Gertrude was said to be a pietist. She went to church every day, and had an inclination toward the Catholic religion, a fact which gave Jordan, as an inveterate Protestant, no little worry. During the day she looked after the house; but as soon as she had everything in order, she would take her place by the quilting frame and work on crowns of thorns, hearts run through with swords, and languishing angels for a mission. There she would sit, hour after hour, with bowed head and knit.

The first time Daniel saw her she had on a Nile green dress, fastened about her hips with a girdle of scales, while her wavy brown hair hung loose over her shoulders. It was in this make-up that he always saw her when he thought of her years after: Nile green dress, bowed head, sitting at the quilting frame, and quite unaware of his presence, a picture of unamiability, conscious or affected.

Eleanore was entirely different. She was like a lamp carried through a dark room.

For some time she had been employed in the offices of the Prudentia, for she wished to make her own living. So far as it was humanly possible to determine from her casual remarks, she thoroughly enjoyed her work. She liked to make out receipts for premiums, lick stamps, copy letters, and see so many people come in and go out. Stout old Diruf and lanky Zittel did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a short time her wonted buoyancy had returned.

She seemed like a child, and yet she was every inch a woman. She insisted on wearing her little felt cap at a jaunty angle on her blond hair. When she entered the room, the atmosphere in it underwent a change; it was easier to breathe; it was fresher. People somehow disapproved of the fact that her eyes were so radiantly blue, and that her two rows of perfect white teeth were constantly shining from out between her soft, peach-like lips. They said she was light-hearted; they said she was a butterfly. Benjamin Dorn was of the opinion that she was a creature possessed of the devil of sensuality and finding her completest satisfaction in earthly finery and frippery. For some time there had been an affair of an intimate nature between her and Baron von Auffenberg. Just what it was no one knew precisely; the facts were not obtainable. But Benjamin Dorn, experienced ferreter that he was, could not see two people of different sexes together without imagining that he was an accomplice in the hereditary sin of human kind. And one day he caught Eleanore alone in the company of Baron von Auffenberg. From that day on she was, in his estimation, a lost soul.

The fact concerning Eleanore was this: life never came very close to her. It comes right up to other people, strangles them, or drags them along with it. It kept its distance from Eleanore, for she lived in a glass case. If she had sorrow of any kind, if some painfully indeterminable sensation was gnawing at her soul, if the vulgarity and banality of a base and disjointed world came her way, the glass case in which she lived simply became more spacious than ever, and the things or thoughts that swarmed around it more and more incomprehensible.

One can always laugh if one lives in a glass case. Even bad dreams remain on the outside. Even longing becomes nothing more than a purple breath which clouds the crystal from without, not from within.

The people were quite right in saying that Jordan was bringing up his daughters like princesses. Both were far removed from the customary things of life: the one was translated to the realm of darkness, the other to that of light.

Daniel saw both of them. They were just as strange to him as he to them. He saw the brother, too, a tall, glib, dapper youth. He saw the old house with its dilapidated stairs, its rooms filled with cumbersome, provincial furniture. He saw the alternating currents of life in this family: there was now rest, now unrest, now quiet, now storm. Life flowed out from the house, and then life, the same or of a different origin, flowed back in again. When he came, he talked with Jordan himself rather than with any one else; for he always knew when Jordan would be at home. They spoke in a free and easy fashion and about things in general. If their conversation could be characterised more fully, it might be said that Daniel was reserved and Jordan tactful. Gertrude sat by the table and attended to her needlework.

Daniel came and warmed himself by the stove. If he was offered a sandwich or a cup of coffee he declined. If the offer was made with noticeable insistency, he shook his head and distorted the features of his face until he resembled an irritated ape. It was the peasant spirit of defiance in him that made him act this way. He nourished a measure of small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying, he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he simply stayed away.

XI

His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.

Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in which an invalid from the Wasp's Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius Street were taking part.

In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the barracks, was examined—and rejected because of a hollow chest.

At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the hangman's bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were drifting about. But when he raised his distressed face a gigantic countenance became visible. The great vaulted arch of heaven was a countenance fearfully distorted by vengeance and scorn. Of escape from it there could be no thought. Within his soul everything became wrapped in darkness. Tones and pictures ran together, giving the disagreeably inarticulate impression that would be made by drawing a wet rag across a fresh, well-ordered creation.

As he walked on, it seemed to him that the horror of the vision was diminishing. The countenance became smaller and more amiable. It was now not much larger than the facade of a church and what wrath remained seemed to be concentrated in the forehead. An old woman passed by, carrying apples in her apron. He trembled at the smell of them; but he did not reach out; he did not try to take a single one of them from her; he still held himself in control. By this time the entire vision was not much larger than the top of a tree, and in it were the traces of mercy.

The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the pavement. There was the vision: he caught sight of it in bodily form on the door jamb of the shop. He could not see that it was the mask of Zingarella. Of course not, for it was a transfigured face, and how could he have grasped a reality in his present state of mind? He looked from within out. The thing before him was a vision; it joined high heaven with the earth below; it was a promise. He could have thrown himself down on the street and wept, for it seemed to him that he was saved.

The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being far removed from death and equally far removed from life—all this caused his feeling to swell into one of credulous devotion. His entire future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without a moment's hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop.

Within he found a young man whom the caster addressed most respectfully as Dr. Benda, and who was about thirty years old. Dr. Benda was being shown a number of successful casts of a figure entitled "The Fountain of Virtue." It was quite a little while before the caster turned to Daniel and asked him what he wanted. In a somewhat rude voice and with an unsteady gesture, Daniel made it clear to him that he wished to buy the mask. The caster removed it from the door, laid it on the counter, and named his price. He looked at the shabby clothing of the newly arrived customer, concluded at once that the price, ten marks, would be more than he could afford, and turned again to Dr. Benda, so that Daniel might have time to make up his mind.

The two conversed for quite a while. When the caster finally turned around, he was not a little surprised to see that Daniel was still standing at the counter. He stood there in fact with half closed eyes, his left hand lying on the face of the mask. The caster exchanged a somewhat dazed glance with Dr. Benda, who, in a moment of forewarning sympathy, grasped the situation perfectly in which the stranger found himself. Dr. Benda somehow understood, owing to his instinct for appreciation of unusual predicaments, the man's poverty, his isolation, and even the ardour of his wish. Subduing as well as he might the feeling of ordinary reserve, he stepped up to Daniel, and said to him calmly, quietly, seriously, and without the slightest trace of condescension: "If you will permit me to advance you the money for the mask, you will do me a substantial favor."

Daniel gritted his teeth—just a little. His face turned to a greenish hue. But the face of his would-be friend, schooled in affairs of the spirit, showed a winning trace of human kindness. It conquered Daniel; it made him gentle. He submitted. Dr. Benda laid the money for the mask on the counter, and Daniel was as silent as the tomb.

When they left the shop, Daniel held the mask under his arm so tightly that the paper wrapping was crushed, if the mask itself was not. The sad state of his clothing and his haggard appearance in general struck Dr. Benda at once and forcibly. He needed to ask but a few well chosen questions to get at the underlying cause of this misery, physical and spiritual, in human form. He pretended that he had not lunched and invited Daniel to be his guest at the inn at the sign of the Grape.

Daniel felt that his soul had suddenly been unlocked by a magic key. At last—he had ears and could hear, eyes and could see. It seemed to him that he had come up to earth from out of some lightless, subterranean cavern. And when they separated he had a friend.



THE NERO OF TO-DAY

I

The spectacle of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he preferred above all others was what is known as Knickebein. Once he had enjoyed his liberal potion, he became jovial, friendly, companionable. In these moods he would venture the hardiest of assertions, not merely in the field of eroticism, but against the government and divine providence as well.

And yet, when he trippled home with mincing steps, there was in his face an expression of cowardly, petty smirking. It was the sign of his inner return to virtuous living; for his night was not as his day. The one belied the other.

