The news of the extraordinary event was fully exploited on the following day. It was carried from house to house, accumulated momentous charm in its course, passed from the regions of the high to those of the less high and quite low, and provoked storms of laughter everywhere. No one had anything to say about the symphony; everybody was fully informed concerning the patent leather episode.
On the way home Daniel walked with Eleanore. Gertrude followed at some distance with M. Rivière; she could not walk rapidly.
"How did you find it, Eleanore? Didn't you have the feeling that you were at a feast of corpses?"
After they had gone along for some time in perfect silence, they came to a narrow gateway. Eleanore suddenly felt that she could no longer endure Daniel's mute questioning. She pulled her silk veil closer to her cheeks, and said: "Give me time! Don't hurry me! Please give me time!"
"If I hadn't given you time, my dear girl, I should not have deserved this moment," he replied.
"I cannot, I cannot," she said, with a sigh of despair. She had only one hope, one ray of hope left, and her whole soul was fixed on that. But she was obliged to act in silence.
Standing in the living room with Gertrude, Daniel's eye fell on the mask of Zingarella; it had been decorated with rose twigs. Under the green young leaves fresh buds shone forth; they hung around the white stucco of the mask like so many little red lanterns. "Who did that?" he asked.
"Eleanore was here in the afternoon; she did it," replied Gertrude.
His burning eyes were riveted on the mask, when Gertrude stepped up to him, threw her arms around him, and in the fulness of her feelings exclaimed: "Daniel, your work was wonderful, wonderful!"
"So? Did you like it? I am glad to hear it," he said, in a tone of dry conventionality.
"The people don't grasp it," she said gently, and then added with a blush: "But I understand it; I understand it, for it belongs to me."
The following day he laid the score of the "Harzreise" together with the words in a big old chest, and locked it. It was like a funeral.
In the dark, winding alleys behind the city wall stand little houses with large numbers and coloured lanterns. They are filled with a sweetish, foul odour, and have been laboriously built up out of dilapidated lumber-rooms. From the cracks in the closed blinds come forth, night after night, the sounds of shrill laughter. Those who enter are received by half-nude monsters, and are made to sit down on monstrous chairs and sofas covered with red plush.