“These are the frenzies with which one has to pay for the gift of genius,” said Carl.  “A cool temperament balances all that.  If one enjoys coolly, one suffers as coolly.  Take these fits of despair as the reverse side of your fate.  She offers you by way of balance cups of joy and pleasure and success, of which we commonplace mortals scarcely taste a drop.  When my peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it.  If it were the princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach the reward at the top.”

“It would not be worth the pains,” said Arnold; “a princess’s smiles are not worth more than a peasant-girl’s.  I am tired of it all.  I am going to find another world.  I am going to England.”

“You are foolish,” answered Carl.  “The world is no different there; there is as little heart in England as in Germany,—­no more or less.  You are just touching success here; do give it a good grasp.”

“I am cloyed with it already,” said Arnold.

“It is not that,” said Carl.  “You are a child crying for the moon.  You would have your cake and eat it too.  You want some one who shall love you, you alone,—­who shall have no other thought but yours, no other dream than of you.  Yet you are jealous for your music.  If that is not loved as warmly, you begin to suspect your lover.  It is the old proverb, ’Love me, love my dog.’  But if your dog is petted too much, if we dream in last night’s strains of music, forget you a moment in the world you have lifted us into,—­why, then your back is turned directly; you upbraid us with following you for the sake of the music,—­we have no personal love of you,—­you are the violin or the fiddlestick!”

“You are right, old Carl,” said Arnold.  “I am all out of tune myself.  I have not set my inward life into harmony with the world outside.  It is true, at times I impress a great audience, make its feelings sway with mine; but, alas! it does not impress me in return.  There is a little foolish joy at what you call success; but it lasts such a few minutes!  I want to have the world move me; I do not care to move the world!”

“And will England move you more than Germany?” asked Carl; “will the hearts of a new place touch you more than those of home?  The closer you draw to a man, the better you can read his heart, and learn that he has a heart.  It is not the number of friends that gives us pleasure, but the warmth of the few.”

“In music I find my real life,” Arnold went on, “because in music I forget myself.  Is music, then, an unreal life?  In real life must self always be uppermost?  It is so with me.  In the world, with people, I am self-conscious.  It is only in music that I am lifted above myself.  When I am not living in that, I need activity, restlessness, change.  This is why I must go away.  Here I can easily be persuaded to become a conceited fool, a flattered hanger-on of a court.”