This hatred of the building, be it understood, did not hinder him from entering the theatre. He was now already of riper years than on the memorable day when he was first here, and he looked on things with different eyes. What he saw on the stage amused him: it amused him to see others the sport of adverse fate, it provoked him when they succumbed to their fate, and although it provoked him, yet it tempted him thither, and he seemed to read there a fragment of his own life and to be thereby consoled.
And now he frequented the theatre every day, and when he saw that there was but a spare supply of musicians in the orchestra, he offered himself with his violin, and was accepted. Then he looked from this orchestra on to that theatre as it were at first hand, he drank from it, as it were, the first draught, and when the curtain fell, he concluded all with his playing. And sometimes he was glad of this, and sometimes he laughed at it. It pleased him well to have his mind diverted and employed. But it did not please him when he saw how those theatrical princesses to-day proffered love to this man, and to-morrow to that; to see them kiss and embrace one man to-day, and to-morrow another. This ran so counter to his ideas that sometimes he would not have grudged his words, if he could have told them what place they had in his esteem.
Sometimes also on the stage was the wood which he had seen here for the first time with Krista, and which reminded him of the hill-side and wood, with the hollow tree at the outskirts of the wood.
Sometimes also he was asked to play a tune in that wood; and he played till he made people weep or whistle; for from his strings spoke both weeping and laughter.
Then they held Venik in respect and honour: they led him to a music master, with whom he studied and played all day long. They also taught him many things which he played to their admiration finely and touchingly. But still he only rose far above the rest, when he played those songs of his own just as he had taught them to himself on the hill-side. Then, indeed, it was just as though the whole hill-side breathed out of him, as though all the wood resounded in his strings, as if even the birds were full of voice, as if even the river played which gurgled far below. Of these songs people could not have enough, and called for them again and again. But, indeed, when he played his “Orphaned Child”, the public was enthralled by the magic of his art. Now it was as though every full-grown man were again an orphan, and as though
