Book + 

IV + 

I + 

In a magnificent salon of the Hôtel Royal⁠—a few days later⁠—the Baroness Valerie von Warnow was pacing restlessly backwards and forwards. She had, by Giraldi’s advice, sent this morning to the General’s house to announce her arrival the evening before, adding that she was unfortunately too much fatigued to present herself in person, but hoped in the course of a few days, if not the next day, to make up for her delay. + 

“You must not expose yourself to the affront of being refused admittance,” Giraldi had said: “I have every ground for suspecting that he has laid himself out more than ever for his favourite part of the knight with the helmet of Mambrinus; but virtuous fools are as little to be depended upon as other fools; possibly the unhoped-for happiness of seeing his mauvais sujet of a son at last betrothed may have softened him, and it will please him to act a part of magnanimity and forgiveness. We shall hear how he takes your message, and we can take our measures and make our arrangements accordingly.” + 

Valerie knew too well that her brother acted no part, that he always was what he seemed; and that if he ever forgave her, it would not be in consequence of a momentary impulse, but from the conviction that she could live no longer without his forgiveness, and that she deserved it if the deepest remorse, the most ardent wish to atone, as far as was possible for the past, entitled her to it. But that day would never come; today, as ever, he would reject with cold politeness her attempt at a reconciliation, would answer her through Sidonie that he regretted to hear of her indisposition and hoped it would soon pass off, so that she might as speedily as possible be able to resume her journey to Warnow, which he trusted might be a prosperous one. + 

And only five minutes ago the answer had come; not in Sidonie’s stiff, formal hand, but in a small, graceful writing, the very sight of which did Valerie good, even before, with eyes fixed and expectant, which at last filled with tears, she read: + 

“Dear Aunt⁠—We are so glad that you are here at last! Papa, who sends you his best love, has another meeting to attend this morning⁠—the War Office is like a beehive just now⁠—but we, that is Aunt Sidonie and I, will call upon you at twelve o’clock, if convenient to you, to ask you how you are, and I especially to make acquaintance at last with a dear relation, whom I have never seen, and whom I have often longed to see. + 

“Dear, good child!” sobbed Valerie; “I have to thank you for his yielding, I am sure! I can see it in your dear, loving words!” + 

She kissed the letter again and again. “Oh, if you knew how thankful I am to you, if I could tell you so on my knees as before God. Be my good angel. You do not know how much I need a good angel, with his pure, strong hand to save me from this fearful slavery. But you will not be able to save me if you would. What could you do against him? Your innocence, your goodness, your wisdom⁠—even your courage, and you must be both wise and courageous to have braved and coaxed this from that obstinate, unapproachable man⁠—he would throw it all into the dust, and tread it under his cruel feet, as he has thrown and trampled me in the dust.” + 

She wandered thus through the spacious room, now throwing herself into an armchair because her limbs threatened to fail her, and the next moment springing up and hurrying to the window to look at a carriage which had just stopped before the hotel; then again stepping before one of the large mirrors, and eagerly and anxiously examining her countenance; it must not betray her excitement when he came in⁠—a quiver of the mouth, an unwonted degree of colour or of pallor in her cheeks, a brighter glance, a fainter light in her eyes⁠—he saw and remarked everything, he had the key of her soul. How gladly would she have received the dear writer alone, how gladly would she at least have concealed the letter from him. But she dared not do even that; now less than ever, when her lips must say yes, while her heart cried no; when her lips must smile while hell raged in her bosom; when she must and would practise the lesson that had been taught her. + 

She rang the bell and desired the servant who waited in the anteroom, which connected her rooms and Giraldi’s, to beg the Signor to come to her for a minute. She gave the order in the most careless tone. The man, a young Frenchman, whom Giraldi had engaged in Rome, had only been a few weeks in her service; but he had no doubt been at least as long in Giraldi’s pay as his predecessors. + 

Hardly a minute had elapsed when she heard his step in the anteroom; he was today, as ever, ready to fulfil her slightest wish. She passed her hand once more hastily over her brow and eyes, and tried whether her voice sounded natural. “Dear friend, I have⁠—” François opened the door to him at that moment. “Dear friend, I have already received an answer from my niece, so extremely kind that it can only be a trap.” + 

