15

Finally the goal was reached. Goldmund entered the longed-for city by the same gate through which he had, so many years ago, stepped for the first time in search of his master. News from the bishop's city had already reached him on the road as he was approaching. He knew that the plague had been there too, that it was perhaps reigning still; people had told him of riots and unrest and that a governor had been sent by the Emperor to restore order, to enforce emergency laws and protect life and property. The bishop had left the city immediately after the outbreak of the epidemic and was living far away in one of his castles in the country. The wanderer had shown little interest in this news. As long as the city was still standing, and in it the workshop in which he wanted to work, everything else was unimportant to him. When he arrived, the plague had subsided; the people were waiting for the bishop's return and the governor's departure and looking forward to taking up their accustomed peaceful existence once more.

When Goldmund saw the city again, a feeling he had never before experienced—the emotion of homecoming—flooded through his heart and he made an unusually severe face to control himself. Everything was still in its place: the portals, the beautiful fountains, the clumsy old tower of the cathedral and the slender new one of the church of St. Mary, the clear bells of the church of St. Lawrence, the broad-shining marketplace. Oh, how good that it had waited for him! Once, on the road, he had dreamed that he arrived and found everything unfamiliar and changed, some sections in decay and ruin and others equally unrecognizable because of new buildings and unpleasant landmarks. He walked through the streets close to tears, recognizing house after house. He found himself almost envying the solid burghers their pretty, secure houses, their fenced-in lives, the comforting, secure feeling of having a home, of belonging in a room, or in a workshop, among wives and children, servants and neighbors.

It was late afternoon. On the sunlit side of the street, houses, taverns, guild emblems, carved doors, and flower-pots were bathed in a warm glow. Nothing recalled the fact that death and madness had raged. Cool, light-green and light-blue, the clear river streamed under the resounding vaults of the bridge. For a while Goldmund sat on the embankment. Dark, shadowlike fish still glided by down there in the crystal greenness, or were motionless, their noses turned against the current. A feeble gold shimmer still blinked here and there from the twilight of the depths that promised so much and encouraged dreaming. Other waters had fish too, and other bridges and other towns offered pretty sights, and yet it seemed to him that he had seen nothing like this for a long time, that he had not felt anything similar.

Two butcher boys passed, pushing a calf. They were laughing, exchanging glances and jokes with a maid who was taking down wash above them on a balcony. How quickly everything passed! Not long ago the plague fires were still smoking here, and the dreadful body burners ruled; and now life went on, people laughed and joked. And he was no different. There he sat, delighted to see these things again, feeling grateful and even sensing warmth in the heart for the burghers, as though there had been no misery, no death, no Lene, no Jewish princess. Smiling, he stood up and walked on. Only when he approached Master Niklaus's house and walked again the street he had walked to work every day long ago did his heart begin to pound with anguish and worry. He walked faster. He wanted to call on the master that very day, to know where he stood; to wait until tomorrow seemed impossible. Was the master perhaps still angry with him? All that had been so long ago. It could no longer have any importance, but if it did, he would overcome it. If only the master was still there, he and his workshop, then all would be well. Hurriedly, as though afraid to miss something at the very last moment, he walked toward the familiar house, reached for the doorknob and had a terrible chill when he found the door locked. Was that a bad sign? Before, the door was never kept locked in broad daylight. Loudly he let the knocker fall and waited, sudden fear in his heart.

The old woman who had received him when he first entered this house came to open. She had not grown any uglier, only older and unfriendlier, and she did not recognize Goldmund. With anguish in his voice, he asked for the master. She looked at him, dumb and distrustful.

"Master? There's no master here. On your way, man. We let nobody in."

She tried to push him back out into the street, and he took her by the arm and yelled: "Speak, Margrit, for heaven's sake! I'm Goldmund, don't you know me? I must see Master Niklaus."

No welcome shone in her farsighted, half-blind eyes.

"There's no Master Niklaus here any more," she said coldly. "He's dead. Be on your way, I can't stand here and chat."

Everything collapsed inside Goldmund. He shoved the old woman aside; she ran after him, screaming as he hurried through the dark hall toward the workshop. It was closed. Still followed by the nagging, scolding old woman, he ran up the stairs. In the twilight of the familiar room he saw the figures Niklaus had collected. Loudly he called for Mistress Lisbeth.

A door opened, and Lisbeth appeared. He recognized her only when he looked a second time: the sight contracted his heart. Ever since the moment he had been shocked to find the door bolted, everything in the house had seemed ghostlike, as though under a spell or in a nightmare, but now, at the sight of Lisbeth, a shudder went down his spine. Beautiful, proud Lisbeth had turned into a shy, bent-over old maid with a yellow, sickly face, a plain black dress, insecure eyes, and an attitude of fear.

"Forgive me," he said. "Margrit didn't want to let me in. Don't you know me? I'm Goldmund, tell me, oh tell me: is it true that your father is dead?"

He saw in her eyes that she had recognized him, and also that he was not in good standing here.

"Oh, so you are Goldmund," she said, and he recognized something of her proud manner in her voice. "You have troubled yourself in vain. My father is dead."

"And the workshop?" he blurted out.

"The workshop is closed. If you're looking for work, you must go elsewhere."

He tried to control himself.

"Mistress Lisbeth," he said in a friendly tone, "I'm not looking for work, I only wanted to say God bless you to the master, and to you. I am so sad to hear this! I can see that you have been through terrible times. If a grateful disciple of your father's can be of any service to you, please say so, it would be a joy to me. Ah, Mistress Lisbeth, my heart is breaking to find you this way—in such deep sorrow."

She withdrew to the door of the room.

"Thank you," she said hesitatingly. "You can no longer be of service to him, or to me. Margrit will show you out."

Her voice sounded bad, half angry, half fearful. He felt if she had the courage, she would have thrown him out cursing.

Soon he was downstairs, and the old woman slammed the door behind him and pushed the bolts. He could still hear the hard clicking of those two bolts. It sounded to him like the locking of a coffin lid.

Slowly he returned to the embankment. Again he sat at the old place above the river. The sun had gone down, cold came up from the water, the stone on which he sat felt cold. The street along the embankment had grown quiet. The stream foamed around the pillars of the bridge; the depths of the water were dark; no gold shimmer blinked up any more. Oh, he thought, if I fell over this wall and disappeared in the river! Again the world was filled with death. An hour passed, and the twilight turned to night. At last he was able to weep. He sat and wept, warm drops falling on his hands and knees. He wept for his dead master, for the lost beauty of Lisbeth, for Lene, for Robert, for Rebekka, for his wilted, squandered youth.

Later he found a tavern where he had once often drunk with friends. The owner recognized him. He asked her for a piece of bread and she gave it to him. She was friendly; she also gave him a mug of wine. He could not swallow the bread or drink the wine. That night he slept on a bench in the tavern. In the morning the owner waked him. He thanked her and left, eating the piece of bread in the street.

He walked to the fish market. There stood the house in which he had once had a room. Beside the fountain, a few fishwives were offering their live wares; he stared into the barrels, at the beautifully glittering animals. He had often seen this before. He remembered how he had felt pity for the fish and anger against the fishwives and the shoppers. He remembered one morning when he had roamed here, admired the fish and felt sorry for them, when he had been very sad. Much time had passed since then; much water had washed down the river. He remembered his sadness well, but he could no longer remember what had made him so sad. It was that way with everything: even sadness passed, even pain and despair, as well as the joys. Everything passed, faded, lost its depth, its value, and finally there came a time when one could no longer remember what had pained one so. Pains, too, wilted and faded. Would today's pain also wilt one day and be meaningless, his deep despair at his master's death, at his dying in anger against him, his hurt that no workshop was open in which he could taste the joy of creating and roll the weight of images from his soul? Yes, doubtless this pain, this bitter need would also grow old and tired. It too would be forgotten. Nothing had permanence, and he regretted that, too.

As he stared at the fish, absorbed in these thoughts, he heard a low friendly voice speak his name.

"Goldmund," someone called shyly, and when he looked up, he saw a delicate, sickly young girl, with beautiful dark eyes, who was calling to him. He did not know her.

"Goldmund! It is you, isn't it?" said the timid voice. "How long have you been back in the city? Don't you know me any more? I'm Marie."

But he did not know her. She had to tell him that she was the daughter of his former landlord who on that early morning of his departure had warmed milk for him in the kitchen. She blushed, telling this.

Yes, it was Marie, the sickly child with the lame hip, who had taken care of him that day with such timid sweetness. Now it all came back to him: she had waited for him that cool morning and had been so sad that he was leaving. She had cooked milk for him, and he had given her a kiss which she had received quietly and solemnly as if it were a sacrament. He had never thought of her again. Now she was grown up and had very beautiful eyes, though she still limped. He shook hands with her. He was so glad that someone in this city knew and loved him.

Marie took him with her; he resisted only halfheartedly. He was invited to eat with her parents in the room where his painting was still hung, where his red ruby glass stood on the mantelpiece. They asked him to stay a few days; they were glad to see him again. Then he learned what had happened in his master's house. Niklaus had not died of the plague, but beautiful Lisbeth had fallen ill with it and for a long time lain deathly sick, and her father had nursed her until he himself died, a few weeks before she was quite cured. She was saved, but her beauty had gone.

"The workshop stands empty," said the landlord. "That'd be a nice home for a good image-carver and there'd be plenty of money. Think about it, Goldmund! She wouldn't say no. She no longer has a choice."

He heard about the days of the plague, how the mob had set fire to a hospital, had stormed and pillaged several rich burghers' houses, how for a while, after the bishop had fled, there had been no order or safety in the city. That's when the Emperor, who happened to be in the region, sent the governor, Count Heinrich. Well, he was a dapper gentleman; he had restored order in the city with a couple of horsemen and soldiers. But now it was time his reign came to an end; the bishop was expected back. The count had imposed hardships on the citizens, and they had seen quite enough of his concubine, Agnes, who was a vixen. Well, soon they'd be off. The city council had long since got sick of having to deal with this courtier and warrior, who was the Emperor's favorite and received emissaries like a prince, instead of with the good bishop.

Now Goldmund was questioned about his adventures. "Ach," he said sadly, "let's not speak of it. I wandered and wandered, and the plague was everywhere and the dead lay all about, and everywhere the people grew mad and wicked with fear. I survived; perhaps one day we'll forget it all. Now I've come back and my master is dead! Let me stay here for a few days and rest, then I'll wander on."

He did not stay in order to rest. He stayed because he was disappointed and undecided, because memories of happier times made the city dear to him, and because poor Marie's love did him good. He could not return it, he could give her nothing but friendliness and pity, but her quiet, humble admiration warmed his heart. But more than all this, the burning need to be an artist once again kept him in this place, even without a workshop, even with only makeshift tools.

For a few days Goldmund did nothing but draw. Marie had found pen and paper, and he sat in his room and drew hour after hour, filling the large sheets now with hasty sketches, now with lovingly delicate figures, letting the overfilled picture book inside him flow out onto the paper. Many times he drew Lene's face: the way it had smiled with satisfaction, her love and murder lust after the vagrant's death, her face as it had been the last night, in the process of melting into formlessness, in its return to the earth. He drew the small peasant boy whom he had seen lying dead across his parents' threshold, with little clenched fists. He drew a cart full of corpses, with three pitifully straining nags pulling it, the death churls running beside it with long staffs, their eyes squinting darkly from the shadows of their black plague hoods. Again and again he drew Rebekka, the slender, black-eyed girl, her proud narrow mouth, her face full of sorrow and indignation, her graceful young figure that seemed created for loving, her proud bitter mouth. He drew himself as the wanderer, the lover, the fugitive from death's reaper, as a dancer at the orgies of the life-greedy. He sat absorbed over the white paper, drew the contemptuous face of Mistress Lisbeth the way he had known her in former days, the caricature of the old servant Margrit, the loved and feared face of Master Niklaus. Several times, with thin, intuitive strokes, he also sketched a large female figure, the earth mother, sitting with hands in her lap, a hint of a smile in her face under melancholy eyes. The outpouring of work, the mastering of these faces, did him great good. In a few days he filled with drawings all the sheets Marie had found for him. He cut off a piece of the last sheet and on it he drew Marie's face with sparing strokes, the beautiful eyes, the resigned mouth, and gave it to her.

Drawing had greatly lessened his feeling of heaviness and lightened the bursting fullness in his soul. As long as he was drawing, he did not know where he was. His world consisted of nothing but a table, white paper, and, at night, a candle. Now he awoke, remembered the most recent events, saw more hapless roaming ahead of him, and began strolling through the city with a strangely split sensation half of homecoming, half of departure.

On one of these strolls he met a woman. Seeing her refocused all his disordered feelings and gave them a new center. She was riding a horse, a tall, light-blond woman with curious, cool blue eyes, and a firm, strong body, a blossoming face full of eagerness for pleasure, and power, self-esteem, and a certain sniffing curiosity of the senses. She sat on her brown horse somewhat domineering and proud, accustomed to giving orders, but not withdrawn or haughty. Her nostrils seemed to be open to all the scents of the world, and her large loose mouth was obviously capable of taking and giving to the highest degree. The moment Goldmund saw this woman, he became fully awake and full of desire to measure himself against her. To conquer her suddenly seemed a noble goal to strive for, and if he were to break his neck on the way it would not have seemed a bad death to him. He felt that this blond lioness was his equal, rich in sensuality and soul, at the mercy of all storms, wild as well as delicate, well versed in passion from an ancient heritage of blood.

As she rode past, he followed her with his eyes. Between curly blond hair and blue velvet collar, he saw her firm neck strong and proud, yet covered by the tenderest skin. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He wanted to hold this neck in his hands and wrest the blue-cool secret from her eyes. It was not difficult to find out who she was. He soon learned that she lived in the castle, that she was Agnes, the governor's mistress. It did not surprise him; she might have been the empress herself. At the fountain basin he stopped and looked at his mirror image. It matched the blond woman's face like a brother's, except that it was rather unkempt. That very hour he visited a barber he knew and persuaded him to cut his hair and beard and comb it clean.

The pursuit lasted two days. Whenever Agnes came out of the castle, the blond stranger was standing at the gates, looking admiringly into her eyes. Agnes rode around the ramparts and the stranger watched her from under the elms. Agnes visited a jeweler and, as she left the shop, she met the stranger. Light sparkled out of her masterful eyes; her nostrils quivered slightly. The next morning, when she again found him standing in readiness at her first ride, she smiled her challenge at him. He also saw the count, the governor, who looked bold and imposing. He had to be taken seriously, but there was gray in his beard and worry in his face, and Goldmund felt superior to him.

These two days made him happy; he was radiant with recovered youth. It was beautiful to show himself to this woman and to offer her combat. It was beautiful to lose his freedom to this beauty; beautiful and deeply exciting to gamble his existence on a single throw.

On the morning of the third day, Agnes rode out through the castle gates, accompanied by a groom on horseback. Immediately her eyes searched for the pursuer, ready for combat and a trifle concerned. There he was, and she sent the groom off on an errand. Slowly she rode ahead alone, out to the bridge gate and across the bridge. Only once did she look back, and saw the stranger following her. She waited for him on the road to the pilgrims' shrine of St. Vitus, which was deserted at this hour. She had to wait for half an hour, as the stranger walked slowly and did not want to arrive out of breath. Fresh and smiling he came walking up, a little twig with a bright red haw on it in his mouth. She had dismounted and tethered her horse and stood leaning against the ivy of the steep buttressing wall, gazing at her pursuer. He came up to her, looked her in the eye, and raised his cap.

"Why are you running after me?" she asked. "What do you want from me?"

"Oh," he said, "I'd much rather make you a present than accept one. I'd like to offer myself to you as a present, beautiful woman, to do with me as you will."

"All right, I'll see what can be done with you. But if you think that here is a little flower you can pluck without risk, you've made a mistake. I can only love men who risk their life if necessary."

"You may command me."

Slowly she detached a thin gold chain from her neck and handed it to him.

"What is your name?"

"Goldmund."

"Good, Goldmund; I shall have a taste of your golden mouth. Listen carefully: toward evening you'll take this chain to the castle and say that you found it. But don't let it out of your hands; I want to receive it directly from you. Come as you are, let them take you for a beggar. If one of the servants scolds you, remain calm. I have only two people in the castle who are trustworthy: the stable groom Max and my chambermaid Berta. You must reach one of these two and let them lead you to me. With all others in the castle, including the count, conduct yourself carefully; they are enemies. You've been warned. It may cost your life."

She held out her hand. He took it smilingly, kissed it gently, softly rubbed his cheek against it. Then he put the chain away and walked off downhill toward the river and the city. The vineyards were already bare; one yellow leaf after another floated from the trees. Laughingly, Goldmund shook his head and, looking down into the city, he found it friendly and lovable. Only a few days ago he had been sad, even sad that misery and suffering passed. And now indeed it had already passed, fluttered down like the golden leaf from a branch. It seemed to him that love had never shone so brightly for him as it did from this woman, whose tall figure and blond joyful energy reminded him of the image of his mother as he had once, as a boy in Mariabronn, carried it in his heart. Two days ago he would not have thought possible that the world would laugh so gaily in his eyes, that he would once more feel the stream of life, of joy, of youth running so fully and urgently through his veins. What a joy to be still alive, to have been spared by death during all these gruesome months!

In the evening he went to the castle. There was a great bustle in the courtyard: horses were being unsaddled; messengers were scurrying about; servants were conducting a small procession of priests and church dignitaries through the inner door and up the stairs. Goldmund wanted to go after them, but the porter held him back. He pulled out the gold chain and said he had been ordered to hand it to no one but the lady herself or her chambermaid. He was given the escort of a servant and was made to wait for a long time in the corridors. Finally, a pretty, nimble woman appeared, walked past him, and asked in a low voice: "Are you Goldmund?" She motioned him to follow her. Quietly she vanished through a door, reappeared after a while, and motioned him in.

He entered a small room that smelled strongly of furs and perfume, and there were dresses and coats and ladies' hats on wooden stands, and all kinds of ladies' boots in an open chest. Here he stood and waited for half an hour perhaps. He sniffed at the scented gowns, brushed his hands over the furs, and smiled with curiosity at all the pretty stuff that hung there.

Finally the inner door opened, and it was not the chambermaid but Agnes herself, in a light blue dress, with white fur brimming around the neck. Slowly she walked up to the waiting man, marking each step, her cool blue eyes looking earnestly at him.

"You've had to wait," she whispered. "I think we're safe now. A committee of church officials is with the count. He is dining with them; they will probably have long discussions. Sessions with priests always last a long time. The hour is yours and mine. Welcome, Goldmund."

She bent toward him, her demanding lips approached his, silently they greeted each other in a first kiss. Slowly he closed his hand about her neck. She led him through the door into her bedchamber, which was high and brightly lit by candles. On a table a meal stood prepared. They sat down; she served him bread and butter and a little meat and poured white wine for him into a beautiful bluish glass. They ate, both drinking from the same bluish chalice, their hands playing probingly with each other.

"Whence have you flown, my beautiful bird?" she asked him. "Are you a warrior, or a musician, or are you just a poor wayfarer?"

"I'm everything you want me to be," he laughed softly. "I am all yours. I'll be a musician if you like, and you are my sweet lute, and when I put my fingers around your neck and play on you, we'll hear the angels sing. Come, my heart, I am not here to eat your cakes and drink your white wine. I've come only for you."

Gently he pulled the white fur from her neck and caressed the clothes off her body. Courtiers and priests held their sessions outside, servants crept about the halls, the thin sickle moon floated away behind the trees—the lovers knew nothing of it. For them paradise bloomed. Drawn toward each other and entangled in one another, they lost themselves in a perfumed night, saw its white flowering secrets shimmer in the darkness, plucked its longed-for fruit with tender and grateful hands. Never had the musician played on such a lute; never had the lute sounded under such strong and knowing fingers.

"Goldmund," she whispered glowingly in his ear, "oh, what a sorcerer you are! I want to have a child by you, sweet Goldmund. And still more, I'd like to die with you. Drink me to the dregs, beloved, melt me, kill me!"

Deep in his throat a tone of happiness sounded as he saw the harshness in her cool eyes dissolve and grow weak. Like a tender expiring shiver, the shudder in the depth of her eyes spent itself like the silver shudder on the skin of a dying fish, golden as the sparkling of those magic shimmers deep down in the river. All the happiness a human being could experience seemed to come together in this moment.

Immediately afterward, as she lay with closed eyes, trembling, he got up and slipped into his clothes. With a sigh he spoke into her ear: "My beautiful treasure, I am leaving you. I don't feel like dying, I don't want to be killed by your count. First I want us to be as happy as we have been today. One more time, many more times."

She lay in silence until he was dressed. Gently he pulled the cover over her and kissed her eyes. "Goldmund," she said, "oh, I am sorry that you must go! Do come back tomorrow! I'll let you know if there is danger. Come back, come back tomorrow!"

She pulled at a bellrope. The chambermaid received him at the door to the wardrobe and led him out of the castle. He would have liked to give her a gold piece; for a moment he felt ashamed of his poverty.

It was almost midnight when he got back to the fish market and looked up at the house. It was late, and nobody would be awake; probably he would have to spend the night outside. To his surprise he found the door open. Softly he crept inside and closed the door behind him. The way to his room led through the kitchen, which was lit. Marie sat at the kitchen table by a tiny oil lamp. She had just dozed off, after waiting for hours. When he entered, she started and sprang to her feet.

"Oh," he said, "Marie, are you still up?"

"I'm up," she said, "or you would have found the house locked."

"I'm sorry that you waited, Marie. It's late. Don't be angry with me."

"I'll never be angry with you, Goldmund. I'm only a little sad."

"You must not be sad. Why sad?"

"Oh, Goldmund, I'd so like to be healthy and beautiful and strong. Then you would not have to go to strange houses during the night and make love to other women. Then you would perhaps stay with me once and be a little sweet to me."

Her mild voice sounded hopeless, but not bitter, only sad. Embarrassed, he stood in front of her. He felt sorry for her; he did not know what to say. With a cautious hand, he reached for her head and stroked her hair. She stood very still and shuddered as she felt his hand on her hair. Then she wept a little, held her head up again, and said timidly: "Go to bed now, Goldmund, I've been talking nonsense, I was so sleepy. Good night."

16

GoIdmund spent a day of happy impatience roaming in the hills. If he had owned a horse, he would have ridden to his master's beautiful madonna in the cloister. He felt the urge to see her again and thought that he had dreamed of Master Niklaus that night. Well, he'd go see the madonna another time. His bliss with Agnes might be of short duration, might lead to danger perhaps—but today it was in full bloom; he did not want to miss any of it. He did not want to see people, to be distracted; he wanted to spend the mild autumn day outside, with the trees and clouds. He told Marie that he was thinking of a hike in the countryside and might be back late. He asked her to give him a good chunk of bread for the road and not wait up for him in the evening. She made no comment, stuffed his pockets full of bread and apples, ran a brush over his old coat, which she had patched the very first day, and let him go.

He strolled across the river and climbed the steep-stepped paths through the empty vineyards, lost himself in the forest on the heights, and did not stop climbing until he had reached the last plateau. There the sun shone halfheartedly through bald trees. Blackbirds scurried before his steps; shyly they retreated into the bushes, looking at him with shiny black eyes. Far below, the river seemed a blue curve. The city looked like a toy; not a sound rose from it, except that of the bells ringing for prayers. Near him on the plateau there were small, grass-covered swellings, mounds from ancient pagan days, perhaps fortifications, perhaps tombs. He sat down in the dry, crackling autumn grass on the side of one of them. He could see the whole vast valley, the hills and mountains beyond the river, chain upon chain, all the way to the horizon, where mountains and sky merged in bluish uncertainty and could no longer be told apart. His feet had measured this sweeping distance much farther than the eye could see. All these regions, which were far away now and remembered, had once been close and present. A hundred times he had slept in those forests, eaten berries, been hungry and cold, crossed those mountain ridges, and stretches of heath, been happy or sad, fresh or fatigued. Somewhere in that distance, far out of the range of vision, lay the charred bones of good Lene; somewhere there his companion Robert might still be wandering, if the plague had not caught up with him; somewhere out there lay dead Viktor; and somewhere too, far off in the enchanted distance, was the cloister of his youth and the castle of the knight with the beautiful daughters, and poor, destitute, hounded Rebekka was still roaming there if she had not perished. So many widely scattered places, heaths and forests, towns and villages, castles and cloisters, and people alive and dead existed inside him in his memory, his love, his repentance, his longing. And if death caught him too, tomorrow, then all this would fall apart, would vanish, the whole picture book full of women and love, of summer mornings and winter nights. Oh, it was high time that he accomplished something, created something, left something behind that would survive him.

Up to now little remained of his life, of his wanderings, of all those years that had passed since he set out in the world. What remained were the few figures he had once made in the workshop, especially his St. John, and this picture book, this unreal world inside his head, this beautiful, aching image world of memories. Would he succeed in saving a few scraps of this inner world and making it visible to others? Or would things just go on the same way: new towns, new landscapes, new women, new experiences, new images, piled one on the other, experiences from which he gleaned nothing but a restless, torturous as well as beautiful overflowing of the heart?

It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast—which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life—then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost ones freedom, scope, lust for life. That's what had happened to Master Niklaus.

Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the nobility of creating. Was that impossible?

Perhaps there were people for whom this was possible. Perhaps there were husbands and heads of families who did not lose their sensuality by being faithful. Perhaps there were people who, though settled, did not have hearts dried up by lack of freedom and lack of risk. Perhaps. He had never met one.

All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or a sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person—no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for the one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. Perhaps women had it easier in this respect. Nature had created them in such a way that desire bore its fruit automatically, that the bliss of love became a child. For a man, eternal longing replaced this simple fertility. Was the god who had created everything in this manner an evil god, was he hostile, did he laugh ironically at his own creation? No, he could not be evil; he had created the hart and the roebuck, fish and birds, forests, flowers, the seasons. But the split ran through his entire creation. Perhaps it had not turned out right or was incomplete—or did God intend this lack, this longing in human life for a special purpose? Was this perhaps the seed of the enemy, of original sin? But why should this longing and this lack be sinful? Did not all that was beautiful and holy, all that man created and gave back to God as a sacrifice of thanks spring from this very lack, from this longing?

His thoughts depressed him. He turned his eyes toward the city, saw the marketplace, the fish market, the bridges, the churches, the town hall. And there was the castle, the proud bishop's palace, in which Count Heinrich was now ruling. Agnes lived under those towers and high roofs, his beautiful regal mistress, who looked so proud but who could nevertheless lose herself, abandon herself completely in love. He thought of her with joy, and gratefully remembered last night. To have been able to experience the happiness of that night, to have been able to make that marvelous woman happy, he had needed his entire life, all the things women had taught him, his many journeys, his needs, wandering through the snow at night, his friendship and familiarity with animals, flowers, trees, water, fish, butterflies. For this he had needed senses sharpened by ecstasy and danger, homelessness, all his inner world of images stored up during those many years. As long as his life was a garden in which such magic flowers as Agnes bloomed, he had no reason to complain.

He spent all day on the autumnal heights, walking, resting, eating bread, thinking of Agnes and the evening before him. Toward nightfall he was back in the city walking toward the castle. It had grown chilly; the houses stared out of quiet red window eyes; he met a small troop of singing boys carrying hollowed-out turnips with faces carved into them and candles inside. This little mummery left a scent of winter in its wake, and smiling, Goldmund looked after them. For a long time he strolled about outside the castle. The church dignitaries were still there; here and there he could see a priest silhouetted in one of the windows. Finally he was able to creep inside and find Berta, the chambermaid. Again she hid him in the little closet room until Agnes appeared and silently led him to her room. Tenderly her beautiful face received him, tenderly, but not happily; she was sad, worried, frightened. He had to try very hard to cheer her a little. Slowly his loving words and kisses restored a little of her confidence.

"How very sweet you can be," she said gratefully. "You have such deep sounds in your throat, my golden bird, when you're tender and chirp. I'm so fond of you, Goldmund. If only we were far from here! I no longer like it here. It will soon come to an end anyhow; the count has been called away; the silly bishop will soon return. The count is angry today. The priests have had harsh words with him. Oh, my dear, he must not set eyes on you! You wouldn't live through the next hour. I'm so afraid for you."

Half-lost sounds rose in his memory—hadn't he heard this song before? That was how Lydia used to speak to him, so lovingly and full of fear, so tender-sad. That's how she used to come to his room at night, full of love and fear, full of worry, of gruesome images. He liked to hear it, that tender-anguished song. What would love be without secrecy? What would love be without risk?

Gently he drew Agnes to him, caressed her, held her hand, hummed low wooing sounds into her ear, kissed her eyebrows. It touched and delighted him to find her so frightened and worried because of him. Gratefully she received his caresses, almost humbly. Full of love, she clung to him, but her mood did not brighten.

