And even
then he stood out for the privilege of being theoretically ungrateful.

Benda and his mother succeeded in getting him a position as a tutor in
some private families. He had to give piano lessons to young boys and
girls. The compensation was not great, but it at least helped him out
for the time being.

After the day's work was done, the evenings and nights bound the two
more and more firmly together.

VII

One evening Daniel entered the house and met Herr Carovius. But he was
so absorbed in thought that he passed by without noticing him. Carovius
looked at him angrily, and walked back to the hall to see where the
young man was going. When he heard him ring the bell on the second
floor, an uneasy expression came over his face. He rubbed his chin with
his left hand.

"The idea of passing by me as though I were a block of wood," murmured
Carovius spitefully. "Just wait, young man, I'll make you pay for that."

Instead of leaving the house as he had wished, Carovius went into his
apartment, lighted a candle, and tripped hastily through three rooms, in
which there were old cabinets and trunks filled with books and music
scores. There was also a piano in one. He then took a key from his
pocket, and unlocked a fourth room, which had closed shades and was in
fact otherwise quite oddly arranged.

He went to a table which reached almost the full length of the room,
picked up a piece of white paper, sat down, and wrote with red ink:
"Daniel Nothafft. Musician. Two months in jail."

He then covered the paper with mucilage, pasted it on a wooden box
which looked like a miniature sentry-house, and nailed a lid on the box,
using tacks that were lying ready for this purpose.

There were at least five dozen such boxes on the long table, the
majority of which had names attached to them and had been nailed up.

The closed room Herr Carovius called his court chamber. What he did in
it he termed the regulation of his affairs with humanity, and the
collection of little wooden cells he called his jail. Every individual
who had offended, hurt, humiliated, or defrauded him was assigned such a
keep in which he was obliged to languish, figuratively, until his time,
determined by a formal sentence, was up.

Nor was this all. In the middle section of the table there were a number
of diminutive sand heaps, about thirty in all, and on each one was a
small wooden cross and on each cross was a