a general way.  With the exception of that song the musical compositions themselves have always been a matter of indifference to me, an attitude in which I have persisted to this day.  The musicians play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Sebastian Bach, but not one plays God Himself.  No one can play the eternal comfort and blessing of tone and sound, its magic correlation with the eager, straining ear; so that”—­he continued in a lower voice and blushing with confusion—­“so that the third tone forms a harmonic interval with the first, as does the fifth, and the leading tone rises like a fulfilled hope, while the dissonance is bowed down like conscious wickedness or arrogant pride.

“And then there are the mysteries of suspension and inversion, by means of which even the second is received into favor in the bosom of harmony.  A musician once explained all these things to me, but that was later.  And then there are still other marvels which I do not understand, as the fugue, counterpoint, the canon for two and three voices, and so on—­an entire heavenly structure, one part joined to the other without mortar and all held together by God’s own hand.  With a few exceptions, nobody wants to know anything about these things.  They would rather disturb this breathing of souls by the addition of words to be spoken to the music, just as the children of God united with the daughters of the Earth.  And by means of this combination of word and music they imagine they can affect and impress a calloused mind.  Sir,” he concluded at last, half exhausted, “speech is as necessary to man as food, but we should also preserve undefiled the nectar meted out by God.”

I could scarcely believe it was the same man, so animated had he become.  He paused for a moment.  “Where did I stop in my story?” he asked finally.  “Oh yes, at the song and my attempt to imitate it.  But I didn’t succeed.  I stepped to the open window in order to hear better.  The singer was just crossing the court.  She had her back turned to me, yet she seemed familiar to me.  She was carrying a basket with what looked like pieces of cake dough.  She entered a little gate in the corner of the court, where there probably was an oven, for while she continued her song, I heard her rattling some wooden utensils, her voice sounding sometimes muffled, sometimes clear, like the voice of one who bends down and sings into a hollow space and then rises again and stands in an upright position.  After a while she came back, and only now I discovered why she had seemed familiar to me before.  I had actually known her for some time, for I had seen her in the chancery office.

“My acquaintance with her was made like this:  The office hours began early and extended beyond noon.  Several of the younger employees, who either actually had an appetite or else wanted to kill a half hour, were in the habit of taking a light lunch about eleven o’clock.  The tradespeople, who know how to turn everything to their advantage, saved the gourmands a walk and brought their wares into the office building, where they took up their position on the stairs and in the corridors.  A baker sold rolls, a costermonger vended cherries.  Certain cakes, however, which were baked by the daughter of a grocer in the vicinity and sold while still hot, were especially popular.