And when he saw the theatre, he reconnoitred it and pryed about it, and felt he hated it so bitterly that he would not have hesitated to throw a burning brand upon it: if any one else had done so, he would have looked on with delight, while the tongues of flame devoured and reduced to nothing a place whence began his hardest turn of destiny. He would have helped the flames yet further to devour and annihilate it, till there remained no trace of it, just as no trace of Krista had survived.
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.