She had handed him the letter, which he appeared only to glance at, though he would know it by heart a year hence, as Valerie said to herself, and now, returning her the letter, sat down at the table by her. + 

“The letter could only be a trap if you took it seriously, in which case it would be a very dangerous one.” + 

“What do you mean?” + 

“The young lady has written it on her own account; I mean without her father’s knowledge, who had probably left the house before she wrote it.” + 

“Impossible!” + 

“Why?” + 

“She would not have dared to do it.” + 

“What does a girl not dare when she thinks it becomes her? Do not you see that her hand faltered as she wrote the words, ‘Papa, who sends you his best love,’ and only became steady again when she had got to the truth, ‘he has another meeting this morning?’ It is interesting and promising to see that the girl cannot even lie with the pen in her hand. We shall be able to learn from her everything we want to know.” + 

“But what do we want to know?” + 

“What?” + 

The faintest glimmer of a smile passed over Giraldi’s dark eyes. + 

“Mi fai ridere, cara mia⁠—we! Why, you do not yet know half.” + 

“Then it must be your fault, my dear friend, for only telling me half. What could I know without your telling me?” + 

He bent over her and took her hand which he pressed to his lips. + 

“Could I know anything, soul of my soul, that I should not immediately impart to you, as the eye and the ear impart their impressions to the mind, whose servants and slaves they are? And as faithful servants, because they are faithful, do everything for the best interests of their master, so I come this morning with the rich spoils of the four and twenty hours that have passed since I was last with you, to lay them at your feet and receive my reward in the smile of your lips.” + 

“And why only this morning, faithless slave?” + 

“Yesterday evening, lady, my pockets were still almost empty; since then⁠—” + 

“A miracle has happened?” + 

“Scarcely less.” + 

Giraldi looked at the clock. “Half-past eleven; I have just time; in a quarter of an hour I expect Councillor Schieler. I only want to speak to him for a few minutes⁠—in continuation of a long conversation which I had with him yesterday evening⁠—so I shall be at hand when your relations arrive, and shall be able to lighten for you the unpleasantness of the first meeting.” + 

“And the Councillor is the miracle-worker?” + 

“The Councillor is a useful tool⁠—voilà tout! so much the more useful that he is used by many, and in his vanity and stupidity, which are not the same thing, though they produce the same effect, always shows the traces of the hand that has last used him, as a trophy of his supposed importance and wisdom. It is as well that a certain person does not appear quite conscious that such a tool cuts both ways, or he would be more prudent in the use he makes of it. But that is not to the purpose. For the rest, we owe him gratitude so far as one can owe gratitude to a person who does one a great service without being aware of it. It was he who made us aware of the favourable opportunity of selling the property to Count Golm, when it became apparent to him and his company that they could obtain the Count, whom they wanted particularly, for no less a price. The Count snapped as eagerly at the tempting bait as they snapped at the Count; they do not see the angler who looks complacently on at the game, in order, when the right moment comes, to land the silly fish with one jerk of his line on the dry land at his feet, where it may gasp out its life. But this does not interest you.” + 

“It does⁠—it does!” exclaimed Valerie. + 

“I see by the absent smile on your lips and the fixed look of your eyes that you have hardly heard me. Luckily I have something else in petto, which may excite your interest.” + 

“The miracle?” + 

“Not yet; I have only to tell you of natural events as yet. For what is more natural than that Count Golm wishes to obtain as cheaply as possible the property which he is so anxious to possess in order to round off his estate and arrange his affairs? And how could he get it cheaper than by receiving a third part as the dowery of his future wife, and another third as the probable inheritance of the said wife, that is to say both as good as given? There remains only one third, which unfortunately appears, since yesterday, to be irrevocably lost. Does my lady see now? It is only necessary to bring a little love into the game, the interest of the women is excited at once.” + 

Valerie’s heart beat. How true had been her foreboding! The dear child, whom she had but now looked up to as to an angel, in the next moment drawn away, dragged down into the sordid game of intrigue by this cruel, inexorable hand! + 