Suddenly she started as a nearby door was slammed and rapid steps approached.

"Oh, my God, the count!" she cried in despair. "Quickly, you can escape through the closet room. Hurry! Don't betray me!"

She pushed him into the closet room. He stood alone groping hesitantly in the darkness. Behind the door he heard the count speak loudly to Agnes. He felt his way through the dresses to the other door; soundlessly he set one foot before the other. He reached the door to the corridor and tried to open it. And only at that moment, when he found the door locked from the outside, did he feel fear, did his heart beat wildly, painfully. It could be an unfortunate coincidence that someone had locked the door after he came in, but he did not believe so. He had walked into a trap; he was lost. Someone must have seen him sneak in here. It would cost him his life. Trembling, he stood in the darkness, and immediately thought of Agnes's last words: "Don't betray me!" No, he would not betray her. His heart pounded, but the decision steadied him. Angrily he clenched his teeth.

It all happened in seconds. A door opened and the count came in from Agnes's room, a candlestick in his left hand and an unsheathed sword in his right. At the same moment, Goldmund hastily scooped up a few dresses and coats that were hanging all around him and placed them over his arm. Let them take him for a thief—perhaps that was a way out.

The count saw him at once. Slowly he came closer.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Answer, or I'll run this sword through you."

"Forgive me," whispered Goldmund. "I'm a poor man and you are so rich! I'll give it all back, my lord, everything I took. Here, see!"

And he put the coats on the floor.

"A thief, eh? It was not intelligent of you to risk your life for a few old coats. Are you a burgher of the city?"

"No, my lord, I'm homeless. I'm a poor man, you'll have mercy …"

"Silence! I want to know if perchance you were brazen enough to molest the lady. Ach, but since you'll be hanged anyhow, we won't have to pry into that. Theft is enough."

Violently he hammered against the locked door and called: "Are you there? Open up!"

The door opened from the outside, and three footmen stood in readiness with drawn blades.

"Tie him well," called the count in a voice that croaked with irony and pride. "He's a vagrant who came in here to steal. Put him in the dungeon, and tomorrow morning the rascal will dangle from the gallows."

Goldmund's hands were tied; he put up no resistance. He was led off, through the long corridor, down the stairs, through the inner courtyard, a butler carrying a torch ahead of them. They stopped in front of a round, iron-studded cellar door, shouted and cursed because the key was not in the lock. One of the footmen took the torch while the butler ran back to fetch the key. There they stood, three armed men and one bound one, waiting outside the door. The one with the light pushed it curiously on to Goldmund's face. At this moment two of the priests who were guests in the castle walked by on the way from the castle chapel. They stopped in front of the group; both looked at the night scene attentively: the three footmen, the bound man, the way they stood there, waiting.

Goldmund noticed neither the priests nor his guards. He could see nothing but the low, flickering light held close to his face. It was blinding his eyes. And behind the light, in a twilight full of horror, he saw something else, something formless, large, ghostlike: the abyss, the end, death. With staring eyes he stood there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. One of the priests was whispering intently to one of the men. When he heard that the man was a thief and condemned to death, he asked if he had a confessor. No, they said, he had just been caught in the act.

"Then I shall go to him in the morning," said the priest. "Before early mass I'll bring him the holy sacraments and hear his confession. You will swear to me that he will not be led away before. I'll speak to the count this very evening. The man may be a thief; he still has the right to confession and the sacraments like any other Christian."

The men dared not contradict. They knew the clerical dignitary. He was one of the envoys; they had seen him several times at the count's table. And besides, why should the poor vagrant be deprived of confession?

The priests walked off. Goldmund stared. Finally the butler came with the key and unlocked the door. The prisoner was led into a cellar, and stumbled down a few steps. A couple of three-legged stools were set around a table; it was the anteroom of a wine cellar. They pushed a stool toward him and told him to sit down.

"Tomorrow a priest is coming to confess you," one of the men said. Then they left and carefully locked the heavy door.

"Leave me the light, brother," begged Goldmund.

"No, fellow, you might do mischief with it. You'll get along without it. The wisest would be to get used to the dark. How long does such a light last anyway? It would be out within an hour. Good night."

Now he was alone in the blackness. He sat on the stool and laid his head on the table. It was painful to sit this way; the rope around his wrists hurt; but these feelings penetrated his consciousness only much later. At first he merely sat, with his head on the table as though he were about to be decapitated. He felt the urge to impress upon his body and senses what had been imposed upon his heart: to accept the inevitable, to accept dying.

For an eternity he sat that way, miserably bent over, trying to accept what had been imposed upon him, to realize it, to breathe it in, and fill himself with it. It was evening now. Night was beginning, and the end of this night would also be the end of him. That was what he had to realize. Tomorrow he would no longer be alive. He would be hanging, an object for birds to sit on and pick at. He would be what Master Niklaus was, what Lene was in the burned-out hut, like all those he had seen piled high on the death-carts. It was not easy to accept that, to let himself be filled with it. It was absolutely impossible to accept it. There were too many things he had not yet given up, to which he had not yet said goodbye. The hours of this night had been given him to do just that.

He had to say farewell to beautiful Agnes. Never again would he see her tall figure, her light sunny hair, her cool blue eyes, the diminishing quiver of pride in these eyes, the soft gold down on her sweet-smelling skin. Farewell, blue eyes, farewell lovely mouth! He had hoped to kiss it many times more. Oh, only this morning in the hills, in the late autumn sun, he had thought of her, belonged to her, longed for her! And he also had to say farewell to the hills, to the sun, the blue and white-clouded sky, the trees and forests, to wandering, the times of day, the seasons. Perhaps Marie was still sitting up, even now: poor Marie with the good loving eyes and hobbled gait, sitting and waiting, falling asleep in her kitchen and waking up again, but no Goldmund would ever come home.

Oh, and his paper and drawing pen, and all the figures he had wanted to make—gone, gone! And the hope of seeing Narcissus again, his dear St. John, that too had to be given up.

And he had to say farewell to his hands, his eyes, to hunger and thirst, to love, to playing the lute, to sleeping and waking, to everything. Tomorrow a bird would fly through the air and Goldmund would no longer see it, a girl would sing in a window and he would not hear her song, the river would run and the dark fish would swim silently, the wind would blow and sweep the yellow leaves on the ground, the sun would shine and stars would blink in the sky, young men would go dancing, the first snow would lie on the distant mountains—everything would go on, trees would cast their shadows, people would look gay or sad out of their living eyes, dogs would bark, cows would low in the barns of villages, and all of it without Goldmund. Nothing belonged to him any more, he was being dispatched from it all.

He smelled the morning smell of the heath; he tasted the sweet young wine, the young firm walnuts; his memory spun a glowing panorama of the entire colorful world through his oppressed heart. In parting, all of life's beautiful confusion shone once more through his senses; grief welled up in him and he felt tear upon tear drop from his eyes. Sobbing, he gave in to the wave. His tears flooded out; collapsing, he abandoned himself to the infinite pain. Oh, valleys and wooded mountains, brooks among green elms, oh girls, oh moonlit evenings on the bridges, oh beautiful radiant image world, how can I leave you! Weeping, he lay across the table, a disconsolate boy. From the misery of his heart, a sigh, an imploring complaint rose: "Oh mother, oh mother!"

And as he spoke this magic word, an image answered him from the depths of his memory, the image of his mother. It was not the figure of his thoughts and artist's dreams. It was the image of his own mother, beautiful and alive, the way he had not seen it since his cloister days. To her he addressed his prayer, to her he cried his unbearable sorrow at having to die, to her he abandoned himself, to her he gave the forest, the sun, his eyes and hands; he placed his whole life and being in her motherly hands.

And so weeping he fell asleep; exhaustion and sleep held him in their arms like a mother. He slept an hour or two, escaping his misery.

He woke up and felt violent pain. His bound wrists burned horribly; a jagged pain shot through neck and back. He had trouble sitting up; then he came to and realized where he was again. Around him the darkness was complete. He did not know how long he had slept, how many hours he still had to live. Perhaps they'd come any moment to take him away to die. Then he remembered that he had been promised a priest. He didn't think that the sacraments would do him much good. He didn't know whether even complete absolution of his sins could bring him to heaven. He didn't know if there was a heaven, a God the father, a judgment, an eternity. He had long since lost all certitude about those things.

But whether there was an eternity or not: he did not desire it, he wanted nothing but his insecure, transitory life, this breathing, this being at home in his skin, he wanted to live. Furiously he sat up, groped his way to the wall in the dark, and began to think. There had to be an escape! Perhaps the priest was the answer. Perhaps he could convince him of his innocence, get him to say a good word on his behalf or help him secure a stay of execution or make his escape? He went over these ideas again and again. If they didn't work he could not give up; the game just couldn't be over yet. First he would try to win over the priest. He would try as hard as he could to charm him, to enlist him in his cause, to convince him, to flatter him. The priest was the one good card in his hand; all the other possibilities were dreams. Still, there were coincidence and destiny: the hangman might have a stomach-ache, the gallows might collapse, some unforeseeable possibility of escape might arise. In any case Goldmund refused to die; he had vainly tried to accept his fate, and he could not. He would resist, he would struggle, he'd trip the guard, he'd attack the hangman, he would fight for his life to the last moment, with every drop of blood in him. Oh, if he could only persuade the priest to untie his hands! A great deal would be gained.

In the meantime he tried, in spite of the pain, to work at the ropes with his teeth. With furious effort he succeeded, after a cruelly long time, in making them seem a little looser. Panting, he stood in the night of his prison, his swollen arms and hands hurting terribly. When he had gotten his breath again, he crept along the wall, step by step, exploring the humid cellar wall for a protruding edge. Then he remembered the steps over which he had stumbled down into this dungeon. He found them. He knelt and tried to rub the rope against the edge of one of the stones. It was difficult. Again and again his wrists instead of the rope hit the stone; they burned like fire and he felt his blood flow. But he did not give up. When a miserable strip of gray morning was visible between the door and the sill, he had succeeded. The rope had been rubbed through; he could untie it; his hands were free! But afterwards he could hardly move a finger. His hands were swollen and lifeless, and his arms were stiff with cramps all the way up to the shoulders. He had to exercise them. He forced himself to move them, to make the blood stream through them again. Now he had a plan that seemed good to him.

If he could not succeed in persuading the priest to help him, well then, if they left the man alone with him even for the shortest time, he had to kill him. He could do it with one of the stools. He could not strangle him, he no longer had enough strength in his hands and arms. First beat the priest to death, quickly slip into his robes and flee! When the others found the dead man, he'd have to be outside the castle, and then run, run. Marie would let him in and hide him. The plan would work.

Never in his life had Goldmund watched the grayish beginning of morning with such attention, longed for it and yet feared it. Quivering with tension and determination, he watched the miserable strip of light under the door growing slowly lighter. He walked back to the table and practiced crouching on the stool with his hands between his

knees so that the missing ropes would not be noticed immediately. Since his hands had been freed, he no longer believed in his death. He was determined to get through, even if the whole world had to be smashed in the process. He was determined to live at any cost. His nose quivered with eagerness for freedom and life. And who could tell, perhaps someone on the outside would come to his aid? Agnes was a woman. Her power did not reach very far, nor perhaps did her courage; and it was possible that she would abandon him. But she loved him; perhaps she could do something for him. Perhaps her chambermaid Berta was hovering outside the door—and wasn't there also a groom she thought she could trust? And if nobody appeared and no sign was given him, well, then he'd go through with his plan. If it did not succeed, he'd kill the guards with the stool, two or three of them, as many as came in. He was certain of one advantage: his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark cellar. He now recognized instinctively all the shapes and shadows in the twilight, whereas the others would be completely blind for the first few minutes at least.

Feverishly he crouched at the table, thinking carefully what he would say to the priest to win his assistance, because that's how he had to begin. At the same time he eagerly watched the modest swelling of light in the slit. Now he longed desperately for the moment he had so dreaded hours ago. He could hardly wait; the terrible tension would not be bearable much longer. His strength, his vigilance, his power of decision would gradually diminish. The guard had to come soon with the priest, while his taut readiness, his determined will to be saved was still in the blossoming stage.

Finally the world outside awakened, the enemy approached. Steps resounded on the pavement in the court, a key was pushed into the lock and turned: each sound boomed out like thunder after the long deathly silence.

Slowly the heavy door opened a slit, creaking on its hinges. A priest came in, alone, without a guard, carrying a candlestick with two candles. This was not at all what the prisoner had imagined.

How strangely moving: the priest who had entered, behind whom invisible hands pulled the door shut, wore the habit of Mariabronn, the well-known, familiar habit that Abbot Daniel, Father Anselm, and Father Martin had once worn!

The sight stabbed at his heart; he had to look away. Perhaps the habit of this cloister was the promise of something friendly, a good omen. But then again perhaps murder was still the only way out. He clenched his teeth. It would be hard for him to kill this friar.

17

"Praised be the Lord," said the priest and placed the candlestick on the table. Goldmund murmured the response, staring straight ahead.

The priest said nothing. He waited and said nothing, until Goldmund grew restless and searchingly raised his eyes to the man in front of him.

This man, he now saw to his confusion, was not only wearing the habit of the fathers of Mariabronn, he also wore the insignia of the office of Abbot.

And now he looked into the Abbot's face. It was a bony face, firmly, clearly cut, with very thin lips. It was a face he knew. As though spellbound, Goldmund looked into this face that seemed completely formed by mind and will. With unsteady hand he reached for the candlestick, lifted it and held it closer to the stranger, to see his eyes. He saw them and the candlestick shook in his hand as he put it back on the table.

"Narcissus!" he whispered almost inaudibly. The cellar began to spin around him.

"Yes, Goldmund, I used to be Narcissus, but I abandoned that name a long time ago; you've probably forgotten. Since the day I took the vows, my name has been John."

Goldmund was shaken to the roots of his being. The whole world had changed, and the sudden collapse of his superhuman effort threatened to choke him. He trembled; dizziness made his head feel like an empty bladder; his stomach contracted. Behind his eyes something burned like scalding sobs. He longed to sink into himself, to dissolve in tears, to faint.

But a warning rose from the depths of the memories of his youth, the memories that the sight of Narcissus had conjured up: once, as a boy, he had cried, had let himself go in front of this beautiful, strict face, these dark omniscient eyes. He could never do that again. Like a ghost, Narcissus had reappeared at the strangest moment of his life, probably to save his life—and now he was about to break into sobs in front of him again, or faint? No, no, no. He controlled himself. He subdued his heart, forced his stomach to be calm, willed the dizziness out of his head. He could not show any weakness now.

In an artificially controlled voice, he managed to say: "You must permit me to go on calling you Narcissus."

"Do, my friend. And don't you want to shake my hand?"

Again Goldmund dominated himself. With a boyishly stubborn, slightly ironic tone, like the one he had occasionally taken in his student days, he forced out an answer.

"Forgive me, Narcissus," he said coldly and a trifle blasé. "I see that you have become Abbot. But I'm still a vagrant. And besides, our conversation, as much as I desire it, won't unfortunately last very long. Because, Narcissus, I've been sentenced to the gallows, and in an hour, or sooner, I'll probably be hanged. I say this only to clarify the situation for you."

Narcissus's expression did not change. He was much amused by the boyish boasting streak in his friend's attitude and at the same time touched. But he understood and keenly appreciated the pride that kept Goldmund from collapsing tearfully against his chest. He, too, had imagined their reunion differently, but he had no objection whatsoever to this little comedy. Goldmund could not have charmed his way back into his heart any faster.

"Well yes," he said, with the same pretended casualness. "But I can reassure you about the gallows. You've been pardoned. I have been sent to tell you that, and to take you away with me. Because you cannot remain in this city. So we'll have plenty of time to chat with each other. Now will you shake my hand?"

They shook hands, holding on for a long time, pressing hard and feeling deeply moved, but their words stayed brittle and playful for a while longer.

"Fine, Narcissus, let's leave this scarcely honorable retreat, and I'll join your retinue. Are you traveling back to Mariabronn? You are. Wonderful. How? On horseback? Splendid. Then it will be a question of getting a horse for me."

"We'll get a horse for you, amicus, and in two hours we'll be on our way. Oh, but what happened to your hands! For heaven's sake, they are completely raw and swollen, and bleeding! Oh, Goldmund, what have they done to you!"

"Never mind, Narcissus. I did that to my hands myself. They had tied me up and I had to get free. It wasn't easy. Besides, it was rather courageous of you to come in here without an escort."

"Why courageous? There was no danger."

"Oh, only the slight danger of being murdered by me. Because that's what I had planned to do. They had told me a priest would come. I'd have murdered him and fled in his robes. A good plan."

"You didn't want to die then? You wanted to fight?"

"Indeed I did. Of course I could hardly guess that the priest would be you."

"Still," Narcissus said hesitantly, "that was a rather ugly plan. Would you really have been capable of murdering a priest who'd come to confess you?"

"Not you, Narcissus, of course, and probably no priest who wore the habit of Mariabronn. But any other kind of priest, yes, I assure you." Suddenly his voice grew sad and dark. "It would not have been the first man I've murdered."

They were silent. Both felt embarrassed.

"Well, we'll talk about that some other time," Narcissus said in a cool voice. "You can confess to me some day, if you feel like it. Or you can tell me about your life. I, too, have this and that to tell you. I'm looking forward to it. Shall we go?"

"One moment more, Narcissus! I just remembered something: I did call you John once before."

"I don't understand."

"No, of course you don't. How could you? It happened quite a number of years ago. I gave you the name John and it will be your name forever. I was for a time a carver and a sculptor, and I think I'd like to become one again. The first statue I carved in those days was a wooden, life-size disciple with your face, but its name is not Narcissus, it is John, a St. John under the cross."

He rose and walked to the door.

"So you did think of me?" Narcissus asked softly. Goldmund answered just as softly: "Oh yes, Narcissus, I have thought of you. Always, always."

He gave the heavy cellar door a strong push, and the fallow morning looked in. They spoke no more. Narcissus took him to his guest chamber. There a young monk, his companion, was busy readying the baggage. Goldmund was given food, and his hands washed and bandaged. Soon the horses were brought out.

Mounting, Goldmund said: "I have one more request. Let us pass by the fish market; I have an errand there."

They rode off and Goldmund looked up at every castle window to see if Agnes might perhaps be visible. He did not see her. They rode to the fish market; Marie had worried a great deal about him. He bade farewell to her and to her parents, thanked them a thousand times, promised to come back one day, and rode off. Marie stood in the doorway of her house until the riders were out of sight. Slowly she limped back inside.

They rode four abreast: Narcissus, Goldmund, the young monk, and an armed groom.

"Do you still remember my little horse Bless?" Goldmund asked. "He was in your stable at the cloister."

"Certainly. But you won't find him there any more, and you probably didn't expect to. It's been at least seven or eight years since we had to do away with him."

"And you remember that?"

"Oh yes, I remember."

Goldmund was not sad about Bless's death. He was glad that Narcissus knew so much about Bless, Narcissus who had never cared about animals and probably had never known another cloister horse by name. That made him very glad.

"With all the people in your cloister," he began again, "you'll laugh at me for asking first about that poor little horse. It wasn't nice of me. Actually I had wanted to ask about something else entirely, about our Abbot Daniel. But I suppose that he is dead since you are his successor. And I didn't intend to speak only of death to begin with. I'm not well inclined toward death at the moment, because of last night, and also because of the plague, of which I saw altogether too much. But now that we're on the subject, and since we'll have to speak about it some time, tell me when and how Abbot Daniel died. I revered him very much. And tell me also if Father Anselm and Father Martin are still alive. I'm prepared for the worst. But I'm glad the plague spared you at least. I never imagined that you might have died; I firmly believed that we would meet again. But belief can deceive, as I was unfortunate enough to learn by experience. I could not imagine that my master Niklaus, the image carver, would be dead either; I counted on seeing him again and working with him again. Nevertheless, he was dead when I got there."

"All is quickly told," said Narcissus. "Abbot Daniel died eight years ago, without illness or pain. I am not his successor; I've been Abbot only for a year. Father Martin was his successor, the former head of our school. He died last year; he was almost seventy. And Father Anselm is no longer with us either. He was fond of you, he often spoke of you. During his last years he could no longer walk at all, and lying in bed was a great torture to him; he died of dropsy. Yes, and we too had the plague; many died. Let's not speak of it. Have you any other questions?"

"Certainly, many more. Most of all: how do you happen to be here in the bishop's city at the governor's palace?"

"That is a long story, and you'd be bored with it; it is a matter of politics. The count is a favorite of the Emperor and his executor in many matters, and at this moment there are many things to be set to rights between the Emperor and our religious order. I was one of the delegates sent to treat with the count. Our success was small."

He fell silent and Goldmund asked nothing more. He had no need to know that last night, when Narcissus had pleaded for Goldmund's life, that life had been paid for with a number of concessions to the ruthless count.

They rode; Goldmund soon felt tired and had difficulty staying in the saddle.

After a long while Narcissus asked: "But is it true that you were arrested for theft? The count said you had sneaked into the inner rooms of the castle, where you were caught stealing."

Goldmund laughed. "Well, it really looked as though I were a thief. But I had a meeting with the count's mistress; he doubtless knew that, too. I'm surprised that he let me go at all."

"Well, he wasn't above a little bargaining."

They could not cover the distance they had set themselves for that day. Goldmund was too exhausted; his hands could no longer hold the reins. They took rooms in a village for the night; he was put to bed running a slight fever, and they kept him in bed the next day, too. But then he was strong enough to ride on. Soon his hands were healed and he began to enjoy riding. How long since he had last ridden! He came to life again, grew young and animated, rode many a race with the groom, and during hours of conversation assaulted his friend Narcissus with hundreds of impatient questions. Calmly, yet joyously, Narcissus responded. Again he was charmed by Goldmund. He loved these vehement, childlike questions, all asked with unlimited confidence in his own ability to answer them.

"One question, Narcissus: did you also burn Jews?"

"Burn Jews? How could we? There are no Jews where we are."

"All right. But tell me: would you be capable of burning Jews? Can you imagine such a possibility?"

"No, why should I? Do you take me for a fanatic?"

"Understand me, Narcissus. I mean: can you imagine that, in certain circumstances, you might give the order to kill Jews, or consent to their being killed? So many dukes, mayors, bishops, and other authorities did give such orders."

"I would not give an order of that kind. On the other hand it is conceivable that I might have to witness and tolerate such cruelty."

"You'd tolerate it then?"

"Certainly, if I had no power to prevent it. You probably saw some Jews being burned, didn't you, Goldmund?"

"I did."

"Well, and did you prevent it? You didn't. You see."

Goldmund told the story of Rebekka in great detail; he grew hot and passionate in telling it.

"And so," he concluded violently, "what is this world in which we are made to live? Is it not hell? Is it not revolting and disgusting?"

"Certainly, that's how the world is."

"Ah!" Goldmund cried with indignation. "And how often you told me that the world was divine, that it was a great harmony of circles with the Creator enthroned in its midst, that what existed was good, and so forth. You told me Aristotle had said so, or Saint Thomas. I'm eager to hear you explain the contradiction."

Narcissus laughed.

"Your memory is surprising, and yet it has deceived you slightly. I have always adored our Creator as perfect, but never his creation. I have never denied the evil in the world. No true thinker has ever affirmed that life on earth is harmonious and just, or that man is good, my dear friend. On the contrary. The Holy Bible expressly states that the strivings and doings of man's heart are evil, and every day we see this confirmed anew."

"Very good. At last I see what you learned men mean. So man is evil, and life on earth is full of ugliness and trickery—you admit it. But somewhere behind all that, in your thoughts and books, justice and perfection exist. They exist, they can be proved, but only if they are never put to use."

"You have stored up a great deal of anger against us theologians, dear friend! But you have still not become a thinker; you've got it all topsy-turvy. You still have a few things to learn. But why do you say we don't put justice to use? We do that every day, every hour. I, for instance, am an abbot and I govern a cloister. Life in this cloister is just as imperfect and full of sin as it is in the world outside. And yet we constantly set the idea of justice against original sin and try to measure our imperfect lives by it and try to correct evil and put ourselves in everlasting relationship with God."

"All right, Narcissus. I don't mean you, nor did I mean that you were not a good abbot. But I'm thinking of Rebekka, of the burned Jews, the mass burials, the Great Death, of the alleys and rooms full of stinking corpses, of all the gruesome looting, the haggard, abandoned children, of dogs starved to death on their chains—and when I think of all that and see these images before me, then my heart aches and it seems to me that our mothers have borne us into a hopeless, cruel, devilish world, and that it would be better if they had never conceived, if God had not created this horrible world, if the Saviour had not let himself be nailed to the cross in vain."

Narcissus gave Goldmund a friendly nod.

"You are quite right," he said warmly. "Go ahead, say it all, get it all out. But in one thing you are quite wrong: you think that the things you have said are thoughts. But actually they are feelings. They are the feelings of a man preoccupied with the horror of life, and you must not forget that these sad, desperate emotions are balanced by completely different ones! When you feel happy on a horse, riding through a pretty landscape, or when you sneak somewhat recklessly into a castle at night to court a count's mistress, then the world looks altogether different to you, and no plague-stricken house or burned Jew can prevent you from fulfilling your desire. Is that not so?"

"Certainly that is so. Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and to pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell. I find bliss, and for an hour I forget the horror. But that does not mean that it does not exist."

"You expressed that very well. So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert."

"Yes, that's true."

"Most people feel that way, but only a few feel it with such sharpness and violence as you do; few feel the need to become aware of these feelings. But tell me: besides this desperate coming and going between lust and horror, besides this seesaw between lust for life and sadness of death—have you tried no other road?"

"Oh yes, of course I have. I've tried art. I've already told you that, among other things, I also became an artist. One day, when I had roamed the world for three years perhaps, wandering almost all the time, I saw a wooden madonna in a cloister church. It was so beautiful, the sight moved me so deeply, that I asked the name of the sculptor who carved it and searched for him. I found him, he was a famous master; I became his apprentice and worked with him for a few years."

"You'll tell me more about that later. But what has art meant to you, what has art brought to you?"

"It was the overcoming of the transitory. I saw that something remained of the fools' play, the death dance of human life, something lasting: works of art. They too will probably perish some day; they'll burn or crumble or be destroyed. Still, they outlast many human lives; they form a silent empire of images and relics beyond the fleeting moment. To work at that seems good and comforting to me, because it almost succeeds in making the transitory eternal."

"I like that very much, Goldmund. I hope you will again make beautiful statues; my confidence in your strength is great. I hope you will be my guest in Mariabronn for a long time and permit me to set up a workshop for you; our cloister has long since been without an artist. But I do not think your definition quite encompassed the miracle of art. I believe that art is more than salvaging something mortal from death and transforming it into stone, wood, and color, so that it lasts a little longer. I have seen many works of art, many a saint and many a madonna, which did not seem to me merely faithful copies of a specific person who once lived and whose shapes or colors the artist has preserved."

"You are right in that," Goldmund cried eagerly. "I didn't think you were so well informed about art! The basic image of a good work of art is not a real, living figure, although it may inspire it. The basic image is not flesh and blood; it is mind. It is an image that has its home in the artist's soul. In me, too, Narcissus, such images are alive, which I hope to express one day and show to you."

"How lovely! And now, my dear Goldmund, you have strayed unknowingly into philosophy and have expressed one of its secrets."

"You're mocking me."

"Oh no. You spoke of 'basic images,' of images that exist nowhere except in the creative mind, but which can be realized and made visible in matter. Long before a figure becomes visible and gains reality, it exists as an image in the artist's soul. This image then, this 'basic image,' is exactly what the old philosophers call an 'idea.'"

"Yes, that sounds quite plausible."

"Well, and now that you have pledged yourself to ideas and to basic images, you are on mind-ground, in the world of philosophers and theologians, and you admit that, at the center of the confused, painful battlefield of life, at the center of the endless and meaningless death dance of fleshly existence, there exists the creative mind. Look, I have always addressed myself to this mind in you, ever since you came to me as a boy. In you, this mind is not that of a thinker but that of an artist. But it is mind, and it is the mind that will show you the way out of the blurred confusion of the world of the senses, out of the eternal seesaw between lust and despair. Ah, my dear friend, I am happy to have heard this confession from you. I have waited for it—since the day you left your teacher Narcissus and found the courage to be yourself. Now we can be friends anew."

It seemed to Goldmund that his life had been given a meaning. For a moment it was as though he were looking down on it from above, clearly seeing its three big steps: his dependence on Narcissus and his awakening; then the period of freedom and wandering; and now the return, the reflection, the beginning of maturity and harvest.