He had a quite respectable income; the house in which he lived was his own private property. It was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town; it was certainly one of the oldest and gloomiest buildings in that part of the country. An especially attractive feature of it was the smart and graceful bay-window. Above the beautifully arched outer door there was a patrician coat-of-arms, consisting of two crossed spears with a helmet above. This was chiselled into the stone. In the narrow court was a draw-well literally set in a frame of moss. Each floor of the house had its own gallery, richly supplied with the most artistic of carvings. The stairway was spacious; the tread of the steps was broad, the elevation slight; there were four landings. It symbolised in truth the leisurely, comfortable tarrying of centuries gone before and now a matter of easy memory only.

Often in the nighttime, Herr Carovius recognised in the distance the massive figure of his brother-in-law, Andreas Doederlein, the professor of music. Not wishing to meet him, Herr Carovius would stand at the street corner, until the light from Doederlein's study assured him that the professor was at home. On other occasions he would come in contact with the occupant of the second floor, Dr. Friedrich Benda. When these two came together, there was invariably a competitive tipping of hats and passing of compliments. Each wished to outdo the other in matters of courtesy. Neither was willing to take precedence over the other. The polished civility of the young man made an even greater degree of pretty behaviour on the part of Herr Carovius imperative, with the result that his excessive refinement of manners made him appear awkward, while his embarrassment made coherent speech difficult and at times impossible.

When however he came alone, he would take the huge key from his pocket, unlock the door, light a candle, hold it high above his head, and spy into every nook and cranny of the barn-like hall before entering his apartment on the ground floor.

II

Herr Carovius was a regular customer at the Crocodile Inn; a table was always reserved for him. Around it there assembled every noon the following companions: Solicitor of the Treasury Korn, assistant magistrate Hesselberger, assistant postmaster Kitzler, apothecary Pflaum, jeweller Gruendlich, and baker Degen. Judge Kleinlein also joined them occasionally as a guest of honour.

They gossiped about their neighbours, their acquaintances, their friends, and their colleagues. What they said ran the whole gamut of human emotions from an innocent anecdote up to venomous calumny. Not a single event was immune from malicious backstairs comment. Reputations were sullied without discrimination; objections were taken to the conduct of every living soul; every family was shown to have its skeleton in the closet.

When the luncheon was finished, the men all withdrew and went about their business, with the exception of Herr Carovius. He remained to read the papers. For him it was one of the most important hours of the day. Having feasted his ears with friends in private, he now turned to a study of the follies, transgressions, and tragedies that make up everyday life.

He read three papers every day: one was a local sheet, one a great Berlin daily, and the third a paper published in Hamburg. He never deviated; it was these three, week in and week out. And he read them from beginning to end; politics, special articles, and advertisements were of equal concern to him. In this way he familiarised himself with the advance of civilisation, the changes civic life was undergoing, and the general status of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat.

Nothing escaped him. He was as much interested in the murder of a peasant in a Pommeranian village as he was in the loss of a pearl necklace on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. He read with equal concentration of the sinking of a steamer in the South Sea and the wedding of a member of the Royal Family in Westminster Abbey. He could work up just as much enthusiasm over the latest fashions as he could over the massacring of enslaved Armenians by the Turks. If he read with care and reflection of the death of a leading citizen, he pursued the same course with regard to the reprehending of a relatively harmless vagabond.

It is only fair to remark, however, that his real sympathy was with those events that have to be entered on the calamitous side of life's ledger. This was due to a bizarre kink in his philosophy: he studied the world primarily from the point of view of its wars, earthquakes, floods, hailstorms, cyclones, and public and private tragedies in the lives of men. Happy and reassuring events, such as the birth of a healthy child, the conferring of an order of distinction, heroic deeds, the winning of a prize in the lottery, the publication of a good book, or the announcement of a legitimate and successful speculation made no impression on him. At times they even annoyed him. He kept his mind, in other words, riveted on the evils, sorrows, woes, and tribulations that come to pass either on this earth or in the starry firmament above, and that were somehow brought to his attention.

His brain was a storehouse of fearful and ferocious happenings; it was a catalogue, an inventory of disease, seduction, theft, robbery, larceny, assassination, murder, catastrophe, pest, incest, suicide, duel, bankruptcy, and the never failing family quarrel.

If he chanced to enrich his collection by the addition of some especially curious or unheard-of incident, he took out his pocket diary, noted the date, and then wrote: "In Amberg a preacher had a hemorrhage while delivering his morning sermon." Or: "In Cochin China a tiger killed and ate fourteen children, and then, forcing its way into the bungalow of a settler, bit off the head of a woman as she was sleeping peacefully by the side of her husband." Or: "In Copenhagen a former actress, now ninety years old, mounted a huge vegetable basket on the market place, and recited Lady Macbeth's monologue. Her unconventional behaviour attracted such a large crowd of passersby that several people were crushed to death in the excitement."

This done, he would go home, happy as a man can be. To idlers standing in the doorways or servants looking out the windows he would extend the greetings of the day, and that with really conspicuous cordiality.

If a fire broke out in the city, he was present. As his eyes peered into the flames, they seemed intoxicated, obsessed, seized with uncanniness. He would hum a tune of some sort, look into the anxious faces of those immediately concerned, busy himself with whatever had been salvaged, and attempt to force his gratuitous advice on the fire chief.

If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and, where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the funeral discourse. But his lips twitched in a peculiar fashion, as if he felt that he were understood, and flattered.

And in truth all this did flatter him. The defeat, distress, and death of other people, the betrayals that take place in any community, the highhanded injustice of those in power, the oppression of the poor, the violence that was done to right and righteousness, and the sufferings which had to be borne by thousands day after day, all this flattered him; it interested him; it lulled him into a comfortable feeling of personal security.

But then he sat down at his piano at home, and played an adagio of Beethoven or an impromptu by Schubert, his eyes with fine frenzy rolling in the meantime. And when the mighty chorus in a Bach oratorio resounded, he became pale with ecstasy. At the hearing of a good song well sung he could shed copious tears.

He idolised music.

He was a provincial with unfettered instincts. He was an agitator with a tendency to conservatism. He was a Nero without servants, without power, and without land. He was a musician from despair and out of vanity. He was a Nero in our own day.

He was the Nero of our day living in three rooms. He was a lonely bachelor and a bookworm. He exchanged his views with the corner grocer; he discussed city ordinances with the night watchman; he was a tyrant through and through and a hangman at heart; he indulged in eavesdropping at the shrine of fate, and in this way concocted the most improbable of combinations and wanton deeds of violence; he was constantly on the lookout for misfortune, litigation, and shame; he rejoiced at every failure, and was delighted with oppression, whether at home or abroad. He hung with unqualified joy on the imagined ruins of imaginary disaster, and took equal pleasure in the actual debacles of life as it was lived about him. And alongside of this innate and at times unexpressed gruesomeness and bloodthirstiness, he was filled with a torturing passion for music. This was Herr Carovius. Such was his life.

III

For nine long years, that is, from the time she was fifteen until she was twenty-four, his sister Marguerite kept house for him. She got his breakfast, made his bed, darned his socks, and brushed his clothes; and all he knew about her was that she had yellowish hair, a skin full of freckles, and a timid, child-like voice. His astonishment was consequently unbounded when Andreas Doederlein called one day and proposed to her. He had moved into the house the year before. Herr Carovius was amazed for the very simple reason that he had never known Marguerite except as a fourteen-year-old girl.

He took her to task. With unusual effort she summoned the courage to tell him that she was going to marry Doederlein. "You are a shameless prostitute," he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Doederlein the door. The wedding took place.

One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas Doederlein, being in an unusually happy mood, went to the piano, and began playing the shepherd's motif from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."

Herr Carovius sprang to his feet as if stung by a viper, and exclaimed: "Stop playing that foul magic! You know as well as you are living that I don't believe in it."

"What do you mean, brother?" asked Andreas Doederlein, his head bowed in grief.

