plained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement
of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut
the piano with a bang, and said: "Adieu, Baroness." He did not return
until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.

"Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time," he thought, though he did not
fail to appreciate the Baroness's human dignity. The eight hours a month
were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an
hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him
alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.

A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and
shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and
much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.

Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain
crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense
admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as
humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her
choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of
Schumann's "Carneval" for her, a piece of music of which she was
passionately fond.

Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always
walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his
mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was
always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be
alone. He bent the rim of his hat down so that it covered his forehead.
His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.

At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into
space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about
him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: "Tell
me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?"

This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just
before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so
aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle
of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so
old. This is the light in which we must see him.

V

The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the
street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.

With very limited means, but with dilig