New images surrounded Goldmund in this city; a new life began for him. Landscape and city had received him happily, entigly, generously, and so did this new life, with joy and many promises. Although sorrow and awareness remained essentially untouched in his soul, life, on the surface, played for him in rainbow colors. The gayest and lightest period in Goldmunds life had begun. Outwardly, the rich bishops city offered itself in all its arts; there were women, and hundreds of pleasant games and images. On the inside, his awakening craftsmanship offered new sensations and experiences. With the masters help he found lodgings in the house of a gilder at the fish market, and at the masters as well as at the gilders he learned how to handle wood, plaster, colors, varnish, and gold leaf.
Goldmund was not one of those forsaken artists who, though highly gifted, never find the right means of expression. Quite a number of people are able to feel the beauty of the world profoundly and vastly, and to carry high, noble images in their souls, but they are uo exteriorize these images, to create them for the enjoyment of others, to unicate them. Goldmund did not suffer from this lack. The use of his hands came easily to him; he enjoyed learning the tricks and practices of the craft, and he easily learo play the lute with panions in the evening after work and to dan Sundays in the village. He lear easily; it came by itself. He worked hard at wood carving, met with difficulties and disappois, spoiled a few pieces of good wood, and severely cut his fingers several times. But he quickly surmouhe beginnings and acquired skill. Still, the master was often dissatisfied with him and would say: "Fortunately we know that youre not my apprentiy assistant, Goldmund. Fortunately we know that youve wandered in from the woods and that youll go back there some day. Anybody who didnt know that youre a homeless drifter and not a burgher or artisan might easily succumb to the temptation to ask this or that of you, the things every master demands of his men. You dont work badly at all when youre in the mood. But last week you loafed for two days. Yesterday you slept half the day in the courtyard workshop, instead of polishing the two angels you were supposed to polish."
The master was right, and Goldmund listened in silence, without justifying himself. He knew he was not a reliable, hard-w man. As long as a task fasated him, posed problems, or made him happily aware of his skill, hed work zealously. He did not like heavy manual work, or chores that were not difficult but demaime and appliany of the faithful, patient parts of craftsmanship were often pletely unbearable to him. It sometimes made him wonder. Had those few years of wandering been enough to make him lazy and unreliable? Was his mothers iance growing in him and gaining the upper hand? Or was something else missing? He thought of his first years in the cloister, when he had been such a good and zealous student. Why had he managed so much patiehen? Why did he lack it now; why had he been able to learn Latin syntax and all those Greek aorists iigably, although, at the bottom of his heart, they were quite unimportant to him? Occasionally hed muse about that. Love had steeled his will; love had given him wings. His life had been a stant courtship of Narcissus, whose love one could woo only by esteem and reition. In those days he was able to slave for hours and days in exge for an appreciative glance