ut they are now dead. Only I am still alive," he
said, pulling at his threadbare trousers and picking off some little
feathers with downcast eyes. "My father was ambitious and a man of
violent temper. My brothers satisfied him. I was considered a slow
coach, and I _was_ slow. If I remember rightly," he continued, turning
aside as though looking far away, with his head resting upon his left
hand, "I might have been capable of learning various things, if only I
had been given time and a systematic training. My brothers leaped from
one subject to another with the agility of gazelles, but I could make
absolutely no headway, and whenever only a single word escaped me, I was
obliged to begin again from the very beginning. Thus I was constantly
driven. New material was to occupy the place which had not yet been
vacated by the old, and I began to grow obstinate. Thus they even drove
me into hating music, which is now the delight and at the same time the
support of my life. When I used to improvise on my violin at twilight in
order to enjoy myself in my own way, they would take the instrument away
from me, asserting that this ruined my fingering. They would also
complain of the torture inflicted upon their ears and made me wait for
the lesson, when the torture began for me. In all my life I have never
hated anything or any one so much as I hated the violin at that time.

"My father, who was extremely dissatisfied, scolded me frequently and
threatened to make a mechanic of me. I didn't dare say how happy that
would have made me. I should have liked nothing better than to become a
turner or a compositor. But my father was much too proud ever to have
permitted such a thing. Finally a public examination at school, which
they had persuaded him to attend in order to appease him, brought
matters to a climax. A dishonest teacher arranged in advance what he was
going to ask me, and so everything went swimmingly. But toward the end I
had to recite some verses of Horace from memory and I missed a word. My
teacher, who had been nodding his head in approval and smiling at my
father, came to my assistance when I broke down, and whispered the word
to me, but I was so engrossed trying to locate the word in my memory and
to establish its connection with the context, that I failed to hear him.
He repeated it several times--all in vain. Finally my father lost his
patience, _'cachinnum'_ (laughter)--that was the word--he roared at me
in a voice of t