"Humor, humor indeed!" repeated Mr. Lesa savagely. "When a field is destroyed by hail, one may hope the next year will bring a crop. But when one's only son goes from bad to worse, where is there any hope?"
"So far as I can judge, you have a well-trained and honest son, Mr. Lesa," said Mr. Delrick calmly.
"There is nothing to complain about in that respect," replied the father. "But what's to be done when a father tries to see that all his son has to do is to enjoy his good fortune, and the boy does not see it or know what is best for him, and doesn't wish to learn anything but childish stuff? But I will not give up until Vinzi returns to his senses, even if I have to send him across the ocean. However, there is a place nearer where his childishness will find no support, that's a sure thing."
"You mean your son's love of music and his wish to devote himself to it? That may be something quite different from childishness; it may be something very serious on his part."
"Something very serious!" repeated the roused father. "It is play, just like anything else. I would have nothing against it if the boy amused himself singing merry songs in the leisure of the evening, but that's not his way. He sits and gazes ahead without seeing or hearing anything; he thinks only about his piping. Once I found a whole pile of pipes he had carved, stowed away in the haymow—children's toys on which he put all his thought!"
"But that shows how earnest he is in his longing for music," replied Mr. Delrick. "If it were only play like any other game, he would have dropped it for something else long since, after the way of boys. His mind would not cling so to one thing. And his perseverance in trying to make each instrument better so it would meet his requirements shows how great his zeal is. I am convinced this is no play with him but has become his serious work."
"Work! Do you call such a thing work?" and in his anger Vinzenz Lesa puffed unusually thick clouds out of his pipe.
"Certainly music can be work, and where there is genius, it can become a high calling," continued Mr. Delrick. "I think, Mr. Lesa, you should let your son learn an instrument. His desire for it is so intense, he would undertake any kind of work with pleasure in order to fulfil his wish."
Vinzenz Lesa laid his pipe aside, and that with him was a sign of greatest agitation.
"Sir," he said, restraining his anger with difficulty, "the only son of Vinzenz Lesa shall not be a musician. He has a farm on which he can live like a gentleman. If he wants to blow a trumpet later on as much as he wants to now, he can afford to do so. But it is quite a different matter to lead a boy away from a profitable and proper calling and train him to play instruments and write music. Vinzi has no common sense, for he tells me what you have just said: that he wants to take up music as his occupation. No, sir, the son of Vinzenz Lesa shall never become a wandering minstrel!"