"Or else you must make up your mind to be satisfied with an honest farmer's daughter—I mean the bailiffs Kathrine. Franzl is right, she would jump over hedge and ditch after you; she would be sparing and frugal, and you would have fine healthy children—seven sons strong enough to uproot the old firs in the wood of the Landlord of the 'Lion;' and you would become a man of substance too; but you must not in that case expect your wife to understand anything of your vocation, or of the many ideas you have in your head. You have the choice, but choose you must. When you have made up your mind, let me know, and send me to the family. I feel quite proud already at the thoughts of my dignity as matchmaker; I will even put on a white neckcloth for the occasion if necessary. Can I give you a more striking proof of my wish to serve you?"
Lenz still continued to look at himself in the glass. Pilgrim had excluded Annele from the possibility of his choice. After a long pause Lenz said, "I should like to be in a large town just for once; I should so enjoy hearing music played by a whole orchestra, and to hear the same piece played five or six times over, then I feel I could arrange it quite differently: it always seems to me as if there were certain tones wanting, that I can never produce. They may praise me as much as they like, but I can tell you that the pieces I set have not the right sound, very far from it; I know it is so, and yet I can't alter the tone. There is something squeaking, and dry, and hard, in the instrument, like a dumb man who has been taught to speak; it is something like our speech, but yet it is different. If I could only succeed in getting this tone. I know what it should be—I hear it, but I can't produce it."
"Yes, yes, I feel just the same; I imagine that there is a style of drawing and colour that I must aim at. I am always in hopes that I shall seize the idea, and hold it fast. But I shall die in obscurity without ever having succeeded. This is doomed to be our fate—both yours and mine. Come, let us finish our wine and go home."
They went along together in a cheerful mood, this fine autumnal evening, singing all kinds of melodies together, and when they were tired of singing they whistled duets. Pilgrim took leave of Lenz at his own house. Lenz, however, seeing lights in the "Lion," and hearing the sound of loud voices, went in.
"I am so glad that you have come again to see us," said Annele, stretching out her hand to him. "I could not help thinking that you must feel it very solitary at home, now that your work is gone; almost as bad as the day you lost your poor mother."
"Oh! not quite so bad as that, though something of the same kind; but, Annele, people may praise my musical clock as much as they like, but I know it should be very different. I don't wish to praise myself, but this I will say, that I understand how to listen to music, and really to understand that, is no small merit."
Annele looked at him in surprise, and thought: "To know how to listen to music; what knowledge does that require? any one can do that who has ears, if they do not put cotton into them." She, however, had a suspicion that Lenz meant something more; she knew well, from long experience, that people often begin with some very opposite subject when they have something to communicate which they are full of; she therefore cast a sympathising glance at Lenz, saying, "Yes, indeed; it is no small merit."
"You understand then what I mean?" cried Lenz with enthusiasm.
"Yes; but I don't exactly know how to express it."
"That is precisely my case. When I come to this point I get puzzled. I never learned the science of music, I can neither play on the violin nor on the piano; but when I hear the notes, I seem to know at once what the composer meant. I cannot express music, but I can listen to it."