a number of special rehearsals.

But a violent snow storm broke out on the day of the performance;
scarcely two dozen people attended.

How differently the violins sounded in this auditorium! The voices were,
as it seemed, automatically well balanced; there was in them an element
of calm and assurance. The orchestra? Daniel had so charmed it that it
obeyed him as if it were a single instrument. At the close of the last
act, an old, grey-haired man stepped up to Daniel, smiled, took him by
the hand, and thanked him. It was Spindler.

Daniel went home with him; they talked about the past, the future, men
and music. They could not stop talking; nor could the snow stop falling.
This did not disturb them. They met again on the following day; but at
the end of the week Spindler was taken ill, and had to go to bed.

As Daniel entered the residence of his old friend one morning, he
learned that he had died suddenly the night before. It had been a
peaceful death.

On the third day, Daniel followed the funeral procession to the
cemetery. When he left the cemetery--there were but few people at the
funeral--he went out into the snow-covered fields, and spent the
remainder of the day walking around.

That same night he sat down in his wretched quarters, and began his
composition of Goethe's "Harzreise im Winter." It was one of the
profoundest and rarest of works ever created by a musician, but it was
destined, like the most of Daniel's compositions, not to be preserved to
posterity. This was due to a tragic circumstance.

XI

In the spring of 1886, the company went north to Hesse, then to
Thuringia, gave performances in a few of the towns in the Spessart
region and along the Rhoen, the box receipts growing smaller and smaller
all the while. Doermaul had not been seen since the previous autumn; the
salaries had not been paid for some time. Wurzelmann prophesied a speedy
and fatal end of the enterprise.

An engagement of unusual length had been planned for the town of
Ochsenfurt. The company placed its last hopes on the series, although it
was already June and very warm. The thick, muggy air of the gloomy hall
in which they were to play left even the enthusiasts without much desire
to brighten up the monotony of provincial life by the enjoyment of grand
opera.

They drew smaller houses from day to day. Finally there was no more
money in the till; they did not even have enough to move to