re. As soon as the
piece was finished, she turned to her father and asked him to take her
home. Jordan was frightened. Those sitting next to him looked at the
girl's pale face, sympathised with her, and made conventional remarks.
Eleanore wanted to go home too, but Gertrude whispered to her in her
imperious way and told her to stay. Familiar as she was with Gertrude's
disposition, she thought that it was simply a passing attack of some
kind, and regained her composure.

Daniel was standing at the door, talking to Benda and Wurzelmann. He was
very much excited; his two companions were trying to appease his
embitterment against Andreas Doederlein. "Ah, the man doesn't know a
thing about his profession," he exclaimed, and scorned all attempts to
effect a reconciliation between him and the leader of the orchestra.
"What is left of my compositions is debris only. He drags the time,
never even tries to make a _legatura_, scorns a _piano_ every time he
comes to one, pays no attention to _crescendos_, never retards--it is
terrible! My works cannot be played in public like that!"

Gertrude and her father passed by quickly and without greeting. Daniel
was stupefied. The lifeless expression in Gertrude's face unnerved him.
He felt as if he had been struck by a hammer, as if his own fate were
inseparably connected with that of the girl. Her step, her eyes, her
mouth were, he felt, a part of his own being. And the fact that she
passed by without even speaking to him, cold, reserved, hostile, filled
him with such intense anger that from then on he was not accountable for
what he did.

The flood of melody in Beethoven's great work was on the point of
pouring forth from the orchestra in all its exalted ruggedness. What
happened? There came forth instead a confused, noisy clash and clatter.
Daniel was seized with violent restlessness. It was hard enough to see
his own works bungled; to see this creation with its delicate soul and
titanic power, a work which he knew as he knew few things on this earth,
torn to tatters and bungled all around was more than he could stand. The
trumpet solo did not sound as though it came from some distant land of
fairy spirits: it was manifestly at the people's feet and it was flat.
He began to tremble. When the calm melancholy andante, completely robbed
of all measure and proportion by the unskilled hand of the leader and
made to dissipate in senseless sounds, reached his ear, he was beside
himself. He