The vision faded again. But he had found a fitting relationship to Narcissus. It was no longer a relationship of dependence, but one of equality and reciprocity. He could be the guest of this superior mind without humiliation, since the other man had given recognition to the creative power in him. During their journey he looked forward with increasing eagerness to revealing himself to him, to making his inner world visible to him in works of images. But sometimes he also worried.

"Narcissus," he warned, "I'm afraid you don't know whom you're bringing into your cloister. I'm no monk, nor do I wish to become one. I know the three main vows. I gladly accept poverty, but I love neither chastity nor obedience; these virtues don't seem very manly to me. And I have nothing at all left of piety. I haven't confessed or prayed or taken communion in years."

Narcissus remained calm. "You seem to have become a pagan. But we are not afraid of that. You need not pride yourself any longer on your many sins. You have lived the usual life of the world. You have herded swine like the prodigal son; you no longer know what law and order mean. Surely you'd make a very bad monk. But I'm not inviting you to enter the order; I'm merely inviting you to be our guest and to set up a workshop for yourself in our cloister. And one thing more: don't forget that, during your adolescent years, it was I who awakened you and let you go into the worldly life. Whatever has become of you, good or bad, is my responsibility as well as yours. I want to see what has become of you; you will show me, in words, in life, in your works. After you have shown me, if I find that our house is no place for you, I shall be the first to ask you to leave again."

Goldmund was full of admiration every time his friend spoke in this manner, when he acted the abbot, with quiet assurance and a hint of mockery of people and life in the world, because then he saw what Narcissus had become: a man. True, a man of the mind and of the church, with delicate hands and a scholar's face, but a man full of assurance and courage, a leader, one who bore responsibility. This man Narcissus was no longer the adolescent of old times, no longer the gentle, devoted St. John; he wanted to carve this new Narcissus, the manly, knightly Narcissus. Many statues awaited him: Narcissus, Abbot Daniel, Father Anselm, Master Niklaus, beautiful Rebekka, beautiful Agnes, and still others, friends and enemies, alive and dead. No, he did not want to become a brother of the order, or a pious or learned man; he wanted to make statues, and the thought that his youthful home was to be the home of these works made him happy.

They rode through the chill of late autumn, and one day, on a morning when the bare trees hung thick with frost, they rode across a wide rolling land of deserted reddish moors, and the long chains of hills looked strangely familiar, and then came a high elm wood and a little stream and an old barn at the sight of which Goldmund's heart began to ache in happy anguish. He recognized the hills across which he had once ridden with the knight's daughter Lydia, and the heath across which he had walked that day of thinly falling snow, banished and deeply sad. The elm clumps emerged, and the mill, and the castle. With particular pain he recognized the window of the writing room in which he had then, during his legendary youth, corrected the knight's Latin and heard him tell of his pilgrimage. They rode into the courtyard; it was one of the regular stopping places of the journey. Goldmund asked the Abbot not to tell anyone there his name and to let him eat with the servants, as the groom did. That's how it was arranged. The old knight was no longer there and neither was Lydia, but a few of the old hunters and servants were still part of the household, and in the castle a very beautiful, proud, and domineering noblewoman, Julie, lived and reigned at her husband's side. She still looked wonderfully beautiful, and a little evil. Neither she nor the servants recognized Goldmund. After the meal, in the fading light of evening he crept into the garden, looked over the fence at the already wintery flower beds, crept to the stable door and looked in on the horses. He slept on the straw with the groom, and memories weighed heavily on his chest; he awakened many times. Scattered and infertile, the scenes of his life stretched out behind him, rich in magnificent images but broken in so many pieces, so poor in value, so poor in love! In the morning, as they rode away, he looked anxiously up to the windows. Perhaps he could catch another glimpse of Julie. A few days ago he had looked just as anxiously up to the windows of the bishop's palace to see if Agnes might not appear. She had not shown herself, and neither did Julie. His whole life had been like that, it seemed to him. Saying farewell, escaping, being forgotten; finding himself alone again, with empty hands and a frozen heart. He felt like that throughout the day, sitting gloomily in the saddle, not speaking at all. Narcissus let him be.

But now they were approaching their goal, and after a few days they had reached it. Shortly before tower and roofs of the cloister became visible, they rode across the fallow stony fields in which he had, oh so long ago, gathered John's-wort for Father Anselm, where the gypsy Lise had made a man of him. And now they rode through the gates of Mariabronn and dismounted under the Italian chestnut tree. Tenderly Goldmund touched the trunk and stooped to pick up one of the prickly, split husks that lay on the ground, brown and withered.

18

During the first days Goldmund lived in the cloister, in one of the guest cells. Then, at his own request, he was given a room across the forge, in one of the administrative buildings that surrounded the main yard like a marketplace.

His homecoming put him under a spell, so violent that he himself was astonished by it. Outside the Abbot no one knew him here, no one knew who he was. The people, monks as well as lay brothers, lived a well-ordered life and had their own special occupations, and left him in peace. But the trees of the courtyard knew him, the portals and windows knew him, the mill and the water wheel, the flagstones of the corridors, the wilted rosebushes in the arcade, the storks' nests on the refectory and granary roofs. From every corner of his past, the scent of his early adolescence came toward him, sweetly and movingly. Love drove him to see everything again, to hear all the sounds again, the bells for evening prayer and Sunday mass, the gushing of the dark millstream between its narrow, mossy banks, the slapping of sandals on the stone floors, the twilight jangle of the key ring as the brother porter went to lock up. Beside the stone gutters, into which the rainwater fell from the roof of the lay refectory, the same herbs were still sprouting, crane's-bill and plantain, and the old apple tree in the forge garden was still holding its far-reaching branches in the same way. But more than anything else the tinkling of the little school bell moved him. It was the moment when, at the beginning of recess, all the cloister students came tumbling down the stairs into the courtyard. How young and dumb and pretty the boys' faces were—had he, too, once really been so young, so clumsy, so pretty and childish?

Beside this familiar cloister he had also found one that was unknown, one which even during the first days struck his attention and became more and more important to him until it slowly linked itself to the more familiar one. Because, if nothing new had been added, if everything was as it had been during his student days, and a hundred or more years before that, he was no longer seeing it with the eyes of a student. He saw and felt the dimension of these edifices, of the vaults of the church, the power of old paintings, of the stone and wood figures on the altars, in the portals, and although he saw nothing that had not been there before, he only now perceived the beauty of these things and of the mind that had created them. He saw the old stone Mother of God in the upper chapel. Even as a boy he had been fond of it, and had copied it, but only now did he see it with open eyes, and realize how miraculously beautiful it was, that his best and most successful work could never surpass it. There were many such wonderful things, and each was not placed there by chance but was born of the same mind and stood between the old columns and arches as though in its natural home. All that had been built, chiseled, painted, lived, thought and taught here in the course of hundreds of years had grown from the same roots, from the same spirit, and everything was held together and unified like the branches of a tree.

Goldmund felt very small in this world, in this quiet mighty unity, and never did he feel smaller than when he saw Abbot John, his friend Narcissus, rule over and govern this powerful yet quietly friendly order. There might be tremendous differences of character between the learned, thin-lipped Abbot John and the kindly simple Abbot Daniel, but each of them served the same unity, the same thought, the same order of existence, received his dignity from it, sacrificed his person to it. That made them as similar to one another as their priestly robes.

In the center of his cloister, Narcissus grew eerily tall in Goldmund's eyes, although he was never anything but a cordial friend and host. Soon Goldmund hardly dared call him Narcissus any more.

"Listen, Abbot John," he once said to him, "I'll have to get used to your new name eventually. I must tell you that I like it very much in your house. I almost feel like making a general confession to you and, after penance and absolution, asking to be received as a lay brother. But you see, then our friendship would be over; you'd be the Abbot and I a lay brother. But I can no longer bear to live next to you like this and see your work and not be or do anything myself. I too would like to work and show you who I am and what I can do, so that you can see if it was worth snatching me from the gallows."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Narcissus, pronouncing his words even more clearly and precisely than usual. "You may set up your workshop any time you wish. I'll put the blacksmith and the carpenter at your disposal immediately. Please use any material you find here and make a list of all the things you want brought in from the outside. And now hear what I think about you and your intentions! You must give me a little time to express myself: I am a scholar and would like to try to illustrate the matter to you from my own world of thought; I have no other language. So follow me once more, as you so often did so patiently in earlier years."

"I'll try to follow you. Go ahead and speak."

"Recall how, even in our student days, I sometimes told you that I thought you were an artist. In those days I thought you might become a poet; in your reading and writing you had a certain dislike for the intangible and the abstract, and a special love for words and sounds that had sensuous poetic qualities, words that appealed to the imagination."

Goldmund interrupted. "Forgive me, but aren't the concepts and abstractions which you prefer to use really images too? Or do you really prefer to think in words with which one cannot imagine anything? But can one think without imagining anything?"

"I'm glad you ask! Yes, certainly one can think without imagining anything! Thinking and imagining have nothing whatsoever in common. Thinking is done not in images but with concepts and formulae. At the exact point where images stop, philosophy begins. That was precisely the subject of our frequent quarrels as young men; for you, the world was made of images, for me of ideas. I always told you that you were not made to be a thinker, and I also told you that this was no lack since, in exchange, you were a master in the realm of images. Pay attention and I'll explain it to you. If, instead of immersing yourself in the world, you had become a thinker, you might have created evil. Because you would have become a mystic. Mystics are, to express it briefly and somewhat crudely, thinkers who cannot detach themselves from images, therefore not thinkers at all. They are secret artists: poets without verse, painters without brushes, musicians without sound. There are highly gifted, noble minds among them, but they are all without exception unhappy men. You, too, might have become such a man. Instead of which you have, thank God, become an artist and have taken possession of the image world in which you can be a creator and a master, instead of being stranded in discontentment as a thinker."

"I'm afraid," said Goldmund, "I'll never succeed in grasping the idea of your thought world, in which one thinks without images."

"Oh yes, you will, and right now. Listen: the thinker tries to determine and to represent the nature of the world through logic. He knows that reason and its tool, logic, are incomplete—the way an intelligent artist knows full well that his brushes or chisels will never be able to express perfectly the radiant nature of an angel or a saint. Still they both try, the thinker as well as the artist, each in his way. They cannot and may not do otherwise. Because when a man tries to realize himself through the gifts with which nature has endowed him, he does the best and only meaningful thing he can do. That's why, in former days, I often said to you: don't try to imitate the thinker or the ascetic man, but be yourself, try to realize yourself."

"I understand something of what you say, but what does it mean to realize oneself?"

"It is a philosophical concept, I can't express it in any other way. For us disciples of Aristotle and St. Thomas, it is the highest of all concepts: perfect being. God is perfect being. Everything else that exists is only half, only a part, is becoming, is mixed, is made up of potentialities. But God is not mixed. He is one, he has no potentialities but is the total, the complete reality. Whereas we are transitory, we are becoming, we are potentials; there is no perfection for us, no complete being. But wherever we go, from potential to deed, from possibility to realization, we participate in true being, become by a degree more similar to the perfect and divine. That is what it means to realize oneself. You must know this from your own experience, since you're an artist and have made many statues. If such a figure is really good, if you have released a man's image from the changeable and brought it to pure form—then you have, as an artist, realized this human image."

"I understand."

"You see me, friend Goldmund, in a place and function where it is made rather easy for me to realize myself. You see me living in a community and a tradition that corresponds to me and furthers me. A cloister is no heaven. It is filled with imperfections. Still, a decently run cloister life is infinitely more helpful to men of my nature than the worldly life. I don't wish to speak morally, but from a merely practical point of view, pure thinking, the practice and teaching of which is my task, offers a certain protection from the world. It was much easier for me to realize myself here in our house than it would have been for you. But, in spite of the difficulty, you found a way to become an artist, and I admire that a great deal. Your life has been much harder than mine."

This praise made Goldmund blush with embarrassment, and also with pleasure. In order to change the subject, he interrupted his friend: "I've been able to understand most of what you wanted to tell me. But there is one thing I still can't get through my head: the thing you call 'pure thinking.' I mean your so-called thinking without images, and the use of words with which one cannot imagine anything."

"Well, you'll be able to understand it with an example. Think of mathematics. What kind of images do figures contain? Or the plus and minus signs? What kind of images does an equation contain? None. When you solve a problem in arithmetic or algebra, no image will help you solve it, you execute a formal task within the codes of thought that you have learned."

"That's right, Narcissus. If you give me a row of figures and symbols, I can work through them without using my imagination, I can let myself be guided by plus and minus, square roots, and so on, and can solve the problem. That is—I once could, today I could no longer do it. But I can't imagine that solving such a formal problem can have any other value than exercising a student's brain. It's all right to learn how to count. But I'd find it meaningless and childish if a man spent his whole life counting and covering paper with rows of figures."

"You are wrong, Goldmund. You assume that this zealous problem-solver continuously solves problems a teacher poses for him. But he can also ask himself questions; they can arise within him as compelling forces. A man must have measured and puzzled over much real and much fictitious space mathematically before be can risk facing the problem of space itself."

"Well, yes. But attacking the problem of space with pure thought does not strike me as an occupation on which a man should waste his work and his years. The word 'space' means nothing to me and is not worth thinking about unless I can imagine real space, say the space between stars; now, studying and measuring star space does not seem an unworthy task to me."

Smilingly, Narcissus interrupted: "You are actually saying that you have a rather low opinion of thinking, but a rather high one of the application of thought to the practical, visible world. I can answer you: we lack no opportunities to apply our thinking, nor are we unwilling to do so. The thinker Narcissus has, for instance, applied the results of his thinking a hundred times to his friend Goldmund, as well as to each of his monks, and does so at every instant. But how would he be able to 'apply' something if he had not learned and practiced it before? And the artist also constantly exercises his eye and imagination, and we recognize this training, even if it finds realization only in a few good works. You cannot dismiss thinking as such and sanction only its 'application'! The contradiction is obvious. So let me go on thinking and judge my thoughts by their results, as I shall judge your art by your works. You are restless now and irritable because there are still obstacles between you and your works. Clear them out of the way. Find or build a workshop for yourself and get to work! Many problems will be solved automatically that way."

Goldmund wished nothing better.

Beside the courtyard gate he found a shed that was both empty and suitable for a workshop. He ordered a drawing board and other tools from the carpenter, all to be made after precise plans he drew himself. He made a list of the materials which the cloister carters were to bring him from nearby cities, a long list. He inspected all the felled timber at the carpenter's and in the forest, chose many pieces and had them carried to the grassy lot behind his workshop, where he piled them up to dry under a roof he built with his own hands. He also had much work to do with the blacksmith, whose son, a dreamy young man, was completely charmed and won over by him. Together they stood half the day at the forge, over the anvil, by the cooling trough or the whetstone, making all the bent or straight cutting knives, the chisels, drills, and planes he needed for his work. The smith's son, Erich, an adolescent of almost twenty, became Goldmund's friend. He helped him with everything and was full of glowing interest and curiosity. Goldmund promised to teach him to play the lute, which he fervently desired, and he also allowed him to try his hand at carving. If at times Goldmund felt rather useless and depressed in the cloister and in Narcissus's presence, he was able to recover in the presence of Erich, who loved him timidly and admired him immensely. He often asked him to tell him about Master Niklaus and the bishop's city. Sometimes Goldmund was glad to tell stories. Then he would be suddenly astonished to find himself sitting like an old man, talking about the travels and adventures of the past, when his true life was only now about to begin.

Recently he had changed greatly and aged far beyond his years, but this was visible to no one, since only one man here had known him before. The hardships of his wandering and unsettled life may already have undermined his strength, but the plague and its many horrors, and finally his captivity at the count's residence and that gruesome night in the castle cellar had shaken him to his roots, and several signs of these experiences stayed with him: gray hair in his blond beard, wrinkles on his face, periods of insomnia, and occasionally a certain fatigue inside the heart, a slackening of desire and curiosity, a gray shallow feeling of having had enough, of being fed up. During preparations for his work, during his conversations with Erich or his pursuits at the blacksmith's and at the carpenter's, he grew vivacious and young and all admired him and were fond of him; but at other times he'd sit for hours, exhausted, smiling and dreaming, given over to apathy and indifference.

The question of where to begin was very important to him. The first work he wanted to make here, and with which he wanted to pay for the cloister's hospitality, was not to be an arbitrary piece that one placed just anywhere for the sake of curiosity, no, it had to blend with the old works of the house and with the architecture and life of the cloister and become part of the whole. He would have especially liked to make an altar or perhaps a pulpit, but there was no need or room for either. He found another place instead. There was a raised niche in the refectory, from which a young brother read passages from the lives of the saints during meals. This niche had no ornament. Goldmund decided to carve for the steps to the lectern and for the lectern itself a set of wooden panels like those around a pulpit, with many figures in half-relief and others almost free-standing. He explained his plan to the Abbot, who praised and accepted it.

When finally he could begin—snow had fallen, Christmas was already over—Goldmund's life took on another form. He seemed to have disappeared from the cloister; nobody saw him any more. He no longer waited for the students at the end of classes, no longer drifted through the woods, no longer strolled under the arcades. He took his meals in the mill—it wasn't the same miller now whom he had often visited as a student. And he allowed no one but his assistant Erich to enter his workshop; and on certain days Erich did not hear a word out of him.

For this first work he had long since thought out the following design: it was to be in two parts, one representing the world, the other the word of God. The lower part, the stairs, growing out of a sturdy oak trunk and winding around it, was to represent creation, images of nature and of the simple life of the patriarchs and the prophets. The upper part, the parapet, would bear the pictures of the four apostles. One of the evangelists was to have the traits of blessed Abbot Daniel; another those of blessed Father Martin, his successor; and the statue of Luke was to eternalize Master Niklaus.

He met with great obstacles, greater than he had anticipated. And these obstacles gave him many worries, but they were sweet worries. Now enchanted and now despairing, he wooed his work as though it were a reluctant woman, struggled with it as firmly and gently as a fisherman struggling with a giant pike, and each resistance taught him and made him more sensitive. He forgot everything else. He forgot the cloister; he almost forgot Narcissus. Narcissus came a number of times, but was only shown drawings.

Then one day Goldmund surprised him with the request that he hear his confession.

"I could not bring myself to confess before," he admitted. "I felt too small, and I already felt small enough in front of you. Now I feel bigger, now I have my work and am no longer a nobody. And since I am living in a cloister, I'd like to submit myself to the rules."

Now he felt equal to the task and did not want to wait a moment longer. Those first meditative weeks at the cloister, the abandonment of all the homecoming, all the memories of youth, as well as the stories Erich asked him for, had allowed him to see his life with a certain order and clarity.

Without solemnity Narcissus received his confession. It lasted about two hours. With immobile face the Abbot listened to the adventures, sufferings, and sins of his friend, posed many questions, never interrupted, and listened passively also to the part of the confession in which Goldmund admitted that his faith in God's justice and goodness had disappeared. He was struck by many of the admissions of the confessing man. He could see how much he had been shaken and terrified, how close he had sometimes come to perishing. Then again he was moved to smile, touched when he found that his friend's nature had remained so innocent, when he found him worried and repentant because of impious thoughts which were harmless enough compared to his own dark abysses of doubt.

To Goldmund's surprise, to his disappointment even, the father confessor did not take his actual sins too seriously, but reprimanded and punished him unsparingly because of his neglect in praying, confession, and communion. He imposed the following penance upon him: to live moderately and chastely for a month before receiving communion, to hear early mass every morning, and to say three Our Fathers and one Hail Mary every evening.

Afterwards he said to him: "I exhort you, I beg you not to take this penance lightly. I don't know if you can still remember the exact text of the mass. You are to follow it word by word and give yourself up to its meaning. I will myself say the Our Father and a few canticles with you today, and give you instructions as to the words and meanings to which you are to direct your particular attention. You are to speak and hear the sacred words not the way one speaks and hears human words. Every time you catch yourself just reeling off the words, and this will happen more often than you expect, you are to remember this hour and my exhortation, and you are to begin all over again and speak the words in such a way as to let them enter your heart, as I am about to show you."

Whether it was a beautiful coincidence, or whether the Abbot's knowledge of souls was great enough to achieve it, a period of fulfillment and peace came for Goldmund from this confession and penance. It made him profoundly happy. Amid the many tensions, worries, and satisfactions of his work, he found himself morning and evening released by the easy but conscientiously executed spiritual exercises, relaxed after the excitements of the day, his entire being submitted to a higher order that lifted him out of the dangerous isolation of the creator and included him as a child in God's world. Although the battles of his work had to be overcome in solitude, and he had to give it all the passions of his senses, these hours of meditation let him return to innocence again and again. Still hot with the rage and impatience of his work, or moved to ecstasy, he would plunge into the pious exercises as though into deep, cool water that washed him clean of the arrogance of enthusiasm as well as the arrogance of despair.

It did not always succeed. Sometimes he did not become calm and relaxed in the evening, after burning hours of work. A few times he forgot the exercises, and several times, as he tried to immerse himself in them, he was tortured by the thought that saying prayers was, after all, perhaps only childish striving for a God who did not exist or could not help. He compained about it to his friend.

"Continue," said Narcissus. "You promised; you must keep your promise. You are not to think about whether God hears your prayers or whether there is a God such as you imagine. Nor are you to wonder whether your exercises are childish. Compared to Him to whom all our prayers are addressed, all our doing is childish. You must forbid yourself these foolish child's thoughts completely during the exercises. You are to speak the Our Father and the canticles, and give yourself up to the words and fill yourself with them just the way you play the lute or sing. You don't pursue clever thoughts and speculations then, do you? No, you execute one finger position after another as purely and perfectly as possible. While you sing, you don't wonder whether or not singing is useful; you sing. That's how you are to pray."

And once more it worked. Again his taut, avid ego extinguished itself in wide-vaulted order; again the venerable words floated above him like stars.

With great satisfaction, the Abbot saw Goldmund continue his daily exercises for weeks and months after his period of penance was over and after he had received the holy sacraments.

In the meantime Goldmund's work advanced. A small surging world grew from the thick spiral of the stairs: creatures, plants, animals, and people. In their midst stood Noah between grape leaves and grapes. The work was a picture book of praise for the creation of the world and its beauty, free in expression but directed by an inner order and discipline. During all these months no one but Erich saw the work; he was allowed to execute small tasks and thought of nothing but becoming an artist himself. But on certain days not even he was allowed to enter the workshop. On other days Goldmund took his time with him, showed him a few things and let him try, happy to have a believer and a disciple. If the work turned out successfully, he might ask Erich's father to release the boy and let him be trained as his permanent assistant.

He worked at the statues of the evangelists on his best days, when everything was harmonious and no doubts cast their shadows over him. It seemed to him that he was most successful with the figure that bore the traits of Abbot Daniel. He loved it very much; the face radiated kindness and purity. He was less satisfied with the statue of Master Niklaus, even though Erich admired it most of all. This figure revealed discord and sadness. It seemed to be brimming over with lofty plans for creation and yet there was also a desperate awareness of the futility of creating, and mourning for a lost unity and innocence.

When Abbot Daniel was finished, he had Erich clean up the workshop. He hid the remaining statues under a cloth and placed only that one figure in the light. Then he went to Narcissus, and when he found that he was busy, he waited patiently until the next day. At the noon hour he took his friend to see the statue.

Narcissus stood and looked. He stood there, taking his time, examining the work with the attention and care of the scholar. Goldmund stood behind him, in silence, trying to dominate the tempest in his heart. "Oh," he thought, "if one of us does not pass this test, it will be bad. If my work is not good enough, or if he cannot understand it, all my working here will have lost its value. I should have waited longer."

Minutes felt like hours to him, and he thought of the time when Master Niklaus had held his first drawing in his hands. He pressed his hot humid palms together in the effort of waiting.

Narcissus turned to him, and immediately he felt relieved. In his friend's narrow face he saw flower something that had not flowered there since his boyhood years: a smile, an almost timid smile on that face of mind and will, a smile of love and surrender, a shimmer, as though all its loneliness and pride had been pierced for a second and nothing shone from it but a heart full of joy.

"Goldmund," Narcissus said very softly, weighing his words even now, "you don't expect me to become an art expert all of a sudden. You know I'm not. I can tell you nothing about your art that you would not find ridiculous. But let me tell you one thing: at first glance I recognized our Abbot Daniel in this evangelist, and not only him, but also all the things he once meant to us: dignity, kindness, simplicity. As blessed Father Daniel stood before our youthful veneration, he stands here before me now and with him everything that was sacred to us then and that makes those years unforgettable to us. You have given me a generous gift, my friend, and not only have you given our Abbot Daniel back to me; you have opened yourself completely, to me for the first time. Now I know who you are. Let us speak about it no longer; I cannot. Oh Goldmund, that this hour has been given us!"

It was quiet in the large room. His friend the Abbot was moved to the depth of his heart. Goldmund saw this and embarrassment choked his breathing.

"Yes," he said curtly, "I am happy. But now it's time to go and eat."

19

For two years Goldmund worked on this group and from the second year on he was given Erich as an apprentice. In the balustrade for the staircase he created a small paradise. With ecstasy he carved a graceful wilderness of trees, brush, and herbs, with birds in the branches, and the heads and bodies of animals emerging everywhere. In the midst of this peacefully sprouting primitive garden, he depicted several scenes from the life of the patriarchs. This industrious life was rarely interrupted. There was seldom a day now when working was impossible for him, when restlessness or boredom made him disgusted with his art. But when he did feel bored or restless he'd give his apprentice a chore and walk or ride into the countryside to breathe in the memory-filled perfume of the free and wandering life of the forest, or visit a peasant's daughter, or hunt, or lie for hours in the green staring into the vaulted halls of treetops, into the sprouting wilderness of ferns and juniper. He would always return after a day or two. Then he'd attack his work with renewed passion, greedily carve the luxuriant herbs, gently, tenderly coax human heads from the wood, forcefully cut a mouth, an eye, a pleated beard. Beside Erich only Narcissus knew the statues and he came often to the workshop, which at times was his favorite place in the cloister. He looked on with joy and astonishment. Everything his friend had carried in his restless, stubborn, boyish heart was coming to flower. There it grew and blossomed, a creation, a small surging world: a game perhaps, but certainly no less worthy a game than playing with logic, grammar, and theology.

Pensively he once said: "I'm learning a great deal from you, Goldmund. I'm beginning to understand what art is. Formerly it seemed to me that, compared to thinking and science, it could not be taken altogether seriously. I thought something like this: since man is a dubious mixture of mind and matter, since the mind unlocks recognition of the eternal to him, while matter pulls him down and binds him to the transitory, he should strive away from the senses and toward the mind if he wishes to elevate his life and give it meaning. I did pretend, out of habit, to hold art in high esteem, but actually I was arrogant and looked down upon it. Only now do I realize how many paths there are to knowledge and that the path of the mind is not the only one and perhaps not even the best one. It is my way, of course; and I'll stay on it. But I see that you, on the opposite road, on the road of the senses, have seized the secret of being just as deeply and can express it in a much more lively fashion than most thinkers are able to do."

"Now you understand," Goldmund said, "that I can't conceive of thoughts without images?"

"I have long since understood it. Our thinking is a constant process of converting things to abstractions, a looking away from the sensory, an attempt to construct a purely spiritual world. Whereas you take the least constant, the most mortal things to your heart, and in their very mortality show the meaning of the world. You don't look away from the world; you give yourself to it, and by your sacrifice to it raise it to the highest, a parable of eternity. We thinkers try to come closer to God by pulling the mask of the world away from His face. You come closer to Him by loving His creation and re-creating it. Both are human endeavors, and necessarily imperfect, but art is more innocent."

"I don't know, Narcissus. But in overcoming life, in resisting despair, you thinkers and theologians seem to succeed better. I have long since stopped envying you for your learning, dear friend, but I do envy your calm, your detachment, your peace."

"You should not envy me, Goldmund. There is no peace of the sort you imagine. Oh, there is peace of course, but not anything that lives within us constantly and never leaves us. There is only the peace that must be won again and again, each new day of our lives. You don't see me fight, you don't know my struggles as Abbot, my struggles in the prayer cell. A good thing that you don't. You only see that I am less subject to moods than you, and you take that for peace. But my life is struggle; it is struggle and sacrifice like every decent life; like yours, too."

"Let's not quarrel about it, Narcissus. You don't see all my struggles either. And I don't know whether or not you are able to understand how I feel when I think that this work will soon be finished, that it will be taken away and set in its place. Then I will hear a few praises and return to a bare workroom, depressed about all the things that I did not achieve in my work, things you others can't even see, and inside I'll feel as robbed and empty as the workshop."

"That may be so," said Narcissus. "Neither of us can ever understand the other completely in such things. But there is one realization all men of good will share: in the end our works make us feel ashamed, we have to start out again, and each time the sacrifice has to be made anew."