"What are you trying to do? Are you trying to teach me something about this poisoner of wells?" shouted Herr Carovius, and his face took on the enraged expression of a hunchback who has just been taunted about his deformity. "Does the professor imagine that he knows better than I do who this Richard Wagner is, this comedian, this Jew who goes about masked as the Germanic Messiah, this cacaphonist, this bungler, botcher, and bully, this court sycophant, this Pulchinello who pokes fun at the whole German Empire and the rest of Europe led about by the nose, this Richard Wagner? Very well, if you have anything to teach me about him, go on! Proceed! I am listening. Go on! Pluck up your courage." With this he leaned back in his chair, and laughed a laughter punctuated with asthmatic sighs, his hands in the meantime resting folded across his stomach.

Andreas Doederlein rose to his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crushing between two finger nails. "Oh, ho," he said, "how interesting! Upon my word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some one were to offer me all the money in the world, I should not like to be so ... interesting. Not I. And you, Marguerite, would you like to be so interesting?"

There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority. It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was immediately converted into a gurgling titter. He opened his eyes wide and rolled them behind his nose-glasses, thus making himself look like a water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding her hands, glanced in helpless fashion from her brother to her husband, and dropped her head before them.

Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Doederlein one of hatred? It was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous mass of flesh on his neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pass his door with not a thought of entering it.

When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings, he squinted into the corner, tittered, and made bold to say: "Well, my congratulations. It is good that the Doederleins are not to become extinct, for so long as one of them is living, plaisir will not have vanished from the earth."

Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She soon stopped playing at home.

Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Doederlein wedding. Herr Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea. The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle's benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius said: "Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little toad could croak so beautifully."

Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he looked into Marguerite's radiant face, a certain disappointment in life—a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which delighted him.

IV

About this time Herr Becker died. He was the senior city official, and had been living in the second story of the apartment for twenty-eight years. Dr. Benda moved in at once with his mother.

Carovius told all about this at the reserved table in the Crocodile. His companions were in a position to tell him a great deal more about the ancestry and past life of the Bendas. They were said to have been very rich once, to have lost their money in the great panic, and to be living at present in quite moderate circumstances. Benda's father was said to have shot himself, and his mother was reported to have taken the boy to school every morning. Solicitor Korn had been told that, despite his youth, Dr. Benda had written a number of scientific books on biology, but that this had not enabled him to reach his desired goal.

"What goal?" the table companions asked in unison.

"Why, he wanted to be made a professor, but people had objected." Why had they objected? came the question from more than one throat. "Well, you see it was this way: the man is a Jew, and the authorities are not going to appoint a Jew to an official position in a university without raising objections. That is to be taken as a matter of course." That this was in very truth to be taken as a matter of course was also the opinion of Herr Carovius, who, however, insisted that Benda didn't exactly look like a Jew; he looked more like a tolerably fat Dutchman. He was in truth not quite blond, but he was not dark either, and his nose was as straight as a rule.

"That is just the point: that's the Jewish trick," remarked the Judge, and took a mighty draught from his beer glass. "In olden times," he said, "the Jews all had the yellow spots, aquiline noses, and hair like bushmen. But to-day no Christian can be certain who is Jew and who is Gentile." To this the whole table agreed.

Herr Carovius at once began a system of espionage. He studied the faces of the new tenants, and was particularly careful to note when they went out and when they came in and with whom they associated. He knew precisely when they turned the lights out at night and when they opened the windows in the morning. He could tell exactly how many rugs they had, how much coal they burned, how much meat they ate, how many letters they received, what walks they preferred, what people they spoke to, and who recognised them. As if this were not enough, he went down to the bookstore, bought the complete works of Dr. Benda, and read these heavy scientific treatises in the sweat of his brow. He was annoyed at the thought that they had not been critically reviewed. He would have embraced any one who would have told him that they were all perfectly worthless compilations.

One evening, along towards spring, he chanced to go into the backyard to feed Caesar. He looked up, and saw Marguerite standing on the balcony. She did not see him, for she was also looking up. On the balcony of the second floor, across the court from her, stood Friedrich Benda, responding to some mute signals Marguerite was giving him. Finally they both stopped and merely looked at each other, until Marguerite caught sight of her brother, when she quickly disappeared behind the glass door draped with green curtains.

"Aha," thought Carovius, "there's something up." The scene warmed his very blood.

From that day on he avoided the court. He sat instead for hours at a time in a room from which he could look out through a crack and see everything that was taking place at the windows and on the balconies. He discovered that signals were being sent from the first floor up to the second by changing the position of a flower pot on the railing of the balcony, and that these signals were answered by having a yellow cloth flutter on now a vertical, now a horizontal pole.

At times Marguerite would come out quite timidly, and look up; at times Benda appeared, and stood for a while at the window completely absorbed, as it seemed, in melancholy thoughts. Herr Carovius caught them together but on one single occasion. He opened the window as quickly as he could, and placed his ear so that he could hear what was being said, but it so happened that over in the adjoining yard some one was just then nailing a box together. As a result of the noise it was impossible for him to understand their remarks.

Since that day they exchanged no more signals, and never again appeared on the balcony.

Carovius rubbed his hands at the thought that the majestic Andreas Doederlein had after all grown horns. But his joy waned when he reflected that two other people were deriving profit from the situation. That should not be; that had to be corrected.

And so he stood at times in the evening out in the narrow passage at the entrance to his apartment. His bathrobe fell down over his bony body in many folds. In his right hand he carried a candle. Thus equipped, he listened in, or rather into, the stillness of the house.

At times he would take a dark lantern, walk up the stairs slowly, step by step, and listen, listen with the greedy ears of a man who was determined to hear something. There was something in the air that told him of secret, and of course illicit, transactions.

Was it the same medium through which he learned of the weakening of Marguerite's mind and the beclouding of her soul? Was it this that told him of her mental anxiety and the ever growing delusion of her terrified and broken heart?

Later he learned of her mad outbursts of anxiety concerning the life of her child. He heard that she would never allow the child out of her sight; that she regarded the natural warmth of her body as a high fever; that every morning she would stand by Dorothea's bed, weep, take her in her arms, feel her pulse, and wrap her body in warm clothing. He heard, too, that night after night she sat by the child's bedside watching over her and praying for her, while the child herself slept like an old shoe. All this he learned from the maid.

One day Herr Carovius came home, and found an ambulance and a crowd of gaping people before the house. As he went up the stairway he heard a hushed whimpering. Marguerite was being dragged from the house by two men. The rear of this procession was brought up by Andreas Doederlein, on whose face there was an expression of accusation. The room door was open. He looked in, and saw bits of broken glasses and dishes, and in the midst of the debris sat Dorothea. Her mouth was puckered as if just on the point of weeping, and a cloth was bound about her forehead. The maid stood in the door wringing her hands. And on a step above was Friedrich Benda, white as a sheet, and evidently suffering from great mental anxiety.

Marguerite offered but little resistance. She looked behind her, and tried to see what the child was doing. Herr Carovius buried his hands in his overcoat pockets, and followed the mournful caravan out on to the street. The poor woman was taken to the insane asylum at Erlangen.

Herr Carovius said to himself: somebody is responsible for all this. He determined at once to bring the guilty party to account. He took this stand neither out of grief nor from a feeling of love for his fellow men. His action was motivated by his hatred of a world in which something is constantly going on, and in the midst of which he was condemned to an inactive and deedless life.

V

Not much could be learned from Doederlein's maid. The efforts to draw something out of little Dorothea were also fruitless. She was wrapped up in her own affairs. She arranged her ribbons, played with her toys, recounted the small incidents of her uneventful life, and could hardly be persuaded even to listen to the ingenious questions Carovius put to her when he stopped her out in the hall and asked her about this and that.

One day he went over to Erlangen to visit his sister in the insane asylum. He thought that he might be able to get some clue to this mystery from her.

He found her sitting in the corner of a room, stroking her long, yellowish hair. Her head was bowed; her eyes were fixed on the floor. Through no cunning that he could devise was it possible to entice a single statement from her.

