined to be extremely
+communicative, but she could merely confirm what he had already heard.
+
+She went up to the top floor with him, and he stood there for a long
+while looking at the burnt rooms. There were two firemen on guard duty.
+"All of his music has been burnt up," said Agnes. Benda thought he would
+hardly be able to talk with his old friend again after this tragedy. But
+he at once felt ashamed of his timidity, and went down to see him.
+
+It was again quiet throughout the entire house.
+
+Daniel had lighted a candle in the living room. Finding it too dark with
+only one candle, he lighted another.
+
+He paced back and forth. The room seemed too small for him: he opened
+the door leading into Dorothea's room, and walked back and forth through
+it too. On entering the dark room, his lips would move; he would murmur
+something. When he returned to the lighted room, he would stand for a
+second or two and stare at the candles.
+
+His features seemed to show traces of human suffering such as no man had
+borne before; it could hardly have been greater. He did not seem to
+notice Benda when he came in.
+
+"Everything gone? Everything destroyed?" asked Benda, after he had
+watched Daniel walk back and forth for nearly a quarter of an hour.
+
+"One grave after the other," murmured Daniel, in a voice that no longer
+seemed to be his own. He raised his head as if surprised at the sound of
+what he himself had said. He felt that a stranger had come into the room
+without letting himself be heard.
+
+"And the last work, the great work of which you told me, the fruit of so
+many years, has it also been destroyed?" asked Benda.
+
+"Everything," replied Daniel distractedly, "everything I have created
+in the way of music from the time I first had reason to believe in
+myself. The sonatas, the songs, the quartette, the psalm, the
+'Harzreise,' 'Wanderers Sturmlied,' and the symphony, everything down to
+the last page and the last note."
+
+Yes, there was a stranger there; you could hear him laughing quietly to
+himself. "Why do you laugh?" asked Daniel sternly, and adjusted his
+glasses.
+
+Benda, terrified, said: "I did not laugh."
+
+"The grass rises again, the desert conceals him," said the stranger. He
+wore an old-fashioned suit, a droll sort of cap, and Hessian boots. "I
+ought to know him," thought Daniel to himself, and began to meditate
+with cloudy mind.
+
+"This is like murder, unheard-of murder," cried Benda's soul; "how can
+he bear it? What will he do?"
+
+"What is there to do?" asked Daniel, expressing Benda's silent thought
+in audible words, and looking askew, as he walked back and forth, at the
+stranger who went slowly through the room over to the window in the
+corner. "What can human fancy find reasonable or possible after all that
+has happened? Nothing! Merely pine away; pine away in insanity."
+
+"Oho," said the stranger, "that is a trifle strong."
+
+"If he would only keep quiet," thought Daniel, tortured. "I presume you
+know what has happened with the woman whom I called my wife," he
+continued. "That I threw myself away on this vain, soulless spirit of a
+mirror is irrelevant. Greater men than I have walked into such nets and
+become entangled, ensnared. I have never cherished the delusion that I
+was immune to all the mockery of this earth. I believed, however, that I
+could scent out truth and falsehood, and differentiate the one from the
+other, just as the hand can tell by the feel the wet from the dry. But
+the connection of the one with the other, and the horrible necessity of
+this connection, I do not understand."
+
+"You have been served just right," remarked the intruder with the
+Hessian boots. He had sat down on a chair in the corner, and looked
+quite friendly.
+
+"Why?" roared Daniel, stopping.
+
+Benda, astounded, rose to his feet. "Speak out, Daniel," he said
+affectionately, "unburden your soul!"
+
+"If I only could, Friedrich, if I only could! If my tongue would only
+move! Or if there were some one who felt with me and could speak for
+me!"
+
+"Try it; the first word is often like a spark and starts a flame."
+
+Daniel was silent. The intruder said deliberatively: "That goes deep
+down to the recesses of the heart and up high to the things that are
+immortal."
+
+Daniel looked over at him sharply, and saw that it was the Goose Man.
+
+
+                                  II
+
+All effort to get Daniel to talk was in vain. Along toward midnight,
+Benda took leave of him. Agnes unlocked the door for him; he said to
+her: "Look after him; he has no one else now."
+
+Daniel lay on the sofa with his hands crossed behind his head, and
+stared at the ceiling. His eyes were hot; at times he trembled and
+shook.
+
+"It isn't very sociable here," said the Goose Man, "the air is full of
+tobacco smoke, and there is a draft coming in from that dark room."
+
+Daniel got up, closed the door, and lay down again.
+
+The metallic exterior of the Goose Man seemed to become flexible,
+somewhat as when a frozen body thaws out. "You have gone through a great
+deal," he continued thoughtfully. "That any one who wishes to create
+must also experience is clear. Experience is his mother's milk, his
+realm of roots; it is where the saps flow together, from which his forms
+and figures are developed. But there is experience and experience, and
+between the two there is a world of difference."