A few weeks later Goldmund's big work was finished and set in its place. An old experience repeated itself: his work became the possession of others, was looked at, judged, praised; and he was lauded, honored, but his heart and his workshop stood empty and he no longer knew whether the work had been worth the sacrifice. On the day of the unveiling he was invited to the fathers' table for a festive meal at which the oldest wine of the house was served. Goldmund enjoyed the excellent fish and venison, and even more than by the old wine was warmed by the interest and joy of Narcissus, who praised him and honored his work.

A new work, which the Abbot had asked for and ordered, was already sketched out, an altar for the Mary chapel in Neuzell, which belonged to the cloister and in which a father from Mariabronn officiated as priest. For this altar Goldmund wanted to make a statue of the madonna, and to eternalize in her one of the unforgettable figures of his youth, beautiful fearful Lydia, the knight's daughter. Otherwise this commission was of little importance to him; it seemed suitable to him for Erich's assistant's project. If Erich did well, he'd have a good permanent partner who could replace him, free him to do those works that alone were still close to his heart. With Erich, he chose the wood for the altar and had him prepare it. Often Goldmund left him alone; he had resumed his roaming, his long walks in the woods. Once he was absent for several days, and Erich notified the Abbot, who also feared that Goldmund might have left for good. But he came back, worked for a week on the statue of Lydia, then began to roam again.

He was troubled. Since the completion of his big work his life had been in disorder. He missed early mass; he was deeply restless and dissatisfied. Now he often thought of Master Niklaus and wondered if he himself would not become soon what Niklaus had been, a hard-working and settled master in his craft, but unfree and unyoung. Recently a small adventure had given him food for thought: on one of his wandering days he had found a young peasant girl named Franziska, whom he liked. He had tried to charm her, had employed all the arts of seduction he knew. The girl listened gladly to his chatting, laughed delighted at his jokes, but she refused his advances, and for the first time he realized that, to a young woman, he seemed an old man. He had not gone back, but he had not forgotten. Franziska was right. He was older; he felt it himself, and it was not because of a few premature gray hairs and a few wrinkles around his eyes, but rather something in his being, in his mind. He found himself old, found that he had become strangely similar to Master Niklaus. With ill humor he observed himself and shrugged. He had grown cautious and tame; he was no longer an eagle or a hare; he had become a domestic animal. When he roamed about now, he was looking for the perfume of the past, for memories of his former adventures rather than for new freedom. Like a dog, he looked longingly and distrustfully for the lost scent. And after he had been away for a day or two, loafed a bit and caroused, something drew him irresistibly back. He had a bad conscience. He felt this workshop waiting for him, felt responsible for the altar he had begun, for the prepared wood, for his assistant Erich. He was no longer free, no longer young. He made a firm resolution: after the Lydia-Mary was finished, he wanted to go on a trip and try wandering once more. It was not good to live in a cloister for so long, with men only. It might be good for monks, but not for him. One could speak intelligently with men, and they understood an artist's work, but all the rest—chatting, tenderness, games, love, pleasure without thought—did not flourish among men, for that one needed women, wandering, freedom, and ever new impressions. Everything around him was a little gray and serious here, a little heavy and manly, and he had become contaminated; it had crept into his blood. The thought of a trip consoled him. He kept to his work courageously in order to be free sooner. And as Lydia's figure gradually came toward him out of the wood, as he draped the strict folds of her dress over her knees, a deep, painful joy overtook him, a nostalgic falling in love with the image, with the beautiful shy girl figure, with his memory of that time, with his first love, his first travels, his youth. Reverently he worked at the delicate image, felt it one with the best within him, with his youth, with his most tender memories. It was a joy to form her inclined neck, her friendly-sad mouth, her elegant hands, the long fingers, the beautifully arched cups of her fingernails. Erich, too, would stare at the figure with admiration and loving respect whenever he had a free moment.

When she was almost finished, Goldmund showed her to the Abbot. Narcissus said: "That is a beautiful work, my dear friend. We have nothing in the whole cloister that measures up to it. I must confess to you that I worried about you on several occasions during the last months. I saw that you were restless and disturbed, and when you disappeared and stayed away for more than a day, I sometimes thought with sorrow: perhaps he's never coming back. And now you have carved this wonderful statue. I am happy for you and proud of you."

"Yes," Goldmund said, "the statue turned out rather well. But now listen to me, Narcissus. In order to make this a good statue, I needed my entire youth, my wandering, my love affairs, my courtship of many women. That is the source at which I have drunk. Soon the well will be empty; I feel dry in my heart. I'll finish this Mary, but then I'll take a good long vacation, I don't know for how long. I'll retrace my youth and all that was once so dear to me. Can you understand that? Well, yes. You know I was your guest, and I've never taken any payment for my work here …"

"I often offered it to you," interrupted Narcissus.

"Yes, and now I'll accept it. I'll have new clothes made, and when they're ready, I'll ask you for a horse and a few gold pieces and then I'll ride out into the world. Say nothing, Narcissus, and do not be sad. It is not that I don't like it here any more; I couldn't be better off anywhere else. Something else is at stake. Will you fulfill my wish?"

They spoke about it no more. Goldmund had made for himself a plain riding outfit and boots, and as summer drew near, he completed the Mary figure as though it were his last work. With loving care he gave the hands, the face, the hair their finishing touch. It might almost have seemed that he was prolonging his work, that he was quite happy to be slightly delayed again and again by these final delicate touches to the figure. Days passed, and always there was something new for him to arrange. Although Narcissus felt deeply sad about the approaching farewell, he sometimes smiled a little about Goldmund's being in love, about his not being able to tear himself away from the Mary statue.

But one day Goldmund surprised him; suddenly he came to take his leave. He had made up his mind during the night. In his new clothes, with a new cap, he came to Narcissus to say goodbye. He had already confessed and communed some time ago. Now he came to bid farewell and be given the blessing for the road. The leavetaking came hard to both of them, and Goldmund acted with a brusquesness and indifference he did not feel in his heart.

"Will I ever see you again?" asked Narcissus.

"Oh yes, if your pretty nag does not break my neck, you will certainly see me again. Besides, without me, there wouldn't be anyone left to call you Narcissus and cause you to worry. So don't fear. Yes, and don't forget to keep an eye on Erich. And let no one touch my statue! She must remain standing in my room, as I have said before, and you are not to let the key out of your hand."

"Are you looking forward to the journey?"

Goldmund blinked.

"Well, I was looking forward to it; that's quite true. But now that I'm about to ride off, it feels less amusing than one might think. You'll laugh at me, but I don't like going away; and this dependence does not please me. It is like an illness; young healthy men don't have that. Master Niklaus was that way, too. Well, let's not chat about useless stuff! Bless me, dear friend; I want to leave."

He rode off.

In his thoughts, Narcissus was greatly concerned about his friend. He worried about him and missed him. Would he ever come back? Now this strange and lovable person was again following his crooked, will-less path, roaming the world with desire and curiosity, following his strong dark drives, stormy and insatiable, a grown child. Might God be with him; might he come back safe and sound. Again he would fly hither and thither, the butterfly, commit new sins, seduce women, follow his instincts, would perhaps again be involved in murder, danger, and imprisonment and might perish that way. How much worry this blond boy caused one! He complained about growing old, all the while looking out of such boyish eyes! How one had to fear for him. And yet, deep down in his heart, Narcissus was happy about Goldmund. It pleased him very much that this stubborn child was so difficult to tame, that he had such caprices, that he had broken out again to shake off his antlers.

Every day the Abbot's thoughts returned at one time or another to his friend, with love and longing, gratitude and worry, occasionally also with doubt and self-reproach. Should he not perhaps have shown his friend more clearly how much he loved him, how little he wished him to be other than he was, how rich he had become through his being and his art? He had not said much about it, perhaps not enough—who could tell if he might not have been able to keep him?

But he had not only been enriched by Goldmund. He had also grown poorer because of him, poorer and weaker, and it was certainly good that he had not shown that to his friend. The world in which he lived and made his home, his world, his cloister life, his priestly office, his scholarly being, his well-constructed thought edifice—all this had often been shaken to its foundations by his friend and was now filled with doubt. Certainly, seen from the point of view of the cloister, from the point of view of reason and morality, his own life was better, righter, steadier, more orderly, more exemplary. It was a life of order and strict service, an unending sacrifice, a constantly renewed striving for clarity and justice. It was much purer, much better than the life of an artist, vagrant, and seducer of women. But seen from above, with God's eyes—was this exemplary life of order and discipline, of renunciation of the world and of the joys of the senses, of remoteness from dirt and blood, of withdrawal into philosophy and meditation any better than Goldmund's life? Had man really been created to live a regulated life, with hours and duties indicated by prayer bells? Had man really been created to study Aristotle and Saint Thomas, to know Greek, to extinguish his senses, to flee the world? Had God not created him with senses and instincts, with blood-colored darknesses, with the capacity for sin, lust, and despair? These were the questions around which the Abbot's thoughts circled when they dwelt on his friend. Yes, and was it not perhaps more childlike and human to lead a Goldmund-life, more courageous, more noble perhaps in the end to abandon oneself to the cruel stream of reality, to chaos, to commit sins and accept their bitter consequences rather than live a clean life with washed hands outside the world; laying out a lonely harmonious thought-garden, strolling sinlessly among one's sheltered flower beds. Perhaps it was harder, braver and nobler to wander through forests and along the highways with torn shoes, to suffer sun and rain, hunger and need, to play with the joys of the senses and pay for them with suffering.

At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul. Narcissus had looked deeply into his friend's chaotic life, and neither his love for him nor his respect for him dwindled. Oh no, since he had seen those miraculous still-life images, radiant with inner harmony, come into being under Goldmund's stained hands, those intent faces glowing with spirit, those innocent plants and flowers, those imploring or blessed hands, all those audacious, gentle, proud, or sacred gestures, since then he knew very well that an abundance of light and the gifts of God dwelt in the fickle heart of this artist and seducer.

It had been easy for him to seem superior to Goldmund in their conversations, to oppose his discipline and intellectual order to his friend's passions. But was not every small gesture of one of Goldmund's figures, every eye, every mouth, every branch and fold of gown worth more? Was it not more real, alive, and irreplaceable than everything a thinker could achieve? Had not this artist, whose heart was so full of conflict and misery, fashioned symbols of need and striving for innumerable people, contemporary and future, figures to which the reverence and respect, the deepest anguish and longing of countless people would turn for consolation, confirmation, and strength?

Smiling and sad, Narcissus remembered all the times since their early youth when he had guided and taught his friend. Gratefully his friend had accepted, always admitting Narcissus's superiority and guidance. And then, quietly, he had fashioned his works, born of the tempest and suffering of his ragged life: no words, no instructions, no explanations, no warnings, but authentic, heightened life. How poor he himself was by comparison, with his knowledge, his cloister discipline, his dialectics!

These were the questions around which his thoughts turned. Just as he had once, many years ago, intervened roughly, almost brutally, in Goldmund's youth and placed his life in a new sphere, so his friend had preoccupied him since his return, had shaken him, had forced him to doubt and self-examination. He was his equal; Narcissus had given him nothing that had not been given back to him many times over.

The friend who had ridden off left him much time for thought. Weeks passed. The chestnut tree had long since lost its blossoms; the milky lightgreen beech leaves had long since turned dark, firm, and hard; the storks long since had hatched their young on the entrance tower and taught them to fly. The longer Goldmund stayed away, the more Narcissus realized how important he had been to him. He had several learned fathers in the house, an expert on Plato, an excellent grammarian, and one or two subtle theologians. And there were among the monks a few faithful, serious, honest souls. But he had no equal, no one with whom he could seriously measure himself. This irreplaceable thing only Goldmund had given him. It was hard to renounce it again now. He thought of his absent friend with longing.

Often he went to the workshop, to encourage the assistant Erich, who continued working at the altar and eagerly awaited his master's return. Sometimes the Abbot unlocked Goldmund's room, where the Mary figure stood, lifted the cloth from the figure carefully and stayed with her awhile. He knew nothing of the figure's origin; Goldmund had never told him Lydia's story. But he felt everything; he saw that the girl's form had long lived in Goldmund's heart. Perhaps he had seduced her, perhaps betrayed and left her. But, truer than the most faithful husband, he had taken her along in his soul, preserving her image until finally, perhaps after many years in which he had never seen her again, he had fashioned this beautiful, touching statue of a girl and captured in her face, her bearing, her hands all the tenderness, admiration, and longing of their love. He read much of his friend's history, too, in the figures of the lectern pulpit in the refectory. It was the story of a wayfarer, of an instinctive being, of a homeless, faithless man, but what had remained of it here was all good and faithful, filled with living love. How mysterious this life was, how deep and muddy its waters ran, yet how clear and noble what emerged from them.

Narcissus struggled. He mastered himself; he did not betray his calling. He deviated in no way from his strict service. But he suffered from a sense of loss and from the recognition of how much his heart, which was to belong only to God and to his office, was attached to his friend.

20

The summer passed. Poppies and cornflowers, cockles and starwort wilted and vanished. The frogs grew silent in the pond and the storks flew high and prepared for departure. That's when Goldmund returned.

He arrived one afternoon, during a light rain, and did not go into the cloister; from the portal he went immediately to his workshop. He had come on foot, without the horse.

Erich felt a shock when he saw him come in. Although he recognized him at first glance, and his heart went out to greet him, the man who had come back seemed completely different: a false Goldmund, many years older, with a half-spent, dusty, gray face, sunken cheeks, and sick, suffering eyes, although there was no pain in them, but a smile rather, a kind-hearted, old, patient smile. He walked painfully; he dragged himself, and he seemed to be ill and very tired.

This changed, hardly recognizable Goldmund peered strangely at his assistant. He made no fuss about his return. He acted as though he had merely come in from another room, as though he had never left even for a minute. He shook hands and said nothing, no greeting, no question, no story. He merely said: "I must sleep," he seemed to be terribly tired. He sent Erich away and went into his room next to the workshop. There he pulled off his cap and let it drop, took off his shoes and walked over to the bed. Farther back in the room he saw his madonna standing under a cloth; he nodded but did not go up to her to take off the cloth and greet her. Instead he crept to the little window, saw Erich waiting uneasily outside, and called down to him: "Erich, you needn't tell anybody that I'm back. I'm very tired. It can wait until tomorrow."

Then he lay down on the bed in his clothes. After a while, since he could not fall asleep, he got up and walked heavily to the wall to look into a small mirror that hung there. Attentively he looked at the Goldmund who stared back at him out of the mirror, a weary Goldmund, a man who had grown tired and old and wilted, with much gray in his beard. It was an old, somewhat unkempt man who looked back at him from the little mirror's dull surface—but strangely unfamiliar. It did not seem to be properly present; it did not seem to be of much concern to him. It reminded him of other faces he had known, a little of Master Niklaus, a little of the old knight who had once had a page's outfit made for him, and also a little of St. Jacob in the church, of old bearded St. Jacob who looked so ancient and gray under his pilgrim's hat, and yet still joyous and good.

Carefully he read the mirror face, as though he were interested in finding out about this stranger. He nodded to him and knew him again: yes, it was he; it corresponded to the feeling he had about himself. An extremely tired old man, who had grown slightly numb, who had returned from a journey, an ordinary man in whom one could not take much pride. And yet he had nothing against him. He still liked him; there was something in his face that the earlier, pretty Goldmund had not had. In all the fatigue and disintegration there was a trace of contentment, or at least of detachment. He laughed softly to himself and saw the mirror image join him: a fine fellow he had brought home from his trip! Pretty much torn and burned out, he was returning from his little excursion. He had not only sacrificed his horse, his satchel, and his gold pieces; other things, too, had gotten lost or deserted him: youth, health, self-confidence, the color in his cheeks and the force in his eyes. Yet he liked the image: this weak old fellow in the mirror was dearer to him than the Goldmund he had been for so long. He was older, weaker, more pitiable, but he was more harmless, he was more content, it was easier to get along with him. He laughed and pulled down one of the eyelids that had become wrinkled. Then he went back to bed and this time fell asleep.

The next day he sat hunched over the table in his room and tried to draw a little. Narcissus came to visit him. He stood in the doorway and said: "I've been told that you were back. Thank God, I'm very glad. Since you did not come to see me, I've come to you. Am I disturbing you in your work?"

He came closer; Goldmund looked up from his paper and held out his hand. Although Erich had prepared him, the sight of his friend shocked Narcissus to the heart. Goldmund gave him a friendly smile.

"Yes, I'm back. Welcome, Narcissus, we haven't seen each other for a while. Forgive me for not coming to you."

Narcissus looked into his eyes. He too saw not only the exhaustion, the pitiful wilting of this face; he saw other things besides, strangely pleasing signs of acceptance, of detachment even, of surrender and old man's good humor. Experienced in reading human faces, Narcissus also saw that this changed, different Goldmund was not altogether there any more, that either his soul was far withdrawn from reality and wandering dream roads or already standing at the gates that lead to the beyond.

"Are you ill?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes. I am also ill. I fell ill at the very start of my journey, during the very first days. But you'll understand that I didn't want to come home again right away. You'd all have had a good laugh if I had come back so quickly and taken off my traveling boots. No, I didn't feel like it. I went on to roam about a bit; I felt ashamed because my journey was not working out. I had promised myself too much. Yes, I felt ashamed. Surely you understand that, you're an intelligent man. Forgive me, was that what you asked? It's like a curse; I keep forgetting what we're talking about. But that thing with my mother, you did that well. It hurt a lot, but …"

His murmuring ended in a smile.

"We'll make you well again, Goldmund, we'll take care of you. If only you had turned right around when you began feeling sick! You really don't have to feel ashamed in front of us. You should have come right back."

Goldmund laughed.

"Yes, now I remember. I didn't dare come back. It would have been shameful. But now I have come. Now I feel well again."

"Have you had great pain?"

"Pain? Yes, I have had pains enough. But you see, pains are not so bad; they've brought me to reason. Now I no longer feel ashamed, not even in front of you. The day you came to see me in prison, to save my life, I had to clench my teeth very hard, because I felt ashamed in front of you. But that is completely over now."

Narcissus put his hand on Goldmund's arm and immediately Goldmund stopped speaking and closed his eyes with a smile. He fell peacefully asleep. Disturbed, the Abbot ran to fetch the house physician, Father Anton, to look after the sick man. When they came back, Goldmund was still sitting fast asleep at his drawing table. They put him to bed and the physician stayed to examine him.

He found him hopelessly ill. He was carried into one of the sick rooms, where Erich kept a constant watch.

The whole story of his last journey was never known. He told a few details; others could be guessed. Often he lay listlessly. Sometimes he had a fever and was delirious; sometimes he was lucid, and then Narcissus was sent for each time. These last conversations with Goldmund became extremely important to him.

Narcissus set down a few fragments of Goldmund's reports and confessions. Others were told by Erich.

"When did the pain start? At the very beginning of my journey. I was riding in the forest and fell with my horse into a brook, where I lay the whole night in cold water. I must have broken several ribs; ever since, I've had pains in my chest. At that time I was not very far from here, but I didn't want to turn back. That was childish, I know, but I thought it would look foolish. So I rode on, and when I could ride no longer, because it hurt too much, I sold the horse, and then I was in a hospital for a long time.

"I'll stay here now, Narcissus. I'll never ride off again. No more wandering. No more dancing, no more women. Oh, otherwise I'd have stayed away much longer, years longer. But when I saw that there was no joy out there for me any more, I thought: before I go under, I want to draw a bit more, and make a few more figures. One does want to have some pleasure after all."

Narcissus said to him: "I'm very glad you've come back. I missed you very much. I thought of you every day, and I was often afraid that you would never want to come back."

Goldmund shook his head: "Well, the loss would not have been great."

Narcissus, his heart burning with grief and love, slowly bent down to him, and now he did what he had never done in the many years of their friendship. He touched Goldmund's hair and forehead with his lips. Astonished at first, and then moved, Goldmund knew what had happened.

"Goldmund," the Abbot whispered into his ear, "forgive me for not being able to tell you earlier. I should have said it to you the day I came to see you in your prison in the bishop's residence, or when I was shown your first statues, or at so many other times. Let me tell you today how much I love you, how much you have always meant to me, how rich you have made my life. It will not mean very much to you. You are used to love; it is not rare for you; so many women have loved and spoiled you. For me it is different. My life has been poor in love; I have lacked the best of life. Our Abbot Daniel once told me that he thought I was arrogant; he was probably right. I am not unjust toward people. I make efforts to be just and patient with them, but I have never loved them. Of two scholars in the cloister, I prefer the one who is more learned; I've never loved a weak scholar in spite of his weakness. If I know nevertheless what love is, it is because of you. I have been able to love you, you alone among all men. You cannot imagine what that means. It means a well in a desert, a blossoming tree in the wilderness. It is thanks to you alone that my heart has not dried up, that a place within me has remained open to grace."

Goldmund smiled happily; he was slightly embarrassed. With the soft, calm voice he had during his lucid hours, he said: "When you saved me from the gallows that day and we were riding home, I asked you about my horse Bless and you knew what had happened to him. That day I saw that you, who had never known one horse from another, had taken care of my little Bless. I understood that you had done it because of me, and I was very happy about it. Now I see that it was really so, that you really do love me. But I have always loved you, Narcissus. Half of my life was spent courting you. I knew that you, too, were fond of me, but I never dared hope that you would tell me some day, you're such a proud man. You give me your love in this moment when I have nothing left, when wandering and freedom, world and women have abandoned me. I accept it and I thank you for it."

The Lydia-madonna stood in the room, watching.

"Do you think constantly of death?" asked Narcissus.

"Yes, I think of it and of what has become of my life. As a young man, when I was still your pupil, I wished to become as spiritual as you were. You showed me that I had no calling for it. Then I threw myself into the other side of life, into the world of the senses, and women made it easy for me to find my joys there, they are so greedy and willing. But I don't wish to speak disdainfully of them, or of the joys of the senses; I have often been extremely happy. And I was also fortunate enough in my experiences to learn that sensuality can be given a soul. Of it art is born. But now both flames have died out in me. I no longer have the animal happiness of ecstasy, and I wouldn't want it now even if women were still running after me. And to create works of art is no longer my wish either. I've made enough statues; the number does not matter. Therefore it is time for me to die. I am ready, and I'm curious about it."

"Why curious?" asked Narcissus.

"Well, it may be a bit stupid of me. But I'm really curious about it. Not of the beyond, Narcissus. I think about that very little, and if I may say so openly, I no longer believe in it. There is no beyond. The dried-up tree is dead forever; the frozen bird does not come back to life, nor does a man after he has died. One may continue to think of him for a while after he's gone, but that doesn't last long either. No, I'm curious about dying only because it is still my belief or my dream that I am on the road toward my mother. I hope death will be a great happiness, a happiness as great as that of love, fulfilled love. I cannot give up the thought that, instead of death with his scythe, it will be my mother who will come to take me back to her, who will lead me back to nonbeing and innocence."

During one of his last visits, after Goldmund had not said anything for several days, Narcissus again found him awake and talkative.

"Father Anton thinks you must often be in great pain. How do you bear it so calmly, Goldmund? It seems to me you have found peace now."

"Do you mean peace with God? No, that peace I have not found. I don't want any peace with Him. He has made the world badly; we don't need to praise it, and He'll care little whether I praise Him or not. He has made the world badly. But I have made peace with the pain in my chest, yes. In former days I was not good at bearing pain, and although I sometimes thought dying would come easily to me, I was wrong. When death was so near me that night in Count Heinrich's prison, I saw that I simply could not face it. I was still much too strong and too wild to die; they would have had to break each one of my bones twice. But now it is different."

Speaking tired him. His voice grew weaker. Narcissus asked him to spare himself.

"No," he said, "I want to tell you. Before this I would have been ashamed to tell you. It'll make you laugh. When I mounted my horse that day and rode away, I was not just riding off into the blue. I had heard a rumor that Count Heinrich had returned to this region and that his mistress Agnes was with him. Well, all right, that does not seem important to you, and today it does not seem important to me either. But at that time the news burned itself into me, and I thought of nothing but Agnes. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever known and loved: I wanted to see her again, I wanted to be happy with her again. I rode off, and after a week I found her. And there, during that hour, the change in me took place. As I said, I found her. She had not grown less beautiful. I found her and found as well the opportunity to show myself to her and to speak to her. And just think, Narcissus: she no longer wanted to have anything to do with me. I was too old for her; I was no longer pretty enough, amusing enough; she no longer wanted anything from me. That, actually, was the end of my journey. But I rode on. I didn't want to come back to you so disappointed and ridiculous, and as I rode along, force and youth and intelligence had already completely abandoned me, because I stumbled into a gully with my horse and fell into a stream and broke several ribs and lay there helpless in the water. That's when I first learned about real pain. As I fell I felt something break inside my chest, and the breaking pleased me, I was glad to hear it, I was content with it. I lay there in the water and knew that I was about to die, but everything was completely different from that night in the count's prison. I had nothing against it; dying no longer seemed terrible to me. I felt those violent pains which I've often had since then, and with them I had a dream, or a vision, whatever you want to call it. I lay there and had burning pains in my chest and I was defending myself against them and screaming when I heard a laughing voice, a voice I had not heard since childhood. It was my mother's voice, a deep womanly voice, full of ecstasy and love. And then I saw that it was she, that she was with me, holding me in her lap, and that she had opened my breast and put her fingers between my ribs to pluck out my heart. When I saw and understood that, it no longer hurt. And now, when the pains come back, they are not pains, they are not enemies; they are my mother's fingers taking my heart out. She works hard at it. Sometimes she presses down and moans as though in ecstasy. Sometimes she laughs and hums tender sounds. Sometimes she is not with me, but high above in heaven, and I see her face among the clouds, as large as a cloud. She floats there, smiling sadly, and her sad smile pulls at me and draws my heart out of my chest."

Again and again he spoke of her, of his mother. "Do you remember?" he murmured on one of the last days. "I had completely forgotten my mother until you conjured her up again. That day, too, it hurt very much, as though animal jaws were tearing at my intestines. We were still young then, pretty young boys. But even then my mother called me and I had to follow. She is everywhere. She was Lise, the gypsy; she was Master Niklaus's beautiful madonna; she was life, love, ecstasy. She also was fear, hunger, instinct. Now she is death; she has her fingers in my chest."

"Don't speak so much, my dear friend," said Narcissus. "Wait until tomorrow."

With his new smile Goldmund looked into Narcissus's eyes, with the smile that he had brought back from his journey, the smile that looked at times so old and fragile, a little senile perhaps, and then again like pure kindness and wisdom.

"My dear friend," he whispered, "I cannot wait until tomorrow. I must say farewell to you now, and as we part I must tell you everything. Listen to me another moment. I wanted to tell you about my mother, and how she keeps her fingers clasped around my heart. For many years it has been my most cherished, my secret dream to make a statue of the mother. She was to me the most sacred of all my images; I have carried her always inside me, a figure of love and mystery. Only a short while ago it would have been unbearable to me to think that I might die without having carved her statue; my life would have seemed useless to me. And now see how strangely things have turned out: it is not my hands that shape and form her; it is her hands that shape and form me. She is closing her fingers around my heart, she is loosening it, she is emptying me; she is seducing me into dying and with me dies my dream, the beautiful statue, the image of the great mother-Eve. I can still see it, and if I had force in my hands, I could carve it. But she doesn't want that; she doesn't want me to make her secret visible. She rather wants me to die. I'm glad to die; she is making it easy for me."

Deeply shaken, Narcissus listened to his words. He had to bend close to his friend's lips to be able to understand what they were saying. Some words he heard only indistinctly; others he heard clearly, but their meaning escaped him.

And now the sick man opened his eyes again and looked for a long while into his friend's face. He said farewell with his eyes. And with a sudden movement, as though he were trying to shake his head, he whispered: "But how will you die when your time comes, Narcissus, since you have no mother? Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die."

What he murmured after that could not be understood. Those last two days Narcissus sat by his bed day and night, watching his life ebb away. Goldmund's last words burned like fire in his heart.

