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Title: The Goose Man

Author: Jacob Wassermann

Release Date: May 6, 2008 [EBook #25345]

Language: English

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                             The GOOSE MAN

                          by JACOB WASSERMANN


                               Author of
                        “THE WORLD’S ILLUSION”

                      _Authorized translation by_
                         ALLEN W. PORTERFIELD


                   [Illustration: Das Gänsemännchen]


                     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 Gänsemännchen”),
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 Höllriegel 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 Nördlingen 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 Höllriegel 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 Döderlein, who was a professor at the Nuremberg conservatory and
a tireless apostle of the redeemer. Döderlein seemed not disinclined to
understand and to help, and expressed a real delight at the deep,
original enthusiasm and burning devotion of his protégé. 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 Döderlein’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
Döderlein 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 Döderlein 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 Döderlein 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.

Döderlein 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 Döderlein’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.”

Döderlein 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 Schütt 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 café 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
rôle 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 habitués, 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 Döderlein, though he
seemed to take anything but pride in the relationship. If any one
mentioned Döderlein’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 rôle 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 naïveté 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 Zürich 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 cafés, 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 Ægydius,
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 façade 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 Döderlein, the professor
of music. Not wishing to meet him, Herr Carovius would stand at the
street corner, until the light from Döderlein’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 Gründlich, 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 Döderlein 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 Döderlein. “You are a shameless
prostitute,” he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Döderlein
the door. The wedding took place.

One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas
Döderlein, 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 Döderlein, 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 Döderlein 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 Döderlein 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 Döderleins 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 Cæsar. Cæsar 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-Döderlein 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 Cæsar. 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
Döderlein 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 Döderlein, 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 Döderlein’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 café 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 Cæsar 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 Döderlein 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 Cæsar 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. Cæsar 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
Café 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 employé. 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 Fürther
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 Rüdiger 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.

Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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. Fräulein
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.

Fräulein Albertina said to her sisters: “He seems like an interesting
young man, but he has bad manners.”

“Artists attach no importance to externalities,” replied Fräulein
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 Rüdiger, 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 Rüdiger 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 Füll. 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 Rüdiger 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 Rückert’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 Mainländer. 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 naïve 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
Dörmaul. He went to Dörmaul 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 Dörmaul: “Incomprehensible
stuff! Crazy attempt to be original! You couldn’t coax a dog away from
the stove with it.” Such was Dörmaul’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 Dörmaul. He also told
Benda that Dörmaul 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 Dörmaul’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 Dörmaul? 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 Döderlein 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 Dörmaul 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 naïveté; for he felt that his attitude was due
to naïveté 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 Rüdiger 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. Fräulein 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 Rüdiger, the
geometrician, who had always been an ardent champion of Feuerbach, took
the artist’s part. It finally reached the point where Rüdiger 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 Dürer. 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 _mésalliance_. 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 Fräulein 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 Ægydius
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 protégé 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 Döderlein. 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, Dörmaul, the impresario, gave a dinner in the Little
Swan, to which he invited Daniel. Dörmaul 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 Döderlein 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 Döderlein’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. Döderlein 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, Döderlein exclaimed: “Give me Lethe, my fair one.” By
“Lethe” he meant punch.

Daniel drank Lethe too. He embraced old Herold, shook hands with Andreas
Döderlein, 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 Ægydius 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 Füll, 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 Ægydius 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 Störbecker. 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 Störbecker 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.”

“_Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon_,” 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.

“_Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon_,” 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
Fürth 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 Rübsam,
a notary public and an old man to boot. Eleanore visited the Rübsams
occasionally, as did also her father; and in the course of conversation
it came out that Herr Rübsam 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 Döderlein 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
Dörmaul: 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.” Döderlein 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
Dörmaul 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 Döderlein 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 Döderlein. “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 Döderlein 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 Döderlein was sitting at the table in the
musicians’ waiting room. He looked like Emperor Barbarossa in
Kyffhäuser. 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 Döderleins, 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
Zoölogical 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 Altmühltal. 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 Döderlein,” 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 Cæsar 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 Döderlein a good deal to think
about in the days to come,” said Daniel.

“You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Döderlein,” 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
Döderlein 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 Döderlein
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 naïve, 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 Rüdiger 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 Rüdigers’ 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.

Fräulein Jasmina took out her handkerchief and dried her eyes. Fräulein
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.”

Fräulein Jasmina and Fräulein Albertina nodded their heads in sadness
and without looking up.

“Can we put the unfortunate girl out of the house?” continued Fräulein
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 Fräulein 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?”

Fräulein 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 Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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 Rüdiger 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 rôle 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 Rüdigers 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 Steinhäger was
the mother of the illegitimate child, Eva Steinhäger, 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 Dinkelsbühl, 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
Dörmaul 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 rôles, 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 Dörmaul 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 café; 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.

Dörmaul 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 Dörmaul 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.”

Dörmaul 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 Hänschen: 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 æsthetic
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 café 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. “Freischütz” 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. Dörmaul 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 Dörmaul, 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 Dörmaul. 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.

Dörmaul 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 _Phœnix_, 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 rôle 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 Dörmaul 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 fiancée
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 Rübsam 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 Ægydius 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 Ægydius 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
fiancée 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
Wöhrd 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.

“_Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon_,” 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 protégé. 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 Dörmaul, 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 Rübsam, 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 Rivière was of longer duration.
Rivière 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. Rivière 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. Rivière 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. Rivière 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
Schütt 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 Rübsam. 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 Schütt 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 rôle 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 rôle 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 Fräulein Eleanore come down at once.
The boy came back, and said that Fräulein 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 Rübsam’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 Rübsam, 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
Füll, 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 Cæsar 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 habitués 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 Gründlich, 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-à-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 Döderlein
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 _étude_, 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 Ægydius 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. Rivière, 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. Rivière. 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. Rivière 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. Rivière 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 rôle, 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 Dörmaul-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 æsthetic 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 Fräulein
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 _Phœnix_
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 Rübsam
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. Rivière at the café 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 étoile_,” 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
Blätter_ 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. Rivière
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. Rivière 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. Rivière 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. Rivière 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. Rivière, 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 m