ter into giving him a written statement
that she was satisfied with the sum of twelve thousand: the remaining
eighteen thousand was the price he demanded in return for her consent to
have his sister, who was slavishly submissive to him, marry the man of
her choice.

"I have been duped," said Andreas Doederlein, and bore up under his
grudge with becoming dignity.

The director of the conservatory died, and Andreas Doederlein, who, by
virtue of his achievements and his personality, had the first right to
the vacant position, was appointed to it. His former colleagues were
stout in their contention that the appointment cost him many a bitter
visit to the powers that be. Doederlein read envy in their eyes and
smiled to himself.

But it was a hard life. "Art cannot live without bread," said Doederlein,
with a heroic glance into the future. "But oh, what works I could bring
out if I only had time! Give me time, time, and," swinging his hands
cloudward, "the eagles above would greet me!"

IX

Herr Carovius and death were intimate friends. Whenever death had an
errand to run, it always knocked on Herr Carovius's door, as if to find
a person who approved of its deeds and who had a just appreciation of
them, for there were so many of the other kind.

But when Herr Carovius heard that Eleanore Nothafft had died, he felt
that his old friend had gone a bit too far. He was touched. He was
seized with griping pains in the abdominal region, and locked himself up
for the period of one whole day in his court room. There he was taken
down with catalepsy; his face went through a horrible transformation: it
came to look as if all the wickedness, hopelessness, and despair of the
man who had never become reconciled to life through love had been
concentrated in it and petrified.

His forebodings had come true.

Eleanore's funeral took place on a rainy June day. Herr Carovius,
dressed in his shabby old yellow raincoat with its big pockets, was
present. There were also many others present. Every face was touched
with grief; every eye was filled with tears, like the earth round about.
Those who had not known her had at least heard of her. They had known
that she had been there in some capacity, just as one hears of some
unusual phenomenon among the celestial bodies, and that she was gone;
that she was no more to be seen. For one moment at least all these
people were changed into deep, seeing, feeling