 

Gertrude


Chapter One

   When I take a long look at my life, as though from outside, it does not appear particularly happy. Yet I am even less justified in calling it unhappy, despite all its mistakes. After all, it is foolish to keep probing for happiness or unhappiness, for it seems to me it would be hard to exchange the unhappiest days of my life for all the happy ones. If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless. Even if, as it is decreed by the gods, fate has inexorably trod over my external existence as it does with everyone, my inner life has been of my own making. I deserve its sweetness and bitterness and accept full responsibility for it.
   At times, when I was younger, I wanted to be a poet. And if I were a poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength. So I passed unmarked through the schools as a disliked, untalented, yet quiet student whom they let chart his own course finally, because he seemed to elude the strong influences brought to bear upon him.
   At about the age of six or seven, I realized that of all the invisible powers the one I was destined to be most strongly affected and dominated by was music. From that moment on I had a world of my own, a sanctuary and a heaven that no one could take away from me or belittle, and which I did not wish to share with anyone. I had become a musician, though I did not learn to play any instrument before my twelfth year and did not think that I would later wish to earn my living by music.
   That is how matters have been ever since, without anything essential being changed, and that is why on looking back on my life it does not seem varied and many-sided, but from the beginning it has been tuned in a single key and directed solely to one star. Whether things went well or badly with me, my inner life remained unchanged. For long periods I might sail foreign seas, without touching manuscript-book or instrument, and yet at every moment there would be a melody in my blood and on my lips, a beat and rhythm in the drawing of breath and life. However eagerly I sought salvation, oblivion and deliverance in many other ways, however much I thirsted for God, understanding and peace, I always found them in music alone. It did not need to be Beethoven or Bach: it has been a continual consolation to me and a justification for all life that there is music in the world, that one can at times be deeply moved by rhythms and pervaded by harmonies. O music! A melody occurs to you; you sing it silently, inwardly only; you steep your being in it; it takes possession of all your strength and emotions, and during the time it lives in you, it effaces all that is fortuitous, evil, coarse and sad in you; it brings the world into harmony with you, it makes burdens light and gives wings to depressed spirits. The melody of a folk song can do all that. And first of all harmony! For each harmonious chord of pure-tuned notes -- those of church bells, for example -- fills the spirit with grace and delight, a feeling that is intensified by every additional note; and at times this can enchant the heart and make it tremble with bliss as no other sensual pleasure can.
   Of all the conceptions of pure bliss that people and poets have dreamed of, listening to the harmony of the spheres always seemed to me the highest and most intense. That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged -- to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony. Alas, how is it that life can be so confusing and out of tune and false, how can there be lies, evil, envy and hate among people, when the shortest song and most simple piece of music preach that heaven is revealed in the purity, harmony and interplay of clearly sounded notes. And how can I upbraid people and grow angry when I, myself, with all the good will in the world have been unable to make song and sweet music out of my life? Within me I can sense the urgent admonition and thirsting desire for one pure, pleasing, essentially holy sound and its fading away, but my days are full of mischance and discord. Wherever I turn and wherever I strike, there is never a true and clear echo.
   But no more; I will tell you the story. When I consider for whom I am covering these pages -- she who has in fact so much power over me that she can penetrate my loneliness and draw a confession from me -- I must give the name of this beloved woman, who not only is bound to me by a large sum of experience and fate, but stands above everything for me like a sacred symbol, a star.

chapter two

   it was only during my last year or two at school, when all my schoolfellows were beginning to talk about their future careers, that i also began to think about mine. The possibility of making music my profession and means of livelihood was really far removed from my thoughts; yet i could not think of any other career that would make me happy. I had no real objection to business or the other professions suggested by my father; i just felt indifferent to them. Perhaps it was because my colleagues were so proud of the careers of their choice that an inward voice also told me that it was good and right to make a career of that which filled my thoughts and alone gave me real pleasure. It proved useful that i had learned to play the violin at twelve and had made some progress under a good teacher. The more my father resisted and worried at the thought of his only son embarking upon the uncertain career of an artist, the stronger grew my will in the face of his opposition, and the teacher, who liked me, strongly supported my wish. In the end my father submitted, but just to test my strength of purpose and in the hope that i would change my mind, he required me to stay on another year at school. I endured this with reasonable patience and during this time my desire became even stronger.
   during the last year at school i fell in love for the first time with a pretty young girl who was in our circle of friends. Without seeing her often and also without strongly seeking her company, i suffered and enjoyed the emotions of first love as in a dream. During this period when i was thinking about my music as much as about my beloved and could not sleep at night because of my great excitement, i consciously retained for the first time melodies that occurred to me. They were two short songs and i tried to write them down. This made me feel shy but also gave me acute pleasure, and i almost forgot my youthful pangs of love. Meantime, i learned that my beloved took singing lessons and i was very eager to hear her sing. After some months my wish was fulfilled at an evening gathering at my parents' house. The pretty girl was asked to sing. She resisted strongly but finally had to give in and i waited with great excitement. A gentleman accompanied her on our humble little piano; he played a few bars and she began. She sang badly, very badly, and while she was still singmg, my dismay and torment changed into sympathy, then into humor, and from then on i was no longer in love with her.
   i was patient and not altogether indolent, but i was not a good scholar, and during my last year at school i made very little effort. This was not due to laziness and my infatuation, but to a state of youthful daydreaming and indifference, a dullness of senses and intellect that was only now and then suddenly and powerfully pierced when one of the wonderful hours of premature creative desire enveloped me like ether. I then felt as if i were surrounded by a rarefied, crystal-clear atmosphere in which dreaming and vegetating were not possible and where all my senses were sharpened and on the alert. Little was produced during those hours, perhaps ten melodies and several rudimentary harmonic arrangements, but i will never forget the rarefied, almost cold atmosphere of that time and the intense concentration required to give a melody the proper, singular, no longer fortuitous movement and solution. I was not satisfied with these meager achievements and never considered them as either valid or good, but it became clear to me that there would never be anything as desirable and important in my life as the return of such hours of clarity and creativeness.
   at the same time i also had periods of daydreaming when i improvised on the violin and enjoyed the intoxication of fleeting impressions and exalted moods. I soon knew that this was not creativeness but just playing and running riot, against which i had to guard. I realized that it was one thing to indulge in daydreaming and intoxicating hours and another to wrestle strenuously and resolutely with the secrets of form as if with fiends. I also partly realized at that time that true creativity isolates one and demands something that has to be subtracted from the enjoyment of life.
   at last i was free. My school days were behind me. I had said goodbye to my parents and had begun a new life as a student at the school of music in the capital. I commenced this new phase with great expectations and was convinced that i would be a good scholar at the school of music. However, to my embarrassed astonishment, this did not prove to be the case. I had difficulty keeping up with the great variety of courses i was forced to take. I found the piano lessons nothing but a great trial, and i soon saw my whole course of study looming before me like an unscalable mountain. Of course i did not think of giving in, but i was disillusioned and disconcerted. I now saw that with all my modesty i had considered myself some kind of a genius and had considerably underestimated the toils and difficulties encountered along the path to an art. Moreover, my composing was seriously affected, for i now saw mountains of difficulties and rules in the smallest exercise. I learned to mistrust my sensibilities entirely and no longer knew whether i possessed any talent. So i became resigned, humble and sad. I did my work very much as i would have done in an office or in another sphere, diligently but without pleasure. I did not dare complain, least of all in the letters that i sent home, but continued in secret disillusionment along the path i had commenced and hoped to become at least a good violinist. I practiced continually and bore hard words and sarcasm from the teachers. I saw many others, whom i would not have believed capable of it, make progress easily and receive praise, and my goal became even more humble. For, even with the violin, things were not going so well that i could feel proud and perhaps think of becoming a virtuoso. If i worked hard, it looked as if i might at least become a proficient violinist who could play a modest part in some small orchestra, without disgrace and without honor, and earn my living by it.
   so this period for which i had yearned so much and which had promised everything to me was the only one in my life when i traveled joyless paths abandoned by the spirit of music and lived through days that had no meaning and rhythm. Where i had sought pleasure, exaltation, radiance and beauty, i found only demands, rules, difficulties, tasks and trials. If a musical idea occurred to me, it was either banal and imitative, or it was apparently in contradiction with all the laws of music and thus was bound to be worthless. So i said farewell to all my great hopes. I was one of thousands who had approached the art with youthful confidence and whose powers had fallen short of his aspirations.


   this impasse lasted about three years. I was now over twenty years old. I had apparently failed in my vocation and continued following the course i had started only out of a feeling of shame and duty. I did not know anything more about music, only about finger exercises, difficult tasks, contradictions in the theory of harmony, and tedious piano lessons from a sarcastic teacher who saw in my efforts a waste of time.
   if the old ideal had not secretly been alive in me, i could have enjoyed myself during those years. I was free and had friends. I was a good-looking and healthy young man, the son of well-to-do parents. For short periods i enjoyed it all; there were pleasant days, flirtations, carousing and holidays. But it was not possible for me to console myself in this way, to lay aside my obligations for a short time and above all to enjoy my youth. Without really knowing it, in unguarded hours i still looked longingly at the fallen star of creative art, and it was impossible for me to forget and stifle my feelings of disillusionment. Only once was i really successful in doing so.
   it was the most foolish day of my foolish youth. I was then pursuing a girl who was studying under the famous singing teacher, h. Both she and i seemed to share the same predicament; she had arrived with great hopes, had found strict teachers, was unused to the work, and finally thought she was going to lose her voice. She took the easy way out, flirted with her colleagues and knew how to make all of us chase her. She had the vivacious, gaudy type of beauty that soon fades.
   this pretty girl, liddy, captivated me with her ingenuous coquetry whenever i saw her. I never stayed in love with her for long. Often i completely forgot her, but whenever i was with her, my infatuation returned. She toyed with me as she did with others, enticing me and enjoying her power, but she was only indulging the sensual curiosity of her youth. She was very pretty, but only when she spoke and moved, or laughed with her deep warm voice, or danced or was amused at the jealousy of her admirers. Whenever i returned home from a party where i had seen her, i used to laugh at myself and realize that it was impossible for a person of my nature to be seriously in love with this pleasant, lighthearted girl. Sometimes, however, with a gesture or a friendly whispered word, she was so successful in exciting me that for half the night i would loiter with ardent feelings near the house where she lived.
   i was then going through a phase of wildness and half-willful bravado. After days of depression and dullness, my youth demanded stormy emotions and excitement and i went with other companions of my own age in search of diversion. We passed for jolly, unruly, even dangerous rioters, which was untrue of me, and we enjoyed a doubtful but pleasant heroic reputation with liddy and her small circle. How many of these urges could be attributed to genuine youthful abandon, and how many were a desire for forgetfulness, i cannot now decide, for i long ago completely outgrew these phases of exhibitionistic youthfulness. If i indulged in excesses, i have since atoned for them.
   one winter's day when we were free, we went on an excursion to the outskirts of the town. There were eight or ten young people, among them liddy and three girlfriends. We had toboggans, whose use was considered exclusively a childhood pleasure at that time; and we looked for good slides in the hilly districts outside the town, on the roads and on the slopes of fields. I remember that day very well. It was moderately cold; at times the sun would appear for about a quarter of an hour and there was a wonderful smell of snow in the strong air. The girls looked lovely in their bright clothes against the white background; the sharp air was intoxicating and this energetic exercise in the fresh air was delightful. Our little party was in very high spirits; there was much familiarity and chaffing, which was answered with snowballs and led to short battles until we were all hot and covered with snow. Then we had to stop awhile to recover our breath before we began again. A large snow castle was built and besieged, and every so often we tobogganed down the slopes.
   at midday, when we were formidably hungry from romping about, we looked for and found a village with a good inn; we cooled off, took possession of the piano, sang, shouted, and ordered wine and beer. Food was brought and enjoyed enormously, and there was good wine in abundance. Afterward the girls asked for coffee while we sampled liqueurs. There was such a festive uproar in the little room that we were all giddy. All the time i was with liddy, who, in a gracious mood, had chosen me for special favor that day. She was at her best in this intoxicating and merry atmosphere; her lovely eyes sparkled and she permitted many half-bold, half-timid endearments. We played a game of forfeits, in which the forfeiters were released after being made to imitate one of our teachers at the piano, or after the number and quality of their kisses were adjudged acceptable.
   when we left the inn and set off home, in high spirits and with much noise, it was still early afternoon but it was already growing a little dark. We again romped through the snow like carefree children, returning to town without haste in the gradually approaching evening. I managed to remain by liddy's side as her companion, not without opposition from the others. I pulled the toboggan for stretches with her as rider, and protected her to the best of my ability against renewed snowball attacks. Finally, we were left alone; each girl found a male companion, and the two young men who were left without girls walked alongside, kidding everyone and engaging in mock belligerence. I had never been so excited and madly in love as i was at that time. Liddy had taken my arm and allowed me to draw her close to me as we moved along. She was soon chattering away; then she became silent and, it appeared to me, content to be at my side. I felt very ardent and was determined to make the most of this opportunity and maintain this friendly, delightful state of affairs as long as possible.
   no one had any objection when i suggested another detour shortly before reaching town. We turned on to a lovely road that ran high above the valley in a semicircle, rich in extensive views over the valley, river and town, which, in the distance, was already aglow with rows of bright lamps and thousands of rosy lights. Liddy still hung on my arm and let me talk, received my ardent advances with amusement and yet seemed very excited herself. But when i tried to draw her gently to me and kiss her, she freed herself and moved away.
   "look," she cried, taking a deep breath, "we must toboggan down that field! Or are you afraid, my hero? "
   i looked down and was astonished, for the slope was so steep that for the moment i was really afraid at the thought of such a daring ride.
   "oh, no," i said nonchalantly. "it is already much too dark. "
   she immediately began to mock and provoke me, called me a coward and said she would ride down the slope alone if i was too fainthearted to come with her.
   "we shall overturn, of course," she said laughing, "but that is the most amusing part of tobogganing. "
   she provoked me so much that i had an idea.
   "liddy," i said softly, "we'll do it. If we overturn, you can rub snow over me, but if we go down all right, then i want my reward. "
   she just laughed and sat down on the toboggan. I looked at her face; it was bright and sparkling. I took my place in the front, told her to hold tight to me, and, as we set off, i felt her clasp me and cross her hands on my chest. I wanted to shout something back to her but i could no longer do so. The slope was so steep that i felt as if we were hurtling through the air. I immediately tried to put both feet on the ground in order to pull up or even overturn, for suddenly i was terribly worried about liddy. However, it was too late. The toboggan whizzed uncontrollably down the hill. I was aware of a cold, biting mass of churned-up i snow in my face. I heard liddy cry out anxiously -- then no more. There was a tremendous blow on my head as if from a sledgehammer; somewhere there was a severe pain. My last feeling was of being cold.
   with this brief and frenzied toboggan ride, i atoned for all my youthful overexuberance and foolhardiness. After it was over, among many other things my love of liddy had also evaporated.
   i was spared the tumult and agitation which took place after the accident. For the others it was a painful time. They had heard liddy shout out and they laughed and teased from above in the darkness. Finally, they realized that something was wrong and climbed laboriously down to us. It took a little while for them to calm down and really understand the true situation. Liddy was pale and half unconscious, but quite unharmed; only her gloves were torn and her delicate white hands were a little bruised and bleeding. They carried me away thinking i was dead. At a later date i looked in vain for the apple or pear tree into which the toboggan had crashed and broken my bones.
   it was thought that i had a serious concussion but matters were not quite so bad. My head and brain were indeed affected and it was a long time before i regained consciousness in the hospital, but the wound healed and my brain was unharmed. On the other hand, my left leg, which was broken in several places, did not fully heal. Since that time i have been a cripple who can only walk with a limp, who cannot stride along or even run and dance. My youth was thus unexpectedly directed along a path to quieter regions, along which i traveled not without a feeling of shame and resistance. But i did go along it and sometimes it seems to me that i would not willingly have missed that toboggan ride and its effect on my life.
   i confess that i think less about the broken leg than about the other consequences of the accident, which were far happier. Whether it can be attributed to the accident, the shock and the glimpse into darkness, or the long period of lying in bed, being quiet for months and thinking things over, the course of treatment proved beneficial to me.
   the beginning of that long period of lying in bed -- say, the first week -- has quite vanished from my memory. I was unconscious a great part of the time, and even when i finally recovered full consciousness, i was weak and listless. My mother arrived and every day sat faithfully beside my bed in the hospital. When i looked at her and spoke a few words, she seemed calm and almost cheerful, although i learned later that she was very worried about me, not for my life but for my reason. Sometimes we chatted for a long time in the quiet little hospital room. Yet our relationship had never been very warm. I had always been closer to my father. Sympathy on her part and gratitude on mine made us more understanding and inclined to draw closer, but we had both waited too long and had become too accustomed to a mutual laisser faire for awakening affection to show itself in our conversation. We were glad to be together and left some things unspoken. She was again my mother who saw me lying ill and could care for me, and i saw her once again through a boy's eyes and for a time forgot everything else. To be sure, the old relationship was resumed later and we used to avoid talking much about this period of sickness, for it embarrassed us both.
   gradually i began to realize my position, and as i had recovered from the fever and seemed peaceful, the doctor no longer kept the news from me that i would have a permanent memento as a result of my fall. I saw my youth, which i had scarcely begun to enjoy consciously, grievously cut short and impoverished. I had plenty of time in which to appreciate the situation, as i was bedridden for another three months.
   i then tried hard to grasp my situation and visualize the shape of my future life, but i did not make much progress. Too much thinking was still not good for me. I soon became tired and sank into a quiet reverie, by which nature protected me from anxiety and despair and compelled me to rest in order to recover my health. The thought of my misfortune tormented me frequently, often half through the night, without my finding anything in my predicament to console me.
   then one night i awakened after a few hours of peaceful slumber. It seemed to me that i had had a pleasant dream and i tried in vain to recall it. I felt remarkably well and at peace, as if all unpleasant things were surmounted and behind me. And as i lay there thinking and feeling light currents of health and relief pervade me, a melody came to my lips almost without any sound. I began to hum it and unexpectedly, music, which had so long been a stranger, came back to me like a suddenly revealed star, and my heart beat to its rhythm, and my whole being blossomed and inhaled new, pure air. It did not reach my consciousness; i just felt its presence and it penetrated my being gently, as if melodious choirs were singing to me in the distance.
   with this inwardly refreshed feeling i fell asleep again. In the morning i was in a good humor and free from depression, which i had not been for a long time. My mother noticed it and asked what was making me feel happy. I reflected awhile and then said that i had not thought about my violin for a long time; but now i suddenly did and it gave me pleasure.
   "but you will not be able to play for a long time yet," she said in a somewhat worried tone.
   "that does not matter -- nor does it matter if i never play again. "
   she did not understand and i could not explain to her. But she noticed that things were going better with me and that nothing ominous lurked beneath this unfounded cheerfulness. After a few days she cautiously mentioned the matter again.
   "how are you progressing with your music? We almost believed that you were tired of it and your father has spoken to your teachers about it. We do not want to persuade you, least of all just now. . . But we do feel that if you have made a mistake and would rather give it up, you should do so and not continue out of a feeling of defiance or shame. What do you think? "
   i again thought about the long period of my alienation and disillusionment with music. I tried to tell my mother what it had been like and she seemed to understand. I thought i now saw my goal clearly again and i would not, at all events, run away from it but finish my studies. That is how things remained for the time being. In the depths of my soul, where my mother could not penetrate, there was sweet music. Whether or not i should now have any luck with the violin, i could again hear the world resound as if it were a work of art and i knew that outside music there was no salvation for me. If my condition never permitted me to play the violin again, i would resign myself to it, perhaps consider another career or even become a merchant; it was not so important. As a merchant, or anything else, i would not be any less sensitive to music or live and breathe less through music. I would compose again! It was not, as i had said to my mother, the thought of my violin that made me happy, but the intense desire to make music, to create. I again often felt the clear vibrations of a rarefied atmosphere, the concentration of ideas, as i had previously in my best hours, and i also felt that the misfortune of a crippled leg was of little importance beside it.
   from that time on i was victorious, and however often since then my desires have traveled into regions of physical fitness and youthful pleasures, and however often i have hated and cursed my crippled state with bitterness and a deep sense of shame, it has not been beyond my power to bear this load; there has been something there to console and compensate me.
   occasionally my father came down to see me and, one day, as i continued to improve, he took my mother home with him again. For the first few days i felt rather lonely, and also rather ashamed that i had not talked more affectionately to my mother and taken more interest in her thoughts and cares. But my other emotion was so vivid that these thoughts about good intentions and feelings of compassion receded into the background.
   then unexpectedly someone came to visit me who had not ventured to do so while my mother was there. It was liddy. I was very surprised to see her. For the first moment i entirely forgot how close i had been to her recently and how deeply in love. She came in a state of great embarrassment, which she disguised very badly. She had been afraid of my mother and even a law suit, for she knew she was responsible for my misfortune, and only gradually realized that things were not so bad and that the matter was really not her concern. She breathed freely again but could not conceal a feeling of slight disappointment. The girl, despite her troubled conscience, had in her feminine heart deeply enjoyed the whole business with its heart-rending and touching consequences. She even used the word "tragic" several times, at which i could hardly conceal a smile. She had not really been prepared to see me so cheerful and so little concerned about my crippled leg. She had had it in mind to ask my forgiveness, the granting of which, she thought, would have given me, her beloved, tremendous satisfaction, so that at the climax of this stirring scene she would have triumphantly conquered my heart anew.
   it was indeed no small relief to the foolish girl to see me so contented and to find herself free from all blame and accusation. However, this relief did not make her feel happy, and the more her conscience was eased and her anxiety removed, the quieter and cooler did i see her become. Subsequently, it hurt her not a little that i regarded her part in the affair as so slight and indeed even seemed to have forgotten it, that i had quenched her apology and all the emotion and ruined the whole pretty scene. Moreover, and despite my extreme politeness, she realized that i was no longer in love with her, and that was the worst thing of all. Even if i had lost my arms and legs, i should still have been an admirer of hers, whom indeed she did not love and who had never given her any pleasure, but if i had been wretchedly lovesick, it would have been a greater source of satisfaction to her. That was not the case, as she so well observed, and i saw the warmth and interest on the pretty face of the sympathetic visitor gradually grow less and disappear. After an effusive farewell, she finally went away and never came again, though she faithfully promised to do so.
   however painful it was to me and however much it reflected on my power of judgment to see my previous infatuation sink into insignificance and become laughable, the visit did in fact do me good. I was very surprised to see this attractive girl for the first time without passion and without rose-colored spectacles, and to realize that i had not known her at all. If someone had shown me the doll i had embraced and loved when i was three years old, the lack of interest and change of feeling could not have surprised me more than in this case, when i saw as a complete stranger this girl whom i had so strongly desired a few weeks earlier.
   of the companions who were present at that sunday outing in the winter, two visited me several times, but we found little to talk about. I saw how relieved they were when i improved, and i asked them not to bring me any more gifts. We did not meet again later. It was a strange business and it made a sad and curious impression on me; everything that had belonged to me in these earlier years of my life went from me and became alien and lost to me. I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder that i could have endured them so long.
   i was surprised to receive another visitor to whom i had never given a thought. That strict and ironic gentleman, my piano teacher, came to see me one day. Holding his walking-stick and wearing gloves, he spoke in his usual sharp, almost biting tones, called the ill-fated toboggan ride "that women's ride business," and by the tone of his words seemed to feel that my ill-luck was well-deserved. All the same, it was remarkable that he had come, and he also showed, though he did not change his tone of voice, that he had not come with bad intentions, but to tell me that despite my general awkwardness he considered me a passable student. His colleague, the violin teacher, was of the same opinion and they therefore hoped i would soon return fit and well and give them pleasure. Although this speech almost sounded like an apology for previous harsh treatment and was delivered in the same sharp tones, it was as sweet to me as a declaration of love. I gratefully held out my hand to the unpopular teacher and, in order to show confidence in him, i tried to explain the course of my life during these years and how my old attitude toward music was beginning to return.
   the professor shook his head and his voice whistled with derision as he said: "so a composer is what you want to become? "
   "if possible," i said disheartened.
   "well, i wish you luck. I thought you would now resume practicing with fresh enthusiasm, but if you want to compose, you don't, of course, need to do that. "
   "oh, i didn't mean that. "
   "what then? You know, when a music student is lazy and doesn't like hard work, he always takes up composing. Anyone can do that, and each one, of course, is a genius. "
   "i really don't mean that at all. Shall i become a pianist then? "
   "no, my dear friend, you could never become that -- but you could become a reasonably good violinist. "
   "i wish to do that, too! "
   "i hope you mean it. Well, i must not stay any longer. Hope you will soon be better. Goodbye. "
   thereupon he went away and left me with a feeling of amazement. I had thought very little about the return to my studies. Now i became afraid things would be difficult and go wrong again and that everything would be as it had been before, but these thoughts did not remain with me long, and it also seemed as if the grumpy professor's visit was well-meant and a sign of sincere good will.
   after i had sufficiently recovered my health, it was intended that i should go away for a period of convalescence, but i preferred to wait until the usual vacation. I wished to return to work immediately. I then experienced for the first time what an astonishing effect a period of rest can have, particularly a compulsory one. I began my studies and my practicing with mistrust, but everything now went better than before. To be sure, i now fully realized that i would never become a virtuoso, but in my present mood this did not trouble me. Besides, matters were going well. In particular, the impenetrable undergrowth of music theory, harmony and the study of composition had been transformed into an accessible, attractive garden. I felt that the sudden flashes of insight and the musical sketches i made during my best hours no longer defied all the rules and laws, but that through assiduous study a narrow but clearly discernible path was leading to freedom. There were indeed hours and days and nights when i still seemed to be confronted by an insurmountable barrier and with a tired brain i struggled vainly against contradictions and pitfalls, but i did not despair again and i saw the narrow path become clearer and more accessible.
   when school closed at the end of the term, the teacher who taught theory said to me, much to my surprise: "you are the only student this year who really seems to understand something about music. If you ever compose anything, i should like to see it. "
   with these comforting words ringing in my ears, i set off for my holidays. I had not been home for a long time, and during the railway journey i again pictured my native place with affection, and conjured up a series of half-forgotten memories of my childhood and early youth. My father was waiting for me at the station and we drove home in a cab. The following morning i already felt an urge to go for a walk through the old streets. For the first time i was overcome with a feeling of tragedy at my lost youthful fitness. It was painful to me to have to lean on a stick and limp with my crooked, stiff leg along these lanes, where every corner reminded me of boyish games and past pleasures. I came back home feeling dejected, and no matter whom i saw or whose voices i heard or what i thought about, everything reminded me bitterly of the past and my crippled state. At the same time, i was also unhappy because my mother was less enthusiastic than ever about my choice of career, although she did not actually tell me so. A musician who could make an appearance as a slender, erect virtuoso or an impressive-looking conductor, she might have conceded, but that a semi-cripple with only moderate qualifications and a shy disposition could bring himself to continue as a violinist was inconceivable to her. In this connection she was supported by an old friend who was a distant relative. My father had once forbidden her to come to the house, which caused her to conceive a violent dislike for him, although this did not keep her away, for she often came to see my mother while my father was at the office. She had never liked me and had scarcely ever spoken to me since i was a young boy. She saw in my choice of career an unfortunate sign of degeneration and in my accident an obvious punishment and the hand of providence.
   in order to give me pleasure, my father arranged for me to be invited to play a solo in a concert to be given by the town's music society. But i felt i could not do so. I refused and retired for many days to the small room which i had occupied as a boy. I was particularly harassed by all the questions i had to answer and by having to account for myself all the time, so that i hardly ever went out. I then found myself looking out of the window at the life in the street and at the school children, and above all i looked at the young girls with unhappy longing.
   how could i ever hope to declare my love to a girl again, i thought! I should always have to stand outside, as at a dance, and look on, and never be taken seriously by girls, and if any were very friendly with me, it would be out of sympathy. Oh, i was more than sick of sympathy!
   as it was, i could not remain at home. My parents also suffered considerably as a result of my extreme melancholy and scarcely raised any objection when i asked permission to set off immediately on the long-planned journey that my father had promised me. Throughout my life my infirmity made trouble for me and destroyed my heart's wishes and hopes, but i never felt my weakness and deformity so keenly as i did then, when the sight of every healthy young man and every pretty woman depressed and hurt me. I slowly grew used to my stick and to the limp until it hardly bothered me any more, so that with the passing of years i had to accustom myself to bearing the awareness of my injury without bitterness, but with resignation and humor.
   fortunately, i was able to travel alone and did not need to wait for anything. The thought of any companion would have been repugnant to me and would have disturbed my need for inner peace. I already felt better as i sat in the train and there was no one to look at me curiously and sympathetically. I traveled a day and night without stopping, with a feeling of really taking flight, and breathed a sigh of relief when, on the second day, i caught sight of high mountain peaks through steamed windows. I reached the last station as it was growing dark. I went wearily yet happily along dark lanes to the first inn of a compact little town. After a glass of deep red wine i slept for ten hours, throwing off the weariness of travel and also a good deal of the distress of mind with which i had come.
   the following morning i took a seat in the small mountain train that traveled through narrow valleys and past white sparkling streams toward the mountains. Then, from a small, remote station, i traveled by coach; by midday i was in one of the highest villages in the country.
   i stayed right into the autumn in the only small inn of the quiet little village, at times being the only guest. I had had it in mind to rest here for a short time and then travel farther through switzerland and see some more of foreign parts and the world. But there was a wind at that height which blew air across that was so fresh and strong i felt i never wanted to leave it. One side of the steep valley was covered almost to the top with fir trees; the other slope was sheer rock. I spent my days here, by the sun-warmed rocks, or by the side of one of the swift, wild streams, the music of which could be heard during the night throughout the whole village. At the beginning i enjoyed the solitude like a cool, healing drink. No one bothered about me; no one showed any curiosity or sympathy toward me. I was alone and free like a bird in the air and i soon forgot my pain and unhealthy feelings of envy. At times i regretted being unable to go far into the mountains to see unknown valleys and peaks and to climb along dangerous paths. Yet i was not unhappy. After the events and excitement of the past months, the calm solitude surrounded me like a fortress. I found peace again and learned to accept my physical defect with resignation, although perhaps not with cheerfulness.
   the weeks up there were almost the most beautiful in my life. I breathed the pure, clear air, drank the icy water from streams and watched the herds of goats grazing on the steep slopes, guarded by dark-haired, musing goatherds. At times i heard storms resound through the valley and saw mists and clouds at unusually close quarters. In the clefts of rocks i observed the small, delicate, bright colored flowers and the many wonderful mosses, and on clear days i used to like to walk uphill for an hour until i could see the clearly outlined distant peaks of high mountains, their blue silhouettes, and white, sparkling snow fields across the other side of the hill. On one part of the footpath where a thin trickle of water from a small spring kept it damp, i found on every fine day a swarm of hundreds of small, blue butterflies drinking the water. They scarcely moved when i approached, and if i disturbed them, they whirled about with a fluttering of tiny, silky wings. After i made the discovery, i only went that way on sunny days, and each time the dense, blue swarm was there, and each time it was a holiday.
   when i consider it more closely, that period was not really as perfectly serene and sunny and joyous as it seems in retrospect. There were not only days when there was fog or rain, and even days when it snowed and was bitter cold; there were also days when it was stormy and inclement within me.
   i was not used to being alone, and after the first days of repose and delight had passed, i again felt the pain from which i had run away return suddenly, at times with dreadful intensity. Many a cold evening i sat in my tiny room with my traveling rug over my knees, wearily and unrestrainedly giving way to foolish thoughts. Everything that young blood desired and hoped for, parties and the gaiety of dancing, the love of women and adventure, the triumph of strength and love, lay on another distant shore, far removed and inaccessible to me forever. Even that wild, defiant period of half-forced gaiety, which had ended in my toboggan accident, then seemed in my memory to be beautiful and colored in a paradisiacal way, like a lost land of pleasure, the echo of which still came across to me with bacchanal intoxication from the distance. And at times, when storms passed over at night, when the continual sound of the cold, down-pouring rain was drowned by the strong, plaintive rustling through the storm-swept fir wood, and when a thousand inexplicable sounds of a sleepless summer night echoed through the girders of the roof of the frail house, i lay dreaming hopelessly and restlessly about life and the tumult of love, raging and reproaching god. I felt like a miserable poet and dreamer whose most beautiful dream was only a thin, colored soap bubble, while thousands of others in the world, happy in their youthful strength, stretched out joyous hands for all the prizes of life.
   just as i seemed to see all the glorious beauty of the mountains, and everything that my senses enjoyed, as through a veil and from a great distance, so also did there arise between me and the frequent wild outbursts of grief a veil and a slight feeling of strangeness, and soon the brightness of the days and the grief of the nights were like external voices which i could listen to with a heart free of pain. I saw and felt myself like a mass of moving clouds, like a battlefield full of fighting troops, and whether i experienced pleasure and enjoyment, or grief and depression, both moods seemed clearer and more comprehensible to me. They freed themselves from my soul and approached me from the outside in the form of harmonies and a series of sounds that i heard as if in my sleep and that took possession of me against my will.
   it was in the quiet of one evening when i was returning from the rocky side of the valley that i understood it all clearly for the first time, and as i meditated upon it and found myself to be a riddle, it suddenly occurred to me what it all signified -- that it was the return of those strange remote hours of which i had a premonition-filled foretaste when i was younger. And with this memory, that wonderful clarity returned, the almost glasslike brightness and transparency of feelings where everything appeared without a mask, where things were no longer labeled sorrow or happiness, but everything signified strength and sound and creative release. Music was arising from the turmoil, iridescence and conflict of my awakened sensibilities.
   i now viewed the bright days, the sunshine and the woods, the brown rocks and the distant snow-covered mountains with heightened feelings of happiness and joy, and with a new conception. During the dark hours i felt my sick heart expand and beat more furiously, and i no longer made any distinction between pleasure and pain, but one was similar to the other; both hurt and both were precious. Whether i felt pain or joy, my discovered strength stood peacefully outside looking on and knew that light and dark were closely related and that sorrow and peace were rhythm, part and spirit of the same great music.
   i could not write this music down; it was still strange to me and its territory was unfamiliar. But i could hear it. I could feel the world in its perfection within me, and i could also retain something of it, a small part and echo of it, reduced and translated. I thought about it and concentrated on it for days. I found that it could be expressed with two violins and began in complete innocence, like a fledgling trying its wings, to write down my first sonata.
   as i played the first movement on my violin in my room one morning, i was aware of its weakness, incompleteness and faults, but every bar went through me like a heart tremor. I did not know whether this music was good, but i knew that it was my own music, born and experienced within me and never heard anywhere else before.
   downstairs in the coffee room, motionless and with hair as white as snow, there sat year in year out the innkeeper's father, who was over eighty years old. He never said anything and only gazed around him attentively through peaceful-looking eyes. It was a mystery whether the solemn, silent man possessed more than human wisdom and stillness of spirit, or whether his mental powers had deserted him. I went down to that old man that morning, my violin under my arm, for i had observed that he always listened attentively to my playing and indeed to all music. As i found him alone, i stood before him, tuned my violin and played my first movement to him. The old man directed his peaceful-looking eyes, the whites of which were yellowish and the eyelids red, toward me and listened. Whenever i think of that music, i see the old man again, his immobile face and his serene eyes watching me. When i had finished, i nodded to him. He winked knowingly and seemed to understand everything. His yellowish eyes returned my glance; then he averted his gaze, lowered his head a little and returned to his former motionless state.
   autumn began early at that height, and as i made my departure one morning, there was a thick mist which fell in fine drops as cold rain, but i took with me the sunshine of the good days and also, as a thankful remembrance, courage for my next path in life.

