Well, he was told, a great many things are said about Nothafft, but it is difficult to get at the truth. They appealed to the apothecary Pflaum, on the ground that his assistant knew the musician and might be able to give them some definite information.
Herr Pflaum took on an air as if he knew a great deal but was under obligations not to tell. Yes, yes, he said rather perfunctorily, he had heard that some one had said that Nothafft was running a pretty questionable domestic establishment; that he had a rather unsavoury past; and that there was some talk about his neglecting his wife.
The deuce you say! Why, they were married only a short while ago. Yes, but there was a rumour to the effect that there was a woman in the case. Who could it be? Ahem! Well-ah, it would be a good idea to be cautious about mentioning names. Good Lord, why cautious? Why not straight out with the information any one chanced to be fortunate enough to have? Is it not a question of protecting one’s own wife and daughters?
And so this slanderous babble rattled on. There was something unfathomable in their hatred of the musician. They were just as agreed on this point as they would have been if Daniel had broken open their strong boxes, smashed their windows, and betrayed their honour and dignity to public ridicule.
They did not know what they should do about him. They passed by him as one would pass by a bomb that might or might not explode.
II
When Herr Carovius was alone, he picked up the paper, and read the account of a mine explosion in Silesia. The number of killed satisfied him. The description of the women as they stood at the top of the shaft, wept, wrung their hands, and called out the names of their husbands, filled him with the same agreeable sensation that he experienced when he listened to the melancholy finale of a Chopin nocturne.
But he could not forget the expression on Herr Pflaum’s face when he told how Nothafft was neglecting his wife. It had been the expression that comes out, so to speak, from between the curtains of a sleeping room: something was up, make no mistake, something was going on.
For quite a while Herr Carovius had harboured the suspicion that there was something wrong. Twice he had met Daniel and Eleanore walking along the street in the twilight, talking to each other in a very mysterious way. Things were going on behind Herr Carovius’s back which he could not afford to overlook.