Between the fuchsias in the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room: “Come out,” it chirped, “come out.” And Daniel went.
He had an engagement with M. Rivière at the café by the market place. Since he no longer saw anything of Eleanore, he wanted to find out how her plans for going to Paris were getting along.
The Frenchman told of the progress he was making in his Caspar Hauser research. In his broken German he told of the murder of body and soul that had been committed in the case of the foundling: “He was a mortal man comme une étoile,” he said. “The bourgeoisie crushed him. The bourgeoisie is the racine of all evil.”
Daniel never mentioned Eleanore’s name. He tried to satisfy himself by the fact that she kept out of his sight. He bit his lips together, and said: I will. But a stronger power in him said, No, you won’t. And this stronger power became a beggar. It went around saying, Give me, please, give me!
The billiard balls rattled. A gentleman in a red velvet vest had a quarrel with a shabby looking fellow who had been reading Fliegende Blätter for the last two hours; he would begin over and over again at the very beginning, and break out into convulsions of laughter every time he came to his favourite jokes.
Daniel was silent; he insisted somehow on remaining silent. M. Rivière wished, for this reason, to hear something about the “Harzreise.” By way of starting a discussion he remarked quite timidly that sans musique la vie est insupportable, “There is something about music that reminds one of insanity,” he remarked. He said there were nights when he would open a volume of Schubert’s or Brahms’s songs, leaf through them, read the notes, and hum the melodies simply in order to escape the despair which the conduct of the people about him was emptying into his heart. “Moi, I ought to be, how do you say? stoic; mais I am not. In me there is trop de musique, et c’est le contraire.”
Daniel looked at him in astonishment. “Come with me,” he said suddenly, got up, and took him by the arm.
They met Eleanore in the hall. She had been up in the new flat with the whitewasher. Her father was to move in the following day.
“Why was all this done so quickly?” asked Daniel, full of a vague happiness that drew special nourishment from the fact that Eleanore was plainly excited.
“Mere chance,” she said, and carefully avoided looking at him. “A captain who is being transferred here from Ratisbon is moving in our place. It is a pity to leave the good old rooms. The second-hand dealer is going to get a deal of our stuff; there is no room for it up there in those two cubby holes. How is Gertrude? May I go up and see her for a minute or two?”