+
+"Superfluous profundity," murmured Daniel, plainly annoyed. "To live is
+to have experience." He took council with himself in the attempt to
+devise a means by which he might get rid of the importunate chatterer.
+
+The Goose Man again struck up his gentle laugh. He replied: "Many live,
+and yet do not live; suffer, and yet do not suffer. In what does guilt
+lie? What does it consist of? In not feeling; in not doing. The first
+thing for some men to do is to eradicate completely the false notions
+they have of what constitutes greatness. For what is greatness after
+all? It is nothing in the world but the fulfilment of an unending circle
+of petty duties, small obligations."
+
+"There is a fundamental difference between the creator and all other
+men," remarked Daniel, at once excited and troubled by the conversation
+and the turn it was taking.
+
+"Do you appeal to, depend on, refer to music in this present case?"
+asked the Goose Man, his good-natured look becoming more or less
+disdainful.
+
+"In music every creation is more closely related to an unconditional
+exterior than is true of anything else that man gives to man," answered
+Daniel. "The musical genius stands nearer God than any other genius."
+
+The Goose Man nodded. "But his fall begins one step from God's throne,
+and is a high and deep one. Do you know what you are? And do you really
+know what you are not?"
+
+Daniel pressed his hand to his heart: "Have you ever known me to fight
+for evanescent laurels? Have I ever tried to feed the human race, which
+is a race of minors, on surrogates? Have I ever imitated the flights of
+Heaven with St. Vitus dance, confusing the one with the other? Have I
+not always acted in accord with the best, the inmost knowledge I had,
+and in obedience to my conscience? Was I ever a liar?"
+
+"No, no, no!" cried the Goose Man, by way of appeasing Daniel's unrest.
+He took off his cap, and laid it on his knee. "You were always sincere.
+There can be no doubt about it, your heart was always in your
+profession. All life has streamed into your soul, and you have lived in
+the ivory tower. Your soul was well protected, well protected from the
+very beginning. It was in a position similar to that created by a
+swimmer who rubs his body with grease before plunging into the water.
+You have suffered; the poison of the Nessus shirt you have worn has
+burned your skin, and the pain you have thereby suffered has been
+transformed into sweet sounds. So they all are, the creators,
+invulnerable and inaccessible. That is the way you picture them to
+yourself. Is it not true? Monsters who take up the cross of the world,
+and yet, grief-laden though they be, grow beyond their own fate. Such is
+your lot; and so do you look to-day in your forty-second year."
+
+Daniel was not prepared for this tone of bitterness; he turned his face
+to the corner where the Goose Man was sitting. "I do not understand
+you," he said slowly. The pitiable crying of little Gottfried could be
+heard from the room opening out on the court, and then Agnes's quieting
+lullaby.
+
+"If you only had not lived in the ivory tower!" cried the Goose Man. "If
+you only had been more sensitive and not so well protected! If you had
+only lived, lived, lived, really and truly, and near to life, like a
+naked man in a thicket of thorns! Life would have got the best of you,
+but your love would have been real, the hate you have experienced real,
+your misfortunes real, the lies, ridicule, and betrayal all real, and
+the shadows of those who have died from you would have taken on reality.
+And the poison of the Nessus shirt would not merely have burned your
+skin; it would have penetrated to your very blood, it would have found
+its way to the deepest, most secret recesses of your heart. Your work
+would have been carried on and out, not in a struggle against your
+darkness and your limited torments of soul, a slave before men and
+unblessed of God. Eliminate from your mind now, forever and completely,
+the delusion that you have borne the sufferings of the world! You have
+merely borne your own sufferings, loving-loveless, altruistic-egoist,
+monster, man without a country that you are!"
+
+"Who are you? What are you trying to say?" asked Daniel, automatically,
+falteringly, with pale lips.
+
+"Oh, don't you see who I am? I am the Goose Man," came the reply, spoken
+with a loyal and devoted bow. "The Goose Man, lonesome there behind the
+iron fence, lonesome there on the water at the fountain, and yet
+situated in the middle of the Market. An insignificant being, tangible
+and intelligible to every one who passes by, though a certain degree of
+monumentality has been ascribed to me in all these years. But I pay no
+attention to this ascription of greatness; I laugh at it. I give the
+Market, where the people come and haggle over the price of potatoes and
+apples, a certain degree of dignity. That is all. They see me as I stand
+there, always upright, under the open sky; and despite my distinguished
+position, they have all come to look upon me as a cousin. For a time
+they gave me a nickname: they called me by your name. But they had no
+right to do this; none at all, it seems to me. I have looked out for my
+geese; no one can say a thing against me."
+
+The Goose Man laughed a quiet, inoffensive laugh; and when Daniel turned
+his face to the corner, the chair was empty, the strange guest had
+vanished.