The physician said: "She is a harmless patient, but most secretive and passionate. She must have suffered for years from some heavy burden on her soul."

Herr Carovius left her, and went back to the station. The sun was shining bright. He soon saw to his infinite discomfort that it was impossible to eliminate the picture of the melancholy woman from his inner eye. He went into a cafe and drank some whiskey. On the return journey an old woman sat opposite him who seemed to understand him. There was a trace of compassion in her eyes. This made him so uneasy that he found it necessary to change his seat.

He had met with unanticipated difficulties in his investigation. He recognised these fully, but consoled himself with the thought that there was still time. It occurred to him that he might somehow get hold of Dr. Benda and cross-question him. He recalled having seen Friedrich Benda meet little Dorothea on the stairway once, and no sooner had he seen her coming than he made every effort to avoid her. That set Carovius to thinking.

Some gas pipes had to be installed in the apartment about that time, and this gave him, as superintendent, a splendid opportunity to go up and see Benda. The doctor was just then making his final attempt to claim his rights—the rights of a man and a scholar—against the conspiracy of enemies who were really immune before the law.

He was all alone when Carovius called. He took him straight to his study. The walls of his hall as well as those of his room were covered with books from floor to ceiling. Benda said he was just getting ready to go on an extended journey. The finished politeness with which he removed the books from a chair and the tense way in which he eyed Herr Carovius made it clear to the latter that this was neither the time nor the place to engage in mock conversation. Carovius talked gas pipes. Benda finished all he had to say on this subject in two short, crisp sentences and got up to go.

Herr Carovius got up too, removed his nose glasses, and rubbed them with his bright blue handkerchief. "Where are you going, if I may ask?" There was an expression of apparent sympathy in his question.

Benda made it a habit never to treat any man impolitely, however little regard he might have for him personally. He said that he was going to Kiel to deliver his trial lecture at the university.

"Bravo!" cried Carovius, falling at once into the tone of awkward familiarity. "You have simply got to show those fellows that you are not a coward. Bravo!"

"I don't quite understand you," said Benda in amazement. His antipathy for the man was growing. And no one recognised this better than Carovius himself.

He cast a sideglance that reeked with hypocrisy at the young scholar. "My dear doctor, you must not look upon me as a poor uncultured yokel," he said, "anch' io sono pittore. I have read, among other things, your monograph on the morphogenetic achievements of the original sulcate cell. Listen, man! I take off my hat to that book. Of course, it is not exactly original, but then it is one of your earlier works. The idea developed in it follows pretty closely that of the evolutionary and mechanical theories of the much slandered Wilhelm Roux. And yet I am bound to say you display considerable independence in your method. Indeed you do. And more than that, you throw much needed light on the mysteries of God himself. There is a good deal of incoherent drivel these days about the freedom of science. Well, you'll have to show me where it is. Scientists? They are a lot of conceited pin-heads, each working for himself, and incurably jealous of what his colleagues are doing. Up and at 'em, Doctor, that's my advice, and luck to you!"

Benda was amazed to hear Carovius mention a work that was otherwise known only to specialists. This however merely tended to increase his distrust. He knew too much about the man to stand before him without a feeling of hostility. He merely needed to call to mind the story of the woman whose youth he had made into a waste place and a prison to be made aware of the fact that it was quite impossible to stand in his presence and breathe easily. The air of the room in which Carovius chanced to be was heavy, stuffy, depressing.

Benda's bearing, however, remained unchanged. He replied in a serious tone: "It is not after all easy to get along with people. Each has his own place and wants to keep it. I thank you very much for your visit and your kind words, but my time is limited. I have a great deal to do—"

"Oh, certainly," said Carovius hastily, while a rancorous grin flitted across his face, "but you don't need to drive me away. I am going on my own accord. I have an engagement at the district court at five o'clock, I am to sign some sort of a document concerning the detention of my sister in the insane asylum. It probably has to do with the settling of her estate or something like that. Who knows? By the way, what have you to say about the affair? You knew her rather intimately. No hedging, doctor. There she sits in the cell and combs her hair. Can you imagine who is responsible? You know a woman doesn't lose her mind from a mere love affair. And this music swindler down stairs—it is impossible to get him to show his true colours. Yes, we all have our troubles."

In order to take the sting out of his impudent insinuations, for he regretted having made a premature move with his trump card, Carovius smiled in a scurrilous fashion, ducked his head, coward that he was, and riveted his greedy, banal eyes on Benda.

But Benda was looking down. His eyes had been attracted by the fancy buckle shoes of Herr Carovius. He was repelled by the man's foppish socks with the yellow stripes which were made more conspicuous by the fact that his trousers were too high. He had a feeling of unmitigated mental nausea, too, when he noticed how Carovius lifted first one foot and then the other from the floor, and then set it down, heel first. It was a detestable habit; and indulging in it made an ugly noise.

VI

Benda's absence lasted for hardly a year. His mother had not accompanied him this time. She was not feeling well, and there was some danger that she was losing her eyesight.

After his return he took to silent brooding. Though he never said a word to his mother about the disappointment he had experienced, she knew precisely what he had gone through, and spared him the humiliation that would have followed any questions she might have asked.

He was oppressed by the memories the house awakened in him. Forgotten pictures became living ones. The figure of the murdered woman appeared in the nighttime on the balcony. Her shadow fell upon him, nestled up to him in fact, as he sat at his writing-desk.

There were a great many things that still bound him to her whose spirit had vanished from the earth, though her body remained.

It was impossible for him to forget her gentle look or the coyness of her hands. He knew her fate; he knew her soul. But he was condemned to silence. To withdraw from contact with the world and into the deepest of loneliness had been her lot; it had also been his. At present it was possible to get only one picture of her, the one her brother had given: she sat in her cell and combed her yellow hair.

He held no one responsible; he blamed no one. He merely regretted that men are as they are.

A former university friend of his came in, and tried to get him interested in collaborating on a great scientific work. He declined. As soon as his colleague of other days had gone, he visualised to himself the entire conversation: The man was affable and insistent; and yet there was in his very being an underground, enigmatic hostility. It was the hostility he invariably felt whenever he had anything to do, either of a purely external, business nature or in a social way, with men of other faith. The least he had to fear was a prejudiced inimicality, as if the individual in question were on the point of calling out to him: You stay on that side, I'll stay on this. Keep off the bridge.

He was fully aware of this, but his pride forbade his fighting against it. He renounced his natural right to life and a living. He declined the university conceded privilege of co-existence. To go out and actually win for himself the right to participate in the inevitable contest of forces, or to secure even this poor privilege by supplication, or to defend it by argument, or to cajole it into his possession by political wiles, seemed to him contrary to reason and at odds with common sense. He would not do it.

He refused to knock at the door which he himself had bolted and barricaded.

From this self-imposed embarrassment he suffered to an almost intolerable degree. It was the irrational and fraudulent phase of matters that made him suffer. Did men act as they did because they were so strong in their faith? Not at all. Did he believe in those racial differences which made them believe? Not at all. He felt at home on the soil that nourished him; he felt under obligations to the weal and woe of his people; he was bound heart and soul to the best of them, and realised that he had been spiritually developed by their language, ideas, and ideals.

Everything else was a lie. They knew that it was a lie too, but out of his pride they forged a weapon and turned it against him. To deny his relationship to them, a relationship that had been proved by his achievements and enthusiasm, was a part of their plan; it was also a part of their evil designs.

To strike up acquaintances, seek out congenial companions, or take an active part in social organisations was repulsive to him. He did not care to be dragged into fruitless and empty community of effort or social co-operation. Defiant and alone, he explained his case to himself. Since it merely intensified his agony to compare his lot with that of others who seemed to be similarly situated, he did not do it. He avoided in truth all reflections that might have made the world appear to him as having at least a semblance of justice.

He was consequently filled with a longing which took more definite shape day by day, and finally developed into a positive and irrevocable decision.

