e of the girl. He was like a man who goes along
the street carrying a basket full of eggs: his sole ambition for the
time being is to see that not a single egg is lost or broken.

The two would frequently accompany the girl home. Daniel always talked
about himself, and Benda listened with a smile. Or Benda talked about
Daniel, and Daniel was all ears.

What did people say? That Eleanore was now trotting around with three
men, whereas she formerly had only one on her string, the Baron, and
that you are going to hear from this affair.

Every now and then a snip of ugly gossip reached Eleanore's ears. She
paid not the slightest attention to it. She looked out from her glass
case on to the world with cool and cheerful indifference, quite
incapable of placing the established interpretation on the glances of
calumniators.

VI

Benda could have sketched Daniel's face in the darkness: the round
forehead, the little nose, pointed and mulish, the rigidly pinched lips,
the angular musician's chin, and the deep dimples in his cheeks.

His ignorance of the musician was complete. Like all scholars, he
nurtured an ingrained distrust when it came to the supernatural
influence of art. For the great musical compositions which, in the
course of time and as a result of the homage of succeeding generations,
had come to be regarded as exemplary and incontestable, he had a feeling
of reverence. For the creations of his contemporaries he had no ear.

That it was hard to understand and appreciate, he knew. That it was
bitter not to be understood or appreciated, he had experienced. That the
discipline associated with all intellectual work demands its tribute in
the form of sacrificial renunciation needed no proof in his case.

The musician was something new to him. How did he regard him? As a blind
man whose soul was on fire. As a drunken man who made the impression of
repulsive sobriety on other men. As an obsessed individual who was
living an excruciatingly lonely life and was unaware of it. As an
unpolished peasant with the nerves of a degenerate.

The scientist wished to find the established and formulated law in the
musician--a task that could lead only to despair. The friend surveyed
the life of his friend; he allowed the personalities of many young men
whom he had met in life to pass before his mind's eye. He looked for the
criteria of common interests; he sought a law, even here. He sat in the