+
+
+                                  III
+
+But he came back. And when Daniel's mind and body were both completely
+broken down and he was obliged to remain in bed, his visits became
+regular. He sat next to Benda, for Benda had taken to calling on Daniel
+now every day and staying with him until late at night. But Daniel grew
+quieter and quieter. Sometimes he would make no reply at all to Benda's
+remarks or questions.
+
+The Goose Man came in behind Dr. Dingolfinger and stood on tiptoes, as
+curious as curious could be, and looked over his arm when he wrote out
+his prescriptions. The Goose Man was a little fellow: he hardly reached
+up to the doctor's hips.
+
+He hopped around Agnes when she cooked the soup and expressed his
+sympathy for her; she looked so pale. Though only thirteen years old,
+there was the worried look of a mature woman in her face; she would cast
+her eyes around the room as if trying to catch a glance of human love in
+the eyes of another person; her looks were timid and stealthy. "Some one
+should be caring for her too," said the Goose Man, shaking his head,
+"some one should be making a good, warm soup for her."
+
+Though it would be unfair to say that the Goose Man was offensively
+concerned, he seemed to be interested in everything that was going on in
+the house. When the officials of the fire department came to
+cross-question Daniel about the fire, he became angry and gruff, and did
+not wish to let them in. "Give the poor man some rest, some peace, after
+all these years of suffering," he implored, "give him time to collect
+himself and to meditate on what has taken place." And in fact the
+members of the fire department left as soon as possible; they did not
+stay long.
+
+The Goose Man was always in a cheerful humour, always ready for a good
+joke. At times he would whistle softly, and smooth out the wrinkles in
+his doublet. There was a certain amount of rustic shyness about him, but
+his affability, his good manners, and his child-like cheerfulness
+removed any unpleasant impression this rusticity might otherwise have
+made. He generally spoke the dialect of Nuremberg, though when with
+Daniel he never spoke anything but the most correct and chosen High
+German. His natural, acquired culture and the wealth of his vocabulary
+were really amazing.
+
+Ten times a day at least he would scamper into the room where little
+Gottfried was sleeping and express his admiration for the pretty child.
+"How you are to be envied to have such a living creature crawling and
+sprawling around in your home!" he said to Daniel. And in course of time
+Daniel actually came to have a new affection for the child.
+
+As soon as the Goose Man felt perfectly at home in Daniel's house, he
+took to bringing his two geese along with him. He would place them very
+circumspectly in a corner of the room. One evening he was sitting
+playing with them, when the bell rang. Andreas Doederlein stormed in, and
+demanded that some one tell him where his daughter was.
+
+"Upon my word and honour! An old acquaintance of mine!" said the Goose
+Man, laughing and blinking. "I see him nowadays in the cafe much more
+frequently than is good for his health."
+
+"I must urgently request you to control yourself," said Benda, turning
+to Andreas Doederlein, and pointed to the bed in which Daniel was lying.
+
+"My daughter is not a bad woman. Let people overburdened with credulity
+believe that she is bad," cried Doederlein, with the expression and in
+the tone and gesture of the royal Lear, and shook his Olympian locks.
+"The fact is that violence has been practised on her; she has been
+driven into ruin! Men have stolen the sweet love of my dearly beloved
+daughter through the use of vile tricks and artifices. Where is she, the
+unfortunate, betrayed child? With what is she clothing her nakedness,
+and how is she finding food and shelter--shelter in a world of wicked
+men?"
+
+A strange thing happened: the Goose Man took the gigantic arm of the
+Olympian, put his mouth to his beefy ear, and, with a sad and
+reproachful look on his face, whispered something to him. Doederlein
+turned red and then pale, looked down at the floor, and went away with
+heavy, rumbling step but silent lips. The Goose Man folded his arms
+across his breast, and looked at Doederlein thoughtfully.
+
+"He is said to have taken to drinking," remarked Benda, "is said to be
+living a wild, dissipated life. It seems incredible to me. The
+Doederleins are generally content to stroll in lust along the banks of
+the slimy sea of vice and let other people fall in. The Doederleins are
+born in false ermine, and they die in false ermine."
+
+"And yet he is a human being," said the Goose Man, so that only Daniel
+could hear him.
+
+Daniel sighed.
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+It was late at night. Daniel could not sleep. The Goose Man crouched at
+his feet on the edge of the bed, and looked at him as one looks at a
+dear brother who is suffering intense pain.
+
+"I cannot deny that it is difficult for you to continue your life," said
+the Goose Man, trying to subdue his bright voice. "When we sum up your
+situation, we see day following day, night following night, and nothing
+happening that can be a cause for rejoicing. Everything has been cut
+off; the threads have all been broken; the foundation on which you
+built has been completely annihilated. You are like the mother of many
+children who loses them all, all of them, on a single day by one
+terrible stroke. The labour of years remains unrewarded; your work has
+been in vain; in vain the blood your heart has poured out, the
+deprivations you have submitted to; your whole past is like a bad,
+disordered dream. Oh, I understand full well; I appreciate your
+situation. It seems hard, very hard, to go on and not to despair."
