His hatred of things in general, of the customs of human society, of order and prosperity, of state and family, of love and marriage, of man and woman, had burst out into lurid flames. It was rare that a man had so cut, slashed, and vilified himself as did this depatriated citizen while playing the piano. He converted music into an orgy, a debauch, a debasing crime. “Enough!” he bellowed, as he closed with an ear-splitting discord. He shut the piano with a vituperative bang, and threw himself into a rickety leather chair. What his inner eye saw mocks at language and defies human speech. He was in that house over there; it lay in his power to murder his rival; he could abuse the woman who had been denied him by the wily tricks of circumstances; he chastised her; he dragged her from her bed of pleasure by the hair. He feasted on her sense of shame and on the angry twitchings of the musician, tied, bound, and gagged. He spared them no word of calumniation. The whole city stood before his court, and listened to the sentence he passed. Everybody stood in awe of him. Thus it is that the citizen of the moral stature of Herr Carovius satisfies his thirst for revenge. Thus does the Nero of our time punish the crimes mankind commits against him in that it creates pleasures and enjoyments of which he is not in a position to partake. But because he felt more abandoned to-day than ever, and more fearful in his abandonment, and because he felt so keenly the injustice done him by the man on whom he had hung for years with dog-like fidelity, and who avoided him to-day as one avoids an old dog that is no longer fit for anything, he decided in the depths of his embittered soul to avenge himself, and to do it by a means that would be quite different from playing the piano in accordance with the rules of his own perverted fancy. With this decision in mind he sought sleep—at last. XV Jordan was now living all alone in the two attic rooms. He had asked of his own will that he be permitted to take over the clerical work Eleanore had been doing, and her employers had agreed to this arrangement. He was consequently enabled to pay the rent and a little on his board. Daniel and Eleanore slept in the corner room in the front. Daniel moved his piano into the living room, and did all his work there. Philippina and Agnes remained in the room next to the kitchen. Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancy price for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her flowers in Daniel’s presence, or even near him; she did this in the old room up next to the roof.