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