+
+Daniel covered his face with his hands and moaned.
+
+"Have you ever asked yourself how the hand of murder came to strike you?
+Ah, this Philippina! This daughter of Jason Philip! I am almost four
+hundred years old, but such a person I have never seen or known. But
+look back over your past! Do it just once! Open your eyes; they are pure
+now and capable of beholding. Have you not suffered the Devil to live by
+your side, to take part in your life? And were you not at the same time
+impatient with the angels who spread their wings about you as my geese
+spread theirs about me? The Devil has grown fat from you. The vampire
+has battened on you, has fed on your blood. All this comes about when
+one is unwilling to give, when one merely takes and takes and takes.
+That makes the Devil fat; the vampire becomes greedier with each passing
+sun. Ah, so many good genii have fled from you! Many you have frightened
+away, you, bewitched, you, enchanted! Well, what now? What next? Hell
+has claimed its full booty; Heaven can now open again to your new-born
+heart."
+
+"There is no Heaven," groaned Daniel, "there is nothing but blackness
+and darkness."
+
+"You still breathe, your heart is still beating, you still have five
+fingers on each hand," replied the Goose Man quietly. "He who has paid
+his debts is a free man: you have paid yours."
+
+"I am my own debt, my own guilt. If I continue to live, I will sin
+again. Were I to live over the past, back into the past, I would
+contract the same debts."
+
+"But there is such a thing as a transformation, and through it one
+receives absolution. Turn away from your phantom and become a human
+being--and then you can become a creator. If you once become human,
+really human, it may be that you will not need the work, symphony or
+whatever else you choose to call it. It may be that power and glory will
+radiate from you yourself. For are not all works merely the round-about
+ways, the detours of the man himself, merely man's imperfect attempts to
+reveal himself? Did you not love a mask of plaster more than the
+countenances that shone upon you, the faces that wept about you? Did you
+not allow another mask, a thing of the mirror, to get control over you,
+and so to besmirch your soul and strike your spirit with paralysis? How
+can a man be a creator if he deceives, stunts, and abbreviates the
+humanity that is in him? It is not a question of ability, Daniel
+Nothafft, it is a question of being, living, being."
+
+Daniel tossed his head back and forth on his pillow, writhing in agony.
+"Stop!" he gulped, "stop, stop!"
+
+The Goose Man bent over him, and crouched up nearer to his body like an
+animal trying to get warm. "Come out of the convulsion," something cried
+and exhorted within him, "break your chains! Your music can give men
+nothing so long as you yourself are held captive. Feel their distress!
+Have pity on their unplumbed loneliness! Behold mankind! Behold it!"
+
+"There is so much," replied Daniel in extreme torture, "a hundred
+thousand faces bewilder me, a hundred thousand pictures hem me in. I
+cannot differentiate; I must flee, flee!"
+
+There was something inimitably tender, reassuring, and resigned in what
+the Goose Man then said: "I speak to you as Christ: Rise and walk! Rise
+and go in peace, Daniel! Go with me to my place. Be _me_ for just one
+day, from morning to evening, and _I_ will be _you_."
+
+Daniel got up, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he had
+put on his clothes and was out on the street with the Goose Man. They
+crossed the market place, and Daniel, in a crepuscular state of mind,
+climbed up, with the help of the Goose Man, and took his place on the
+base of the fountain behind the iron railing. The two geese he took
+under his arms. He stood perfectly still, rigid, just like the Goose
+Man, and waited in anticipation of the things that were to come.
+
+
+                                   V
+
+But nothing extraordinary happened. Everything that took place was quite
+prosaic and obviously a matter of custom.
+
+The sun rose, and the market women took the cords and covers from their
+baskets. Fresh cherries, young pears, and winter apples shone in all
+their brilliancy of colour and lent variety to the drab square. Sparrows
+picked in the straw that lay on the street. The sun rose higher; its
+early red gave way to a midday blue. Clouds drifted over the roof of the
+church. The women gossiped. Wagons rattled by, errand boys called to
+each other, curtains were drawn from the windows, and men and women
+looked out to see what the weather was going to be like. There were
+sleepy faces and anxious faces, good faces and bad faces, young and old.
+
+Maids and humbler housewives came to make their purchases. They examined
+the fruit with seasoned care and experienced hand, and bargained for
+lower prices. The peasant women praised what they had, and if their
+praise was ineffectual, they became abusive. Once a sale had been made,
+they would take their balances, put the weights in one pan and the fruit
+in another, and never cease praising what they were selling until they
+had the money safe in their pockets. Then they would count over the
+coins they had received, and looked at them as if to say: "It is fine to
+earn money!"