About this time he made the acquaintance of Daniel, and through him he came to know other people. He saw at once that there was something unusual about Daniel; that there was something in him which he had never before noticed in any one. Even his outer distress was a challenge to greater activity, while his inner agitation never permitted his associates to rest in idle peace.

It was not easy to be of assistance to him; he rejected all gifts which he could not repay. He had to be convinced first of his duty and indebtedness to the friend whom fate had made cross his path. And even then he stood out for the privilege of being theoretically ungrateful.

Benda and his mother succeeded in getting him a position as a tutor in some private families. He had to give piano lessons to young boys and girls. The compensation was not great, but it at least helped him out for the time being.

After the day's work was done, the evenings and nights bound the two more and more firmly together.

VII

One evening Daniel entered the house and met Herr Carovius. But he was so absorbed in thought that he passed by without noticing him. Carovius looked at him angrily, and walked back to the hall to see where the young man was going. When he heard him ring the bell on the second floor, an uneasy expression came over his face. He rubbed his chin with his left hand.

"The idea of passing by me as though I were a block of wood," murmured Carovius spitefully. "Just wait, young man, I'll make you pay for that."

Instead of leaving the house as he had wished, Carovius went into his apartment, lighted a candle, and tripped hastily through three rooms, in which there were old cabinets and trunks filled with books and music scores. There was also a piano in one. He then took a key from his pocket, and unlocked a fourth room, which had closed shades and was in fact otherwise quite oddly arranged.

He went to a table which reached almost the full length of the room, picked up a piece of white paper, sat down, and wrote with red ink: "Daniel Nothafft. Musician. Two months in jail."

He then covered the paper with mucilage, pasted it on a wooden box which looked like a miniature sentry-house, and nailed a lid on the box, using tacks that were lying ready for this purpose.

There were at least five dozen such boxes on the long table, the majority of which had names attached to them and had been nailed up.

The closed room Herr Carovius called his court chamber. What he did in it he termed the regulation of his affairs with humanity, and the collection of little wooden cells he called his jail. Every individual who had offended, hurt, humiliated, or defrauded him was assigned such a keep in which he was obliged to languish, figuratively, until his time, determined by a formal sentence, was up.

Nor was this all. In the middle section of the table there were a number of diminutive sand heaps, about thirty in all, and on each one was a small wooden cross and on each cross was a name. That was Herr Carovius's cemetery, and those who were figuratively buried there were, so far as he was concerned, dead, even though they were still going about their earthly affairs as lively and cheerful as ever. They were people whose mundane careers were finished, as he saw it, and under each of their accounts, reckoned exclusively in sins, he had drawn a heavy line. They were such people as Richard Wagner and his champions, the local stationer to whom he had advanced some money years ago and who entered a plea of bankruptcy a few months later, the authors of bad books that were widely read, or of books which he loathed without having read them, as, for instance, those of Zola.

There were still a third noteworthy section of the table, and that was the so-called Academy. This consisted of a plot of ground, surrounded by an iron fence, and divided up into twelve or fifteen square fields, each of which was painted in fresh green. In the middle of each field there was a wooden peg about two inches high, and to the middle of each peg there was attached a name-plate. From the tops of some of these pegs little banners of green cloth fluttered in the breeze.

The fact is, Herr Carovius had a weakness for association with aristocrats. In his heart of hearts he admired the manners of the aristocracy, their indifference and self-complacency, their irrefragable traditions and their noiseless and harmonious behaviour. To the pegs of the Academy he had affixed the names of some of the best families he had known; among others, those of the Tuchers, the Hallers, the Humbsers, the Kramer-Kleets, and the Auffenbergs. Whenever he had succeeded in making the personal acquaintance of the members of any of these families, he went straightway to the Academy and hoisted the appropriate flag.

But, despite all his effort, he had never in the course of time been able to run up more than three flags, and these only for a brief period and without any marked success. Some one had recognised him on the street or spoken to him at the concert, and that was all. The Academy looked, in contradistinction to the jail and the cemetery, quite deserted. Finally he was able to hoist the Auffenberg banner. Herr Carovius felt that the Academy had a great future.

VIII

Kropotkin the painter had once upon a time received an order to make a copy of a Holbein for Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg. He never finished the picture, owing to lack of ability; but he had become acquainted with Baron Eberhard, and years later, having met him quite accidentally, took him to the Paradise, where the infamous brethren were then in the habit of gathering.

Eberhard's appearance at the Paradise was short-lived; he disappeared in fact as quickly as he had appeared. But this brief space was sufficient for Herr Carovius to become intimately acquainted with him.

The first time he sat at the same table with him he was noticeably excited. His face shone with a mild spiritual glow. His voice was sweet and gentle, his remarks of an unusually agreeable moderation.

He turned the conversation to a discussion of the superiorities of birth, and lauded the distinction of the hereditary classes. He said it was from them only that the people could acquire civic virtue. The brethren scorned his point of view. Herr Carovius came back at them with an annihilating jest.

During the rendition of this hallelujah-solo in praise of the nobility, Eberhard von Auffenberg intrenched himself behind a sullen silence. And though Carovius used every available opportunity from then on to flatter the young nobleman in his cunning, crafty way, he failed. The most he could do was to inspire Eberhard to lift his thrush-bearded chin in the air and make some sarcastic remark. Fawn as he might, Carovius was stumped at every turn.

One night, however, the two enjoyed each other's company on the way home. That is, Carovius never left Eberhard's side. Annoyed at the failure of his former tactics, he thought he would try his luck in another way: he ridiculed the arrogance of a certain caste which affected to attach less importance to a man like himself than to some jackanapes whose handkerchief was adorned with an embroidered crown.

"What are you, any way, what is your vocation?" asked Eberhard von Auffenberg.

"I don't do anything," replied Carovius.

"Nothing at all? That is quite agreeable."

"Oh, I do work a little at music," added Herr Carovius, entirely pleased at the curiosity of the Baron.

"Now, you see, that is after all something," said the Baron. "I for my part am as unmusical as a shot-gun. And if you do not do anything but interest yourself in music, you must have a great deal of money."

Herr Carovius turned away. The positive dread of being taken for a rich man wrestled with the vain desire to make the young Baron feel that he really was somebody. "I have a little," he remarked with a titter, "a little."

"Very well; if you will loan me ten thousand marks, it will give me great pleasure to make you a present of the crown on my handkerchief," said Eberhard von Auffenberg.

Herr Carovius stopped stock still, and opened his mouth and his eyes: "Baron, you are taking the liberty of jesting with me." But when Eberhard indicated that he was quite serious, Carovius continued, blank amazement forcing his voice to its highest pitch: "But my dear Sir, your father has an income of half a million. A mere income! The tax receipts show it."

"Well, I am not talking about my father," said Eberhard coldly, and once more threw his chin in the air. "It is evidently a part of your heraldic prejudices to feel that you can coax the income of my father into my own pockets."

They were standing under a gas lamp at the Haller Gate. It was dripping rain, and they had raised their umbrellas. It was perfectly still; it was also late. Not a human being was to be seen anywhere. Carovius looked at the seriously offended young man, the young man looked at Carovius, then grinning a grin of embarrassment, and neither knew how to take the other.

"You are surprised," said Eberhard, resuming the conversation. "You are surprised, and I don't blame you. I am a discontented guest in my own skin; that much I can assure you. I am as abortive a creature as ever was born. I inherited far too much that is superfluous, and not nearly enough of the necessities. There are all manner of mysteries about me; but they are on the outside. Within there is nothing but stale, dead air."

He stared at the ground as though he were talking to himself, and as though he had forgotten that any one was listening, and continued: "Have you ever seen old knights carved in stone in old churches? If you have, you have seen me. I feel as if I were the father of my father, and as if he had had me buried alive, and an evil spirit had turned me to stone, and my hands were lying crossed over my breast and could not move. I grew up with a sister, and I see her as though it were yesterday"—at this point his face took on an expression of fantastic senility—"walking through the hall, proud, dainty, innocent, with roses in her hand. She is married to a captain of cavalry, a fellow who treats his men like Negro slaves, and who never returns the greeting of a civilian unless he is drunk. She had to marry him. I could not prevent it. Somebody forced her into it. And if she is carrying roses now, it is as if a corpse were singing songs."

