now, when you have attained all this, now you are still unsatisfied, now
you long to resign all this again. But you will reflect, Leonore; you will
listen to reason. You will consider what we have suffered from the
pettiness, the pitifulness, the arrogance, and the selfishness of men. You
will remember how often you vowed, with angry tears, to avenge yourself
some day for all that we have suffered. Remember, child, remember! Have you
forgotten how we starved and pined, when your mother died, because we were
so poor that, in her illness, we could not give her the necessary nursing,
could not pay a doctor. Have you forgotten how we both knelt beside her
corpse and, with tears of grief and anger, swore to avenge the death of the
poor sufferer upon cruel men, base society?"

"I know it, father, yes, I know it," she answered, panting for breath, as
she slowly raised her hands and pressed them on her bosom as if to force
down the anguish within. "Ah, yes, I shall never forget it! That was the
hour when we both sold ourselves to hell."

"Until that time I had been an honest man," he continued. "I had toiled in
honest ways to obtain support for my family and myself. I had earnestly
endeavored to make my knowledge profitable--humble enough to be willing to
teach for the lowest price, to offer my services everywhere. But I could
get no employment; people wanted no teacher of music; everywhere I was
pitilessly turned away. During the mournful years of war which had closed
in upon us, no one wanted to spend his money for a useless art, which
perhaps could be used only for dirges. A music-teacher was the most
unnecessary and useless of mortals, and the music-teacher felt this, and
was ready to become wood-cutter, laborer, street-sweeper, anything to
procure food for his sick wife, his only child, to brighten their
impoverished, sorrowful lives with a ray of comfort. But it was all in
vain; the poor music-teacher found employment nowhere; he might have