and fail me as often the strings of my instrument fail
my fingers. To put on any of the conventionalities of life, any of its
honors, even the loves of life, would be to put on so many constraints the
more."

"That is because you have never loved," said Carl.

"That may be," said Arnold,--"because I have never loved anything but
music. Still that does not satisfy me,--it scarcely gives me joy; it gives
me only longing, and oftener despair. I listen to it alone, in secret,
until I am driven by a strange desire to express it to a great world.
Then, for a few moments, the praise and flattery of crowds delight and
exalt me,--but only to let me fall back into greater despair, into remorse
that I have allowed the glorious art of music to serve me as a cup of
self-exaltation."

"You, Arnold, so unmoved by applause?" said Carl.

"It is only an outside coldness," answered Arnold; "the applause heats me,
excites me, till a moment when I grow to hate it. The flatteries of a
princess and her imitating train turn my head, till an old choral strain,
or a clutch that my good angel gives me, a welling-up of my own genius in
my heart, comes to draw me back, to cool me, to taunt me as traitor, to
rend me with the thought that in self I have utterly forgotten myself, my
highest self."

"These are the frenzies with which one has to pay for the gift of genius,"
said Carl. "A cool temperament balances all that. If one enjoys coolly,
one suffers as coolly. Take these fits of despair as the reverse side of
your fate. She offers you by way of balance cups of joy and pleasure and
success, of which we commonplace mortals scarcely taste a drop. When my
peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my
bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it. If it were the
princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine
now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach the
reward at the top."

"It would not be worth the pains," said Arnold; "a princess's smiles are
not worth more than a peasant-girl's. I am tired of it all. I am going to
find another world. I am going to England."

"You are foolish," answered Carl. "The world is no different there; there
is as little heart in England as in Germany,--no more or less. You are
just touching success here; do give it a good grasp."

"I am cloyed with it already," said Arnold.

"It is not that," said Carl. "You are a child cr