The Goose Man

But Aside, Who Is It?

I

Late in the evening Benda came. He had been tolerably well informed of everything that had taken place. In the hall he met Agnes. Though generally quite monosyllabic, Agnes was now inclined to be extremely communicative, but she could merely confirm what he had already heard.

She went up to the top floor with him, and he stood there for a long while looking at the burnt rooms. There were two firemen on guard duty. “All of his music has been burnt up,” said Agnes. Benda thought he would hardly be able to talk with his old friend again after this tragedy. But he at once felt ashamed of his timidity, and went down to see him.

It was again quiet throughout the entire house.

Daniel had lighted a candle in the living room. Finding it too dark with only one candle, he lighted another.

He paced back and forth. The room seemed too small for him: he opened the door leading into Dorothea’s room, and walked back and forth through it too. On entering the dark room, his lips would move; he would murmur something. When he returned to the lighted room, he would stand for a second or two and stare at the candles.

His features seemed to show traces of human suffering such as no man had borne before; it could hardly have been greater. He did not seem to notice Benda when he came in.

“Everything gone? Everything destroyed?” asked Benda, after he had watched Daniel walk back and forth for nearly a quarter of an hour.

“One grave after the other,” murmured Daniel, in a voice that no longer seemed to be his own. He raised his head as if surprised at the sound of what he himself had said. He felt that a stranger had come into the room without letting himself be heard.

“And the last work, the great work of which you told me, the fruit of so many years, has it also been destroyed?” asked Benda.

“Everything,” replied Daniel distractedly, “everything I have created in the way of music from the time I first had reason to believe in myself. The sonatas, the songs, the quartette, the psalm, the ‘Harzreise,’ ‘Wanderers Sturmlied,’ and the symphony, everything down to the last page and the last note.”

Yes, there was a stranger there; you could hear him laughing quietly to himself. “Why do you laugh?” asked Daniel sternly, and adjusted his glasses.

Benda, terrified, said: “I did not laugh.”

“The grass rises again, the desert conceals him,” said the stranger. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a droll sort of cap, and Hessian boots. “I ought to know him,” thought Daniel to himself, and began to meditate with cloudy mind.

“This is like murder, unheard-of murder,” cried Benda’s soul; “how can he bear it? What will he do?”

“What is there to do?” asked Daniel, expressing Benda’s silent thought in audible words, and looking askew, as he walked back and forth, at the stranger who went slowly through the room over to the window in the corner. “What can human fancy find reasonable or possible after all that has happened? Nothing! Merely pine away; pine away in insanity.”

“Oho,” said the stranger, “that is a trifle strong.”

“If he would only keep quiet,” thought Daniel, tortured. “I presume you know what has happened with the woman whom I called my wife,” he continued. “That I threw myself away on this vain, soulless spirit of a mirror is irrelevant. Greater men than I have walked into such nets and become entangled, ensnared. I have never cherished the delusion that I was immune to all the mockery of this earth. I believed, however, that I could scent out truth and falsehood, and differentiate the one from the other, just as the hand can tell by the feel the wet from the dry. But the connection of the one with the other, and the horrible necessity of this connection, I do not understand.”

“You have been served just right,” remarked the intruder with the Hessian boots. He had sat down on a chair in the corner, and looked quite friendly.

“Why?” roared Daniel, stopping.

Benda, astounded, rose to his feet. “Speak out, Daniel,” he said affectionately, “unburden your soul!”

“If I only could, Friedrich, if I only could! If my tongue would only move! Or if there were some one who felt with me and could speak for me!”

“Try it; the first word is often like a spark and starts a flame.”

Daniel was silent. The intruder said deliberatively: “That goes deep down to the recesses of the heart and up high to the things that are immortal.”

Daniel looked over at him sharply, and saw that it was the Goose Man.

II

All effort to get Daniel to talk was in vain. Along toward midnight, Benda took leave of him. Agnes unlocked the door for him; he said to her: “Look after him; he has no one else now.”

Daniel lay on the sofa with his hands crossed behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. His eyes were hot; at times he trembled and shook.

“It isn’t very sociable here,” said the Goose Man, “the air is full of tobacco smoke, and there is a draft coming in from that dark room.”

Daniel got up, closed the door, and lay down again.

