I was silent. I had put a good face upon the matter and spoken bravely about it. I had told him that I did not believe him guilty—that my regard and respect were as high as ever, and I spoke the truth. Both before and since then he had told me that I had a bump of veneration and one of belief ludicrously out of proportion to the exigencies of the age in which I lived.
Be it so. Despite my cheerful words, and despite the belief I did feel in him, I could not help seeing that he carried himself now as a marked man. The free, open look was gone; a blight had fallen upon him, and he withered under it. There was what the English call a “down” look upon his face, which had not been there formerly, even in those worst days when the parting from Sigmund was immediately before and behind us.
In the days which immediately followed the scene at the concert I noticed how he would set about things with a kind of hurried zeal, then suddenly stop and throw them aside, as if sick of them, and fall to brooding with head sunk upon his breast, and lowering brow; a state and a spectacle which caused me pain and misery not to be described. He would begin sudden conversations with me, starting with some question, as:
“Friedel, do you believe in a future state?”
“I do, and I don’t. I mean to say that I don’t know anything about it.”
“Do you know what my idea of heaven would be?”
“Indeed, I don’t,” said I, feebly endeavoring a feeble joke. “A place where all the fiddles are by Stradivarius and Guanarius, and all the music comes up to Beethoven.”
“No; but a place where there are no mistakes.”
“No mistakes?”
“Ja wohl! Where it would not be possible for a man with fair chances to spoil his whole career by a single mistake. Or, if there were mistakes, I would arrange that the punishment should be in some proportion to them—not a large punishment for a little sin, and vice versâ.”