He laughed that way at the intrigues that were being forged against him
by his bitterest enemy, Fraeulein Varini, and which resulted in his
meeting with distrust and opposition in everything he undertook at the
City Theatre.
He laughed that way at the anonymous letters, filled with insulting
remarks, which were being sent him by his fellow citizens, and which he
read with naive curiosity merely to see how far human nastiness and
bestial hate could go.
He laughed that way when he received the letter from Baroness von
Auffenberg informing him that she was forced to discontinue her lessons
and recitals. She said that her constitution had been weakened, and that
she was going to close her town house and spend the winter at her
country place at Hersbruck. Daniel heard however that she spent a great
deal of her time in town, and that she had arranged for an elaborate
cycle of _musicales_, a thing she had never dared to do under his
administration. Andreas Doederlein had been engaged as her musical
adviser: now she could rave and go into ecstasies and hypnotise her
impotent soul in the mephitic air of artificial aroma just as much as
she pleased.
And he laughed that way at the weekly attacks upon him and his art that
appeared in the _Fraenkischer Herold_, copies of which were delivered at
his front door with the regularity of the sun. The attacks consisted of
sly, caustic sneers, secrets that had been ferreted out with dog-like
keenness, gigantic broadsides based on hearsay evidence, and perfidious
suspicions lodged against Daniel Nothafft, the artist, and Daniel
Nothafft, the man.
The articles never failed to mention the Goose Man. Daniel asked to have
the allusion explained. The Goose Man was elevated to the rank and
dignity of an original humourist. "What is the latest concerning the
Goose Man?" became a standing head-line. Or the reader's eye would fall
on the following notice: "The Goose Man is again attracting the
attention of all friends of music. He has had the ingenious audacity to
make the opera 'Stradella' more enjoyable by the interpolation of a
funeral march of his own make. The ever-submissive domestic birds which
he carries under his arms have rewarded him for his efforts in this
connection by the cackling of their abundant and affectionate
gratitude."
The birthplace of these inimitable achievements in the field of
journalistic wit was the reserved table at the Crocodile. If ever in the
history of the world men have laughed real honest tears it was at the
writing of such news bearing on the life and conduct of the Goose Man.
The editor-in-chief, Weibezahl, was the recording secretary at these
intellectual Olympiads, and Herr Carovius was the protagonist. He had
access to reliable sources, as newspaper men say, and every evening he
surprised the round table with new delicacies for Weibezahl's columns.
Daniel was ignorant of what was going on. But the Goose Man, the
expression as well as the figure, became interwoven with his thoughts,
and acquired, somehow and somewhere in the course of time, a
transfigured meaning.