+
+But those who paid out the money bore the mien of painful care and
+solicitude. They seemed to be counting it all up in their heads; to be
+taking lessons in mental arithmetic. They would think over how much it
+were wise or permissible for them to spend. The thing that impressed
+Daniel most of all, and the longer he stood there the clearer it became
+to him, was this: Each purchaser went right up to the very edge of the
+territory staked out for her, so to speak, by some mysterious master.
+This they felt was correct, certain though they were that to have gone
+beyond the allotted limit would have brought swift and irremediable
+ruin. The money was paid out with such studied caution, and taken in
+with such a sense of victory! There was something touching about it all.
+This daily life of these small people seemed so strange, so very
+strange, and at the same time so in accord with established order: it
+seemed indeed to be a practical visualisation of the sanctity of the
+law.
+
+In all the transactions due respect was paid to the formalities of life,
+and nothing was veiled. There was fulness, but no confusion; many words,
+but no misunderstanding. There were the wares and there were the coins.
+The scales showed how much was being given and how much taken. The fruit
+wandered from basket to basket, and human arms carried it home. Each
+bought as much as could be paid for; there was no thought of going
+beyond one's means.
+
+The clock in the tower struck on the hour, and the shadows moved in a
+circle about the objects on the square. So it was to-day; and so it had
+been four hundred years ago.
+
+Four hundred years ago the houses stood there just as they stood to-day,
+and people, men and women, looked out of the windows, some with kindly,
+some with embittered faces.
+
+Is that not Theresa Schimmelweis creeping around the corner? How old,
+decrepit, and bent with years! Her hair is stone grey, her face is like
+lime. She is poorly dressed; she does not notice the people she meets.
+She sees nothing but the full baskets of fruit; for them she has a
+greedy eye. And she looks at Daniel behind the iron fence with an
+expression of painful astonishment.
+
+And is that not Frau Hadebusch hobbling along over there! Though her
+face is that of a crafty criminal, in her eyes there is a panicky,
+terrified look. She has no support other than the ground beneath her
+feet; she is a poor, lost soul.
+
+There comes Alfons Diruf, who retired years ago. He has become stout and
+gloomy. He is out for his morning walk along the city moat. There goes
+the actor, Edmund Hahn, seeking whom he may devour. Disease and lust are
+writ large across his jaded face. There is the sculptor, Schwalbe. He is
+secretly buying a few apples to take home to roast, for otherwise he has
+nothing warm to eat. And there is Herr Carovius, ambling along. He looks
+like a wandering spirit, dejected and exhausted.
+
+Beggars pass by, and so do the rich. There are respected people who are
+greeted by those who see them; there are outcasts who are shunned. There
+are those who are happy and those who are weighed down with grief. Some
+hasten and some hesitate. Some seem to hold fast to their lives as a
+lover might hold fast to his fiancee; others will die that same day. One
+has a child by the hand, another a woman by the arm. Some drag crimes in
+their hearts, others walk upright, free, happy to face the world. One is
+being summoned to court as a witness, the other is on his way to the
+doctor. One is fleeing from domestic discord, another is rejoicing over
+some great good fortune. There is the man who has lost his purse and the
+man who is reading a serious letter. One is on his way to church to
+pray, another to the cafe to drown his sorrows. One is radiant with joy
+over the business outlook, another is crushed with poverty. A beautiful
+girl has on her best dress; a cripple lies in the gateway. There is a
+boy who sings a song, and a matron whose eyes are red with weeping. The
+baker carries his bread by, the cobbler his boots. Soldiers are going to
+the barracks, workmen are returning from the factory.
+
+Daniel feels that none of them are strangers to him. He sees himself in
+each of them. He is nearer to them while standing on his elevated
+position behind the iron railing than he was when he walked by them on
+the street. The jet of water that spurts from him is like fate: it flows
+and collects in the basin. Eternal wisdom, he feels, is streaming up to
+him from the fountain below; each hour becomes a century. However men
+may be constituted, he is seized with a supernatural feeling when he
+looks into their eyes. In all of their eyes there is the same fire, the
+same anxiety and the same prayer; the same loneliness, the same life,
+the same death. In all of them he sees the soul of God.
+
+He himself no longer feels his loneliness; he feels that he has been
+distributed among men. His hate has gone, dispelled like so much smoke.
+The tones he hears now come rushing up from the great fountain; and this
+fountain is fed from the blood of all those he sees on the market place.
+Water is something different now: "It washes clean man's very soul, and
+makes it like an angel, whole."
+
+Noon came, and then evening: a day of creation. And when evening came, a
+mist settled over the city, and Daniel came down from his high place at
+the fountain, set the geese carefully to one side, and went home. He
+arrived at the vestibule; he stood in the door of the room looking out
+on the court. His eyes beheld a wonderful sight.
