“Pardon, Friedel, that I left you without light. The time of parting will come, you know, and I was taking a look in anticipation of the time when there will be no one there to look at.”
I bowed. There was a slight smile upon his lips, but I would rather have heard a broken voice and seen a mien less serene.
The second, and only time, up to now, and the events I am coming to, was once when he had been giving Sigmund a music lesson, as we called it—that is to say, Eugen took his violin and played a melody, but incorrectly, and Sigmund told him every time a wrong note was played, or false time kept. Eugen sat, giving a look now and then at the boy, whose small, delicate face was bright with intelligence, whose dark eyes blazed with life and fire, and whose every gesture betrayed spirit, grace, and quick understanding. A child for a father to be proud of. No meanness there; no littleness in the fine, high-bred features; everything that the father’s heart could wish, except perhaps some little want of robustness; one might have desired that the limbs were less exquisitely graceful and delicate—more stout and robust.
As Eugen laid aside his violin, he drew the child toward him, and asked (what I had never heard him ask before):
“What wilt thou be, Sigmund, when thou art a man?”
“Ja, lieber Vater, I will be just like thee.”
“How just like me?”
“I will do what thou dost.”
“So! Thou wilt be a musiker like me and Friedel?”