The metallic exterior of the Goose Man seemed to become flexible, somewhat as when a frozen body thaws out. “You have gone through a great deal,” he continued thoughtfully. “That any one who wishes to create must also experience is clear. Experience is his mother’s milk, his realm of roots; it is where the saps flow together, from which his forms and figures are developed. But there is experience and experience, and between the two there is a world of difference.”

“Superfluous profundity,” murmured Daniel, plainly annoyed. “To live is to have experience.” He took council with himself in the attempt to devise a means by which he might get rid of the importunate chatterer.

The Goose Man again struck up his gentle laugh. He replied: “Many live, and yet do not live; suffer, and yet do not suffer. In what does guilt lie? What does it consist of? In not feeling; in not doing. The first thing for some men to do is to eradicate completely the false notions they have of what constitutes greatness. For what is greatness after all? It is nothing in the world but the fulfilment of an unending circle of petty duties, small obligations.”

“There is a fundamental difference between the creator and all other men,” remarked Daniel, at once excited and troubled by the conversation and the turn it was taking.

“Do you appeal to, depend on, refer to music in this present case?” asked the Goose Man, his good-natured look becoming more or less disdainful.

“In music every creation is more closely related to an unconditional exterior than is true of anything else that man gives to man,” answered Daniel. “The musical genius stands nearer God than any other genius.”

The Goose Man nodded. “But his fall begins one step from God’s throne, and is a high and deep one. Do you know what you are? And do you really know what you are not?”

Daniel pressed his hand to his heart: “Have you ever known me to fight for evanescent laurels? Have I ever tried to feed the human race, which is a race of minors, on surrogates? Have I ever imitated the flights of Heaven with St. Vitus dance, confusing the one with the other? Have I not always acted in accord with the best, the inmost knowledge I had, and in obedience to my conscience? Was I ever a liar?”

“No, no, no!” cried the Goose Man, by way of appeasing Daniel’s unrest. He took off his cap, and laid it on his knee. “You were always sincere. There can be no doubt about it, your heart was always in your profession. All life has streamed into your soul, and you have lived in the ivory tower. Your soul was well protected, well protected from the very beginning. It was in a position similar to that created by a swimmer who rubs his body with grease before plunging into the water. You have suffered; the poison of the Nessus shirt you have worn has burned your skin, and the pain you have thereby suffered has been transformed into sweet sounds. So they all are, the creators, invulnerable and inaccessible. That is the way you picture them to yourself. Is it not true? Monsters who take up the cross of the world, and yet, grief-laden though they be, grow beyond their own fate. Such is your lot; and so do you look to-day in your forty-second year.”

Daniel was not prepared for this tone of bitterness; he turned his face to the corner where the Goose Man was sitting. “I do not understand you,” he said slowly. The pitiable crying of little Gottfried could be heard from the room opening out on the court, and then Agnes’s quieting lullaby.

“If you only had not lived in the ivory tower!” cried the Goose Man. “If you only had been more sensitive and not so well protected! If you had only lived, lived, lived, really and truly, and near to life, like a naked man in a thicket of thorns! Life would have got the best of you, but your love would have been real, the hate you have experienced real, your misfortunes real, the lies, ridicule, and betrayal all real, and the shadows of those who have died from you would have taken on reality. And the poison of the Nessus shirt would not merely have burned your skin; it would have penetrated to your very blood, it would have found its way to the deepest, most secret recesses of your heart. Your work would have been carried on and out, not in a struggle against your darkness and your limited torments of soul, a slave before men and unblessed of God. Eliminate from your mind now, forever and completely, the delusion that you have borne the sufferings of the world! You have merely borne your own sufferings, loving-loveless, altruistic-egoist, monster, man without a country that you are!”

“Who are you? What are you trying to say?” asked Daniel, automatically, falteringly, with pale lips.

“Oh, don’t you see who I am? I am the Goose Man,” came the reply, spoken with a loyal and devoted bow. “The Goose Man, lonesome there behind the iron fence, lonesome there on the water at the fountain, and yet situated in the middle of the Market. An insignificant being, tangible and intelligible to every one who passes by, though a certain degree of monumentality has been ascribed to me in all these years. But I pay no attention to this ascription of greatness; I laugh at it. I give the Market, where the people come and haggle over the price of potatoes and apples, a certain degree of dignity. That is all. They see me as I stand there, always upright, under the open sky; and despite my distinguished position, they have all come to look upon me as a cousin. For a time they gave me a nickname: they called me by your name. But they had no right to do this; none at all, it seems to me. I have looked out for my geese; no one can say a thing against me.”

