Now it had arisen, and its soul—its consequence—had arisen with it; it was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and filled as the world is full.
Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of machinery.
IV
Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.
Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on approval; he was placed on the black list.
He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.
But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent; in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought his stock and furnishings at brokers’ prices, and the firm of Jason Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.
In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock together.
Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his convictions, with the result that the Masons would have none of him.
For some time he found actual difficulty in earning his daily bread. He had resigned his position with the Prudentia Insurance Company long ago. Ever since a certain interpellation in the Reichstag and a long lawsuit in which the Prudentia became involved, and which was decided in favour of its opponents, the standing of the company had suffered irreparably.