“Does Count Golm love my niece?” + 

“I did not say that; in fact, without wishing to detract from the charms of the young lady, I am convinced that it is not the case. He has only known her a very short time⁠—since the General’s journey at the end of last month. Your North German country people are in general not very subject to the dangers of a Romeo-like passion; besides, a too strikingly material advantage is not very favourable for the blossoming of the tender plant, love, and therefore the young lady is either really affronted by the too evidently mercenary intentions of her suitor, or pretends to be so, in order to keep herself disengaged in another direction; I shall come to that presently. At least the Count complains bitterly of her behaviour towards him, and threatens, to the Councillor’s alarm, to withdraw, only he has fortunately committed the imprudence of accepting from the Councillor earnest-money for the projected alliance in the form of a considerable advance, and is consequently bound for the present.” + 

Valerie’s astonishment was great. Four and twenty hours had not yet passed since Giraldi, on receipt of the letter in which Sidonie informed them of Ottomar’s betrothal to Fräulein von Wallbach, had burst into a furious rage, although they had long foreseen and expected this event; and today he appeared to encourage a second union, which would destroy, if not his fixed plans, at any rate, hopes that he had silently cherished and fostered. + 

Giraldi read these thoughts on her countenance. He continued with a smile: + 

“I said, for the present, my dear friend; only till the simpleton⁠—he is a simpleton, I had already spoken to him yesterday evening before you came⁠—only till he has pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for us; then he may go, and the more he burns his fingers the better pleased I shall be. He must, however, for the present be bound to us, for the following reasons: We do not require the consent of General von Werben for the sale of the property, as he is already doubly outvoted by Herr von Wallbach and our friend the Councillor; but what we do positively want, if the bargain is to be struck, is the consent of the Government to the making of the line; and, the Councillor is here again my informant, if this consent is obtained, it will only be because the Count is mixed up in the affair and rejoices in special protection in certain high circles, whose influence in important ministerial regions is particularly powerful just now. I am again unfortunate in not having your attention.” + 

“I am all attention.” + 

“To reward you I will strike the chord of love again: it is for our most pressing interest, and it is my most particular wish, that you should casually⁠—I mean at some opportunity which your cleverness will readily seize upon⁠—give your niece to understand that you think this marriage a particularly suitable one; and only wish, in order to avoid the appearance of desiring to derive a personal benefit from it in the sale of the property, that the affair should not be at once made public, or even settled⁠—between ourselves let us say, not binding. This will make the young lady pause. I want no more till we are clear on the other side, and can then, as a reward for her obedience, perhaps do something to help on her particular inclinations. Do you quite understand?” + 

“Perfectly; to the minutest detail. You hinted before that my niece had a real inclination in another direction that would not interfere with us?” + 

“Which, in fact, when the time comes, I intend to forward by every lawful means, if it were only in order to pay the General back in the same coin for his past and present conduct towards a certain Signor Gregorio Giraldi, and a certain Signora Valerie⁠—widowed Frau von Warnow, born Fräulein von Werben.” + 

The man’s lips smiled, but his black eyes glittered like the blade of a dagger when it flashes out of the sheath. Valerie suppressed the shudder that passed over her. She said, with a smile: + 

“I know your sagacity, your powers of divination; but here you have really surpassed yourself. All that is now wanting is the name of the happy man, where they first met, and when they last met.” + 

Giraldi bowed. + 

“The name may wait, signora! But before I tell you more about your charming niece, I must tell you a little anecdote about your excellent nephew, which may serve as a proof of the reward which Providence grants to those who trust in it.” + 

“The miracle, then?” + 

“Decide for yourself.” + 

The expression of his face had changed suddenly, the smile of superiority had vanished and had given place to deep earnestness; in the black eyes brooded melancholy night; even his voice sounded different⁠—softer, more fervent⁠—as he now, in his native tongue (he had hitherto spoken only German), continued in the tone of one who wishes to speak with all possible calm and clearness on a subject that moves him deeply. + 