The Goose Man laughed a quiet, inoffensive laugh; and when Daniel turned his face to the corner, the chair was empty, the strange guest had vanished.

III

But he came back. And when Daniel’s mind and body were both completely broken down and he was obliged to remain in bed, his visits became regular. He sat next to Benda, for Benda had taken to calling on Daniel now every day and staying with him until late at night. But Daniel grew quieter and quieter. Sometimes he would make no reply at all to Benda’s remarks or questions.

The Goose Man came in behind Dr. Dingolfinger and stood on tiptoes, as curious as curious could be, and looked over his arm when he wrote out his prescriptions. The Goose Man was a little fellow: he hardly reached up to the doctor’s hips.

He hopped around Agnes when she cooked the soup and expressed his sympathy for her; she looked so pale. Though only thirteen years old, there was the worried look of a mature woman in her face; she would cast her eyes around the room as if trying to catch a glance of human love in the eyes of another person; her looks were timid and stealthy. “Some one should be caring for her too,” said the Goose Man, shaking his head, “some one should be making a good, warm soup for her.”

Though it would be unfair to say that the Goose Man was offensively concerned, he seemed to be interested in everything that was going on in the house. When the officials of the fire department came to cross-question Daniel about the fire, he became angry and gruff, and did not wish to let them in. “Give the poor man some rest, some peace, after all these years of suffering,” he implored, “give him time to collect himself and to meditate on what has taken place.” And in fact the members of the fire department left as soon as possible; they did not stay long.

The Goose Man was always in a cheerful humour, always ready for a good joke. At times he would whistle softly, and smooth out the wrinkles in his doublet. There was a certain amount of rustic shyness about him, but his affability, his good manners, and his child-like cheerfulness removed any unpleasant impression this rusticity might otherwise have made. He generally spoke the dialect of Nuremberg, though when with Daniel he never spoke anything but the most correct and chosen High German. His natural, acquired culture and the wealth of his vocabulary were really amazing.

Ten times a day at least he would scamper into the room where little Gottfried was sleeping and express his admiration for the pretty child. “How you are to be envied to have such a living creature crawling and sprawling around in your home!” he said to Daniel. And in course of time Daniel actually came to have a new affection for the child.

As soon as the Goose Man felt perfectly at home in Daniel’s house, he took to bringing his two geese along with him. He would place them very circumspectly in a corner of the room. One evening he was sitting playing with them, when the bell rang. Andreas Döderlein stormed in, and demanded that some one tell him where his daughter was.

“Upon my word and honour! An old acquaintance of mine!” said the Goose Man, laughing and blinking. “I see him nowadays in the café much more frequently than is good for his health.”

“I must urgently request you to control yourself,” said Benda, turning to Andreas Döderlein, and pointed to the bed in which Daniel was lying.

“My daughter is not a bad woman. Let people overburdened with credulity believe that she is bad,” cried Döderlein, with the expression and in the tone and gesture of the royal Lear, and shook his Olympian locks. “The fact is that violence has been practised on her; she has been driven into ruin! Men have stolen the sweet love of my dearly beloved daughter through the use of vile tricks and artifices. Where is she, the unfortunate, betrayed child? With what is she clothing her nakedness, and how is she finding food and shelter—shelter in a world of wicked men?”

A strange thing happened: the Goose Man took the gigantic arm of the Olympian, put his mouth to his beefy ear, and, with a sad and reproachful look on his face, whispered something to him. Döderlein turned red and then pale, looked down at the floor, and went away with heavy, rumbling step but silent lips. The Goose Man folded his arms across his breast, and looked at Döderlein thoughtfully.

“He is said to have taken to drinking,” remarked Benda, “is said to be living a wild, dissipated life. It seems incredible to me. The Döderleins are generally content to stroll in lust along the banks of the slimy sea of vice and let other people fall in. The Döderleins are born in false ermine, and they die in false ermine.”

“And yet he is a human being,” said the Goose Man, so that only Daniel could hear him.

Daniel sighed.

