This fruitless adventure had spoiled all my enjoyment of the popular festival.  I wandered through the Augarten in all directions, and finally decided to go home.  As I neared the little gate that leads out of the Augarten into Tabor Street, I suddenly heard the familiar sound of the old violin.  I accelerated my steps, and, behold! there stood the object of my curiosity, playing with all his might, surrounded by several boys who impatiently demanded a waltz from him.  “Play a waltz,” they cried; “a waltz, don’t you hear?” The old man kept on fiddling, apparently paying no attention to them, until his small audience, reviling and mocking him, left him and gathered around an organ-grinder who had taken up his position near by.

“They don’t want to dance,” said the old man sadly, and gathered up his musical outfit.  I had stepped up quite close to him.  “The children do not know any dance but the waltz,” I said.

“I was playing a waltz,” he replied, indicating with his bow the notes of the piece he had just been playing.  “You have to play things like that for the crowd.  But the children have no ear for music,” he said, shaking his head mournfully.

“At least permit me to atone for their ingratitude,” I said, taking a silver coin out of my pocket and offering it to him.

“Please, don’t,” cried the old man, at the same time warding me off anxiously with both hands—­“into the hat, into the hat.”  I dropped the coin into his hat, which was lying in front of him.  The old man immediately took it out and put it into his pocket, quite satisfied.  “That’s what I call going home for once with a rich harvest,” he said chuckling.

“You just remind me of a circumstance,” I said, “which excited my curiosity before.  It seems your earnings today have not been particularly satisfactory, and yet you retire at the very moment when the real harvest is beginning.  The festival, as you no doubt know, lasts the whole night, and you might easily earn more in this one night than in an entire week ordinarily.  How am I to account for this?”

“How are you to account for this?” replied the old man.  “Pardon me, I do not know who you are, but you must be a generous man and a lover of music.”  With these words he took the silver coin out of his pocket once more and pressed it between his hands, which he raised to his heart.

“I shall therefore tell you the reasons, although I have often been ridiculed for them.  In the first place, I have never been a night-reveler, and I do not consider it right to incite others to such a disgusting procedure by means of playing and singing.  Secondly, a man ought to establish for himself a certain order in all things, otherwise he’ll run wild and there’s no stopping him.  Thirdly, and finally, sir, I play for the noisy throng all day long and scarcely earn a bare living.  But the evening belongs to me and to my poor art.  In the evening I stay at home, and”—­at these words he lowered his voice, a blush overspread his countenance and his eyes sought the ground—­“then I play to myself as fancy dictates, without notes.  I believe the text-books on music call it improvising.”