+
+The Goose Man was sitting playing with Agnes and little Gottfried. He
+had cut silhouettes from bright coloured paper and made them stand up on
+the table by bending back the edge of the paper. There he sat, pushing
+these figures into each other, and making such droll remarks that Agnes,
+who had never in her life really laughed, laughed now with all her
+heart, and like the child that she in truth still was.
+
+Little Gottfried could only prattle and clap his hands. The Goose Man
+had placed him on the table. Whenever he made a false or awkward move,
+the Goose Man would set him right. He seemed to be especially skilled at
+handling and amusing children.
+
+When Daniel came in, the Goose Man got up and went over to him, greeted
+him, and said in a kindly, confidential tone: "Are you back so soon? We
+have had such a nice time!"
+
+In the room, however, there was the same haze that had settled down over
+the city when Daniel left the fountain. Agnes and Gottfried were seized
+with a terrible fear. The boy began to cry; Agnes threw her arms around
+him and cried too.
+
+Daniel went up to them, and said: "Don't cry! I'm with you. You don't
+need to cry any more!"
+
+He sat down on the same seat on which the Goose Man had been sitting,
+looked at the tiny paper figures, and, smiling, continued the game the
+Goose Man had been playing with them.
+
+Gottfried became quiet and Agnes happy.
+
+"Good-night!" cried the Goose Man, "now I am again myself, and you are
+you."
+
+He nodded kindly and disappeared.
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+That same evening six of Daniel's pupils came in. They had heard that he
+had been removed from his position at the conservatory.
+
+It was not a mere rumour. Andreas Doederlein had had him discharged. He
+was also relieved of his post as organist at St. AEgydius's. The scandal
+with which he had been associated, and which was by this time known to
+the entire city, had turned the church authorities against him.
+
+The six pupils came into his room where he was playing with his
+children. One of them, who had been chosen as their spokesman, told him
+that they had made up their minds not to leave him; they were anxious to
+have him continue the instruction he had been giving them.
+
+They were clever, vivacious young chaps. In their eyes was an enthusiasm
+that had not yet been dimmed either by cowardice or conceit.
+
+"I am not going to remain in the city," said Daniel. "I am planning to
+return to my native Eschenbach."
+
+The pupils looked at each other. Thereupon the speaker remarked: "We
+want to go with you." They all nodded.
+
+Daniel got up and shook hands with each one of them.
+
+Two days later, Daniel's furniture and household belongings had all been
+packed. Benda came to say good-bye: his work, his great duty was calling
+him.
+
+At first Benda could hardly realise that Daniel was yet to live an
+active life; that there was still a whole life in him; that his life was
+not merely the debris of human existence, the ruins of a heart. But it
+was true.
+
+There was about Daniel the expression, the bearing of a man who had been
+liberated, unchained. No one could help but notice it. Though more
+reticent and laconic than in former days, his eyes had taken on a new
+splendour, a renewed brilliancy and clarity; they were at once serious
+and cheerful. His mood had become milder, his face more peaceful.
+
+The friends shook hands. Benda then left the room slowly, went down the
+steps slowly, and once out on the street he walked along slowly: he felt
+so small, so strangely unimportant.
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+Daniel returned to Eschenbach, and moved into the house of his parents.
+His pupils took rooms with the residents of the village.
+
+He was regarded by the natives as a peculiar individual. They smiled
+when they spoke of him, or when they saw him passing through the streets
+absorbed in his own thoughts. But it was not a malicious smile. If there
+was the faintest tinge of ridicule in it at first, it soon gave way to a
+vague feeling of pride.
+
+He gained a mysterious influence over people with whom he came in
+contact; many sought his advice when in trouble. His pupils especially
+adored him. He had the gift of holding their attention, of carrying them
+along. The means he employed were the very simplest: his splendid,
+cheerful personality, the harmony between what he said and what he did,
+his earnestness, his humanness, his resignation to the cause that lay
+close to his heart, and his own belief in this cause--those were the
+means through which and by which he gained a mysterious influence over
+those with whom he came in touch.
+
+He became a famous teacher; the number of pupils who wished to study
+under him increased from year to year. But he admitted very few of them
+to his classes. He took only the best; and the certainty with which he
+made his selections and differentiated was wellnigh infallible.
+
+No inducements of any kind could persuade him to leave the isolated
+place where he had elected to live.
+
+He was almost always in a good humour; he was never distracted; and the
+preciseness and sharpness with which he observed whatever took place was
+remarkable. The one thing that could throw him into a rage was to see
+some one abuse a dumb beast. Once he got into trouble with a teamster
+who was beating his skinny old jade in order to make it pull a load that
+was far in excess of its strength. The boys on the street made fun of
+him; the people laughed with considerable satisfaction, and said: "Ah,
+the professor: he's a bit off."