IV

It was late at night. Daniel could not sleep. The Goose Man crouched at his feet on the edge of the bed, and looked at him as one looks at a dear brother who is suffering intense pain.

“I cannot deny that it is difficult for you to continue your life,” said the Goose Man, trying to subdue his bright voice. “When we sum up your situation, we see day following day, night following night, and nothing happening that can be a cause for rejoicing. Everything has been cut off; the threads have all been broken; the foundation on which you built has been completely annihilated. You are like the mother of many children who loses them all, all of them, on a single day by one terrible stroke. The labour of years remains unrewarded; your work has been in vain; in vain the blood your heart has poured out, the deprivations you have submitted to; your whole past is like a bad, disordered dream. Oh, I understand full well; I appreciate your situation. It seems hard, very hard, to go on and not to despair.”

Daniel covered his face with his hands and moaned.

“Have you ever asked yourself how the hand of murder came to strike you? Ah, this Philippina! This daughter of Jason Philip! I am almost four hundred years old, but such a person I have never seen or known. But look back over your past! Do it just once! Open your eyes; they are pure now and capable of beholding. Have you not suffered the Devil to live by your side, to take part in your life? And were you not at the same time impatient with the angels who spread their wings about you as my geese spread theirs about me? The Devil has grown fat from you. The vampire has battened on you, has fed on your blood. All this comes about when one is unwilling to give, when one merely takes and takes and takes. That makes the Devil fat; the vampire becomes greedier with each passing sun. Ah, so many good genii have fled from you! Many you have frightened away, you, bewitched, you, enchanted! Well, what now? What next? Hell has claimed its full booty; Heaven can now open again to your new-born heart.”

“There is no Heaven,” groaned Daniel, “there is nothing but blackness and darkness.”

“You still breathe, your heart is still beating, you still have five fingers on each hand,” replied the Goose Man quietly. “He who has paid his debts is a free man: you have paid yours.”

“I am my own debt, my own guilt. If I continue to live, I will sin again. Were I to live over the past, back into the past, I would contract the same debts.”

“But there is such a thing as a transformation, and through it one receives absolution. Turn away from your phantom and become a human being—and then you can become a creator. If you once become human, really human, it may be that you will not need the work, symphony or whatever else you choose to call it. It may be that power and glory will radiate from you yourself. For are not all works merely the round-about ways, the detours of the man himself, merely man’s imperfect attempts to reveal himself? Did you not love a mask of plaster more than the countenances that shone upon you, the faces that wept about you? Did you not allow another mask, a thing of the mirror, to get control over you, and so to besmirch your soul and strike your spirit with paralysis? How can a man be a creator if he deceives, stunts, and abbreviates the humanity that is in him? It is not a question of ability, Daniel Nothafft, it is a question of being, living, being.”

Daniel tossed his head back and forth on his pillow, writhing in agony. “Stop!” he gulped, “stop, stop!”

The Goose Man bent over him, and crouched up nearer to his body like an animal trying to get warm. “Come out of the convulsion,” something cried and exhorted within him, “break your chains! Your music can give men nothing so long as you yourself are held captive. Feel their distress! Have pity on their unplumbed loneliness! Behold mankind! Behold it!”

“There is so much,” replied Daniel in extreme torture, “a hundred thousand faces bewilder me, a hundred thousand pictures hem me in. I cannot differentiate; I must flee, flee!”

There was something inimitably tender, reassuring, and resigned in what the Goose Man then said: “I speak to you as Christ: Rise and walk! Rise and go in peace, Daniel! Go with me to my place. Be me for just one day, from morning to evening, and I will be you.”

Daniel got up, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he had put on his clothes and was out on the street with the Goose Man. They crossed the market place, and Daniel, in a crepuscular state of mind, climbed up, with the help of the Goose Man, and took his place on the base of the fountain behind the iron railing. The two geese he took under his arms. He stood perfectly still, rigid, just like the Goose Man, and waited in anticipation of the things that were to come.

V

But nothing extraordinary happened. Everything that took place was quite prosaic and obviously a matter of custom.

