his hat and followed
the shoemaker into the entry, "the price for the lessons will not be
exorbitant."

"You need have no anxiety on that score," replied the shoemaker,
shuttings the door of the shop. "If he were paid as he deserves, he
wouldn't need to climb my old back stairs, but could buy the handsomest
house on Unter der Linden. Turn to the left here, and then cross the
courtyard, Herr Koenig, if you please."

CHAPTER VII.

Meantime the brothers had again been left alone.

As soon as the music below ceased, Mohr took his hat. "To envy this
happiness is one of my favorite occupations," he growled, twisting his
under lip awry. "I pity you for being able to listen to such a thing
quietly, without becoming filled with fiendish joy or rage, I tried to
express this mood in a somewhat rattling, but I think not wholly
meritless composition, which I call my _sinfonia ironica_. When I have
a lodging and a tin pan, I'll play it to you, and then read you my new
comedy: 'I am I, and rely on myself.'"

"A great many pleasures at once, Heinz," said Edwin.

"You need not fear the length of this _concert spirituel_. Only two
bars of the symphony and an act and a half of the comedy are finished.
A man who is but half a man, never brings any work to completion."

"Fortunately, as you know, the half is more than the whole,"

"You shall give me a lecture on that subject very shortly, Philosopher.
Adieu."

He went out to search for lodgings in the neighborhood. His mother, a
widow in easy circumstances, seemed to have provided him with
sufficient means to live for some time without work. At the pianist's
door he paused, and read on the little porcelain plate: "Christiane
Falk, music teacher." Within everything was still. He would gladly have
found some pretext to ring and to make her acquaintance; however, none
occurred to him, so he deferred it until a more favorable opportunity.

Balder had returned to his work again. He seemed in great haste to
complete a dainty little box of olive-wood, which contained all sorts
of implements for sewing.

In the meantime Edwin was dressing.

This was usually accomplished in the following manner: first he hung a
small mirror, scarcely the width of his hand, on a nail in one of the
book shelves, just under Kant's critique of pure reason and Fichte's
religion of science, and then while passing a comb minus numerous teeth
through his hair and beard, ga