re not a
ghost.

The Swallow wrote: "There is only one who can redeem us: the musician.
The day of founders of religion, builders of states, military heroes,
and discoverers is gone. The poets have only words, and our ears have
grown tired of words, words, words. They have only pictures and figures,
and our eyes are tired beholding. The soul's last consolation is to be
found in music; of this I am certain. If there is any one thing that can
make restitution for the lost illusions of religious faith, provide us
with wings, transform us, and save us from the abyss to which we are
rushing with savage senses, it is music. Where are you, O redeemer? You
are wandering about over the earth, the poorest, the most abandoned, the
guiltiest of men. When are you going to pay your debts, Daniel
Nothafft?"

Daniel spent seven months in Ravenna, Ferrara, Florence, and Pisa. He
was looking for some manuscripts by Frescobaldi, Borghesi, and Ercole
Pasquini. Having found the most important ones he could regard his
collection as complete.

Men seemed to him like puppets, landscapes like paintings on glass. He
longed for forests; his dreams became disordered.

From Genoa he wandered on foot through Lombardy and across the Alps. He
slept on hard beds in order to keep his hot blood in check, and lived on
bread and cheese. His attacks of weakness, sometimes of complete
exhaustion, did not worry him at first; he paid no attention to them.
But in Augsburg he swooned, falling headlong on the street. He was taken
to a hospital, where he lay for three months with typhus. From his
window he could see the tall chimneys of factories and an endless
procession of wandering clouds. It had become winter; the ground was
covered with snow.

Two years after his last visit he again entered the house on AEgydius
Place. When Philippina saw him, so pale and emaciated, she uttered a cry
of horror.

Agnes had grown still taller, thinner, and more serious. At times when
she looked at her father he felt like crying out to her in anger: "What
do you mean by your everlasting questions?" But he never said a word of
this kind to her.

When Philippina saw that Daniel had returned as lonesome and
uncommunicative as he was when he went away, she took it upon herself to
display a great deal of gentleness, kindness, sympathy in his presence.
Old Jordan was living the same life he had been living for years.
Everything in fact was just the same; it seemed that the h