Chapter Three

   During my last term at the School of Music, I made the acquaintance of the singer Muoth, who had quite a creditable reputation in the town. He had finished his studies four years before and immediately obtained a position at the Opera House, where he was at present still taking lesser roles and, compared to older and better-liked singers, did not shine. Many people, however, considered him to be a future celebrity whose next step must lead him to fame. I had seen him on the stage in a number of roles and he had strongly impressed me, although not always favorably.
   We became acquainted in the following way. After my return to the School of Music, I took my violin sonata and two songs that I had composed to the teacher who had showed such kind sympathy toward me. He promised to look through the work and give me his opinion about it. It was a long time before he did so, and meantime I could detect a certain feeling of embarrassment on his part whenever I met him. Finally, he called me to his office one day and returned the manuscript to me.
   "Here is your work," he said, visibly uncomfortable. "I hope you have not built too many hopes upon it. There is something in it, without any doubt, and you may yet achieve something. To be quite honest, I thought you were already more mature and tranquil. I did not really credit you with such a passionate nature. I expected something quieter and more pleasing, something more technically correct which could have been judged technically. But your work is not good technically, so I can say little about that. It is an audacious attempt, the merit of which I am unable to judge, but as your teacher I cannot praise it. You have put both less and more in it than I expected and thus place me in an embarrassing position. I am too much of a schoolmaster to overlook stylistic mistakes, and whether you will be able to outweigh them with originality, I should not like to say. I will therefore wait until I see more of your work. I wish you luck. You will go on composing in any event. That much I have noticed."
   I then went away and did not know what to make of his verdict, which was no real criticism. It seemed to me that one should be able to look at a piece of work and see immediately whether it was done as a game and pastime, or whether it arose from necessity and the heart.
   I put the manuscript away and decided to forget all about it for the time being and work really hard during my last few months of study.
   One day I received an invitation from a family with strong musical interests. They were friends of my parents and I used to visit them once or twice a year. It was one of the usual evening gatherings except that there were one or two well-known people from the Opera House there whom I knew by sight. The singer Muoth was also there. He interested me most of all and it was the first time I had seen him at such close quarters. He was tall and handsome, a dark, imposing-looking man with a confident and perhaps already somewhat pampered manner. One could see that women liked him. Apart from his manner, he seemed neither pleased nor proud and there was something in his look and countenance that expressed much seeking and discontent. When I was introduced to him, he acknowledged me with a short stiff bow, without saying anything to me. After a while he suddenly came up to me and said: "Isn't your name Kuhn? Then I already know you a little. Professor S. has shown me your work. You must not hold it against him; he was not indiscreet. I came up just as he was looking at it, and as there was a song there, I looked at it with his permission."
   I was surprised and embarrassed. "Why are you telling me about it?" I asked. "I believe the professor didn't like it."
   "Does that hurt you? Well, I liked the song very much. I could sing it if I had the accompaniment. I should like you to let me have it."
   "You liked it? Can it be sung then?"
   "Of course -- although it would not be suitable for every kind of concert. I should like to have it for my own use at home."
   "I will write it out for you. But why do you want to have it?"
   "Because it interests me. There is real music in that song. You know it yourself."
   He looked at me, and his way of looking made me feel uncomfortable: he looked me straight in the face, studying me with complete calmness, and his eyes were full of curiosity.
   "You are younger than I thought. You must have already suffered a great deal."
   "Yes," I said, "but I cannot talk about it."
   "You don't need to. I won't ask you any questions."
   His look disturbed me. After all, he was quite a well-known man and I was still a student, so that although I did not at all like his way of asking questions, I could only defend myself weakly and timidly. He was not arrogant but somehow he inspired my sense of modesty and I could only put up a slight resistance, for I felt no real antagonism toward him. I had a feeling that he was unhappy and that he had an instinctive, powerful way of seizing on people as if he wanted to snatch something from them that would console him. His dark, searching eyes were as sad as they were bold and the expression on his face made him look much older than he really was.
   Soon afterward, while his remarks were still occupying my thoughts, I saw him chatting politely and merrily to the host's daughter, who was listening to him with delight and gazed at him as if he were a creature out of a fairy tale.
   I had lived such a lonely life since my accident that I thought about this meeting for many days, and it disturbed me. I was too unsure of myself not to stand in awe of this superior man, and too lonely and in need of someone not to be flattered by his approach. Finally, I thought he had forgotten me and his whims of that evening. Then, to my confusion, he visited me at my rooms.
   It was on a December evening and it was already dark. The singer knocked at the door and came in as if there were nothing remarkable about his visit, and without any introduction and superficialities he immediately entered into conversation with me. I had to let him have the song, and as he saw my hired piano in the room, he wanted to sing it at once. I had to sit down and accompany him and so I heard my song sung properly for the first time. It was sad and moved me against my will, for he did not sing it at full singing strength but softly, as if to himself. The text, which I had read in a magazine the previous year and had copied, was as follows:

   When the south wind blows
   The avalanche tumbles
   And death's dirge rumbles.
   Is that God's will?

   Through the lands of men
   I wander alone,
   Ungreeted and unknown.
   Is that God's will?

   Pain is my lot,
   My heart is like lead.
   I fear God is dead. --
   Shall I then live?

   From the way he sang it, I could tell that he liked the song.
   We were silent for a short time; then I asked him if he could point out any mistakes and suggest any corrections.
   Muoth gave me one of his keen looks and shook his head.
   "There is nothing to correct," he said. "I don't know whether the composition is good or not. I don't understand anything about that. There is experience and feeling in the song, and because I don't write poetry myself, or compose, I am glad when I find something that seems individual and that I want to sing."
   "But the text is not mine," I exclaimed.
   "Isn't it? Well, it doesn't matter; the text is of secondary importance. You must have experienced it, otherwise you could not have written the music."
   I offered him the copy which I had had ready for some days. He took it, rolled it up and pushed it into his coat pocket.
   "Come and visit me sometime, if you want," he said and gave me his hand. "I know you lead a quiet life. I don't want to disturb it, but now and then one is glad to look a good fellow in the face."
   When he had gone, his last words and his smile remained with me. They were in keeping with the song he had sung and with everything that I knew of the man. The longer I pondered upon it, the clearer it became to me, and in the end I felt I understood this man. I understood why he had come to me, why he liked my song, why he almost presumptuously intruded upon me, and why he seemed half shy, half bold to me. He was unhappy, an inward pain gnawed at him, and his loneliness had become intolerable to him. This unhappy man had been proud and had tasted solitude. He could no longer endure it; he was searching for people, for a kind look and a little understanding, and he was ready to sacrifice himself for them. That is what I thought at the time.
   My feelings toward Heinrich Muoth were not clear. I sensed his desires and unhappiness, yet I feared he could be a cruel, ruthless man who might use and then discard me. I was too young and my experience of people too limited to understand and accept the fact that he almost revealed himself naked to people and, in doing so, hardly seemed to know any shame. Yet I also saw that here was a sensitive passionate man who was suffering and who was alone. Involuntarily, I remembered rumors I had heard about Muoth, vague, disjointed, students' talk, the exact details of which I had forgotten but the echo and pattern of which I had preserved in my memory. There were wild tales of women and adventure, and without remembering one of them, I seemed to recall something about bloodshed -- the linking of his name to a story of suicide or murder.
   When I conquered my shyness and asked one of my colleagues about it, the matter seemed less serious than I had thought. Muoth, it was said, had had a love affair with a young woman of good family, and the latter had, in fact, committed suicide two years ago, not that anyone ventured to speak of the singer's involvement in this affair in anything but cautious allusions. Evidently it was my own imagination, stirred by the encounter with this unique and faintly ominous person, that had created that aura of dread around him. All the same, he must have suffered over that love affair.
   I did not have the courage to go to see him. I could not conceal the fact from myself that Heinrich Muoth was an unhappy and perhaps desperate person who wanted and needed me, and at times I felt I ought to obey the call and that I was contemptible not to do so. Yet I did not go. Another feeling prevented me: I could not give Muoth what he sought from me. I was quite different from him and even if in many ways I was also isolated and not fully understood by other people, even if I was different from everyone else and separated from most people by fate and my talents, I did not want to make an issue of it. Though the singer might be demonic in some ways, I definitely was not, and an inner necessity made me resist the spectacular and unusual. I had a feeling of aversion and repugnance toward Muoth's vehement manner. He was a man of the theater and an adventurer, I thought, and he was perhaps destined to live a tragic and public life. On the contrary, I wanted a quiet life; excitement and audacious talk did not suit me -- resignation was my lot. That was how I argued with myself to set my mind at rest. A man had knocked at my door. I was sorry for him and perhaps I ought to put him before myself, but I wanted peace and did not want to let him in. I threw myself energetically into my work but could not rid myself of the tormenting idea that someone stood behind me and tugged at me.
   As I did not come, Muoth again took the initiative. I received a note from him written in large bold characters, which read:

Dear Sir,
   I usually celebrate my birthday on the 11th January with a few friends. Would you like to come along? It would give us pleasure if we could hear your new sonata on this occasion. What do you think? Have you a colleague with whom you could play it, or shall I send someone to you? Stefan Kranzl would be agreeable. It would please me very much.
   HEINRICH MUOTH

   I had not expected that -- to play my music, which no one yet knew about, before experts, and to play the violin with Kranzl! Ashamed and grateful, I accepted the invitation, and only two days later I was requested by Kranzl to send him the music. After another two days, he invited me to visit him. The well-known violinist was still young. He was very pale and slender and looked like a virtuoso.
   As soon as I entered, he said, "So you are Muoth's friend! Well, let us start straight away. If we pay attention, we'll have it after playing it two or three times."
   Then he placed a stand before me, gave me the second-violin part, marked time and began with his light sensitive touch, so that in comparison I was quite feeble.
   "Not so timidly!" he shouted across to me without stopping, and we played the music right through.
   "That's all right!" he said. "It's a pity you haven't a better violin. But never mind. Now let us play the allegro a little faster, so that no one takes it for a funeral march. Ready!"
   I then played my music quite confidently with the virtuoso, my modest violin sounding quite well alongside his valuable one. I was surprised to find this distinguished-looking man so natural, indeed, almost naïve. As I began to feel more at home and gathered up courage, I asked him with some hesitation what he thought about my composition.
   "You will have to ask someone else, my dear sir. I don't understand much about it. It's a little unusual, but people like that. If Muoth likes it, you can feel flattered. He is not easily pleased."
   He gave me some advice regarding the playing and showed me a few places where alterations were necessary. We arranged to have another rehearsal the following day, and I then departed.
   It was a comfort to me to find this man so natural and sincere. If he was one of Muoth's friends, perhaps I could also find a place among them. To be sure, he was an accomplished artist and I was a beginner without any great prospects. I was sorry that no one would give me an honest opinion of my work. The most severe criticism would have been preferable to these good-natured remarks which said nothing.
   It was bitterly cold at that time -- one even had difficulty keeping the rooms warm. My companions enthusiastically went skating. It was just a year since our outing with Liddy. That was not a happy period for me. I looked forward to the evening at Muoth's, not because I expected too much from it, but because I had had no friends or gaiety for so long. During the night before January 11, I was awakened by an unusual noise and an almost amazing feeling of warmth in the air. I rose and went to the window, surprised that it was no longer cold. The south wind had suddenly come. Damp and warm, it blew vigorously. High above, the storm swept the heavy masses of clouds across the sky; in the small gaps between the clouds a few stars, unusually large and brilliant, shone through. The roofs already had black patches on them, and in the morning, when I went out, all the snow was gone. The streets and people's faces seemed strangely altered, and everywhere there was a breath of premature spring.
   That day I went about in a state of slightly feverish agitation, partly on account of the south wind and the intoxicating air, partly in anticipation of the evening. I frequently took out my sonata, played parts of it, then pushed it away again. Sometimes I found it quite beautiful and was proud and happy with it; at other times it seemed trivial, fragmented and vague to me. I could not have endured this state of agitation and anxiety much longer. In the end, I did not know whether I was looking forward to the forthcoming evening or not.
   However, it came at last. I put on my overcoat, took my violin case with me, and went to find Muoth's house. It was with some difficulty that I found it in the dark. It was far out in the suburbs on an unknown and unfrequented road. The house stood by itself in a large garden, which looked untidy and neglected. From behind the unclosed gate a large dog sprang at me. Someone whistled it back from a window and, growling, it accompanied me to the entrance. A little old woman with an anxious expression on her face received me there, took my coat and led me along a brightly lit passage.
   Kranzl, the violinist, lived in a very elegant fashion and I had expected Muoth, who was reputed to be rich, to live in a similarly lavish way. I now saw two large, spacious rooms, far too large for a bachelor who was seldom at home. Apart from that, everything was very simple, or not really simple but casual and unarranged. Part of the furniture was old and seemed to belong to the house, and there were new things bought indiscriminately and placed about the room without forethought. Only the lighting was splendid. There was no gas -- instead, there were a large number of white candles in single, attractive pewter candlesticks. In the main room there was also a kind of chandelier, a plain brass circle containing many candles. Here the chief item of furniture was a very good grand piano.
   In the room into which I was led, several men stood talking to each other. I put my violin case down and said: "Good evening!" Some of them nodded and then turned to each other again. I stood there feeling uncomfortable. Then Kranzl, who was among them and had not seen me immediately, came across to me, held out his hand, introduced me to his friends and said: "Here is our new violinist. -- Have you brought your violin with you?" Then he called across to the next room: "Muoth, the young man with the sonata is here."
   Heinrich Muoth then came in, greeted me very warmly and took me into the music room, which looked cheerful and festive. An attractive woman in a white dress, an actress from the Royal Theatre, handed me a glass of sherry. To my surprise, I observed that apart from her no other colleagues of the host had been invited. She was the only lady present.
   As I had emptied my glass very quickly, partly through embarrassment, partly from an instinctive need to get warm after the damp, evening walk, she poured out another and ignored my protests. "Take it. It won't do you any harm. We do not eat until after the music. Have you brought your violin with you -- and the sonata?"
   I made reserved replies and felt embarrassed. I did not know what her relationship was to Muoth. She seemed to be the mistress of the house. She was very attractive. I subsequently noted that my new friend went about only with very beautiful women.
   Meantime, everyone came into the music room. Muoth put up a music stand. Everyone sat down and soon I was playing the music with Kranzl. I played mechanically; it seemed poor to me. Only now and then for fleeting moments, like flashes of lightning, was I conscious of the fact that I was playing here with Kranzl and that the evening I had so long waited for with trepidation was here, and that a small gathering of experts and discerning musicians were sitting there listening to my sonata. Only during the rondo did I become aware that Kranzl was playing magnificently, but I was still so shy and distracted from the music that I continually thought about other things and it suddenly occurred to me that I had not even congratulated Muoth on his birthday.
   We finished playing the sonata. The pretty lady rose, held out her hand to Kranzl and me, and opened the door of a smaller room, where a table was set for a meal, with flowers and bottles of wine.
   "At last!" cried one of the men. "I'm nearly starving."
   "You're a shocking person," the lady replied. "What will the composer think?"
   "Which composer? Is he here?"
   She pointed me out. "There he is."
   He looked at me and laughed. "You should have told me that before. Anyway, the music was very enjoyable. But when a man is hungry --"
   We began the meal, and as soon as the soup was finished and the white wine was poured out, Kranzl rose and proposed a toast to the host on the occasion of his birthday. Immediately after the toast, Muoth rose to his feet. "My dear Kranzl, if you think I am going to make a speech in reply, you are mistaken. I don't want any more speeches, please. But perhaps the only one that is necessary I will take upon myself. I thank our young friend for his sonata, which I think is splendid. Perhaps our friend Kranzl will someday be glad to receive music of his to play, which he should do, for he played the sonata very sympathetically. I drink a toast to the composer and to our good friendship."
   They all clinked glasses, laughed, chaffed me a little, and soon the good wine helped to produce an atmosphere of gaiety to which I gave in with relief. It was a long time since I had enjoyed myself and felt at ease in this way, and in fact I had not done so for a whole year. Now the laughter and wine, the clinking of glasses, the intermingling of voices and the sight of a gay, pretty woman opened up closed doors of pleasure to me, and I easily entered into the atmosphere of unrestrained merriment, of light and lively conversation and smiling faces.
   Shortly after the meal, everyone rose and returned to the music room, where wine and cigarettes were handed round. A quiet-looking man who had not spoken much, and whose name I did not know, came up to me and said some kind words about the sonata, I have quite forgotten what. Then the actress drew me into conversation and Muoth sat down beside us. We drank another glass of wine to our friendship, and suddenly his dark, sad eyes sparkled and he said: "I know your story now." He turned to the lady. "He broke his bones while tobogganing, out of love for a pretty girl." Then he turned to me again. "That is beautiful -- to go head over heels down the hill at the moment when love is at its peak and is quite unsullied. It is worth losing a healthy leg for that." Laughing, he emptied his glass and again looked gloomy and thoughtful. Then he said: "What made you interested in composing?"
   I told him how music had affected me since I was a young boy. I told him about the previous summer, about my flight into the mountains, about the song and the sonata.
   "I see," he said slowly, "but why does it give you pleasure? You can't express sorrow on paper and be finished with it."
   "I don't want to do that," I replied. "I don't want to thrust aside and be rid of anything but weakness and constriction. I want to feel that pleasure and pain arise from the same source, that they are aspects of the same force and portions of the same piece of music, each beautiful and each essential."
   "Man," he shouted vehemently, "you have a crippled leg! Can music make you forget it?"
   "No, why? In any case, I can never make it better."
   "And doesn't that make you despair?"
   "It does not please me, you can be sure of that, but I hope it will never bring me to despair."
   "Then you are lucky, but I wouldn't exchange a leg for that kind of luck. So that is how it is with your music! Marian, this is the magic of art that we read about so much in books."
   "Don't talk like that!" I cried angrily. "You yourself don't sing just for your salary but because it is a source of pleasure and satisfaction to you. Why do you mock me and yourself? I think it is cruel."
   "Hush," said Marian, "or Muoth will become angry."
   He looked at me and said, "I won't be angry. You are quite right, really. But you can't feel so bad about your leg. Otherwise music-making would not be such a compensation to you. You are a contented sort of person. Anything can happen to you and you still remain contented -- but I would never have believed it." Muoth sprang angrily to his feet. "And it isn't true. You set the Avalanche Song to music; that was no indication of consolation and satisfaction -- but of despair. Listen!"
   Suddenly he went to the piano and it became quieter in the room. He began to play, made a mistake, then omitted the introduction and sang the song. He now sang it differently from the way he had sung it in my room, and I could tell that he had sung it often since then. He now sang it aloud in the deep baritone voice that I had heard from the stage, and the strength and intense feeling in his voice made one forget the unrelieved distress of the song.
   "This man says he wrote that purely for pleasure. He doesn't know anything about despair and is perfectly contented with his lot," he cried and pointed his finger at me. There were tears of shame and anger in my eyes. I saw everything through a mist, and in order to end it I stood up to go.
   Then I felt a delicate yet strong hand press me back into the armchair and gently stroke my hair, so that tingling warm waves washed over me, I closed my eyes, and choked back my tears. Looking up, I saw Heinrich Muoth standing in front of me. The others did not appear to have observed the whole scene and my agitation. They were drinking wine and laughing.
   "You are a child," said Muoth softly. "When a man writes songs like that, he should be above this kind of thing. But I am sorry. I find a person whom I like and we have hardly been together at all when I begin to pick a quarrel with him."
   "Oh, all right," I said with embarrassment, "but I should like to go home now. The best part of the evening is finished."
   "Very well, I will not press you to stay. The rest of us will have another drink yet, I think. Would you mind seeing Marian home? She lives on the inner side of the moat; it is not out of your way."
   The pretty woman looked at him curiously for a moment. Then she turned to me and said, "Will you?" I said, "With pleasure," and stood up. We only said goodbye to Muoth. In the anteroom a hired servant helped us on with our coats; then the little old woman appeared sleepily and took us through the garden to the gate by the light of a large lantern. The wind was still warm and caressing ; it drew along masses of black clouds and stirred the tops of the bare trees.
   I did not venture to offer Marian my arm, but she took it unasked, breathed in the night air with her head thrown back and looked up at me inquiringly and trustfully. I still seemed to feel her soft hand on my hair. She walked slowly and seemed to want to lead me.
   "There are cabs over there," I said, for it was painful to me that she should adapt herself to my lame walk and it made me suffer to have to limp beside this warm, healthy, slender woman.
   "Let us walk a little," she said. She took care to walk very slowly, and if I had had my way I should have drawn her still closer to me. But I was filled with so much pain and anger that I released her arm, and when she looked at me with surprise, I said to her: "It is no good like this. Pardon me, I must walk alone." She walked anxiously and sympathetically by my side, and all that was needed for me to say and do the opposite of what I said and did was an upright walk and the awareness of physical well-being. I became quiet, as well as abrupt in my answers. I could not do otherwise or I should have had tears in my eyes and longed to feel her hand on my head again. I would have preferred to escape from her at the next side street. I did not want her to walk slowly, to show me consideration and pity me.
   "Are you vexed with him?" she said at last.
   "No, it was stupid of me. I hardly know him yet."
   "He upsets me when he is like that. There are days when I am afraid of him."
   "You, too?"
   "Yes, more than anyone. He hurts no one more than himself. He hates himself at times."
   "Oh, he puts on a pose."
   "What did you say?" she said startled.
   "He is an actor. What does he want to mock himself and others for? Why does he have to draw out the experiences and secrets from a friend and ridicule them -- the miserable wretch!"
   My previous anger found a way into my speech again. I wanted to insult and disparage this man who had hurt me and whom I really envied. Also my respect for the lady had decreased since she defended him and openly admitted it to me. Wasn't it bad enough that she had been the only woman at this bachelors' drinking party? I was used to little license in these things, and I was ashamed to have a yearning for this pretty woman at the same time. I preferred in my vexation to start a quarrel with her rather than feel her pity any longer. If she thought me rude and left me, it would be better than staying and being kind to me.
   But she put her hand on my arm. "Stop," she cried warmly, so that her voice moved me despite myself. "Don't say any more! What is the matter with you? Muoth wounded you with two or three words because you were not skillful or courageous enough to defend yourself, and now that you have left, you attack him in hateful language in front of me. I ought to let you walk alone!"
   "As you wish. I only said what I thought."
   "Don't lie! You accepted his invitation and you played your music to him. You saw how he liked it, how it pleased you and cheered you up. And now, because you are angry and took offense at a few words he said, you begin to insult him. You shouldn't do that, and I will put it down to the wine you have had."
   It appeared to me that she suddenly realized how things were with me and that it was not the wine that had excited me; she changed her tone, although I did not make the slightest attempt to vindicate myself. I was defenseless.
   "You don't know Muoth yet," she continued. "You have heard him sing, haven't you? That is what he is like, fierce and violent, but mostly against himself. He is an emotional man; he has great vigor but no goal. At every moment he would like to taste the whole world, and whatever he has and whatever he does only constitutes an infinitesimal part of it. He drinks and is never drunk; he has women and is never happy; he sings magnificently and yet does not want to be an artist. If he likes anyone, he hurts him. He pretends to despise all who are contented, but it is really hatred against himself because he does not know contentment. That is what he is like. And he has shown friendship toward you, as much as he is capable of doing."
   I maintained an obstinate silence.
   "Perhaps you don't need him," she began again. "You have other friends. But when we see someone suffer and be ill-mannered because of his suffering, we ought to be indulgent and forgive him."
   Yes, I thought, one should do that. Gradually the walk in the night cooled me down, and although my own wound was still open and needed healing, I was induced to think more and more about what Marian had said and about my stupid behavior that evening. I felt that I was a miserable creature who really owed an apology. Now that the courage the wine had given me had worn off, I was seized by an unpleasantly sentimental mood against which I fought. I did not say much more to the pretty woman, who now seemed agitated and moody herself as she walked beside me along the dark streets where, here and there, the light of a lamp was suddenly reflected on the dark surface of the wet ground. It occurred to me that I had left my violin in Muoth's house; in the meantime I was again filled with astonishment and alarm at everything. The evening had turned out to be so different from what I had anticipated. Heinrich Muoth and Kranzl the violinist, and also the radiant Marian, who played the role of queen, had all climbed down from their pedestals. They were not gods or saints who dwelt on Olympian heights, but mere mortals; one was small and droll, another was oppressed and conceited, Muoth was wretched and self-tormented, the charming woman was pathetic and miserable as the lady friend of a restless sensualist who knew no joy, and yet she was good and kind and acquainted with suffering. I, myself, felt changed. I was no longer a single person but a part of all people, seeing good and bad in all. I felt I could not love a person here and hate another person there. I was ashamed of my lack of understanding and saw clearly for the first time in my young life that one could not go through life and among people so simply, hating one person and loving another, respecting one person and despising another, but all these emotions were closely tied up, scarcely separable and at times scarcely distinguishable. I looked at the woman walking by my side who was now also silent as if she too realized that the nature of many things was different from what she had thought and said.
   At last we reached her house. She held out her hand to me, which I gently pressed and kissed. "Sleep well!" she said kindly but without a smile.
   I did, too. I went home and to bed, I know not how, fell asleep immediately and slept far into the next morning. Then I rose like the man in the jack-in-the-box, did my exercises, and washed and dressed myself. It was only when I saw my coat hanging on the chair and missed my violin case that I thought of the previous day. Meantime, I had slept well and felt better. I could not link up the thoughts I had had the previous night. There remained only small, strange, inward experiences in my memory and a feeling of surprise that I was still unchanged and the same as ever.
   I wanted to work but my violin was not there. So I went out, at first irresolutely, then with determination, in the direction I had gone yesterday and arrived at Muoth's house. Even from the garden gate I heard him singing. The dog sprang at me and was led away with difficulty by the old woman who had quickly come out. She allowed me to go in. I told her I only wanted to fetch my violin and did not want to disturb the gentleman. My violin case was in the anteroom and my violin was in the case. My music had also been put there. Muoth must have done that; he had thought about me. He was singing aloud close by. I could hear him walking quietly up and down as if wearing slippers. At times he would strike keys on the piano. His voice sounded clear and bright, more controlled than I had ever heard it at the theater. He was practicing a role that was unknown to me. He repeated parts of it a number of times and walked quickly up and down the room.
   I had taken my things and was going to leave. I felt quite calm and hardly affected by the memory of the previous day. But I was curious to see him and to know whether he had changed. I went nearer, and almost involuntarily I put my hand on the handle, turned it and stood in the open doorway.
   Muoth turned round while singing. He was in a shirt, in a very long, fine, white shirt and looked fresh, as if he had just had a bath. Too late I took fright at having surprised him like that. However, he seemed neither surprised that I had come in without knocking nor embarrassed because he was not dressed. Just as if everything was perfectly normal, he held out his hand and asked: "Have you had breakfast yet?" Then, as I said yes, he sat down by the piano.
   "Imagine, that's a part I'm supposed to sing! Just listen to this aria -- what a mishmash! The opera is to be given at the Royal Opera House with Büttner and Duelli! But that doesn't interest you or me, really. How are you? Have you had a good rest? You didn't look so well when you left last night. And you were annoyed with me too. Anyway, we won't start that nonsense again now."
   And straight away, without giving me a chance to say anything, he said: "You know, Kranzl is a bore. He won't play your sonata."
   "But he played it yesterday."
   "I mean at a concert. I wanted him to take it on, but he won't. It would have been grand if it had been included in, say, a matinee concert next winter. Kranzl isn't a fool, you know, but he is lazy. He is always playing Russian music by an 'insky' or 'owsky.' He doesn't like learning anything new."
   "I don't think," I began, "that the sonata is suitable for a concert and I never had that in mind. It is still not flawless technically."
   "That's nonsense! You and your artistic pride! We're not like your schoolteachers and worse things will doubtless be played, particularly by Kranzl. But I have another idea. You must give me the song and write some more soon! I am leaving here in the spring. I have handed in my resignation and am going on a long holiday, during which I want to give one or two concerts, but with something new, not Schubert, Wolf, Lowe and the others we hear every evening. I want at least one or two new and unknown pieces of music, such as the Avalanche Song. What do you think?"
   The prospect of my songs being sung in public by Muoth was like a gateway to the future through the bars of which I could see splendid vistas. For that very reason I wanted to be cautious and neither abuse Muoth's kindness nor bind myself to him too much. It seemed to me that he wanted to draw me to him somewhat too forcibly, to dazzle me and in some way overpower me. Therefore I hardly committed myself.
   "I will see," I said. "You are very kind to me, I realize that, but I cannot promise anything. I am at the end of my studies and must now think about good testimonials. Whether I shall ever make my way as a composer is uncertain. Meantime, I am a violinist and must try to obtain a position soon."
   "Oh, yes, you can do all that. But you may think of another song like that one, which you can let me have. Will you?"
   "Yes, of course, although I don't know why you take such an interest in me."
   "Are you afraid of me? I simply like your music. I should like to sing some more of your songs and look forward to doing so. It is pure egoism."
   "All right, but why did you talk to me as you did yesterday?"
   "Oh, you are still offended! What did I really say? I no longer remember. Anyway, I didn't intend to treat you roughly, as I seem to have done. But you can defend yourself! One talks, and every person is as he is and as he must be, and people have to accept each other."
   "That's what I think, but you do just the opposite. You provoke me and do not accept what I say. You draw out of me things that I don't want to think about myself and that are my affair, and throw them back in my face like a reproach. You even mock me about my leg."
   Heinrich Muoth said slowly: "Well, well, people are different. One man is wild if you tell him the truth, and another can't bear it if you spout platitudes. You were annoyed because I didn't treat you with false respect and I was annoyed because you were on the defensive and tried to delude me with fine phrases about the solace of art."
   "I meant what I said, only I am not used to talking about these things. And I won't talk about the other matter either. How things seem to me, whether I am sad or in despair and how my leg came to be injured, I want to keep to myself, and I don't want to let anyone drag them out of me and mock me about them."
   He stood up. "I haven't anything on yet. I'll go and get dressed. You're a good fellow. I'm not, I know. We won't talk about it so much again. Hasn't it occurred to you that I like you? Just wait a little. Sit down by the piano until I'm dressed. Do you sing? -- No? -- Well, I'll only be a few minutes."
   He soon returned dressed from the adjoining room.
   "We'll go into town now and have a meal," he said lightly. He did not ask whether it suited me. He said, "We'll go," and we went. For however much his manner annoyed me, it impressed me; he was the stronger character of the two. At the same time, he displayed a whimsical, childlike disposition in his conversation and behavior which was often charming and which quite won me over.
   From that time I saw Muoth often. He frequently sent me tickets for the opera, sometimes invited me down to play the violin, and if I did not like everything about him, there were many things I could say to him without his taking offense. A friendship was established between us, at that time my only one, and I almost began to fear the time when he would no longer be there. He had in fact handed in his resignation and could not be pressed to stay, despite a number of requests and inducements. At times he hinted that there might be a part for him at a large theater in the autumn, but it was not yet arranged. In the meantime spring arrived.
   One day I went to Muoth's house for the last gentlemen's gathering. We drank to our next meeting and the future, and this time there was no woman present. Muoth accompanied us to the garden gate early in the morning. He waved us farewell and returned shivering in the morning mist to his already half-emptied rooms, accompanied by the leaping and barking dog. It seemed to me that a section of my life and experience had now ended. I felt I knew Muoth well enough to be sure that he would soon forget us all. Only now did I see clearly and unmistakably how much I had liked this moody, imperious man.


