what he had been looking for: he had found the mournful
melody that had driven him away the day Eleanore died. He had, to be
sure, put it on the paper then and there, but it had remained without
consequence: it had been buried in the grave with Eleanore.

Now it had arisen, and its soul--its consequence--had arisen with it; it
was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and
filled as the world is full.

Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of
machinery.

IV

Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the
museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a
mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a
cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house
in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.

Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he
become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary
nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits
without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and
editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a
nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip
had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on
approval; he was placed on the black list.

He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that
the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects
of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.

But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent;
in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought
his stock and furnishings at brokers' prices, and the firm of Jason
Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.

In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted
of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von
Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending
upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock
together.

Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he
tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to
understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his
convictions, with the result that the Masons would hav