The sun rose, and the market women took the cords and covers from their baskets. Fresh cherries, young pears, and winter apples shone in all their brilliancy of colour and lent variety to the drab square. Sparrows picked in the straw that lay on the street. The sun rose higher; its early red gave way to a midday blue. Clouds drifted over the roof of the church. The women gossiped. Wagons rattled by, errand boys called to each other, curtains were drawn from the windows, and men and women looked out to see what the weather was going to be like. There were sleepy faces and anxious faces, good faces and bad faces, young and old.

Maids and humbler housewives came to make their purchases. They examined the fruit with seasoned care and experienced hand, and bargained for lower prices. The peasant women praised what they had, and if their praise was ineffectual, they became abusive. Once a sale had been made, they would take their balances, put the weights in one pan and the fruit in another, and never cease praising what they were selling until they had the money safe in their pockets. Then they would count over the coins they had received, and looked at them as if to say: “It is fine to earn money!”

But those who paid out the money bore the mien of painful care and solicitude. They seemed to be counting it all up in their heads; to be taking lessons in mental arithmetic. They would think over how much it were wise or permissible for them to spend. The thing that impressed Daniel most of all, and the longer he stood there the clearer it became to him, was this: Each purchaser went right up to the very edge of the territory staked out for her, so to speak, by some mysterious master. This they felt was correct, certain though they were that to have gone beyond the allotted limit would have brought swift and irremediable ruin. The money was paid out with such studied caution, and taken in with such a sense of victory! There was something touching about it all. This daily life of these small people seemed so strange, so very strange, and at the same time so in accord with established order: it seemed indeed to be a practical visualisation of the sanctity of the law.

In all the transactions due respect was paid to the formalities of life, and nothing was veiled. There was fulness, but no confusion; many words, but no misunderstanding. There were the wares and there were the coins. The scales showed how much was being given and how much taken. The fruit wandered from basket to basket, and human arms carried it home. Each bought as much as could be paid for; there was no thought of going beyond one’s means.

The clock in the tower struck on the hour, and the shadows moved in a circle about the objects on the square. So it was to-day; and so it had been four hundred years ago.

Four hundred years ago the houses stood there just as they stood to-day, and people, men and women, looked out of the windows, some with kindly, some with embittered faces.

Is that not Theresa Schimmelweis creeping around the corner? How old, decrepit, and bent with years! Her hair is stone grey, her face is like lime. She is poorly dressed; she does not notice the people she meets. She sees nothing but the full baskets of fruit; for them she has a greedy eye. And she looks at Daniel behind the iron fence with an expression of painful astonishment.

And is that not Frau Hadebusch hobbling along over there! Though her face is that of a crafty criminal, in her eyes there is a panicky, terrified look. She has no support other than the ground beneath her feet; she is a poor, lost soul.

There comes Alfons Diruf, who retired years ago. He has become stout and gloomy. He is out for his morning walk along the city moat. There goes the actor, Edmund Hahn, seeking whom he may devour. Disease and lust are writ large across his jaded face. There is the sculptor, Schwalbe. He is secretly buying a few apples to take home to roast, for otherwise he has nothing warm to eat. And there is Herr Carovius, ambling along. He looks like a wandering spirit, dejected and exhausted.

Beggars pass by, and so do the rich. There are respected people who are greeted by those who see them; there are outcasts who are shunned. There are those who are happy and those who are weighed down with grief. Some hasten and some hesitate. Some seem to hold fast to their lives as a lover might hold fast to his fiancée; others will die that same day. One has a child by the hand, another a woman by the arm. Some drag crimes in their hearts, others walk upright, free, happy to face the world. One is being summoned to court as a witness, the other is on his way to the doctor. One is fleeing from domestic discord, another is rejoicing over some great good fortune. There is the man who has lost his purse and the man who is reading a serious letter. One is on his way to church to pray, another to the café to drown his sorrows. One is radiant with joy over the business outlook, another is crushed with poverty. A beautiful girl has on her best dress; a cripple lies in the gateway. There is a boy who sings a song, and a matron whose eyes are red with weeping. The baker carries his bread by, the cobbler his boots. Soldiers are going to the barracks, workmen are returning from the factory.

Daniel feels that none of them are strangers to him. He sees himself in each of them. He is nearer to them while standing on his elevated position behind the iron railing than he was when he walked by them on the street. The jet of water that spurts from him is like fate: it flows and collects in the basin. Eternal wisdom, he feels, is streaming up to him from the fountain below; each hour becomes a century. However men may be constituted, he is seized with a supernatural feeling when he looks into their eyes. In all of their eyes there is the same fire, the same anxiety and the same prayer; the same loneliness, the same life, the same death. In all of them he sees the soul of God.