   The time for my departure had also arrived. I made my last visits to places and to people whom I would remember kindly. I also went once more up to the high road and looked down at the slope, which I would not indeed forget.
   I set off home to an unknown and apparently uninteresting future. I had no situation and I could not give independent concerts. At home there only awaited me, to my dismay, some students who wanted violin lessons. To be sure, my parents also awaited me and they were rich enough to see that I did not want for anything, and were tactful and kind enough not to press me and ask what was to become of me. But right from the beginning I knew that I should not be able to endure it long.
   There is not much for me to say about the ten months that I spent at home. During this time I gave lessons to three students and despite everything was not really unhappy. People lived here also; things also happened here every day, but I only had a feeling of polite indifference toward everything. Nothing touched my heart, nothing swept me along. On the other hand, I secretly experienced strange, entrancing hours with music, when my whole way of life appeared petrified and estranged and only a hunger for music remained that often tormented me unbearably during the violin lessons and certainly made me a bad teacher. But afterwards, when I had fulfilled my obligations, or had evaded my lessons with cunning and excuses, I relapsed into a wonderful dreamlike state in which I built bold sound edifices, erected magnificent castles in the air, raised arches casting long shadows, and created musical patterns as light and delicate as soap bubbles.
   While I went about in a state of stupefaction and absorption which drove away my previous companions and worried my parents, the dammed-up spring within me burst open even more forcibly and profusely than it had done the previous year in the mountains. The fruits of seemingly lost years, during which I had worked and dreamed, suddenly ripened and fell softly and gently, one after the other. They were sweet and fragrant; they surrounded me in almost overwhelming abundance and I picked them up with hesitation and mistrust. It began with a song, then a violin fantasia followed, then a string quartet, and when after a few months I had composed some more songs and several symphonic themes, I felt that it was all only the beginning and an attempt. Inwardly, I had visions of a great symphony; in my wildest moments I even thought of an opera. Meanwhile, from time to time I wrote polite letters to conductors and theaters, enclosed copies of testimonials from my teachers and humbly asked to be remembered for the next vacancy for a violinist. There came short, polite replies beginning "Dear Sir" and sometimes there were no replies, and there was no promise of an appointment. Then for a day or two I felt insignificant and retreated into myself, gave conscientious lessons and wrote more polite letters. Yet immediately afterwards I felt that my head was still full of music that I wanted to write down. Hardly had I begun composing again when the letters, theaters, orchestras, conductors and "Dear Sirs" faded out of my thoughts and I found myself fully occupied and contented.
   But these are memories that one cannot properly describe, like most recollections. What a person really is and experiences, how he develops and matures, grows feeble and dies, is all indescribable. The lives of ordinary working people can be boring, but the activities and destinies of idlers are interesting. However rich that period remains in my memory, I cannot say anything about it, for I remained apart from ordinary social life. Only once, for moments, did I again come closer to a person whom I will not forget. He was a teacher called Lohe.
   One day, late in the autumn, I went for a walk. A modest villa suburb had arisen on the south side of the town. No rich people dwelt in the small, inexpensive houses with their neat gardens, but respectable middle-class families and people who lived on small incomes. A clever young architect had erected a number of attractive houses here which I was interested to see.
   It was a warm afternoon. Here and there, nuts had fallen belatedly from the trees; the small new houses and gardens were clearly outlined in the sunshine. They were of a simple design that appealed to me. I looked at them with the superficial interest that young people have in these things, when thoughts of house, home and family, rest days and holidays are still remote. The peaceful streets with their gardens made a very pleasing impression on me. I strolled along slowly, and as I was walking, I happened to read the names of the occupants on small bright plates on the garden gates.
   The name "Konrad Lohe" was on one of these brass plates and, as I read it, it seemed familiar to me. I stood still and reflected. Then I remembered that that was the name of one of the teachers at the Grammar School. For a few moments the past rose before me, confronted me with surprise, and a mass of faces, teachers and friends, memories of nicknames and stories danced before me in fleeting waves. As I stood there looking at the brass plate, a man rose from behind a nearby currant bush where he had been bending down at work. He came forward and looked at me.
   "Did you want me?" he asked, and it was Lohe, the teacher whom we used to call Lohengrin.
   "Not really," I said and raised my hat. "I did not know that you lived here. I used to be one of your students."
   He looked at me more keenly, observed my stick, reflected a moment and then pronounced my name. He had remembered not my face but my stiff leg, for he naturally knew about my accident. Then he asked me to come in.
   His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he was wearing a green gardening apron. He did not seem to have grown older and looked wonderfully well. We walked through the small, neat garden, then he led me to an open veranda, where we sat down.
   "Well, I would never have recognized you," he said candidly. "I hope your memory of me has been a kind one."
   "Not entirely," I said laughing. "You once punished me for something I did not do and declared my protestations of innocence to be lies. It was in the fourth grade."
   He looked up with a troubled expression on his face. "You must not hold it against me. I am very sorry. With all the good intentions in the world, it continually happens with teachers that something goes wrong and an act of injustice is committed. I know of worse cases. That is one of the reasons why I left."
   "Oh, aren't you still teaching?"
   "Not for a long time now. I became ill, and when I recovered, my views had changed so much that I resigned. I tried to be a good teacher, but I wasn't one; you have to be born to it. So I gave it up and since then I have felt better."
   I could see that. I inquired further, but he wanted to hear my story, which was soon told. He was not altogether pleased that I had become a musician. On the other hand, he showed great tact by his sympathy for my ill-fortune so that for once I was not offended. He discreetly tried to discover how I had succeeded in finding consolation, and was not satisfied with my half-evasive answers. With mysterious gesticulations, he intimated hesitatingly and yet impatiently, with much bashful circumlocution, that he knew of a solace, of complete wisdom which was there for every earnest seeker.
   "I know," I said. "You mean the Bible."
   Mr. Lohe smiled mysteriously. "The Bible is good. It is the way to knowledge, but it is not knowledge itself."
   "Well, where is knowledge itself?"
   "You will find it easily if you wish to. I will give you something to read that gives the principles of it. Have you heard of the study of Karma?"
   "Karma? No, what is it?"
   "You will find out. Just wait a minute!" He went away and was absent for a short time while I sat there surprised, not knowing what to expect, and looked down the garden where diminutive fruit trees stood in faultless rows. After a short time, Lohe returned. He looked at me, with his face beaming, and handed me a small book, which bore, in the middle of a mysterious symbolic pattern, the title Theosophical Cathechism for Beginners.
   "Take that with you," he said. "You may keep it, and if you want to study further, I can lend you some more books. This one is only an introduction. I owe everything to these teachings. I have become well in body and soul through them and hope they will do the same for you."
   I took the small book and put it in my pocket. The man accompanied me through the garden down to the road, took friendly leave of me and asked me to come again soon. I looked at his face, which was good and happy, and it seemed to me that there could be no harm in trying the path to such happiness. So I went home with the little book in my pocket, curious about the first steps along this path to bliss.
   Yet I only embarked upon it after a few days. On my return home, the call of music was again powerful. I threw myself into it and lived in a world of music. I wrote and played until the storm within me was again silenced and I could return calmly to everyday life. Then I immediately felt the need to study the new teachings, and sat holding in front of me the little book which I thought I could soon absorb.
   But I did not find it so easy. The little book became massive in my hands and finally seemed unfathomable. It began with an interesting introduction on the many paths to wisdom to which everyone has access, and the theosophical brotherhood that stands independently for knowledge and inner perfection, in which every faith is respected and every path to the light is welcome. Then followed a cosmology that I did not understand, a division of the world into different "planes," and history into remarkable ages unknown to me, in which the lost continent of Atlantis was also included. I left this for a time and turned to the other chapters, where the doctrine of reincarnation was presented, which I understood better. Yet it was not quite clear to me whether it was all mythology and poetic fables, or whether it was to be taken literally. It seemed to me to be the latter, which I could not accept.
   Then came the teachings about Karma. It appeared to me to be a religious interpretation of the law of causality, which was not unattractive to me. And so on. I soon realized that these teachings could only be of solace and value to those who could accept them literally, and sincerely believe them to be true. If, as it seemed to me, they were partly beautiful literature, partly intricate symbols, an attempt at a mythological explanation of the world, one could be instructed by them and hold them in esteem, but one could not learn how to live and gain strength from them. One could perhaps be a worthy and religious theosophist, but the final solace beckoned only to those who accepted simple beliefs without too much questioning. In the meantime, it was not for me.
   All the same, I went to see the teacher several more times. Twelve years ago we had plagued each other with Greek and now, in quite a different way and equally unsuccessfully, he tried to be my teacher and guide. We did not become close friends, but I liked going to see him and for a time he was the only person with whom I discussed important aspects of my life. I did indeed realize that all this talk was of no value and at its best only led to clever phrases. Yet I found him soothing and worthy of reverence, this devout man who had coolly renounced church and knowledge and who in the latter half of his life experienced the peace and glory of religion through his naïve belief in remarkable, subtly reasoned teachings.
   Despite all my efforts, this path has always been closed to me. Yet I have a great leaning, which is not reciprocated, toward religious people who are fortified by and gain peace from one faith or another.

Chapter Four

   During the short period of my visits to the pious theosophist and fruit grower, I one day received a small check, the reason for which was a mystery to me. It had been sent to me by a well-known north German concert agent with whom, however, I had never had any dealings. On making inquiries, I received the reply that this amount had been forwarded to me by order of Mr. Heinrich Muoth. He had sung at six concerts a song composed by me and this sum represented my fee.
   I then wrote to Muoth, thanked him and asked for news. Above all, I wanted to know how my song had been received at the concerts. I had heard about Muoth's recitals and had seen reviews of them once or twice in the newspapers, without however seeing my song mentioned. I wrote to him about my activities and work in minute detail, as solitary people often do, and also enclosed one of my new songs. Then I waited for an answer. As I had still received none after four weeks, I forgot all about the whole matter again. Almost every day I wrote music, which haunted me as in a dream. During the intervals, however, I felt limp and discontented. I very much disliked giving lessons and felt I could not endure it much longer.
   I therefore felt that a curse was lifted from me when I finally received a letter from Muoth. He wrote:

Dear Mr. Kuhn,
   I am no letter writer. I did not answer your letter, as I did not really know what to say. But now I can put forward concrete proposals. I am now engaged at the Opera House here in R. and I should be pleased if you could also come here. You could, in the first place, obtain a position here as a second violinist. The conductor is an intelligent, frank man, even though somewhat abrupt. You would probably also soon have an opportunity to play some of your music. We have good chamber concerts here. I also have something to tell you about your songs; one thing is that there is a publisher who wants to bring them out. But writing is such a bore. It would be better if you came. Come quickly and wire me about the position.
   Yours,
      MUOTH

   I was thus suddenly dragged away from my unprofitable hermit's existence. I was again drawn into the stream of life, had hopes and cares, sorrows and joys. There was nothing to keep me, and my parents were glad to see me take my first definite step in my career in life. I sent a wire without delay, and three days later I was in R. with Muoth.
   I had obtained accommodation in a hotel. I went to visit Muoth but did not find him in. Then he came to my hotel and unexpectedly stood before me. He held out his hand, asked me no questions, did not tell me anything and did not share my excitement in the slightest. He was used to letting himself be drawn along by events, only experiencing and taking seriously the present moment. He hardly gave me time to change my clothes and then took me to see Rössler, the conductor.
   "This is Mr. Kuhn," he said.
   Rössler nodded. "How do you do! What can I do for you?"
   "He is the violinist," cried Muoth.
   The conductor looked at me with surprise, turned to the singer again and said rudely: "You didn't tell me that the gentleman was lame. I must have people with straight limbs."
   The blood rose to my face but Muoth remained calm. He just laughed. "Do you want him to dance, Rössler? I thought he was to play the violin. If he can't do that, we must send him away again. But let us hear him first."
   "Very well, gentlemen. Mr. Kuhn, come and see me tomorrow morning about nine o'clock, here in my rooms. Are you annoyed at what I said about the foot? Well, Muoth should have told me about it. Anyway, we shall see. Till tomorrow!"
   As we went away, I reproached Muoth about it. He shrugged his shoulders and said that if he had mentioned my infirmity at the beginning, it would have been difficult to obtain the conductor's consent. Now I was here and if Rössler found me reasonably satisfactory, I would soon get to know the better side of his nature.
   "But how could you recommend me in any case?" I asked. "You don't even know if I am any good."
   "That's your affair. I thought you would be all right -- and you will be too. You're such an unassuming fellow that if someone didn't give you a push at times, you would never get anywhere. That was a push -- now you go ahead! You need not be afraid. Your predecessor wasn't much good."
   We spent the evening in his rooms. Here again he had rented some rooms in a remote district where there was a large garden and it was quiet. His powerful dog sprang forward to greet him. We had hardly sat down and warmed ourselves when the bell was rung and a tall, very beautiful woman came in and kept us company. It was the same atmosphere as previously, and his mistress was again a splendid aristocratic person. He seemed to take lovely women very much for granted and I looked at this latest lady love with sympathy and with the embarrassment that I always felt in the presence of attractive women. It was indeed not without envy, for with my lame leg it seemed to me I was unloved and without hope of love.
   As in the past, we enjoyed ourselves and drank a great deal at Muoth's. He dominated us with his extreme but moody gaiety, which nevertheless charmed us. He sang for us enchantingly and also sang one of my songs. The three of us became very friendly; a feeling of warmth spread among us and drew us close. We were natural with each other and remained close as long as the warmth in us endured. The tall lady, who was called Lottie, was friendly toward me in a gentle way. It was not the first time that a beautiful and affectionate woman had treated me in this sympathetic and extremely, confiding way.
   It hurt me this time too, but I now recognized this recurrent form of behavior and did not take it too much to heart. Sometimes I have even known women who have shown special friendship toward me. They all regarded me as incapable of jealousy as of love. In addition, there was that insufferable pity they had for me which evinced itself in an almost maternal trust.
   Unfortunately, I still had no experience of such affairs and could not look on the happiness of love at close quarters without thinking about myself a little and feeling that I should also have liked to indulge in something similar. It spoiled my pleasure to some extent, but on the whole it was a pleasant evening in the company of this generous and beautiful woman and the fiery, vigorous and temperamental man who liked me and took an interest in me and yet could not show his affection in any different way than he did with women, namely in a forceful and moody fashion.
   As we clinked glasses for the last time before I left, he nodded to me and said: "I really ought to drink to our good friendship, shouldn't I? I should certainly like to do so. But never mind, it will be all right just the same. At one time, whenever I met anyone I liked, I always addressed him immediately in an intimate fashion, but it isn't a good thing, least of all among colleagues. I quarreled with them just the same."
   This time I did not have the bittersweet pleasure of having to accompany my friend's lady love home. She remained there and it was better so. The journey, the visit to the conductor, the suspense about the following morning and the renewed association with Muoth had all done me good. Only now did I see how forgotten, ill at ease and remote from people I had become during my long, lonely year of waiting, and with a sense of enjoyment and healthy anticipation, I was again alert and active among people, again belonging to the world.


