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Updated: June 22, 2025
Herr Carovius, whose mouth was just then hanging on his beer glass, laughed so heartily that the beer went down his Sunday throat; he was seized with a coughing spell. Herr Korn slapped him on the back. It was a shame that such a bad actor as Nothafft had to be endured in the midst of people who lived peaceful and law-abiding lives.
One Sunday afternoon—it chanced to be her eighteenth birthday—a junior agent of Jason Philip, a fellow by the name of Pfefferkorn, came to the house, and in the course of the conversation remarked rather casually that the elder of the Jordan sisters was engaged to the musician Nothafft, that the engagement had been kept secret for a while, but that the wedding was to take place in the immediate future.
He shook his head: “No, I can’t take your hand; another one of those shudders will run through you if I do. Farewell, Eleanore.” “And you too, Eberhard, farewell!” Eberhard started down the hill. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and said: “Just one thing more. That musician—Nothafft is his name, isn’t it?—is engaged to your sister, isn’t he?”
She was again in complete control of herself. The court had in the meanwhile examined the silent woman with stern scrutiny: “Where is Daniel Nothafft at present?” asked Fräulein Saloma. “I do not know,” replied Eleanore, “he hasn’t written for over three weeks.”
Among those present at the wedding in the Ægydius Church were Judge and Frau Rübsam, Councillor Bock, Impresario Dörmaul, Philippina Schimmelweis, Marian Nothafft, and Inspector Jordan. On the very last bench sat Herr Carovius; underneath one of the pillars, unseen by most of the people in the church, stood Baron Eberhard von Auffenberg.
In the dust of one of the drawers she found, sure enough, a bundle of papers, and among them the receipt which Gottfried Nothafft had sent back to Jason Philip ten years before. She read in the indistinct light the confidential words of the deceased. She saw that Jason Philip had received three thousand taler. After she had read this, she crumpled up the paper.
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.
The man who is going to lead me to the altar is called Daniel Nothafft. He loves me perhaps even more than I deserve, and I will make him a good wife. This is my unalterable decision, and you yourself will certainly come to see that it is nobler to obey the impulses of one’s own heart than to allow one’s self to be led on and blinded by material considerations. Your loving daughter, Dorothea.”
In Daniel’s study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son.
He was squaring accounts with the woman he had been unable to bring before his Neronic tribunal in bodily form; and all the pent-up hatred in his heart for the musician Nothafft he was emptying into the music of another man.
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