He himself no longer feels his loneliness; he feels that he has been distributed among men. His hate has gone, dispelled like so much smoke. The tones he hears now come rushing up from the great fountain; and this fountain is fed from the blood of all those he sees on the market place. Water is something different now: “It washes clean man’s very soul, and makes it like an angel, whole.”

Noon came, and then evening: a day of creation. And when evening came, a mist settled over the city, and Daniel came down from his high place at the fountain, set the geese carefully to one side, and went home. He arrived at the vestibule; he stood in the door of the room looking out on the court. His eyes beheld a wonderful sight.

The Goose Man was sitting playing with Agnes and little Gottfried. He had cut silhouettes from bright coloured paper and made them stand up on the table by bending back the edge of the paper. There he sat, pushing these figures into each other, and making such droll remarks that Agnes, who had never in her life really laughed, laughed now with all her heart, and like the child that she in truth still was.

Little Gottfried could only prattle and clap his hands. The Goose Man had placed him on the table. Whenever he made a false or awkward move, the Goose Man would set him right. He seemed to be especially skilled at handling and amusing children.

When Daniel came in, the Goose Man got up and went over to him, greeted him, and said in a kindly, confidential tone: “Are you back so soon? We have had such a nice time!”

In the room, however, there was the same haze that had settled down over the city when Daniel left the fountain. Agnes and Gottfried were seized with a terrible fear. The boy began to cry; Agnes threw her arms around him and cried too.

Daniel went up to them, and said: “Don’t cry! I’m with you. You don’t need to cry any more!”

He sat down on the same seat on which the Goose Man had been sitting, looked at the tiny paper figures, and, smiling, continued the game the Goose Man had been playing with them.

Gottfried became quiet and Agnes happy.

“Good-night!” cried the Goose Man, “now I am again myself, and you are you.”

He nodded kindly and disappeared.

VI

That same evening six of Daniel’s pupils came in. They had heard that he had been removed from his position at the conservatory.

It was not a mere rumour. Andreas Döderlein had had him discharged. He was also relieved of his post as organist at St. Ægydius’s. The scandal with which he had been associated, and which was by this time known to the entire city, had turned the church authorities against him.

The six pupils came into his room where he was playing with his children. One of them, who had been chosen as their spokesman, told him that they had made up their minds not to leave him; they were anxious to have him continue the instruction he had been giving them.

They were clever, vivacious young chaps. In their eyes was an enthusiasm that had not yet been dimmed either by cowardice or conceit.

“I am not going to remain in the city,” said Daniel. “I am planning to return to my native Eschenbach.”

The pupils looked at each other. Thereupon the speaker remarked: “We want to go with you.” They all nodded.

Daniel got up and shook hands with each one of them.

Two days later, Daniel’s furniture and household belongings had all been packed. Benda came to say good-bye: his work, his great duty was calling him.

At first Benda could hardly realise that Daniel was yet to live an active life; that there was still a whole life in him; that his life was not merely the debris of human existence, the ruins of a heart. But it was true.

There was about Daniel the expression, the bearing of a man who had been liberated, unchained. No one could help but notice it. Though more reticent and laconic than in former days, his eyes had taken on a new splendour, a renewed brilliancy and clarity; they were at once serious and cheerful. His mood had become milder, his face more peaceful.

The friends shook hands. Benda then left the room slowly, went down the steps slowly, and once out on the street he walked along slowly: he felt so small, so strangely unimportant.

VII

Daniel returned to Eschenbach, and moved into the house of his parents. His pupils took rooms with the residents of the village.

He was regarded by the natives as a peculiar individual. They smiled when they spoke of him, or when they saw him passing through the streets absorbed in his own thoughts. But it was not a malicious smile. If there was the faintest tinge of ridicule in it at first, it soon gave way to a vague feeling of pride.

He gained a mysterious influence over people with whom he came in contact; many sought his advice when in trouble. His pupils especially adored him. He had the gift of holding their attention, of carrying them along. The means he employed were the very simplest: his splendid, cheerful personality, the harmony between what he said and what he did, his earnestness, his humanness, his resignation to the cause that lay close to his heart, and his own belief in this cause—those were the means through which and by which he gained a mysterious influence over those with whom he came in touch.

