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. Hedeclined. 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.
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.
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 discontentedguest 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 supplyof 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.
Benno Jordanwas now a senior in thegymnasiumand 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’sinsurance, 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 whohad 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.
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, thistime 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.
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.
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 thanthat 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.
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.
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 ofmany 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.”
Eleanore returned the copy of “Manon Lescaut.” When Danielasked 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.
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 wonderfulaurora borealisand 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.
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 musicas 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 himservule, 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.
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 ownmind 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.
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, AlfonsDiruf—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 withheads 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.
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 tellyou. 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 inmésalliance. 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.”