r I never could have learned to render music as I
hear it. The hearing is a natural gift, for which I have to thank God.
My grandfather is said to have had a wonderful understanding of music.
If my playing were necessarily below my hearing and my conception, I
should want to tear my ears out."

"That is the way with me," said Annele. "I like to hear music, but am
too unskilful a performer. When one has to be busy about the house, and
cannot devote much time to practising, there is no use in trying to
play. I have given up the piano altogether, much to my father's
vexation, for he spared no pains to have all his children taught; but I
think what cannot be done thoroughly had better not be done at all.
Your musical clocks are meant for people like me, who like to hear
music, but cannot make it. If I were master here, I should never allow
your greatest work to go to Russia, but should buy it myself. It ought
to stand in the public room to entertain the guests. It would bring you
in ever so many orders there. Since I was up at your house, I have had
constantly running in my head that beautiful melody, 'Das klinget so
herrlich, das klinget so schoen!'"

Beautiful and brave were the melodies playing in Lenz's heart. He tried
to explain to Annele how the notes might be followed exactly, all the
pins be put in the right places, and even the time in certain passages
changed, and yet, unless the man himself felt the music, he would make
nothing but a hurdy-gurdy, after all. The piano passages must be taken
slower, the forte faster. A performer would naturally render them so;
he could hardly help being more subdued at the piano passages and more
animated at the forte. The same effect must be wrought by the pins; but
the hurrying and slackening needs to be very slight. In the forte
passages especial care is needed; for in them the works necessarily
labor and are retarded, so that they have to be, in some way, favored.
"I cannot tell you, Annele," he concluded, "how happy my art, my work,
makes me. As Pilgrim says, I sit there in my room, and set up pieces
lively or solemn, which play themselves, and make happy hundreds and
hundreds of people that I never saw."

Annele listened intelligently to the end. "You deserve to be happy,"
she said, when he had finished. "Your beautiful words show me how
beautiful your work is. Thank you very much for explaining it to me so
thoroughly. Some people would be jealous if they knew you talked so