“I am,” he said to himself, “of the same flesh and blood as that man; in me too there is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I have, to be sure,” he said to himself, “despised women, for they are despicable. But let some woman come forward and show me that she is fit for anything more than to increase by two or three the number of idiots with which the world is already overcrowded, and I will do penance, whole and complete, and then offer her my services as a knight.”
He no longer slept or ate; nor could he do anything that was in any way rational. In a belated sexual outburst, a second puberty, his imagination became inflamed by a picture which he adorned with all the perfections of both soul and body.
He heard that one of Daniel’s works was to be played before invited guests at the home of Baroness von Auffenberg. He wired to Eberhard, and asked him to get him an invitation. The reply was a negative one. In his rage he could have murdered the messenger boy. He then wrote to Daniel, and, boasting of what he had already done for him, begged Daniel to see to it that he was among the guests at the recital. He received a printed card from the Baroness, on which she had expressed the hope that she might be able to greet him on a certain day.
He was in the seventh heaven. He decided to pay Daniel a visit, and to thank him for his kindness.
III
“The only thing to do is to leave the city, to go far, far away from here,” thought Eleanore, on that evening that was so different from any other evening of her life.
While she was combing her hair, she was tempted to take the scissors and cut it off just to make herself ugly. In the night she went to the window to look for the stars. If it only had not happened, if it only were a dream, a voice within her cried.
As soon as it turned grey in the morning, she got up. She hastened through the deserted streets, just as she had done yesterday, out to the suburbs. But everything was different. Tree and bush looked down upon her with stern reproachfulness. The mists hung low; but the hazy grey cold of the early morning was like a bath to her. Later the sun broke through; primroses glistened with gold on the meadow. If it could only have been a dream, she thought in silence.
When she came home, her father had already received the news about the money: it had been paid to Diruf; Daniel had taken it to him.