Daniel attended the _gymnasium_ at Ansbach. He was to complete the
course of studies that would entitle him to the reduction of his
military service to one year and then enter business. This had been
agreed upon between Jason Philip and Marian.
The boy's zeal for study was small. His teachers shook their heads.
Their considerable experience of the world had never yet offered them a
being so constituted. He listened more eagerly to the lowing of a herd
of cows and to the twittering of the sparrows than to the best founded
principles of grammatical science. Some of them thought him dull, others
malicious. He passed from class to class with difficulty and solely by
virtue of a marvellous faculty of guessing. At especially critical
moments he was saved through the help and advocacy of the music-master
Spindler.
The families who gave the poor student his meals complained of his bad
manners. The wife of Judge Hahn forbade him the house on account of his
boorish answers. "Beggars must not be choosers," she had called out
after him.
Spindler was a man who asserted quite correctly that he had been meant
for better things than wearing himself out in a provincial town. His
white locks framed a face ennobled by the melancholy that speaks of lost
ideals and illusions.
One summer morning Spindler had risen with the sun and gone for a long
walk in the country. When he reached the first barn of the village of
Dautenwinden he saw a company of strolling musicians, who had played
dance music the evening before and far into the night, and who were now
shaking from their hair and garments the straw and chaff amid which they
had slept. Above them, under the open gable of the barn, Daniel Nothafft
was lying in the straw. With an absorbed and devout expression he was
seeking to elicit a melody from a flute which one of the musicians had
loaned him.
Spindler stood still and looked up. The musicians laughed, but he did
not share in their merriment. A long while passed before the unskilful
player of the flute became aware of his teacher. Then he climbed down
and tried to steal away with a shy greeting. Spindler stopped him. They
walked on together, and Daniel confessed that he had not been able to
tear himself away from the musicians since the preceding afternoon. The
lad of fourteen was not able to express his feeling; but it seemed to
him as though a higher power had forced him to breathe the same air at
least with those who made music.
From that day on and for three years Daniel visited Spindler twice a
week, and was most thoroughly grounded in counterpoint and harmony. The
hours thus spent were both consecrated and winged. Spindler found a
peculiar happiness in nourishing a passion whose development struck him
as a reward for his many years of toneless isolation. And though the
desperateness of this passion, though the rebelliousness and aimless
wildness which streamed to him not only from the character of his pupil
but also from that pupil's first attempts at composition, gave him cause
for anxiety, yet he hoped always to soothe the boy by pointing to the
high and serene models and masters of his art.
And so the time came in which Daniel was to earn his own bread.