“I went yesterday, after I had paid and received a few visits, to the Exhibition, and turned at once into the sculpture gallery. I had promised Guarnerio, Braga, and a few more of our friends in Milan and Rome, who had sent works there, to go at once and look after them, to see how they were placed, what impression they made, and whether the German sculptors bore comparison with them. They are wretchedly placed, and consequently produce little effect, and the German sculptors can quite hold their own with them. Your countrymen have progressed; they may boast of several talents of the very first order, such as Reinhold Begas, Siemering, and a third, whose name I read for the first time on a marvellous group of a Satyr, to whom a mischievous Cupid is holding a looking-glass⁠—Justus Anders. I beg you will remember the name; it will appear again in my little history. + 

“Close to it, in a window, a life-sized figure first attracted my attention, because it was one of the few that was in a really good light. Doubtless a masterpiece, I thought, of which they are specially proud. But I was mistaken, it was not at least a work of the highest rank; finely conceived, but not so well carried out; a certain want of freedom in the technical part, which betrayed the pupil who has not long left school, and has for the first time attempted a higher flight. The subject also was not one to excite my interest⁠—a young shepherd boy of the Campagna, in the ordinary costume, saying his Ave Maria, with raised eyes and clasped hands; but nevertheless the statue attracted me in a remarkable degree. Dare I acknowledge it? I thought I saw myself five-and-twenty, thirty years ago, as I so often roved through the Campagna and dreamed dreams over which I now smile; and looked up ecstatically into the glowing sky, which in my thought was peopled by bands of angels, and offered up ardent prayers, which I believed would be heard. And more curious still, the next moment I saw, not myself, but you, as I saw you on that memorable day when I was presented to you and your Princess in the park⁠—the two Leonoras as you were then jestingly called⁠—and with the first glance into your eyes I knew that I had lost myself in you, without dreaming that at that moment you were already lost to me.” + 

He passed his hands over his downcast eyes, which he then, as if accidentally, raised to her. She also had drooped her eyelids; but a pink tinge was on her pale cheeks. Was it the reflection of the sunlight of that evening? Giraldi hoped so; he did not suspect how wonderfully mixed were the feelings that these memories awakened in the heart of the unhappy woman. He hoped also that her eyes would be raised to his with a glance in which might still gleam a ray of the old love: but her eyelids were not raised. He must touch a deeper chord. + 

“And then again I saw neither you nor myself, or rather I saw us both in a third figure, the peasant figure⁠—in which, in spite of all, by God’s decree, and the will of the Holy Virgin, he perhaps now wanders on the earth.” + 

“No! no! no!” she cried. + 

She had started from her chair, but immediately sank back again, her slender hands pressed to her brow and eyes, while repeated shudders shook her tender frame. + 

“No! no! no!” she murmured again; “the righteous God could not permit that!” Then recollecting how fearfully ambiguous her words were, she added: “In peasant’s dress! my son!” + 

“And mine!” said Giraldi softly. “Valerie, remember; is not life sweet because it is life; because it is sunshine and the chirping of the cicala, and moonlight, and the sound of the lute! Ah! how often I have wished I had never seen any other light, I had never heard any other music!” + 

“But he is no longer alive!” she exclaimed; “cannot be alive after all we heard! Who was it then who proved it to me with such terrible clearness at that time when I would have given all I had for a smile from him?” + 

“At that time? and now no longer?” + 

A voice within her repeated, “No! no! no! for then the fetters which bind you to him would be unbreakable!” But she did not dare to speak the words, and once more bowed her head silently in her hands. + 

His dark eyes were fixed firmly on her bowed figure. “And now no longer?” The question had not been answered. “Was it in reality only the pain of the wound which had taken so long to heal, and which she did not wish now to have torn open again? Was it the doubt that is quenched in despair, or did treason lurk in her silence? Was it one of those signs of which he had observed more than one lately; a sign of silently planned desertion, of secret rebellion against his mastery?” + 

His dark glance sought the clock. “At this very moment I am still working and planning for her. Let her beware lest the time come when I do so for myself, and then necessarily against her! Let her beware of saying ‘Now no longer!’ + 

