The Goose Man

_The first chapter, “A Mother Seeks Her Son,” and sections I and II of the second chapter, “Foes, Brothers, a Friend, and a Mask,” were translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. The rest o...

His mother followed him when he went to his little room and pressed her ear to the door, and then entered and saw the candle still lit, and went to his bed and was frightened at...

On the fifth day she did not come home until ten o’clock. Theresa, who had gone to bed, sent her a plate of lentil soup. While she was avidly eating the soup she heard steps in...

“Do you think I am a bandit?” said Jason Philip. “Do you think I want to pocket the money? Don’t you think that I am capable of anything better or higher than that? Or is ambiti...

The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopp...

At times he would take a dark lantern, walk up the stairs slowly, step by step, and listen, listen with the greedy ears of a man who was determined to hear something. There was...

Herr Carovius felt most uneasy. He was not accustomed to hearing things like this. Where he lived people called a spade a spade. He pricked up his ears and made a wry face. “It...

The scientist wished to find the established and formulated law in the musician—a task that could lead only to despair. The friend surveyed the life of his friend; he allowed th...

Daniel was the only one who failed to notice the change that was coming over him. Probably he had accustomed himself to the belief that Benda’s life was orderly and agreeable. T...

Horror, hot and cold, came over her, and filled her with unnamable dismay. Contact with the man had a more gruesome effect on her than anything she had ever even dreamed of. One...

He could not get over the fact that he had heaped up millions, and that Eberhard, so far as it was humanly possible to calculate—and in accordance with the law—would some day fa...

“No, you’re not, Daniel,” cried Eleanore. And when Daniel looked at her in astonishment, she blushed and continued: “You are not going with him; he is going to see some women!”

Benda smiled a gracious smile. “Yes, you die at each fall, and at each come-back you appear a new-made man,” he said. “That is fine. But a Döderlein cannot come back, once his c...

It was to be presumed, however, that widow Nothafft knew the details. The old women, and the young ones too, came on this account more frequently now than ever to her shop. They...

He began to play Schubert’s “Song to Sylvia.” Having finished the impetuous, heart-felt song, he struck up a variation, then a second, a third, and a fourth. The first was melan...

Beside herself with grief, the Baroness made up her mind to tell him, for the first time in her life, of the thousand wrongs that burned within her heart. And she did: “Oh, you...

Certain tones and combinations of tones took on definite shapes in her mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily veiled woman; the middle E resembled a...

To this he made no reply. She waited for him to say something, and when she saw that he did not care to make a reply of any kind, she smiled at him as if in a last attempt to ge...

The second friend he appealed to was his acquaintance of long standing, Judge Rübsam. From him he heard a voluble flow of words dealing with regrets, expressions of disgust, one...

“I have something to say to you,” said Daniel, as he entered the room. His eyes gazed on the walls and at the few cheap, ugly, banal objects that hung on them: a newspaper-holde...

While she was combing her hair, she was tempted to take the scissors and cut it off just to make herself ugly. In the night she went to the window to look for the stars. If it o...

At times he would cast a stealthy glance at Gertrude, who would draw back somewhat as the arm of a thief who feels he is being watched. Eleanore did not seem to be present so fa...

“I cannot, I cannot,” she said, with a sigh of despair. She had only one hope, one ray of hope left, and her whole soul was fixed on that. But she was obliged to act in silence.

After Gertrude had noticed for some time that Daniel was being estranged from his work and that he had lost interest in everything, she decided to have a talk with Eleanore. She...

So that she might not get too far behind with her work—for it meant her daily bread—Eleanore pushed the table up to the window, and despite the poor light, kept on writing. In t...

He sat down in silence on the edge of her bed. Gertrude looked at him in the same tense, anxious way in which she had studied him a few moments earlier. He sank down beside her,...

Marriage had seemed to her like the Holy of Holies. Her union with the man she loved seemed to her to be of equal significance with the union with God. But when she saw that thi...

“Well, hire out. Who cares? It’ll be one mouth less to feed.” “Your daughter is going to hire out,” said Theresa to her husband, when he came home that evening.

After quiet had been restored, Philippina began to rage and rant: “Daniel’s a dunderhead. He could live like a Kaiser if he’d mix with the right people. I know a woman who is lo...

“An angel has made your bed,” interrupted Philippina with a giggle. “I know a fellow,” she went on, her face becoming rather sour, “he’s just the right one. Money? whew! He’s st...

Once he showed Eleanore eighteen variations of the same melody. He had spent the whole night making changes in a single composition. Eleanore’s heart was heavy: she came very ne...

Before her stood a lady and a gentleman. There was something so refined about them that Philippina did not dare raise any objections when they quietly came in and went straight...

Falteringly, and in the affected and finical tone he not infrequently adopted, he told the story of his youth, commenting on the everlasting discord between his father and his m...

She told the story of Eleanore’s death with much satisfaction to herself, and with that delight in the tragic in which she revelled by instinct. “And now,” she said, “old Jordan...

Whatever any of the visitors said went in one of Daniel’s ears and out of the other. It would often happen that there would be a number of people in his presence, and he would s...

The scornful smile died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his forehead. Involuntarily he knee...

Philippina was annoyed at the grudging squints cast at her by the old stay-at-home; her visits became rarer and rarer. She did not feel like opening her heart to Frau Hadebusch,...

In the province, Dorothea Döderlein, fresh from the Bavarian capital, was a phenomenon that attracted general attention. Her conduct seemed, to be sure, a bit liberal, but then...

“What should I have done, Daniel?” she said, calling him by his baptismal name for the first time. She spoke with a felicitous mixture of submissiveness and boldness that touche...

Daniel went to send Philippina to the Golden Posthorn. But Philippina had gone out with Agnes. He saw one of the maids from one of the other apartments standing on the steps, an...

Thus it was brought to light that Daniel was no longer a mysterious and unfathomable individual in her estimation. She had found him out; she had divined him, in her way to be s...

As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him, leave him in peace, his despair increased. “What have you done, Daniel!” a voice within him cried, “what h...

Philippina’s eyes shone with their veteran glitter. She thought for a second or two, and then replied: “Oh, yes, I’ll tell you what you can do. Go down to Frau Hadebusch’s! She’...

Hardly had she closed the door behind her when Philippina sprang like an enraged demon from her bed, clenched her fist, and hissed: “Damned thief and whore! She wanted to rob me...

“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 quar...

Daniel feels that none of them are strangers to him. He sees himself in each of them. He is nearer to them while standing on his elevated position behind the iron railing than h...