This was but the beginning of endless nights of toil pursued whilst the house lay hushed in slumber. For six months, whenever the moon sent her friendly rays through his casement, did Sebastian prosecute his task, until the night arrived when he found himself at the last page. The fear of discovery had ceased to haunt him as time went on, and now he could only reflect with joy at the accomplishment of his long task, and creep into bed utterly unmindful of everything else—even of the precaution of putting his work out of sight!
'By the light of the moon he began his task.'[ToList]
Alas, for poor Sebastian! he was to pay dearly for this act of forgetfulness. As he lay sleeping—his dreams filled with the realization of the fruits of his untiring industry—the books lying open on the table where he had left them, and the moonbeams falling gently on the page whereon his fingers had traced those last passages but a few minutes before, the door opened, and a figure stole softly into the room. It was Christoph himself, who, fancying he heard sounds proceeding from Sebastian's chamber, had come to seek the cause. His glance fell upon the open books. With a stride he was at the table, bending over them. The next moment he raised his head and darted an angry glance at the child's sleeping figure. But Sebastian only smiled, and murmured something in his sleep, and the elder brother turned once more to examine the writing. As he scanned the pages which witnessed Sebastian's heart-work throughout those long months his face hardened. There was no pity in his breast for the child who had thus displayed his devotion to the art which he himself must have loved after his own fashion—no sympathy for one who had spent so many hours snatched from sleep in acquiring that which he, Christoph, had had it in his power to bestow as a free gift—only anger and jealousy at the thought that he had been outwitted by his little brother. With his mouth curved into a cruel smile, Christoph seized the manuscript book and the copy, and, taking them from the room, hid them away in a new place where Sebastian could not possibly find them.
'Christoph seized the manuscript book and the copy.'[ToList]
It was well for Sebastian that his love of music enabled him to overcome the bitter disappointment occasioned by his brother's cruelty, and so to continue the struggle for knowledge in the face of such terrible odds. But there was one thing which served to comfort him in his hour of trial, and of which Christoph was powerless to rob him, and that was the memory of the beautiful music he had copied with such infinite pains. This in itself must have been a resource of priceless value to him in helping him to bear with his brother's oppression.
A new life opened for Sebastian when, at the age of fifteen, he quitted his brother's roof and, with a school-fellow from Ohrdruff, entered the Michael Gymnasium, or Latin School, attached to the Church of St. Michael at Lüneburg. The discovery that he possessed a beautiful soprano voice gave him a place at once amongst those scholars who were selected to sing the principal parts in the Church services in return for a free education. Lüneburg possessed two schools, attached respectively to the Churches of St. Michael and St. John, and the rivalry between the two was so keen that when, as was the custom during the winter months, the scholars were sent out to sing in the streets in order to collect money for their support, the respective routes to be traversed had to be carefully marked out so as to prevent a collision.