Herr Carovius felt most uneasy. He was not accustomed to hearing things like this. Where he lived people called a spade a spade. He pricked up his ears and made a wry face. "It is the way he has been trained that makes him talk like that," he thought; "it is the result of constantly sitting on gold-embroidered chairs and seeing nothing about him but paintings."

"I am going to sit on such chairs too," he was happy to think, "and I shall see the paintings, too." He pictured himself between the Baron and the Baroness, marching up to the portals of the castle, flanked on either side by a row of liveried servants, the nervous masses catching sight of the splendour as well as they might. The rear of this procession was being brought up by the young Baron, who had returned home as the penitent Prodigal Son.

"One must have a feeling of personal security," remarked Carovius. He wondered whether the Baron had reached his majority. Eberhard replied that he had just completed his twenty-first year, and that certain things had made him feel that it would be wise to live independent of his family and to renounce his claims to all family rights for the time being. What he really had in mind was the desire to avoid, so far as humanly possible, association with all professional money-lenders.

Herr Carovius felt that this was an extremely serious case. He claimed moreover to understand it perfectly and to be ready for anything, but insisted that nothing must be withheld, that he must be given undiluted wine. He made this remark just as if he were holding a glass of old Johannisberger out in the rain, sniffing as he did with appreciative nostrils.

"I am very discreet," he said, "very taciturn." He looked at the Baron tenderly.

The young Baron nodded.

"The wearer of purple is recognised wherever he goes," continued Herr Carovius, "and if he lays the purple aside he stands at once in need of reticent friends. I am reserved."

The Baron nodded again. "If you will permit me, I shall visit you in a few days." With that he ended the conversation.

He started off toward the Avenue, walking stiffly. It was not hard to see that he was ill at ease. Herr Carovius walked away with mincing, merry steps down toward the small end of the alley, singing an aria from the "Barber of Seville" as he went.

At the end of the first week he was taken down with a disconcerting suspicion that the Baron had made a fool of him. He was filled with a wrath that had to be cooled. One morning, just as he was leaving his apartment, he saw two milk cans filled with milk standing in the outer hall. One was for the first floor, the other for the second. The milkmaid had placed them there for the time being, and had gone over to have a little morning chat with her neighbour. Herr Carovius went to his lumber-room, which also served as the kitchen, took down a jug of vinegar, came back, looked around with all the caution he could summon, and then poured half of the contents of the jug into one can and the other half into the other.

Two days later he decided not to give Caesar anything to eat, so that he would terrify the neighbours by his howling. This worked. The dog howled and whined and barked night after night. It was enough to melt the heart of a stone. Nobody could sleep. Andreas Doederlein went to the police, but they told him that the case was beyond their jurisdiction.

Herr Carovius lay in bed rejoicing with exceeding great joy over the fact that the people could not sleep. He became enamoured of the idea that it might be possible, through some ingenious invention, to rob a whole city or a whole nation of its sleep. The inventor could then move about conscious of the fact that he was at once the distributor and the destroyer of the world's supply of sleep. If he so elected to exploit his invention, he could revel in the sight of an entire people pining, drying up, and eventually dying from the want of sleep.

After Caesar had become quite savage, Herr Carovius decided to unleash him. It was just after sunset. He slipped up to the beast from the rear, and opened the chain lock. The dog ran like mad through the court and the hall, and out on to the street.

Just at this moment young Baron von Auffenberg was entering to pay Herr Carovius that promised visit. He jumped back from the beast, but it sprang at his body, and in a jiffy the Baron was lying full length on the pavement. Caesar left him, made a straight line for the open door of a butcher shop across the street, sprang in, and snatched a fancy cut from one of the hooks.

In order to see just how much damage the dog would really do, Herr Carovius ran after him, hypocritically feigning as he ran an expression of horror, and acting as though the beast had somehow broken his chain and got loose. The first sight that caught his eyes was that of the young Baron as he rose to his feet and limped over toward his host to-be.

The horror of Herr Carovius at once became real. With the diligence of a seasoned flunkey, he stooped over, picked up the Baron's hat, dusted it, stammered all sorts of apologies, gazed at high heaven like a martyred saint, and brushed the dirt from Eberhard's trousers. Then the dog came back, a huge piece of meat in his mouth. The butcher came to the door and shook his fists. The butcher's boy stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled for the police. They came, too, and Herr Carovius had to pay for the meat.

He then took the Baron into his living-room, plying him in the meantime with innumerable questions as to how he felt. Having been stunned by the fall, the Baron asked to lie down for a few minutes on the couch. Herr Carovius granted his wish, smothering him with sighs of affection and exclamations of regret.

As the Baron lay on the couch, trying to regain his vital spirits, Herr Carovius went to the piano and played the rondo from Weber's sonata in A flat major. His technique was superb; his emotion was touching.

After the concert the transactions began.



INSPECTOR JORDAN AND HIS CHILDREN

I

Benno Jordan was now a senior in the gymnasium and had begun to play mischievous pranks. He also declared that he was no longer minded to tolerate the tyranny of the school, and that he had not the slightest desire to enter the university. He was a wilful, obstinate boy with a marked tendency to sociability. He paid a great deal of attention to his clothes, and was proud of his handsome face.

After repeated conversations with the seventeen-year-old boy, Jordan decided to get him a job as a clerk in the offices of the Prudentia. He discussed the situation with the general agent, and Alfons Diruf gave his consent. Benno began his work at fifty marks a month.

When Jordan would come home of an evening, the first thing he would hear from Eleanore was that Benno had an engagement with some of his friends, and that they were in the Alfas Garden, or in the Wolf's Glen, or in Cafe Merkur, where the orchestrion, then a new invention, was being played for the first time.

"Lord, what is to become of the next generation?" said Jordan, quite worried. "All they think about is having a good time. Why, I never in my whole life thought of merely amusing myself."

Anxious about Benno's behaviour, Jordan called on the chief of the clerical department. The little man with the waxened, weazened, face expressed himself as quite satisfied with the new employe. Jordan took him by the hand; it was his way of displaying gratitude. And he was grateful, though it was hard for him to subdue a feeling of solicitude. He recognised the boy's external amiability, but felt convinced that this merely covered and concealed a decayed soul.

Alfons Diruf was obese and gloomy. His clothes were made in Paris, and on the ring finger of his left hand was a brilliant diamond.

Since the Prudentia had introduced the so-called workmen's insurance, the number of clerks on its payroll had been increased by about twenty-five thousand. Of these eighty-four were under Diruf's direct supervision. They were located in three rooms of a house in Fuerther Street. They were pale and they were silent. Diruf himself had a private office which resembled the boudoirs of a woman of the world. The curtains were of blue silk, a bathing nymph by Thumann hung on the wall, and the whole place smelled of musk.

Three times a day he would leave his fair retreat, and, with the mien of disgust, make the rounds of the clerks' quarters. When they saw him coming, heads ducked, hands scurried across the books, feet stopped scraping, and all whispering died out.

He gave the impression of a man who hated his job, but in reality he loved it. He liked the clerks because of their servile docility and their famished faces. He liked them because they came promptly every morning and went away every evening tired as tired could be, and because day after day, year in and year out, they sat there and wrote, wrote, wrote.

He liked the inspectors because day after day, year in and year out, they did a great deal of work for a very little money. He liked the agents and sub-agents who made it possible for the company to issue hundreds of new policies every day. He liked their dirty clothes and tattered boots, their hungry looks, their misleading but effective line of talk, and their sad faces.

The special bait of the workmen's insurance was the small premium, carrying with it a small policy. In this way the man of small means was to be educated in thrift. As a rule, however, the small man realised, when it was too late, that the agent had promised more than the company could do. He became distrustful; his weekly savings were so scant that it was impossible for him to pay his premiums regularly; with the expiration of each week it became increasingly difficult to make up the back payments, and, before he knew precisely what had happened, his policy had been declared void, and the money he had paid in on it confiscated.

