creative artist! "Y-e-s," said
Daniel, "if you wish to put it that way: a creative artist."

They hopped into the corner like so many sparrows, and went into serious
conference. Fraeulein Saloma, as chairman, wanted to know whether a
monthly rent of twelve marks would be too much. No, replied Daniel, that
would not be excessive. He said it without giving the matter the
slightest consideration, and then shook hands with the sisters. Fraeulein
Jasmina added that he could use the piano on the first floor whenever he
wished to, and that it merely needed tuning. Daniel shook her hand
again, this time with special warmth. His joy had awakened in him a
measure of clumsy familiarity.

Before he left the house he went out into the garden, and stood for a
while under one of the trees. A tree to myself at last, he thought. Up
in the top a blackbird was singing. Meta the servant looked out from the
door where she was standing, astonished at it all.

Fraeulein Albertina said to her sisters: "He seems like an interesting
young man, but he has bad manners."

"Artists attach no importance to externalities," replied Fraeulein
Jasmina with knitted brow.

"A great mistake. He always looked as if he had just come out of a
bandbox. You remember, don't you?"

The other two nodded. The three then walked down the garden path, arm in
arm.

III

Daniel was standing in the vegetable market before the Goose Man
Fountain, eating apples.

The sun was shining, and he noticed that the shadow of the fountain was
moving slowly toward the church. It made him sad to see that time was
passing and how it was passing. When he turned around, however, and saw
that the bronze figure of the man with the two geese under his arms was
not merely indifferent to the passing of time but confident that all is
well, he could not help but laugh.

What made him laugh was partly the calm of the man: he was always
waiting for something, and he was always there. He was likewise amused
at the thought that two geese could make a man look so contented.

IV

As Daniel was going home one afternoon from a piano lesson, he met
Eleanore Jordan. He told her about his new room and the three bizarre
creatures in the house in the Long Row.

Eleanore had heard all about them. She said they were the daughters of
the geometrician Ruediger, and that he had left the town some time ago
because of a quarre