“Three of them are. They have engaged the town clerk’s assistant for second violin, and he plays badly enough to set one’s teeth on edge. If my dead brother could hear him, he would jump out of his coffin and drive the bungler out of his house.”
His friend smilingly nodded assent. “He is certainly a slovenly player, but it can’t be helped now.”
“That is true,” sobbed the boy.
A brief pause in the conversation was filled with the tones of the funeral music, during which his friend’s gaze rested thoughtfully and sympathetically upon the countenance of his mournful comrade, and his lips moved as if he were talking to himself. At last he resumed reluctantly, but with manifest cordiality and good-will: “Well, Bastian, what is to be done now that your brother, the organist, is dead?”
“The town will install a new organist, I suppose.”
“Of course, but that is of little consequence; I mean what will become of you?”
“Of me?” replied Sebastian, thoughtfully. “Who can say? But with God’s help I will become a skilful musician, like my good father, and as all the Bachs have been for a hundred years past.”
“You mistake my question,” said his friend. “I mean where will you live now that this house is henceforth to be closed? You are now a poor orphan. Do you expect that any of your relatives will take you in?”
Sebastian shook his head. “No, Erdmann,[4] I do not. Who can do it? My only remaining brother, Johann Jakob, has left the country and gone into business in Sweden. Both my uncles, my father’s brothers, have been dead for some years, and my cousins have trouble enough to get along upon their small chorister’s allowance without being burdened with me. Again—”
“It must be very hard for you, my poor Bastian.”