"You go too far," said the Schoolmaster, reprovingly; "you cling with your whole heart to everything—you have always some fresh object to devote yourself to! You know I don't care much for musical clocks." Franzl looked very angry, but the young man continued:—"They are for children and childish people. I don't even like the piano, because its tones are already made. Music on the piano is little better than whistling a song; and as for your clocks and barrel organs, they have tongues and lungs but no hearts."
Franzl bolted out of the room, very cross. "God be praised, that there are still Kunslingers in the world, who understand things better!" She heard them in the next room singing that touching song, "To-morrow must I leave thee!" Lenz sang a clear, though not a very full, tenor; and the Schoolmaster could not venture to put forth the energies of his bass voice, for fear of drowning Lenz's sweeter tones. Franzl interrupted the song by calling out through the open door—"Here come the people from the Doctor's."
The Schoolmaster, as master of the ceremonies, went to meet them at the door.
The Doctor came in, accompanied by his wife and his three daughters, and immediately said, in his unceremonious way, which had nothing imperious, but yet admitted of no denial, that Lenz was not to lose his working hours by talking, but merely set the clock going. He did so, and they were all evidently delighted. When the first piece was finished, Lenz cast down his eyes on hearing so much praise, and yet it was all said in a way which did not require deductions to be made for politeness.
"Grandmamma desires to be remembered to you," said the eldest daughter; and Bertha exclaimed—"Fancy a clockcase having so many voices!"
"I suppose you would like to have as many?" said her father, laughing.
The eldest, however, said to Lenz, while her brown eyes sparkled—"You seem to have a most superior talent for music."
"If my worthy father," said Lenz, "had bought me a violin when I was a child, so that I might have learned to play on it, I do think that I might have been a good musician in time, and perhaps done something."
"You have done something," said the stout Doctor, laying his large hand kindly on Lenz's shoulder.
The Schoolmaster, who was very proud of understanding the internal mechanism of the instrument, saved Lenz the trouble of explaining it to the ladies; and, indeed, Lenz could not so well have illustrated how the delicate shades of crescendo and decrescendo were produced, and what a quick ear it requires to produce a full tone without depriving the instrument of sweetness, and to blend the two properly. He repeatedly asserted that a sense of music and mechanical skill must be united to complete such a work; and especially pointed out how admirably Lenz had succeeded in the long drawn mournful tones. Nothing could be more difficult than to produce feeling and harmony, while working by the metronome; for a musician, playing as his sense of music dictates, never plays with a metronome, and is not therefore checked in his musical expression. He was on the point of showing how waltzes were constructed and nailed close together, and that the outside was made of soft alder wood, while in the inside there were various kinds of wood, the grain of which was in different directions, when his explanation was interrupted by hearing Franzl welcoming some visitors outside, with more than usual eagerness. Lenz went out: it was the Landlord of the "Lion," with his wife and Annele. The landlord offered him his hand, and nodded with the consciousness that there was no more to be said, when so dignified a person did a young man the honour to survey for a quarter of an hour, a work on which he had bestowed years of industry.