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Masked boys and girls paraded the streets, making merry wherever they went. As Daniel was passing through The Füll he was startled: the windows in the Benda house were lighted. He suddenly recalled that Herr Seelenfromm had told him that Frau Benda had returned from Worms some time ago, and was living with her niece; she had become totally blind. He went up the steps and rang the bell.
When Herr Seelenfromm and M. Rivière came in of a Sunday evening, Daniel would reach for a volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann or Clemens Brentano, and read from them until he was hoarse. He tried in this way to find peace in a strange world; for he did not wish to weep at the sight of human beings who seemed perfectly at ease.
“Oi, oi, we’re living on the fat of the land, I say,” Philippina replied, stretching her mouth from ear to ear. “Chicken every day, cake too, wine always on hand, and one guest merely opens the door on another.” “Nothafft must have made a pile of money,” remarked Herr Seelenfromm in amazement. “Yes, he must. Nobody works at our house. The wife’s pocket-book at least is always crammed.”
She would wrap it up, put it in her pocket, and give it the next day to a schoolmate from whose note book she had copied her sums in subtraction. Herr Seelenfromm stopped Philippina on the street, and said to her: “Well, how are you getting along? How is the young wife making out?”
Once Daniel came in just as such an assemblage was in the sick room. He looked first at one, then at another, threw back his head, and left without saying a word. Herr Seelenfromm and M. Rivière were likewise not frightened by the distance; they called. Eleanore met them in the hall, and got rid of them by the usual method.
It was growing dark; she reached the apothecary shop of Herr Pflaum, and looked in through the glass door. Herr Seelenfromm was standing at the counter, mixing some medicine in a mortar. She went in and asked him whether he could not give her a narcotic.
He turned his frightened face to one side, and came very nearly falling over the heaped-up earth by the grave. With regard to Daniel’s conduct, Pflaum, the apothecary, had this to say: “I should have expected more grief and sorrow from him, and not so much sullenness.” “A hard-hearted man, an exceedingly hard-hearted man,” said Herr Seelenfromm in his grief.
He felt that association with congenial men would help him over many a dark hour. But when he set out to look for these men, the city became a desert and a waste place. Herr Seelenfromm came to his house now and then. Daniel could not endure the timid man who admired him so profoundly, and who, in the bottom of his heart, had an equal amount of respect for Gertrude.
He said he could, and asked her what it should be. “One which makes you sleep for a long, long while,” she said, and smiled at him so as to make him inclined to fulfil her request. It was the first smile that had adorned her grief-stricken face for many a day. Herr Seelenfromm was just about to suggest a remedy to her.
He told all about the friction in the conservatory since Döderlein had been in charge, and contended that the world was on the point of turning into a pig-stye. Herr Seelenfromm also came in from time to time, while among other visitors were the architect who had a defect in his speech and Martha Rübsam. Toward the close of the winter Herr Carovius also called.