In this way the company made millions. It was the pfennigs of the poorest classes that constituted these millions, made the dividends rise higher and higher, increased the army of clerks, and filled the pockets of the agents.

These agents were recruited from the scum of human society. They were made up of bankrupts, decadent students, gamblers, topers, and beggars. They came from the ranks of those who had been pursued by misfortune and who bore the marks of crime. No one was too small or too bad.

Alfons Diruf, however, saw that it would vastly improve the credit of the company if to this list of outcasts he would add a few eminently respectable citizens. He consequently went out on his own responsibility, and looked for help. His quest brought him to Jason Philip Schimmelweis.

"It's a gold mine," he said; "you work for an ideal, and you get something out of it for yourself. Ideals, incidentally, that are not profitable are idiotic." With that he blew the smoke of his Havana cigar through his nose.

Jason Philip understood. It was not necessary to flatter the leader and politician that was admittedly in him. He nearly ran his legs off working for the company. Alfons Diruf loved this socialist bookkeeper, after a fashion.

Inspector Jordan saw however that the countless brokers were encroaching on his territory and stirring up distrust on the part of his better clients. He lost his interest. The directors felt obliged to send Alfons Diruf a critical memorandum explaining Jordan's case, and showing that he was no longer as efficient as he used to be.

II

Daniel had grown tired of his room in the attic and the society of brush-maker Hadebusch. He announced that he was going to move. Surrounded by a cloud of smells from boiled cabbage, Frau Hadebusch raged about the ingratitude of man. Her shrieks called Herr Francke and the Methodist from out their warm holes; the brush-maker and his imbecile son also appeared in the dimly lighted vestibule; and before these five Hogarth figures stood the defenceless sinner, Daniel Nothafft.

He looked about in the suburbs of St. Mary, but found everything too dear. He went out to New Gate, but everything was taken. He tried the St. John district, and that pleased him best of all. Late in the afternoon he came to a house in the Long Row, at the entrance to which hung a "To Let" sign.

He pulled the bell cord, and a beautiful servant girl took him into a room. Through the window he could look out on a garden filled with old trees. A spinster came in, and smiled at the pleasure he took in the room and the view.

"I must see my sister," she said, as he asked her about the price.

She called out into the hall, and her sister, likewise an elderly and kindly spinster, came in. They held a council, the deliberations of which were conducted in muffled tones, and then agreed that they would have to consult Albertina. She was the third sister. The first tip-toed to the door and, with pointed lips, called the name, Albertina, out into the long hall with as much coyness as had been employed in summoning the second sister.

Albertina was the youngest of the three; she was about forty. But she had forgotten, like Jasmina and Saloma, to erase twenty years from the calendar: all three had preserved the youthful charm of their girlhood.

Albertina blushed as she looked at the young man, and her modesty was contagious; the two sisters also blushed. She told Daniel that they were the Ruediger sisters. With that she remained silent, and looked down as though she had divulged her entire fate. She informed Daniel that they had decided to rent the room to some dependable young man, because there had been considerable petty thieving in the neighbourhood of late and they would like to enjoy the protection of a man, for they were entirely alone, except for the boy who tended the garden. They told him also that they had had several offers, but that they had declined them because they did not like the appearance of the applicants. In affairs of this kind, indeed in everything, the three sisters were always of like mind.

Fraeulein Saloma asked Daniel what he did. He replied that he was a musician. A chorus of surprise greeted his ears, rendered in perfect time by the three female voices. Fraeulein Jasmina asked him whether he was a singer or a violinist. He replied that he was neither, that he was a composer, or that he at least hoped to become one. With that an expression of intense spirituality spread over the faces of the sisters, so that they looked like triplets. Aha, a creative artist! "Y-e-s," said Daniel, "if you wish to put it that way: a creative artist."

They hopped into the corner like so many sparrows, and went into serious conference. Fraeulein Saloma, as chairman, wanted to know whether a monthly rent of twelve marks would be too much. No, replied Daniel, that would not be excessive. He said it without giving the matter the slightest consideration, and then shook hands with the sisters. Fraeulein Jasmina added that he could use the piano on the first floor whenever he wished to, and that it merely needed tuning. Daniel shook her hand again, this time with special warmth. His joy had awakened in him a measure of clumsy familiarity.

Before he left the house he went out into the garden, and stood for a while under one of the trees. A tree to myself at last, he thought. Up in the top a blackbird was singing. Meta the servant looked out from the door where she was standing, astonished at it all.

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

"Artists attach no importance to externalities," replied Fraeulein Jasmina with knitted brow.

"A great mistake. He always looked as if he had just come out of a bandbox. You remember, don't you?"

The other two nodded. The three then walked down the garden path, arm in arm.

III

Daniel was standing in the vegetable market before the Goose Man Fountain, eating apples.

The sun was shining, and he noticed that the shadow of the fountain was moving slowly toward the church. It made him sad to see that time was passing and how it was passing. When he turned around, however, and saw that the bronze figure of the man with the two geese under his arms was not merely indifferent to the passing of time but confident that all is well, he could not help but laugh.

What made him laugh was partly the calm of the man: he was always waiting for something, and he was always there. He was likewise amused at the thought that two geese could make a man look so contented.

IV

As Daniel was going home one afternoon from a piano lesson, he met Eleanore Jordan. He told her about his new room and the three bizarre creatures in the house in the Long Row.

Eleanore had heard all about them. She said they were the daughters of the geometrician Ruediger, and that he had left the town some time ago because of a quarrel with the citizens, or rather with one of the gilds. The origin of the trouble was the picture of a certain painter. More she did not know, other than that Ruediger had gone to Switzerland and lost his life by falling down one of the mountains. The sisters, she said, were the laughing stock of the town. They never left the house except on certain days, when they went out to the nearby cemetery at the Church of St. John to place flowers on the grave of that painter.

Daniel hardly listened to what she said. They were standing at the St. Sebaldus Church, and the chimes began to play. "Magnificent," he murmured, "an ascending triad in A."

Eleanore asked him how he was getting along, and looked with regret at his sunken cheeks. Her virile expression was rather displeasing to him. He was surprised to see how rarely she lowered her eye lids. He said he was getting along quite well. She smiled.

"It's terrible that a man has to have a monster in his body that must be fed," he remarked. "Otherwise one could storm the heavens and steal the songs of the angels. But this was not to be. You have first to flutter your wings until they are wounded and break your chains, and by that time such ethereal power as you may have had is dissipated."

He wrinkled his face until he again looked like the wily ape. "But I am going to see it through," he said. "I want to find out whether God drew me from the urn as a blank or a prize." He could be very eloquent when he talked about himself.

Eleanore smiled. It seemed to her that it was merely necessary to bring a little order into his life. She consequently assumed the responsibility of looking after his room.

In Tetzel Street they met the inspector. As Jordan walked along at the side of his beloved daughter, it seemed to him that the grey walls and weather-beaten stones of the houses were no longer so earthy or weighed down with time. Eleanore looked toward the West into the purple glow of the setting sun. She was not quite herself. There came moments when she suffered from homesickness for a fairer land.

She thought of Italy. She conjured up lovely visions of sunny bays, blooming groves, and white statues.

Daniel however went on toward the Fuell. The workmen were coming from the suburbs, and in their tired faces he felt that he recognised his own world. "Oh," he sighed, "I should like to get nearer the stars, to make the acquaintance of more dependable hearts, of hearts that are truer even than my own."

Just then he looked up at Benda's window, and saw his light. He was ashamed of himself.

V

The first time Eleanore visited Daniel it was along toward evening. She heard from a distance the piano and the shrill crowing of Daniel's voice. Down in the hall she saw three white figures cuddled up close to each other like hens on a roost.