+
+Agnes kept house for him; she was most faithful in looking out for his
+wants. When he would leave the house, she would bring him his hat and
+walking stick. Every evening before she went to sleep, he would come in
+to her and kiss her on the forehead. It was rare that they spoke with
+each other, but there was a secret agreement, a peaceful harmony,
+between them.
+
+Gottfried grew up to be a strong, healthy boy. He had Daniel's physique
+and Eleanore's eyes. Yes, they were the eyes with that blue fire; and
+they had Eleanore's elfin-like chastity and her hatred of all that is
+false and simulated. Daniel saw in this a freak of nature of the
+profoundest significance. All the laws of blood seemed unsubstantial and
+shadowy. His feelings often wandered between gratitude and astonishment.
+
+Of Dorothea he heard one day that she was making her living as a
+violinist in a woman's orchestra. He made some inquiries and traced her
+as far as Berlin. There he lost her. A few years later he was told that
+she had become the mistress of a wealthy country gentleman in Bohemia,
+and was driving about in an automobile on the Riviera.
+
+He was also informed of the death of Herr Carovius. His last hours were
+said to have been very hard: he had kept crying out, "My flute, give me
+my flute!"
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+In August, 1909, Daniel's pupils celebrated the fiftieth birthday of
+their master. They made him a great number of presents, and gave him a
+dinner in the inn at the Sign of the Ox.
+
+One of his pupils, an extremely handsome young fellow for whose future
+Daniel had the highest of hopes, presented him with a huge bouquet of
+orange lilies, wild natives of the woods around Eschenbach. He had
+gathered them himself, and arranged them in a costly vase.
+
+The menu at the dinner was quite frugal; the wine was Franconian country
+wine. During the dinner, Daniel rose, took his glass in his hand, and,
+with a far-away look in his eyes, said: "I drink to the health and
+happiness of a creature who is a stranger to all of you. She grew up
+here in Eschenbach. Many years ago she vanished in a most mysterious
+way. But I know that she is alive and happy at this hour."
+
+His pupils all raised their glasses. They looked at him, and were deeply
+moved by the strength and clarity of his features.
+
+After the dinner he and his pupils went to the old church. He had both
+of the large doors opened so that the bright light of day might pour in
+unimpeded. Up in the lofty vaults of the nave, where all had been dark
+but a moment ago, there was now a milky clearness and cheerfulness.
+
+He went to the organ and began to play. Some men and women who chanced
+to be passing by came in and sat down on the benches with the boys. Then
+a group of children entered. They tripped timidly through the open
+doors, stopped, looked around, and opened their eyes as wide as children
+can. Other people came in; for the tones of the organ had penetrated the
+humble homes. They looked up at the organ silently and seriously; for
+its exalted melodies had, without their being prepared for it, carried
+them away from their everyday existence, and lifted them up above its
+abject lowliness.
+
+The tones grew louder and louder, until they sounded like the prayer of
+a heart overflowing with feeling. As the close of the great hymn drew
+on, a little girl was heard weeping from among the uninvited auditors.
+
+It was Agnes who wept. Had life been fully awakened in her? Was love
+calling her out into the unknown? Was the life of her mother being
+repeated in her?
+
+Children grow up and are seized by their fate.
+
+Toward evening, Daniel took a walk with his nine pupils out over the
+meadow. They went quite far. The last song of the birds had died out,
+the glow of the sun had turned pale.
+
+The beautiful youth, then walking by Daniel's side, said: "And the work,
+Master?"
+
+Daniel merely smiled; his eye roamed over the landscape.
+
+The landscape shows many shades of green. Around the weirs the grass is
+higher, so high at times that one can see nothing of the geese but their
+beaks. Were it not for their cackling, one might take these beaks for
+strangely mobile flowers.
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: The table below lists all corrections applied to
+the original text.
+
+p. 007: [normalized] set up as a book-seller -> bookseller
+p. 008: the lovely curves of the birdges -> bridges
+p. 011: [normalized] he slipt into the Festival Playhouse -> slipped
+p. 011: [normalized] acquaintance of Andreas Doeberlein -> Doederlein
+p. 011: [normalized] Doeberlein seemed not disinclined -> Doederlein
+p. 014: [normalized] little, eight-year old daughter -> eight-year-old
+p. 017: [normalized] Theresa said to the working-man -> workingman
+p. 018: fiercely red pamphets spread out -> pamphlets
+p. 023: [normalized] a room of the brushmaker Hadebusch -> brush-maker
+p. 024: Frau Hadesbusch wailed -> Hadebusch
+p. 024: [normalized] The old brushmaker poked his head -> brush-maker
+p. 046: status of the artistocracy -> aristocracy
+p. 047: [normalized] he indulged in eaves-dropping -> eavesdropping
+p. 048: [normalized] as a fourteen-year old girl -> fourteen-year-old
+p. 054: no sooner had be seen her -> he
+p. 057: seemed to be similiarly situated -> similarly
+p. 065: [normalized] the seventeen-year old boy -> seventeen-year-old
+p. 067: flatter the leader and politican -> politician
+p. 067: [normalized] socialist book-keeper -> bookkeeper
+p. 067: Her shrieks called Herr Franke -> Francke
+p. 084: [missing period] took the artist's part.