He became a famous teacher; the number of pupils who wished to study under him increased from year to year. But he admitted very few of them to his classes. He took only the best; and the certainty with which he made his selections and differentiated was wellnigh infallible.

No inducements of any kind could persuade him to leave the isolated place where he had elected to live.

He was almost always in a good humour; he was never distracted; and the preciseness and sharpness with which he observed whatever took place was remarkable. The one thing that could throw him into a rage was to see some one abuse a dumb beast. Once he got into trouble with a teamster who was beating his skinny old jade in order to make it pull a load that was far in excess of its strength. The boys on the street made fun of him; the people laughed with considerable satisfaction, and said: “Ah, the professor: he’s a bit off.”

Agnes kept house for him; she was most faithful in looking out for his wants. When he would leave the house, she would bring him his hat and walking stick. Every evening before she went to sleep, he would come in to her and kiss her on the forehead. It was rare that they spoke with each other, but there was a secret agreement, a peaceful harmony, between them.

Gottfried grew up to be a strong, healthy boy. He had Daniel’s physique and Eleanore’s eyes. Yes, they were the eyes with that blue fire; and they had Eleanore’s elfin-like chastity and her hatred of all that is false and simulated. Daniel saw in this a freak of nature of the profoundest significance. All the laws of blood seemed unsubstantial and shadowy. His feelings often wandered between gratitude and astonishment.

Of Dorothea he heard one day that she was making her living as a violinist in a woman’s orchestra. He made some inquiries and traced her as far as Berlin. There he lost her. A few years later he was told that she had become the mistress of a wealthy country gentleman in Bohemia, and was driving about in an automobile on the Riviera.

He was also informed of the death of Herr Carovius. His last hours were said to have been very hard: he had kept crying out, “My flute, give me my flute!”

VIII

In August, 1909, Daniel’s pupils celebrated the fiftieth birthday of their master. They made him a great number of presents, and gave him a dinner in the inn at the Sign of the Ox.

One of his pupils, an extremely handsome young fellow for whose future Daniel had the highest of hopes, presented him with a huge bouquet of orange lilies, wild natives of the woods around Eschenbach. He had gathered them himself, and arranged them in a costly vase.

The menu at the dinner was quite frugal; the wine was Franconian country wine. During the dinner, Daniel rose, took his glass in his hand, and, with a far-away look in his eyes, said: “I drink to the health and happiness of a creature who is a stranger to all of you. She grew up here in Eschenbach. Many years ago she vanished in a most mysterious way. But I know that she is alive and happy at this hour.”

His pupils all raised their glasses. They looked at him, and were deeply moved by the strength and clarity of his features.

After the dinner he and his pupils went to the old church. He had both of the large doors opened so that the bright light of day might pour in unimpeded. Up in the lofty vaults of the nave, where all had been dark but a moment ago, there was now a milky clearness and cheerfulness.

He went to the organ and began to play. Some men and women who chanced to be passing by came in and sat down on the benches with the boys. Then a group of children entered. They tripped timidly through the open doors, stopped, looked around, and opened their eyes as wide as children can. Other people came in; for the tones of the organ had penetrated the humble homes. They looked up at the organ silently and seriously; for its exalted melodies had, without their being prepared for it, carried them away from their everyday existence, and lifted them up above its abject lowliness.

The tones grew louder and louder, until they sounded like the prayer of a heart overflowing with feeling. As the close of the great hymn drew on, a little girl was heard weeping from among the uninvited auditors.

It was Agnes who wept. Had life been fully awakened in her? Was love calling her out into the unknown? Was the life of her mother being repeated in her?

Children grow up and are seized by their fate.

Toward evening, Daniel took a walk with his nine pupils out over the meadow. They went quite far. The last song of the birds had died out, the glow of the sun had turned pale.

The beautiful youth, then walking by Daniel’s side, said: “And the work, Master?”

Daniel merely smiled; his eye roamed over the landscape.

The landscape shows many shades of green. Around the weirs the grass is higher, so high at times that one can see nothing of the geese but their beaks. Were it not for their cackling, one might take these beaks for strangely mobile flowers.

The End