this he went to Dresden, where he had some work to do in
the Royal library.

People came to him anxious to place themselves at his service. Many
signs told him that Regina Sussmann was making fervent propaganda for
him.

One day he received a letter from a musical society in Magdeburg, asking
him to give a concert there. He hesitated for a long while, and then
agreed to accede to their wish. Outwardly it could not be called an
unusually successful evening, but his auditors felt his power. People
with the thinnest smattering of music forgot themselves and became
infatuated with his arms and his eyes. An uncertain, undetermined
happiness which he brought to the hearts of real musicians carried him
further along on his career. For two successive winters he directed
concerts in the provincial towns of North Germany. He was the first to
accustom the people to strictly classical programmes. It is rare that
the first in any enterprise of this kind reaps the gratitude of those
who pay to hear him. Had he not desisted with such Puritanical severity
from feeding the people on popular songs, opera selections, and
favourite melodies, his activity would have been much better rewarded.
As it was, his name was mentioned with respect, but he passed through
the streets unacclaimed.

Regina Sussmann was always on hand when he gave a concert. He knew it,
even if he did not see her. At times he caught sight of her sitting in
the front row. She never approached him. Articles redolent with
adulation appeared in the papers about him: it was manifest that she had
been influential in having them written. Once he met her on the steps of
a hotel. She stopped and cast her eyes to the ground; she was pale. He
passed by her. Again he was filled with longing to come into intimate
contact with an untouched woman. Was his heart already hungry, as she
had predicted? He bit his lips, and worked throughout the whole night.
He felt that he was being fearfully endangered by the prosy insipidity
of the age and the world he was living in. But could he not escape the
terrors of such without having recourse to a woman? The shadows receded,
enveloped in sorrow, Gertrude and Eleanore, wrapped in the embrace of
sisters.

"Don't!" they cried. He saw at once that his provincial concerts were
leading him to false goals, enflaming false ambitions, robbing him of
his strength. He no longer found it possible to endure the sight of
brilliantly lighted halls, and the