+p. 094: [normalized] she was in her nightgown -> night-gown
+p. 095: clasped Eleanor about the hips -> Eleanore
+p. 095: stepped back from her, terror stricken -> terror-stricken
+p. 101: The venemous and eloquent hatred -> venomous
+p. 105: [normalized] fell head-long to the floor -> headlong
+p. 107: [added comma] and if you want to, why you can come -> why, you
+p. 121: meant at the time by "having a child," -> 'having a child,'
+p. 122: [added comma] Why the arithmetic of it -> Why, the
+p. 123: [normalized] fixed on a ten-year old girl -> ten-year-old
+p. 124: [normalized] right under my bed-room -> bedroom
+p. 125: crystallised by artifical means -> artificial
+p. 127: [normalized] voice that the passers-by simpered -> passersby
+p. 130: rather die, they said, then meet -> than meet
+p. 131: she could play the role of an emissary -> role
+p. 132: [normalized] Eschenbach at mid-day -> midday
+p. 133: [normalized] unusually large eye-brows -> eyebrows
+p. 136: their retinue was seedy looking indeed -> seedy-looking
+p. 136: dozen or so super-numaries -> super-numeraries
+p. 145: [normalized] pleasing, faraway look in her eyes -> far-away
+p. 153: [normalized] character of the book-seller -> bookseller
+p. 154: [normalized] with heartrending dignity -> heart-rending
+p. 162: [comma missing ink] "Where are you going, my dear friend?"
+p. 163: he liked to breathe the air that Eberhard dreamed -> breathed
+p. 169: [normalized] weatherbeaten by the storms -> weather-beaten
+p. 169: something childlike in his restlessness -> child-like
+p. 176: from the land of no-where -> nowhere
+p. 180: [normalized] this over-crowded room -> overcrowded
+p. 183: the words of the "Herzreise" -> "Harzreise"
+p. 183: voice of the painter Krapotkin -> Kropotkin
+p. 186: Gertrude was pealing potatoes -> peeling
+p. 191: but twenty pfennigs' worth of sweets -> buy
+p. 197: [added closing quotes] "I think he is. If not, I will get him."
+p. 202: light hearted and light footed -> light-hearted and light-footed
+p. 212: [normalized] appeared in the _Phoenix_ -> _Phoenix_
+p. 215: [normalized] her well-nigh supernatural ability -> wellnigh
+p. 215: [normalized] a serious, far-a-way warning -> far-away
+p. 227: threw it at Frauelein Varini -> Fraeulein
+p. 253: [normalized] passersby and onlookers -> on-lookers
+p. 257: Eleanor's example was equally great -> Eleanore's
+p. 275: the greatest atraction for her -> attraction
+p. 297: potato pealings -> peelings
+p. 300: [normalized] just stepped out of a band-box -> bandbox
+p. 300: That old white bearded man -> white-bearded
+p. 301: [punctuation] interrupted Philippina with a giggle, -> giggle.
+p. 304: his nose was as flat as a pan-cake -> pancake
+p. 313: You probaby think I am an idiotic simpleton -> probably
+p. 317: [normalized] hiring out as a mid-wife -> midwife
+p. 320: [normalized] the sound of foot-steps -> footsteps
+p. 326: at most an inadquate light -> inadequate
+p. 327: rid himself completely of all entangements -> entanglements
+p. 331: That is the way our childer are -> children
+p. 333: Count Ulrich had asked for her hand -> Urlich
+p. 338: more and more strange and izarre -> bizarre
+p. 340: his shabby old yellow rain-coat -> raincoat
+p. 346: a vague, faraway idea of music -> far-away
+p. 358: passsionately absorbed in himself -> passionately
+p. 360: [normalized] and a long law-suit -> lawsuit
+p. 360: establishment in the Plobenhaf Street -> Plobenhof
+p. 364: with some hesistation -> hesitation
+p. 378: [normalized] A neighbour, the green grocer -> green-grocer
+p. 397: unsually attentive expression -> unusually
+p. 411: [normalized] the next day to a school-mate -> schoolmate
+p. 424: [punctuation] sleep longer." Dorothea answered -> longer,"
+p. 426: [added period] concerned themselves about him in the slightest.
+p. 441: [normalized] try to brow-beat me -> browbeat
+p. 444: bent dawn, stretched out her arm -> down
+p. 461: The Doederlins are born in false ermine -> Doederleins
+p. 464: [added period] going beyond one's means.
+p. 466: Little Gootfried could only prattle -> Gottfried ]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Goose Man, by Jacob Wassermann
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