“May I continue, Valerie?” + 

She nodded without speaking. + 

“I am almost afraid to do so. It is so seldom that I allow myself to be carried away by my feelings, when sober reason, which smooths the troubled work of life, should alone reign. I know it does not become me.” + 

In his voice there was not the slightest trace of the dark thoughts that were passing through his mind: there was rather a tone of pain, which he would have wished to conceal, a tone of reproach which resigns its rights and asks for pardon. + 

“When after a little while I turned away from the statue, I saw a few paces distant from it, leaning against the window-frame, a youth, evidently the original of the figure; the same height, at that moment even in the same attitude, with the same luxuriant curly hair, the same brow and mouth, and especially the same eyes⁠—magnificent deep black velvet eyes, which were fastened with a curious expression of fixed melancholy on his own likeness. I saw at the first glance that the young man was an Italian, and in the first words he spoke I recognised a native of the Campagna. They were spoken in answer to the question whether the statue were his! It was not; he had only stood several times as a model for it. ‘But you are an artist?’ I asked again. ‘I do not know,’ he answered; ‘I sometimes think so, and sometimes again I think not. I only know one thing for certain, that I am miserable, the most miserable of men.’ He had murmured the last words to himself, as turning suddenly from me he was about to hasten away. I do not believe he meant me to hear them, but I had heard them and held him back by the arm. ‘We are fellow-countrymen,’ I said, ‘fellow-countrymen should always stand by one another; doubly so in a strange land; trebly so when it is a case of bearing misfortune or giving help.’ + 

“He looked at me with his large eyes, which gradually filled with tears. ‘No one can help me,’ he said. ‘Even confession is a help, and often the greatest, most effectual to a heavy-laden heart.’ ‘Are you a priest?’ ‘Did the wounded man ask that who lay bleeding on the ground, when the Samaritan bent charitably over him?’ Two large tears ran down his beautiful face, on which, while I spoke, the colour had come and gone. I had won him over. He promised⁠—as I could not wait then⁠—to meet me that evening in an Italian wine-shop, which he pointed out to me. We could talk better in a wine-shop than in a smart hotel. + 

“He was awaiting me impatiently, when, having been delayed by your retarded arrival, I at length went in search of him, drawn by that mysterious power which often compels me, against my inclination, even against my will, to do one thing or to leave another undone. So it was in this case. My passing interest in the young man had already vanished; my head was full of quite different things, so that I listened to the history of his life, with which he thought it necessary to preface his confession, with only half an ear. His name is Antonio Michele, and he is the son of miserably poor vinedressers, in, or in the immediate neighbourhood of, Tivoli. A monk⁠—his parents’ confessor⁠—has always behaved with particular kindness towards him. I suspect that the holy man is his father. Scarcely less poor than the parents, he could do little more for his favourite than teach him to read and write, and was forced in other matters to leave him to his fate. It was that of other poor and handsome boys in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. He tended his goats on the hills of the Campagna. Some wandering artists found him, and enticed him to the city to act as model for their sketches. He idled about in the studios of painters and sculptors, on the Scala di Spagna, and the Piazza Barberini, till the day came when the fame of being the handsomest model in Rome⁠—to which he could justly lay claim⁠—no longer satisfied his ambition, and he wanted to become an artist himself. This was not so easy as he appears to have hoped; still in the course of time he might have become a good stone-carver, at least I conclude so, from the fact that a German artist, who had known him in Rome, invited him two years ago to come and work in his studio here. Antonio, who had no longer anything to bind him to Rome and his native place⁠—his parents had fallen victims to the cholera in 1868⁠—obeyed the call, provided only with the good brother’s blessing and money for his journey, obeyed it as a man must obey his destiny. + 

