lsive, staring eyes; an old invalid
with a wooden leg, who, on a dreadful, evidently home-made instrument,
half dulcimer, half barrel-organ, was endeavoring by means of analogy to
arouse the pity of the public for his painful injury; a lame, deformed
boy, forming with his violin one single, indistinguishable mass, was
playing endless waltzes with all the hectic violence of his misshapen
breast; and finally an old man, easily seventy years of age, in a
threadbare but clean woolen overcoat, who wore a smiling, self-satisfied
expression. This old man attracted my entire attention. He stood there
bareheaded and baldheaded, his hat as a collection-box before him on the
ground, after the manner of these people. He was belaboring an old,
much-cracked violin, beating time not only by raising and lowering his
foot, but also by a corresponding movement of his entire bent body. But
all his efforts to bring uniformity into his performance were fruitless,
for what he was playing seemed to be an incoherent succession of tones
without time or melody. Yet he was completely absorbed in his work; his
lips quivered, and his eyes were fixed upon the sheet of music before
him, for he actually had notes! While all the other musicians, whose
playing pleased the crowd infinitely better, were relying on their
memories, the old man had placed before him in the midst of the surging
crowd a small, easily portable music-stand, with dirty, tattered notes,
which probably contained in perfect order what he was playing so
incoherently. It was precisely the novelty of this equipment that had
attracted my attention to him, just as it excited the merriment of the
passing throng, who jeered him and left the hat of the old man empty,
while the rest of the orchestra pocketed whole copper mines. In order to
observe this odd character at my leisure, I had stepped, at some
distance from him, upon the slope at the side of the causeway. For a
while he continued playing. Finally he stopped, and, as if recovering
himself after a long spell of absent-mindedness, he gazed at the
firmament, which already began to show traces of approaching evening.
Then he looked down into his hat, found it empty, put it on with
undisturbed cheerfulness, and placed his bow between the strings. "_Sunt
certi denique fines_" (there is a limit to everything), he said, took
his music-stand, and, as though homeward bound, fought his way with
difficulty through the crowd streaming in the oppos