and daughters?

And so this slanderous babble rattled on. There was something
unfathomable in their hatred of the musician. They were just as agreed
on this point as they would have been if Daniel had broken open their
strong boxes, smashed their windows, and betrayed their honour and
dignity to public ridicule.

They did not know what they should do about him. They passed by him as
one would pass by a bomb that might or might not explode.

II

When Herr Carovius was alone, he picked up the paper, and read the
account of a mine explosion in Silesia. The number of killed satisfied
him. The description of the women as they stood at the top of the shaft,
wept, wrung their hands, and called out the names of their husbands,
filled him with the same agreeable sensation that he experienced when he
listened to the melancholy finale of a Chopin nocturne.

But he could not forget the expression on Herr Pflaum's face when he
told how Nothafft was neglecting his wife. It had been the expression
that comes out, so to speak, from between the curtains of a sleeping
room: something was up, make no mistake, something was going on.

For quite a while Herr Carovius had harboured the suspicion that there
was something wrong. Twice he had met Daniel and Eleanore walking along
the street in the twilight, talking to each other in a very mysterious
way. Things were going on behind Herr Carovius's back which he could not
afford to overlook.

Since the day Eleanore had disentangled the cord of his nose glasses
from the button of his top coat, the picture of the young girl had been
indelibly stamped on his mind. He could still see the beautiful
curvature of her young bosom as she raised her arm.

A year and a half after this incident, Herr Carovius was going through
some old papers. He chanced upon an unfinished letter which Eberhard von
Auffenberg had written to Eleanore but had never posted. Eberhard had
come to Nuremberg at the time to transact some business connected with
the negotiation of a new loan; he had left his hotel, and Herr Carovius
had had to wait for him a long while. This time he had spent in looking
over the unsealed documents of the incautious young Baron.

Then it was that he discovered the letter. What words! And oh, the
passion! Herr Carovius would never have believed that the reserved
misanthrope was capable of such a display of emotion. He felt that
Eberhard had disclosed to hi