Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. “She looks to me as though she will give old Döderlein a good deal to think about in the days to come,” said Daniel. “You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Döderlein,” replied Benda. “The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and down for hours right under my bedroom.” “You feel sorry for him, do you?” “If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon.” “Do you really mean it?” exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel continued: “To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I’ll get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime gulped down the whole earth.” 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 contemporaries have thrown him over. The very thing that means a new idea to you spells his ruin; what gives you pleasure, voluptuous pleasure, is death to him.” “Y-e-s,” mumbled Daniel, “and yet, what good is he?” “The spirit of nature, the spirit of God, is a total stranger to such conceptions as harmfulness and usefulness,” replied Benda in a tone of serious reflection. “He lives, and that is about all you can say. So far as I am concerned, I have not the slightest reason to defend a Döderlein in your presence.” He was silent for a moment and took a deep breath. “I cannot speak more distinctly; somehow or other I cannot quite find the right words,” he continued in a disconcerted way, “but the point is, the man has committed a crime against a woman, a crime so malicious, subtle, and naïve, that he deserves every stigma with which it is possible to brand him, and even then he would not be adequately punished.” “You see,” exclaimed Daniel, “he is not only a miserable musician. And that is the way it always is. They are all like that. Oh, these bitter-sweet, grinning, pajama-bred, match-making, ninnying, super-smart manikins—it makes your blood curdle to look at one of them. And yet a real man has got to run the gauntlet before them his whole life long, and down through their narrow little alleys at that!”