"Then you think it's all over with me?" said the cantor, boldly. "No, Grune!" He wanted to tell her that he wasn't sure about it yet, there was still hope, it might be all a fancy, perhaps it was imagination, but he was afraid to say all that, and Grune did not understand what he stammered out. She shrugged her shoulders, and only said, "Upon my word!" and went to beat up the eggs. The cantor sat and sang to himself. He listened to every note as though he were examining some one. Finding himself unable to take the high octave, he called out despairingly: "Grune, make haste with the eggs!" His one hope lay in the eggs. The cantoress brought them with a cross face, and grumbled: "He wants eggs, and we're pinching and starving--" The cantor would have liked to open his heart to her, so that she should not think the eggs were what he cared about; he would have liked to say, "Grune, I think I'm done for!" but he summoned all his courage and refrained. "After all, it may be only an idea," he thought. And without saying anything further, he began to drink up the eggs as a remedy. When they were finished, he tried to make a few cantor-like trills. In this he succeeded, and he grew more cheerful. "It will be all right," he thought, "I shall not lose my voice so soon as all that! Never mind Meyer Lieder, he drank! I don't drink, only a little wine now and again, at a circumcision." His appetite returned, and he swallowed mouthful after mouthful. But his cheerfulness did not last: the erstwhile unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears, and the worry returned and took possession of him. The fear of losing his voice had tormented the cantor for the greater part of his life. His one care, his one anxiety had been, what should he do if he were to lose his voice? It had happened to him once already, when he was fourteen years old. He had a tenor voice, which broke all of a sudden. But that time he didn't care. On the contrary, he was delighted, he knew that his voice was merely changing, and that in six months he would get the baritone for which he was impatiently waiting. But when he had got the baritone, he knew that when he lost that, it would be lost indeed--he would get no other voice. So he took great care of it--how much more so when he had his own household, and had taken the office of cantor in Klemenke! Not a breath of wind was allowed to blow upon his throat, and he wore a comforter in the hottest weather.