It was the Ruediger sisters trying to drink in the creative efforts of the artist. That they were eavesdropping at the fount of art they understood both in the good and the bad sense: their enthusiasm was praiseworthy, their courtesy was deficient. When they caught sight of Eleanore on the stairway, they were terrified, and rustled into the adjoining room.

The three elderly hearts beat impetuously. It was Jasmina's turn to read from Rueckert's poems. Jasmina had not the shadow of a desire to perform; her sisters were equally disinclined to listen.

"It is not right," the three kept saying, when they heard of Eleanore's visits. "It is not right." Even Meta the maid was of the opinion that her calls were highly unconventional.

As Daniel played on and merely nodded to her, Eleanore's eyes fell on the mask of Zingarella. She stepped up, took it down from the nail on the wall, and examined it in perfect silence.

Daniel had in the meantime left the piano. A loud cry from him startled her: "What the devil are you doing?" he exclaimed in a tone of immoderate anger. He took the mask, which she was handling so lightly and tremulously, out of her hands, and replaced it on the nail with affectionate care.

The sensitive girl at once began to cry. She turned to one side in order to conceal her tears. Daniel was irritated, but the first thought that occurred to him was how he could make amends for his rudeness. He fetched a worn book, and offered to lend it to her. It was a translation of that beautiful old novel, "Manon Lescaut."

Eleanore came frequently after office hours, but never remained long; she did not wish to make the people at home uneasy. During the short time she stayed she always found a number of things to do, such as straightening up the papers on his table or arranging his scores.

She became acquainted with Benda; he took a liking to her. It did him good merely to be in her presence, and he could not understand why she did not have the same wholesome effect on Daniel. Daniel seemed thoroughly unappreciative of the girl. He was like a man who goes along the street carrying a basket full of eggs: his sole ambition for the time being is to see that not a single egg is lost or broken.

The two would frequently accompany the girl home. Daniel always talked about himself, and Benda listened with a smile. Or Benda talked about Daniel, and Daniel was all ears.

What did people say? That Eleanore was now trotting around with three men, whereas she formerly had only one on her string, the Baron, and that you are going to hear from this affair.

Every now and then a snip of ugly gossip reached Eleanore's ears. She paid not the slightest attention to it. She looked out from her glass case on to the world with cool and cheerful indifference, quite incapable of placing the established interpretation on the glances of calumniators.

VI

Benda could have sketched Daniel's face in the darkness: the round forehead, the little nose, pointed and mulish, the rigidly pinched lips, the angular musician's chin, and the deep dimples in his cheeks.

His ignorance of the musician was complete. Like all scholars, he nurtured an ingrained distrust when it came to the supernatural influence of art. For the great musical compositions which, in the course of time and as a result of the homage of succeeding generations, had come to be regarded as exemplary and incontestable, he had a feeling of reverence. For the creations of his contemporaries he had no ear.

That it was hard to understand and appreciate, he knew. That it was bitter not to be understood or appreciated, he had experienced. That the discipline associated with all intellectual work demands its tribute in the form of sacrificial renunciation needed no proof in his case.

The musician was something new to him. How did he regard him? As a blind man whose soul was on fire. As a drunken man who made the impression of repulsive sobriety on other men. As an obsessed individual who was living an excruciatingly lonely life and was unaware of it. As an unpolished peasant with the nerves of a degenerate.

The scientist wished to find the established and formulated law in the musician—a task that could lead only to despair. The friend surveyed the life of his friend; he allowed the personalities of many young men whom he had met in life to pass before his mind's eye. He looked for the criteria of common interests; he sought a law, even here. He sat in the dusk, and read from the works of the philosopher Mainlaender. Then he laid the book to one side, and said to himself: "The youth of to-day are lacerating, devastating themselves.... It is a fearful age. Measure, proportion, and balance are gone. Every model becomes a caricature. The individual is absolutely dependent upon himself. The flame is without container, and threatens to burn the hand that would check it."

In Daniel he had found his brother in fate. Music became his brother in torture. On seeing his friend lacerated and devastated, he saw twitch from the eye of Gorgo herself the profoundest of wisdom. But he did not lay bare his own heart.

One night, after unending conversation had brought them both to silence—like ships which, tossed about by the winds, at last drift into the harbour—Benda, taking up with an angry, exasperated remark by Daniel as it echoed back from the other shore of this silence, said: "We must not be vain. We dare not usurp a privilege which has no other basis than our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout."

Daniel looked up at once. Benda's big teeth were visible under his bushy moustache. He had a habit of pulling his lips apart whenever he was searching for a really incisive word.

Benda continued: "The great majority of what you call talent is ignominious. Talent is a feather duster. All that comes from the finger tips is evil. The man who has a distinct goal and is willing to suffer in order to reach it, that man we can use. And otherwise—how beautiful it all is after all! Heaven is above us, the earth is beneath us, and in between stands immortal man."

Daniel got up, and seized Benda's hand. There was nothing more vanquishing than Benda's handshake. His good strong right became a vise in which he shook a man's hand until it became limp, a perfectly delightful benevolence radiating from his eyes in the meanwhile.

The two men exchanged the fraternal "thou."

VII

Eleanore returned the copy of "Manon Lescaut." When Daniel asked her how she liked it, she never said a word. Since he thought that it was an excellent book, he began to scold.

She said: "I cannot read books in which there is so much talk about love."

He gazed into space in order to allow her voice time to die away. There was a violin tone in her speech, the charm of which he could not escape. When he fully realised what she had said, he laughed a short laugh, and remarked that her attitude was one of affected coyness. She shook her head. Then he teased her about going with young Auffenberg, and asked her whether real love affairs were just as disagreeable to her as those related in novels.

The flaming blue of her eyes compelled him to look down. It was not pleasant for him to admit, by action, that the expression in her face was stronger than his own. She left, and did not allow herself to be seen for a few days.

When she returned, he was naive enough to renew his banter. She took her seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: "Do we really intend to remain friends, Daniel?" she asked.

He cast a side glance of amazement at her, not because he was particularly struck by her charming suavity and marked winsomeness, but rather because the violin tone in her throat resounded more strongly and clearly than ever. But it was quite impossible for him to give an affirmative reply to her question without puckering up his lips and putting his hands in his trouser pockets.

She said she had no desire to seem important in his estimation, that she merely wanted him to regard her as different from other girls. She insisted that he concede her one privilege if they were to remain friends: he was not to talk to her about love, either seriously or in jest. She remarked that for months the very word love had called up ghost-like recollections. Why this was so, she said she could not tell him, not now, perhaps years from now when both had grown old. She could not do it, for if she endeavoured to refresh old memories or revive what she had half forgotten, her whole past arose before her, flat, languid, and insipid, easily misinterpreted by the person who heard the story, however clear it might be to her. She repeated that this was the way it was, and she could not help it. Once again she asked that he spare her feelings on this point.

Her face took on a serious expression; it resembled an old picture. There was something dream-like in her words.

"Well, if that is all you have on your mind, Eleanore, I am sure that it will be easy for me to respect your wish," said Daniel. There was a manifest lack of feeling in the kindness he displayed. It seemed indeed that the secret to which she was attaching so much importance was far removed from his egotistically encircled world. The little fountain in the garden was rustling. He listened to see if he could not catch the dominating tone in the continual splashing.

Eleanore turned to him now with renewed if not novel candour. She was closer to him in every way—her eyes, her hands, and her words.

VIII

Daniel had just completed an orchestral work which he had entitled "Vineta." He wished to have Benda hear it. One evening about six Benda came in. Everything was ready. Daniel sat down at the piano. His face was pale, his smooth upper lip was trembling.

"Now think of the sea; think of a storm; think of a boat with people in it. Picture to yourself a wonderful aurora borealis and a sunken city rising from the sea. Imagine a sea that had suddenly become calm, and in the light a strange phenomenon. Conjure up such a scene before your mind's eye, or conjure up something totally different, for this is a false way of getting at the meaning of music. It is plain prostitution to think anything of the kind. Ice-flat."