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After all the other people had gone, Daniel, Benda, Wurzelmann, and Eleanore came along. Daniel’s storm cape fluttered in the wind; his hat was drawn down over his eyes. Herr Carovius stepped up before him. “A heroic deed, my dear Nothafft,” he miauled. “I could embrace you. From this time on you can count me among your friends. Now stand still, you human being transformed into a hurricane.
Quickly had got into a fight, and the lady had scratched a huge piece of skin from the singer’s nose. If these musical strollers, as acting-director Wurzelmann called the company, nevertheless made some money, it was due to the superhuman efforts of Daniel.
Familiar as she was with Gertrude’s disposition, she thought that it was simply a passing attack of some kind, and regained her composure. Daniel was standing at the door, talking to Benda and Wurzelmann.
He said his name was Wurzelmann and that he was a musician himself; that he had attended the Vienna Conservatory, where his teacher had given him a letter of recommendation to Alexander Dörmaul. He also told Benda that Dörmaul was planning to form an opera company that would visit the smaller cities of the provinces, and that he was to be the Kapellmeister.
It turned out that Wurzelmann had told the truth. A fortnight later Daniel was informed that the Orchestral Union had decided to perform his work in February. In order to provide its hearers with a more elaborate picture of his creative ability, the Union asked him for a second work. His compositions were perfect; others needed revision.
Not one of the chorus stayed too long in the café; and since Wurzelmann directed, and the orchestra did not have to feel the burning, basilisk eye of Kapellmeister Nothafft resting on it and floating over it, it played with more precision and produced a more pleasing feast for the ears than ordinarily.
Wurzelmann boasted of having won his way to the seats of the mighty. He had the cordial approval of such professors of music as Wackerbarth and Herold. His masterpiece of diplomacy lay in the fact that he had secured Andreas Döderlein as director of the orchestra. His store of suggestions was inexhaustible, his plans without number.
If Daniel proved that the new was not new after all, that the trouble lay in the fact that the deranged and shattered souls of the present century had lost the power to assimilate unbroken lines in their complete purity, Wurzelmann at once became an advocate of modern freedom, insisting that each individual should be allowed to do all that his innate talent enabled him to vindicate.
Dörmaul was not stingy with his praise. “Bravo Wurzelmann,” he cried, “one more short year of hard work, and I’ll get you a position in the Royal Opera House.” “Nothafft will likewise rise to fame and office,” he said, “although I was so stupid as to publish his music, and now all this waste paper is lying in my shop like a pound of brick cheese in a sick stomach.”
Daniel hated red-headed people, particularly when they had inflamed eyes and slobbered when they spoke. “He is an unappetising fellow, your Wurzelmann,” he said to Benda, “and it is embarrassing to me to be indebted to him. He imagines he flatters me when he speaks contemptibly of himself. What he deserves is a kick or two.” Benda was silent.
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