   The next morning I reported to Rössler in good time. I found him in his dressing gown and with his hair uncombed, but he made me welcome and, in a friendlier fashion than the previous day, he invited me to play the violin, placed handwritten music before me and sat down by the piano. I played as well as I could, but reading the badly written music gave me some trouble. When we had finished, he silently placed another sheet before me to play without any accompaniment, and then a third sheet.
   "That's all right," he said. "You will have to become more used to reading the music; you're sometimes a little slow on the uptake. Come to the theater tonight. I will make room for you; then you can play your part next to the substitute who has filled the gap in the meantime. It will go a little hard at the beginning. Study the music well in advance. There is no rehearsal today. I will give you a note; take it to the theater at eleven o'clock and fetch the music."
   I was not quite certain of my position but realized that this man did not like questions and I went away. At the theater no one wanted to know anything about the music or to listen to me. I was unused to the machinery there and was disconcerted. I sent a special messenger to Muoth. He came and immediately everything went smoothly. In the evening I played for the first time at the theater and was closely observed by the conductor. The following day I obtained the appointment.
   So strange is a human being that in the midst of my new life and fulfilled wishes I was sometimes seized by a sudden, fleeting, almost subconscious desire for solitude, for even boring and empty days. It then seemed to me that the time I had spent at home and the dreary uneventful life from which I was so glad to escape were something desirable. In particular, I thought with real longing about the weeks I had spent in the mountains two years ago. I felt that I was not destined for well-being and happiness but for weakness and failure, and that without these shadows and sacrifices, the creative spring within me would flow more feebly and turbidly. At first there really was no question of quiet hours and creative work, and although I was living a full life, I continually thought I heard the dammed-up spring within me whisper softly and complainingly.
   I enjoyed playing the violin in the orchestra. I poured over full scores a great deal and felt my way gradually in this field. Slowly I learned what I had only known theoretically and remotely, namely to understand the nature, color and significance of single instruments from the bottom upwards. At the same time, I studied ballet music and looked forward with greater earnestness to the time when I could venture to write an opera myself.
   My close relationship with Muoth, who held one of the best positions at the Opera House, facilitated my progress and was quite useful to me. I was very sorry, however, that this had the opposite effect on my relationship with my colleagues. I did not make any close friends among the members of the orchestra, something I was only too willing to do. Only a first violinist, a Styrian called Teiser, took an interest in me and became my friend. He was ten years older than I, an honest, straightforward man with a gentle, delicate face that easily reddened. He was an extraordinarily accomplished musician and had a particularly keen and sensitive ear. He was one of those people who find satisfaction in their art without wanting to play any outstanding part. He was no virtuoso and had never composed anything. He was content to play the violin and derived his greatest pleasure from a thorough knowledge of technique. He knew every overture in detail, and knew as well as any conductor where delicacy and brilliant playing were necessary and where the introduction of another instrument produced a beautiful and original effect. This made him radiant and he enjoyed himself more than anyone else in the whole theater. He could play nearly all the instruments, so that I could ask him questions and learn from him daily.
   For many months we discussed nothing but technique, but I liked him and he saw that I was anxious to learn. An unspoken understanding arose between us that did not fall far short of friendship. Then I finally told him about my violin sonata and asked him to play it with me sometime. He kindly agreed and came to my rooms at the appointed time. In order to please him, I obtained some wine from his native town. We drank a glass of the wine; then I put up the music and we began. He read the music very well, but suddenly he stopped and lowered his bow.
   "I say, Kuhn," he said, "this really is lovely music and I don't want to play it just anyhow. I want to take it home and practice it first. May I?"
   "Yes," I said, and when he came again, we played the sonata through twice. When we had finished, he slapped me on the shoulder and cried: "You modest creature! You pretend to be such an innocent and secretly you do things like this! I won't say much -- I am not a professor, but it is beautiful!"
   That was the first time that someone in whom I really had confidence had praised my work. I showed him all my music, including the songs that were just being published and were soon to appear. But I did not dare tell him that I was so bold as to think of composing an opera.
   During those good days I was shocked by a small incident that I can never forget. At Muoth's, where I was a frequent visitor, I had not seen the pretty woman called Lottie for some time, but I did not think much about it because I did not want to become involved in any of his love affairs. I preferred not to know about them. I therefore did not inquire about her. Besides, he never talked to me about these things.
   One afternoon I sat in my room studying a score. By the window, my black cat lay sleeping in the sunshine. The whole house was quiet. Then I heard someone enter by the front door who was stopped and questioned by the landlady, and then came and knocked at my door. I went to open it and a tall, elegant woman with a veil over her face entered and closed the door behind her. She took a few steps into the room, breathed deeply and then took off her veil. It was Lottie. She looked excited and I immediately guessed why she had come. At my request she sat down. She had shaken my hand but had not yet said anything. She seemed more at ease when she observed my embarrassment, as if she feared I might send her away immediately.
   "Is it about Heinrich Muoth?" I asked at last.
   She nodded. "Did he tell you anything?"
   "No, I don't know anything. It is only what I thought."
   She looked me in the face the way a sick person looks at a doctor, was silent and slowly took off her gloves. Suddenly she stood up, placed both hands on my shoulders and gazed at me with her big eyes.
   "What shall I do? He is never at home, he never writes to me, he never even opens my letters! I have not been able to speak to him for three weeks. I went there yesterday. I know he was in but he did not open the door. He did not even whistle at his dog, who had torn my dress. He doesn't want to recognize me any more."
   "Have you had a quarrel with him?" I asked only so that I should not remain silent.
   She laughed. "Quarrel! Oh, we have had enough quarrels right from the beginning! I was used to that. No, he has even been polite to me lately, which I immediately mistrusted. On one occasion he wasn't there when he asked me to come; another time he said he was coming to see me and did not turn up. Finally, he began to address me formally. I would have preferred him to beat me again."
   I was stunned. "Beat you!"
   She laughed again. "Didn't you know? Oh, he has often beaten me, but not for a long time now. He has become polite; he addresses me formally and does not want to know me any more. I expect he has someone else. That is why I have come here. Tell me, please! Has he another woman? You know, you must know!"
   Before I could prevent it, she took hold of both my hands. I was astounded at what she had told me, but because I did not wish to discuss it and desired to end the scene I was almost glad that she did not give me a chance to speak, for I would not have known what to say.
   Alternately hopeful and sorrowful, she was contented that I should listen to her. She asked me questions, told me things and burst into fits of weeping. All the time I looked at her pretty, tearful face and could think of nothing else except, "He has beaten her!" I seemed to see his clenched hand, and I shuddered at the thought of him, and of her too, who, having been beaten, scorned and repulsed, seemed to have no other thought and wish but to return to him and the same humiliations.
   At last the flood subsided. Lottie began to speak more slowly. She seemed embarrassed and conscious of the situation, became silent, and at the same time released my hands.
   "There is no one else," I said gently, "at least not as far as I am aware."
   She looked at me gratefully.
   "But I can't help you," I continued. "I never talk to him about such things."
   We were both silent awhile. I could not help but think of Marian, of pretty Marian, and that evening when we had walked arm-in-arm the same night the south wind had come, and how she had so loyally defended her lover. Had he beaten her also? And did she still pursue him?
   "Why did you come to me?" I asked.
   "I don't know. I had to do something. Do you know if he still thinks about me? You are a good man. You will help me, won't you? You could ask him sometime, speak about me. . ."
   "No, I can't do that. If he still loves you, he will come to you himself. If not, then. . ."
   "Then what?"
   "Then let him go. He is not worthy that you should humble yourself so much."
   Thereupon she smiled. "Oh, what do you know about love!"
   She was right, I thought, but it hurt me just the same. If love did not come to me, if I stood outside, how could I be taken into anyone's confidence and be of help? I felt sorry for this woman but I despised her even more. If that was love, with cruelty here and humiliation there, then it was better to live without love.
   "I don't want to argue," I said coolly. "I don't understand this kind of love."
   Lottie fastened on her veil. "Very well, I'm going."
   Then I felt sorry for her, but I did not want this ridiculous scene to be repeated, so I did not say anything. She walked toward the door and I opened it for her. I accompanied her past the inquisitive landlady to the stairs; then I bowed and she went away without saying anything more and without looking at me.
   I looked after her sadly and could not rid myself of the memory of her for a long time. Was I really quite different from all these other people, from Marian, Lottie and Muoth? Was that really love? I saw all these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love; then there were the women who were infatuated with him, suffering insults and beatings, finally rejected and yet still clinging to him, degraded by jealousy and despised love, but still remaining faithful, like dogs. That day, for the first time in a very long while, I wept. I shed involuntary tears of vexation for these people, for my friend Muoth, and life and love, and also secret tears for myself who lived among everything as if on another planet, who did not understand life, who longed for love, yet was afraid of it.
   I did not go to see Heinrich any more for a long time. He was enjoying triumphs as a Wagnerian singer and was beginning to be regarded as a star. I also had a moderate amount of publicity. My songs had been published and well received and two pieces of my chamber music had been performed. It was just a little encouraging recognition among friends; the critics still said little or were for the most part indulgent toward me as a beginner.
   I spent a great deal of time with Teiser, the violinist. He liked me, praised my work, and took friendly pleasure in it. He prophesied great things for me and was always ready to play music with me. Just the same I felt that something was lacking. I was drawn to Muoth, although I still avoided him. I did not hear any more from Lottie. Why then was I not content? I reproached myself for not being satisfied with the company of Teiser, who was so good and loyal. But I found something lacking in him too. He was too happy, too cheerful, too contented; he seemed to have no depth. He did not speak well of Muoth. Sometimes when Muoth sang at the theater he looked at me and whispered: "He has faked it again! That man is quite spoiled. He doesn't sing Mozart and he knows why." I had to agree with him and yet I did so unwillingly. I was drawn to Muoth, but did not like to defend him. Muoth had something that Teiser did not have or understand and which bound me to him, and that was a continual desire, yearning and dissatisfaction. These same qualities drove me to study and work, to seize people to myself who always slipped away from me again, just as they eluded Muoth, who was goaded and tormented by the same dissatisfaction, though differently than I. I would always write music. I knew that. But I also wanted to create something out of happiness and abundance and uninterrupted joy, instead of continual longing and a sense of lack. Why was I not happy with what I had -- my music? And why was Muoth not happy with what he possessed -- his tremendous vitality and his women?
   Teiser was lucky; he was not tormented by any desires for the unattainable. He derived a keen, unfailing pleasure from his art. He did not ask for more than it gave him, and outside his art he was even more easy to satisfy; he only needed a few friendly people, an occasional good glass of wine, and on free days an excursion into the country, for he liked walking and open-air life. If there was anything in the teachings of the theosophists, then this man was almost perfect; his disposition was so kind and he harbored so little passion and discontent. Yet even if I perhaps deceived myself, I did not wish to be like him. I did not want to be like anyone else. I wanted to remain in my own skin, although it was often so constrictive. I began to feel power within me as my work began to have some effect, and I was on the point of becoming proud. I had to find some kind of bridge to reach people, had to learn to live with them without always being the weaker. If there was no other way, perhaps my music would create a bridge. If people did not like me, they would have to like my music.
   I could not rid myself of such foolish thoughts and yet I was ready to devote and sacrifice myself to someone who wanted me, to someone who really understood me. Was not music the secret law of the world? Did not the earth and stars move in a harmonious circle? And should I have to remain alone and not find people whose natures harmonized well with my own?
   A year had gone by since I had been in this town. Apart from Muoth, Teiser and our conductor, Rössler, I had had few acquaintances at the beginning. Lately, however, I moved about in a larger circle, which did not particularly please or displease me. Since the performance of my chamber music, I had become acquainted with musicians in the town, outside the theater, and now enjoyed the easy and pleasant burden of a gently burgeoning reputation. I noticed that people knew and observed me. Of all fame, the sweetest is that which is not yet for any great success, which cannot cause envy and which does not isolate you. You go about with the feeling that here and there you are noticed, your name is known and you are praised; you meet people who welcome you with a smile, and acquaintances who give you a friendly nod. Younger people greet you with respect, and you secretly feel that the best is still to come, as all young people do, until they see that the best already lies behind them. My pleasure was diminished primarily by the feeling that there was always a touch of pity behind this recognition. Quite often I even felt that people were so kind and friendly toward me because I was a poor fellow and a cripple whom they wanted to console.
   After a concert at which a violin duet of mine had been played, I made the acquaintance of a rich merchant called Imthor, who was reputed to be a lover of music and a patron of young talent. He was a rather small, quiet man with graying hair in whom one could detect neither his riches nor his love of art. But from what he said to me, I could see that he understood a great deal about music; he did not give extravagant praise but quiet competent judgment, which was worth more. He told me what I had already known for a long time from other sources, namely, that many musical evenings were held at his house, and new as well as classical music was performed. He invited me to come and, before parting, said: "We have your songs at home and we like them. My daughter will also be glad if you will come." Even before I had the chance to visit him he sent me a written invitation. Mr. Imthor asked permission for my trio in E flat major to be performed at his house. A violinist and a cellist, competent amateurs, were available, and the first violin part would be kept for me if I wished to play it. I knew that Imthor always paid a very good fee to professional musicians who played at his house. I would not like to accept this, yet did not know how to refuse the invitation. Finally, I accepted. The two other musicians came to see me, received their parts and we had a number of rehearsals. In the meantime, I called round to see Imthor, but found no one at home. Then the appointed evening arrived.
   Imthor was a widower. He lived in an old, stately, middle-class house, one of the few still surrounded by its old garden, which had remained intact in the midst of the growing town. I saw little of the garden when I arrived in the evening, only a short drive with tall plane trees; in the lamplight one could see the light marks on their trunks. In between them were several old statues that had become darkened with age. Behind the tall trees the old, broad, low house stood unassumingly. From the front door, along the passages, stairs, and in all the rooms we passed through, the walls were closely covered with old pictures of family groups, faded landscapes, old-fashioned scenes and animals. I arrived at the same time as other guests. We were received by a housekeeper and taken inside.
   There were not very many guests, but they seemed to fill the smallish rooms until the doors of the music room were opened. This was a large room and everything here looked new, the grand piano, the music cabinets, the lamps and the chairs; only the pictures on the walls were old here, too.
   The other two musicians were already there. We put up the music stands, attended to the lighting, and began to tune up. Then a door was opened from the far end of the room, and a lady in a light dress came across the half-illumined room. The other two gentlemen greeted her respectfully. She was Imthor's daughter. She looked at me questioningly, then before we were introduced, she held out her hand to me and said: "I know you already. You are Mr. Kuhn, aren't you? I am Gertrude Imthor. You are very welcome."
   The pretty girl had made an impression on me as soon as she had come in. Now her voice sounded so bright and kind that I pressed the outstretched hand warmly and looked with pleasure at the girl who had greeted me in such a charming, friendly manner.
   "I'm looking forward to your trio," she said smiling, as though she had anticipated that I would be the way I was, and was now satisfied.
   "I am, too," I said, not knowing what I was saying. I looked at her again and she nodded. Then she moved away, went out of the room, and my eyes followed her. She soon returned on her father's arm, and behind them came the guests. We three musicians were in our places ready to begin. Everyone sat down. A number of acquaintances nodded to me, the host shook hands with me, and when everyone had settled down, the electric lights were switched off, and only the large candles remained to light our music.
   I had almost forgotten about my music. I looked for Gertrude at the back of the room. She sat leaning against a bookcase in the dim light. Her dark brown hair looked almost black. I could not see her eyes. Then I softly beat time, nodded, and we commenced the andante with a broad sweep of the bow.
   Now that I was playing, I felt happy and at peace. I swayed gently to the rhythm and felt completely at ease with the music, which all seemed quite new to me, as if it had just been composed. My thoughts about the music and Gertrude Imthor flowed together clearly without a break. I drew my bow and gave directions with my glance. The music proceeded smoothly and steadily; it carried me with it along a golden path to Gertrude, whom I could no longer see and now no longer even desired to see. I dedicated my music and my life's breath, my thoughts and my heart to her, as an early-morning wanderer surrenders himself to the blue sky and the bright dew on the meadows, involuntarily and without losing himself. Simultaneous with this feeling of well-being and the increasing volume of sound, I was overwhelmed by an astonishing feeling of happiness, for I suddenly knew what love was. It was not a new feeling, but a clarification and confirmation of old premonitions, a return to a native country.
   The first movement was finished; there was pause for a few moments.
   Then there were the slightly discordant sounds of instruments being tuned up. Beyond intent and approving faces, I saw the dark brown hair for a moment, the delicate light-skinned forehead and the firm, red lips. Then I tapped lightly on my stand and we commenced the second movement, which requires no excuses on my part. The players warmed up, the growing yearning in the melody swelled restlessly, spiraled insatiably upward, searched and then became lost in mournful fearfulness. The cello took up the melody with a warm and deep sound, developed it strongly and insistently and introduced it softly into the new lower key, where it faded away despairingly, on half-angry-sounding bass notes.
   This second movement was my confession, an admission of my longing and dissatisfaction. The third movement was intended to represent satisfaction and fulfillment. But that evening I knew that that was not the case, and I played it carelessly, like something that I knew I was over with. For I thought I now understood exactly how fulfillment should have sounded, how radiance and peace should have emerged through the raging storm of sound, like the light from behind the heavy clouds. All this was not included in my third movement; it was only gentle relief from growing dissonance and an attempt to clarify and strengthen the main theme a little. There was none of the harmony or radiance in it that was now revealed and experienced within me, and I was surprised that no one seemed to notice it.
   My trio was finished. I bowed to the other two players and put my violin away. The lights were switched on again and the guests began to stir. Many of them came up to me with the usual polite remarks, praise and criticisms to demonstrate that they were expert judges. No one mentioned the chief fault in the work.
   The guests spread out into different rooms. Tea, cakes and wine were served, and the men smoked. One hour passed and then another. At last, what I hardly dared any longer to hope for took place. Gertrude stood before me and held out her hand.
   "Did you like it?" I asked.
   "Yes, it was beautiful," she said. But I saw that she meant more than that, so I said: "You mean the second movement. The others aren't much."
   She looked at me again curiously, with as much sagacity as though she were already a mature woman, and said very delicately: "You know it yourself. The first movement is good music; the second movement is broad and sweeping and demands too much from the third. One could also see as you were playing when your heart was in it and when it was not."
   It pleased me to hear that her lovely, bright eyes had observed me without my knowing it. I already thought on that first evening of our meeting how glorious it would be to spend one's whole life regarded by those beautiful, candid eyes, and how it would then be impossible ever to think or do ill. And from that evening I knew that my desire for unity and sweet harmony could be satisfied, and that there was someone on earth whose glance and voice made an instant response to every throb of my pulse and every breath in my body.
   She also felt an immediate sympathetic response toward me and right from the beginning was able to be frank and natural with me, without fear of misunderstanding or a breach of confidence. She immediately made friends with me with the speed and ease that is only possible with people who are young and almost unspoiled. Up to that time I had occasionally been attracted to girls, but always -- and particularly since my accident -- with a shy, wistful and unsure feeling. Now, instead of being just infatuated, I was really in love, and it seemed that a thin, gray veil had fallen from my eyes and that the world lay before me in its original divine light as it does to children, and as it appears to us in our dreams of Paradise.
   At that time, Gertrude was hardly more than twenty years old, as slender and healthy as a strong young tree. She had passed untouched through the usual turbulence of adolescence, following the dictates of her own noble nature like a clearly developing melody. I felt happy to know a person like her in this imperfect world and I could not think of trying to capture her and keep her for myself. I was glad to be permitted to share her happy youth a little and to know from the beginning that I would be included among her close friends.
   During the night after that musical evening I did not fall asleep for a long time. I was not tormented by any fever or feeling of restlessness, but I lay awake and did not wish to sleep because I knew that my springtime had arrived and that after long, wistful, futile wanderings and wintry seasons, my heart was now at rest. My room was filled with the pale glimmer of night. I could see all the goals of life and art lying before me like windswept peaks. I could feel what I had often lost so completely -- the harmony and inward rhythm of my-life -- could feel it in every fiber of my being and trace it back within me to the legendary years of my childhood. And when I wanted to express this dreamlike beauty and sublimity of feeling briefly and call it by a name, then I had to give it the name of Gertrude. That is how I fell asleep when it was already approaching morning, and the next day I awakened refreshed after a long, deep sleep.
   I then reflected on my recent feelings of despair and pride, and I realized what had been lacking. Today nothing tormented me or annoyed me. I again heard the ethereal harmony and experienced my youthful dream of the harmony of the spheres. I again walked and thought and breathed to an inward melody; life again had meaning and I looked forward to a better future. No one noticed the change in me; there was no one close enough.
   Only Teiser, with his childlike simplicity, gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder during rehearsal at the theater and said: "You slept well last night, didn't you?"
   I thought of something to please him and during the next interval I said: "Teiser, where are you going this summer?"
   Thereupon he laughed bashfully and flushed as red as an engaged girl who is asked about her wedding day and said: "Dear me, that's a long way off yet, but look, I have the tickets already." He took them out of his waistcoat pocket. "This time I start from Bodensee; then the Rhine Valley, Fürstentum Liechtenstein, Chur, Albula, Upper Engadine, Maloja, Bergell and Lake Como. I don't know about the return journey yet."
   He picked up his violin and looked at me with pride and delight shining out of his blue-gray, childlike eyes, which seemed never to have seen any of the filth and sorrow in the world. I felt a sense of kinship with him and the way he looked forward to his long walking holiday, to freedom and carefree unity with sun, air and earth. In the same way I felt renewed pleasure at the thought of all the paths in my life which lay before me as if illumined by a brilliant new sun, and which I thought I could travel along steadily with bright eyes and a pure heart.
   Now, when I look back, it all seems very remote, but I am still conscious of some of the former light, even if it is not so dazzling. Even now, as in the past, it is a comfort to me in times of depression and disperses the dust from my soul when I pronounce the name Gertrude and think of how she came up to me in the music room of her father's house, as lightly as a bird and as naturally as a friend.
   That day I visited Muoth, whom I had been avoiding as much as possible since Lottie's painful confession. He had noticed it and was, I knew, too proud and too indifferent to do anything about it, so we had not been alone together for months. Now that I had renewed faith in life and was full of good intentions, it seemed very important to me to approach my neglected friend again. A new song that I had composed gave me an excuse for doing so. I decided to dedicate it to him. It was similar to the Avalanche Song, which he liked, and the words were as follows:

   The hour was late, I blew out my candle;
   By the open window I greeted the night.
   It embraced me gently, called me brother
   And promised me friendship in my sad plight.

   We were sick with the same yearning,
   Our dreams were gloomy and long,
   We whispered about the days of old
   When we were young and hope was strong.

   I made a copy of it and wrote above it: "Dedicated to my friend, Heinrich Muoth."
   Then I went to see him at a time when I knew he would be at home. I heard him singing as he walked up and down rehearsing in his stately rooms. He received me coolly.
   "Good heavens, it's Mr. Kuhn! I thought you would not come any more."
   "Well," I said, "here I am. How are you?"
   "The same as ever. Good of you to come and see me again."
   "Yes, I haven't been very loyal recently. . ."
   "It has been very evident and I know why."
   "I don't think so."
   "Yes, I do. Lottie once went to see you, didn't she?"
   "Yes, but I don't want to talk about it."
   "It isn't at all necessary. Anyway, here you are again."
   "I have brought something with me." I gave him the music.
   "Oh, a new song! That is good. I was afraid you might devote yourself solely to dreary string music. There's a dedication on it already. What, to me! Do you mean it?"
   I was surprised that it seemed to give him so much pleasure. I had somehow expected a joke about the dedication.
   "Of course I am pleased," he said sincerely. "I am always glad when worthwhile people think of me, and particularly you. I had really struck you off my list."
   "Have you a list?"
   "Oh yes, when one has or has had as many friends as I. . . I could make quite a catalogue. I have always thought most of the highly moral ones and those are always the ones who discard me. One can find friends among rascals any day, but it is difficult to do so among idealists and ordinary people if one has a reputation. You are almost the only one at the moment. And the way things are going -- People like best what is hard for them to obtain, don't you agree? I have always wanted friends but it has always been women who have been attracted to me."
   "That is partly your own fault, Mr. Muoth."
   "Why?"
   "You like to treat all people as you do women. It does not work with friends and that is why they leave you. You are an egoist."
   "Thank goodness I am. What is more, you are too. When that dreadful Lottie poured out her tale of woe to you, you didn't help her in any way. You also didn't make the incident an excuse for converting me, for which I am grateful. The affair gave you a feeling of aversion and you kept away from me."
   "Well, here I am again. You are right, I should have tried to help Lottie, but I don't understand these things. She herself laughed at me and told me I didn't understand anything about love."
   "Well, you keep to friendship. It is also a good sphere. Now we'll study the song; sit down and play the accompaniment. Do you remember how it was with your first one? It looks as if you are gradually becoming famous."
   "Things are improving, but I will never catch up with you."
   "Nonsense, you are a composer, a creator, a little god! What is fame to you? People like me have to be pushy to get anywhere. Singers and tightrope walkers have to do the same as women, take their goods to the market while they are still in good condition. Fame up to the hilt, and money, wine and champagne! Photographs in the newspapers, and bouquets! I tell you, if I became unpopular today, or perhaps had a little inflammation of the lungs, I would be finished tomorrow, and fame and bouquets and all the rest would come to an abrupt end."
   "Oh, don't worry about that until it happens."
   "Do you know, I'm very curious about growing old. Youth is a real swindle -- a swindle of the press and textbooks. 'The most wonderful time of one's life!' Old people always seem much more contented to me. Youth is the most difficult time of life. For example, suicide rarely occurs among old people."
   I began to play the piano and he turned his attention to the song. He quickly learned the melody and gave me an appreciative nudge with his elbow at a place where it returned significantly from a minor to a major key.
   When I arrived home in the evening, I found, as I had feared, an envelope from Mr. Imthor containing a short, friendly note and a more than substantial fee. I sent the money back and enclosed a note saying I was quite comfortably off and preferred to be allowed to visit his house as a friend. When I saw him again, he invited me to come and visit him again soon and said: "I thought you would feel like that about it. Gertrude said I should not send you anything, but I thought I would just the same."
   From that time I was a frequent guest at Imthor's house. I played the first-violin part at many concerts there. I brought new music with me, my own and other people's, and most of my shorter works were first performed there.
   One afternoon in spring I found Gertrude at home alone. It was raining, and as I had slipped on the front step on leaving, she would not let me go immediately. We discussed music, and then it happened almost unintentionally that I began to talk to her confidentially, in particular about the grim period I had gone through, during which I had composed my first songs. Then I felt embarrassed and did not know whether I had been wise in making this confession to the girl. Gertrude said to me almost timorously: "I have something to confess which I hope you will not take amiss. I have made copies of two of your songs and learned them."
   "Do you sing?" I exclaimed with surprise. At the same time I remembered with amusement the incident of my first youthful love, and how it ended when I heard the girl sing so badly.
   Gertrude smiled and nodded: "Oh yes, I sing, although only for one or two friends and for my own pleasure. I will sing your songs if you will accompany me on the piano."
   We went to the piano and she handed me the music, which she had copied in her neat, feminine hand. I began the accompaniment softly, so that I could listen to her. She sang one song, then another, and I listened and heard my music changed and transformed. She sang in a high, pure voice, and it was the sweetest thing I had ever heard in my life. Her voice went through me like the south wind across a snow-covered valley, and every note made my heart feel lighter. Although I felt happy and almost as if floating on air, I had to control myself, for there were tears in my eyes which nearly obliterated the music.
   I thought I had known what love was, and had felt wise in my knowledge. I had looked at the world with new eyes and felt a closer kinship toward all people. Now it was different; now there was no longer light, solace and pleasure, but storm and flame. My heart now exulted, beat more quickly and did not want to know anything more about life; it just wanted to consume itself in its own flame. If anyone had now asked me what love was, I should have been able to describe it, and it would have sounded ardent and tumultuous.
   In the meantime, I could hear Gertrude's voice rising. It seemed to call me and wish to give me pleasure, and yet it soared to remote heights, inaccessible and almost alien to me. I now understood how things were with me. She could sing, be friendly, and think well of me, but all this was not what I wanted. If she could not be mine alone, completely and forever, then I lived in vain, and everything that was good and fine and genuine in me had no meaning.
   I then felt her hand on my shoulder. I was startled, turned round and looked at her. Her bright eyes were serious, and only after a short time, as I continued to gaze at her, did she smile sweetly and blush.
   I could only say thank you. She did not know what was the matter with me. She realized only that I was deeply affected and tactfully picked up the threads of our previous pleasant, easy-flowing conversation. I left shortly afterward.
   I went home and did not know whether it was still raining. I walked through the streets leaning on my stick, and yet I did not really walk and the streets seemed unreal. I traveled on stormy clouds across a changing, darkened sky. I talked to the storm and was myself the storm, and coming from above me in the remote distance I thought I heard something. It was a woman's high, sweet voice and it seemed quite immune from human thoughts and emotions, and yet at the same time it seemed to have all the wild sweetness of passion in its essence.
   That evening I sat in my room without a light. As I could not endure it any longer -- it was already late -- I went to Muoth's house. When I found his windows in darkness, I turned back. I walked about for a long time in the night, and finally found myself, wearily coming back to earth, outside the Imthors' garden. The old trees rustled solemnly around the concealed house from which no sound or light penetrated, and pale stars emerged here and there among the clouds. I waited several days before I ventured to go and see Gertrude again. During this time I received a letter from the poet whose poems I had set to music. We had communicated with each other for two years and I occasionally received interesting letters from him. I sent him my music and he sent me his poems. He now wrote:

Dear Sir,
   I have not written to you for some time. I have been very busy. Ever since I have become familiar with your music, I have had a text in mind for you, but it would not form itself. Now I have it and it is almost ready. It is a libretto for an opera, and you must compose the music for it. I gather you are not a particularly happy person; that is revealed in your music. I will not speak about myself, but this text is just for you. As there is nothing else to make us rejoice, let us present something good to the public, something which will make it clear, even to those who are thick-skinned, that life is not lived on the surface alone. As we do not really know ourselves where to begin, it worries us to be aware of the wasted powers of others.
   HANS H.

   It fell like a spark in gunpowder. I wrote for the libretto and was so impatient that I tore up my letter and sent a telegram. The manuscript arrived a week later. It was a passionate love story written in verse. There were still gaps in it, but it was sufficient for me for the time being. I read it and went about with the verses going through my head. I sang them and tried music to them on the violin day and night. Shortly afterwards I went to see Gertrude.
   "You must help me," I cried. "I am composing an opera. Here are three arias suitable for your voice. Will you have a look at them and sing them for me sometime?"
   She seemed very pleased, asked me to tell her about it, glanced at the music and promised to learn the arias soon. Then followed a wonderful, fruitful period; intoxicated with love and music, I was incapable of thinking of anything else, and Gertrude was the only one who knew my secret about the opera. I took the music to her and she learned it and sang it. I consulted her about it, played everything to her, and she shared my enthusiasm, studied and sang, advised and helped me, and enjoyed the secret and the growing work that belonged to us both. There was no point or suggestion which she did not immediately understand and assimilate. Later she began to help me with copying and rewriting music in her neat hand. I had taken sick leave from the theater.
   No feeling of embarrassment arose between Gertrude and me. We were swept along by the same current and worked for the same end. It was for her, as it was for me, the blossoming of maturing powers, a period of happiness and magic in which my passions worked unseen. She did not distinguish between me and my work. She found pleasure in us both and belonged to us both. For me too love and work, music and life, were no longer separable. Sometimes I looked at the lovely girl with astonishment and admiration, and she would return my glance, and whenever I came or departed, she pressed my hand more warmly and firmly than I ventured to press hers. And whenever I walked through the garden and entered the old house during those mild spring days, I did not know whether it was my work or my love which impelled and exalted me.
   Times like those do not last long. This one was approaching the end, and the flame within me steadily flared up into many confused desires. I sat at her piano and she sang the last act of my opera, the soprano part of which was completed. She sang beautifully, and while her voice soared, I reflected upon the glorious days that I felt were already changing, and knew that inevitably different and more clouded days were on the way. Then she smiled at me and leaned toward me in connection with the music. She noticed the sad expression on my face and looked at me questioningly. I did not say anything. I stood up, held her face gently in both hands, kissed her on the forehead and on the mouth and then sat down again. She permitted all this quietly and almost solemnly, without surprise or annoyance, and when she saw tears in my eyes, she gently stroked my hair, forehead and shoulder with her soft, smooth hand.
   Then I began to play the piano and she sang again, and the kiss and that wonderful hour remained unmentioned, though unforgotten, as our final secret.
   The other secret could not remain between us much longer; the opera now required other people and assistants. The first one must be Muoth, as I had thought of him for the principal character, whose impetuosity and violent emotions could well be interpreted with Muoth's voice and personality. I delayed doing anything for a short time. My work was still a bond between Gertrude and me. It belonged to us both and brought us both pleasures and cares. It was like a garden unknown to anyone else, or a ship on which we two alone crossed a great ocean.
   She asked me about it herself when she felt and saw that she could not help me further.
   "Who will sing the principal part?" she asked.
   "Heinrich Muoth."
   She seemed surprised. "Oh," she said, "are you serious? I don't like him."
   "He is a friend of mine, Miss Gertrude, and he would be suitable for the part."
   "Oh!"
   A stranger had already come between us.