I
Late in the evening Benda came. He had been tolerably well informed of
everything that had taken place. In the hall he met Agnes. Though
generally quite monosyllabic, Agnes was now inclined to be extremely
communicative, but she could merely confirm what he had already heard.
She went up to the top floor with him, and he stood there for a long
while looking at the burnt rooms. There were two firemen on guard duty.
"All of his music has been burnt up," said Agnes. Benda thought he would
hardly be able to talk with his old friend again after this tragedy. But
he at once felt ashamed of his timidity, and went down to see him.
It was again quiet throughout the entire house.
Daniel had lighted a candle in the living room. Finding it too dark with
only one candle, he lighted another.
He paced back and forth. The room seemed too small for him: he opened
the door leading into Dorothea's room, and walked back and forth through
it too. On entering the dark room, his lips would move; he would murmur
something. When he returned to the lighted room, he would stand for a
second or two and stare at the candles.
His features seemed to show traces of human suffering such as no man had
borne before; it could hardly have been greater. He did not seem to
notice Benda when he came in.
"Everything gone? Everything destroyed?" asked Benda, after he had
watched Daniel walk back and forth for nearly a quarter of an hour.
"One grave after the other," murmured Daniel, in a voice that no longer
seemed to be his own. He raised his head as if surprised at the sound of
what he himself had said. He felt that a stranger had come into the room
without letting himself be heard.
"And the last work, the great work of which you told me, the fruit of so
many years, has it also been destroyed?" asked Benda.
"Everything," replied Daniel distractedly, "everything I have created
in the way of music from the time I first had reason to believe in
myself. The sonatas, the songs, the quartette, the psalm, the
'Harzreise,' 'Wanderers Sturmlied,' and the symphony, everything down to
the last page and the last note."
Yes, there was a stranger there; you could hear him laughing quietly to
himself. "Why do you laugh?" asked Daniel sternly, and adjusted his
glasses.