the faculty of the Latin School held a special
meeting to decide whether they should permit their pupils to go to the
opera or not. The Young Men's Christian Association voiced its protest
against the nude shoulders of the _artistes_; the members of the Casino
turned up their noses at the achievements of the company; the police
insisted that the booth or hotel lobby in which they performed should be
fireproof; the wife of the mining engineer fell in love with the
barytone, and her husband hired a number of hoodlums to take their
places in the gallery and hoot and hiss when the time came. And those
who nag under any circumstances requested more cheerfulness. They found
the "Czar and Zimmermann" too dull, the "Muette de Portici" too
hackneyed. They insisted on "Madame Angot" and "Orpheus in the Under
World."

There was always something wrong.

Daniel shuddered at the mere presence of these people; he was repelled
by their occupations, their amusements, and the cadavers of their
ideals. He did not like the way they laughed; nor could he stand their
dismal feelings. He despised the houses out of which they crept, the
detectives at their windows, their butcher shops and hotels, their
newspapers, their Sundays and their work days. The world was pressing
hard upon him. He had to look these people straight in the face, and
they compelled him to haggle with them for money, words, feelings, and
ideas.

He learned in time, however, to see other things: the forests on the
banks of the Main; the great meadows in the hills of Franconia; the
melancholy plains of Central Germany; the richly variegated slopes of
the Jura Mountains; the old cities with their walls and cathedrals,
their gloomy alleys and deserted castles. In time he came to see people
in a different and easier light. He saw the young and the old, the fair
and the homely, the cheerful and the sad, the poor--and the rich so far
away and peaceful. They gave him, without discrimination, of their
wealth and their poverty. They laid their youth and their old age, their
beauty and their ugliness, their joys and their sorrows, at his feet.

And the country gave him the forests and the fields, the brooks and the
rivers, the clouds and the birds, and everything that is under the
earth.

X

It was winter. The company came to Ansbach, where they were to play in
the former Margrave Theatre. "Freischuetz" was to be given, and Daniel
had held