Spindler journeyed to Eschenbach to confer with Marian Nothafft.
The woman did not understand him. She felt tempted to laugh.
Music had meant in her life the droning of a hurdy-gurdy, the singing
of a club of men, the marching of a military band. Was her boy to wander
from door to door and fiddle for pennies? Spindler seemed a mere madman
to her. She pressed her hands together, and looked at him as at a man
who was wasting trivial words on a tragic disaster. The music-master
realised that his influence was as narrow as his world, and was forced
to leave without accomplishing anything.
Marian wrote a letter to Jason Philip Schimmelweis.
One could almost see Jason Philip worrying his reddish brown beard with
his nimble fingers and the scornful twinkling of his eyes; one could
almost hear the sharp, northern inflection of his speech when his answer
to Daniel arrived: "I expected nothing else of you than that it would be
your dearest wish to be a wastrel. My dear boy, either you buckle under
and make up your mind to become a decent member of society, or I leave
you both to your own devices. There is no living in selling herrings and
pepper, and so you will kindly imagine for yourself the fate of your
mother, especially if a parasite like yourself clings to her."
Daniel tore up the letter into innumerable bits and let them flutter out
into the wind. His mother wept.
Then he went out into the forest, wandered about till nightfall, and
slept in the hollow of a tree.