“The artist in question was that very Justus Anders whom I mentioned before as one of the most distinguished of your countrymen. Antonio, however, does not consider him so, as he denies him originality, inspiration, and in a word, all the higher qualities of an artist, and describes him, on the other hand, as filled with envy and ill-will towards all real geniuses, amongst which he doubtless considers himself to hold the first place. I am of course unable to decide how far the latter is true, but I suspect that an artist of such undoubted powers as Anders judges the young man quite rightly, and that if he does not allow him any great gifts, but continues to employ him as a mere workman, he has good reason for so doing. At any rate, this supposed neglect has not prevented our young countryman from remaining two years with the envious master, probably, as I gather, in order to be near a lady with whom he fell violently in love from the first moment in which he saw her, and who, if his rapturous description may be trusted, must be a marvel of beauty and grace. + 

“This lady is the daughter of a Herr Schmidt, who it appears carries on a very flourishing trade in marble and marble goods. She is herself an artist, and no insignificant one. The Shepherd Boy came out of her studio, which is only separated by a door from Signor Anders’s studio. I willingly spare you the details of the romance which was carried on from one studio to the other. It appears that Antonio, in spite of his assurances to the contrary, never had any cause to believe in the fulfilment of his extravagant hopes; it appears however, also, that the beautiful lady permitted the love of the handsome youth, perhaps only because she could not prevent it, without giving importance to a matter which was of no importance in her eyes; perhaps, also, because she dreaded his passionate jealousy. Her fears were not unfounded. She loved another, and was beloved by him. The immediate neighbourhood of their houses was favourable to the secret of their relations, which was only penetrated by Antonio’s eyes, sharpened by jealousy. He followed with the cunning and craftiness of a native of the Campagna their secret traces, till, only a few days ago, he obtained undoubted proofs. With the assistance of a man who, for some reason, was willing to make common cause with him, he gave up these proofs into the hands of the fathers, who, besides being in very different ranks of life and also political opponents, as the accomplice knew, were divided by an old personal enmity. The well-aimed blow took effect unexpectedly deeply, on both sides. The fathers came to an explanation, at which were probably some high words. An hour later the lady was found lying insensible on the floor of her studio; another hour, and she was raging in a violent fever. In the neighbouring house nothing can have been known of this that day or the next, or a more suitable time would have been chosen to send out the announcement of a betrothal which had been long expected in the higher circles of society. The news of this betrothal reached us at Munich, and was that of Fräulein Carla von Wallbach with Lieutenant Ottomar von Werben.” + 

“Good God!” exclaimed Valerie. + 

“It must have been God’s will,” answered Giraldi, with a dark smile; “otherwise the affair, which has been so long delayed, would doubtless have remained a little while longer in suspense. I should have made the young man’s acquaintance before the catastrophe, which is as much as to say that the catastrophe would never have occurred. Instead of interfering blindly with the flame of jealousy and the sword of revenge, in a state of affairs that was so wonderfully favourable to us, I should have recommended it to the protection of the Blessed Virgin, and should have done, for my part, all that human wisdom can do to help it on and bring it to a successful termination. I should doubtless have succeeded, but some people would say it was not to be. I do not say so. I know only one opponent before whom I sheath my weapon, and that is Death. So long as I can count upon life I do count upon it, I hope all from it; and for the present the beautiful Ferdinanda still lives. What does my friend say to this second history?” + 

“That I wish my friend had known nothing of it.” + 

“For what reason?” + 

“Because I know it will awaken in his restless mind a thousand hopes that can never be realised; it will give him a world of trouble which will all be useless.” + 

“Not useless, if it be the will of the Blessed Virgin, and if my friend does not refuse me her assistance.” + 

“What can I do in this matter?” + 

“Almost everything; everything at least that can be done at present. I mean, observe the parties in question, first and foremost the betrothed couple; see how they bear their happiness, whether with the modesty which would be appropriate under the circumstances in which it was born, or with that scornful pride which, according to your proverb, goes before a fall. A fugitive glance, a gesture, a turn of the eyes⁠—what will they not say to one who is so well prepared as my talented friend? I recommend to her in particular the clever Carla, who will meet her with open arms; les beaux esprits se rencontrent; but, to return to my first story, and, like a good narrator, to weave it properly into the second, I recommend also to your kind care the more modest Elsa. With regard to this young lady, I have also a special request to make, that you will observe whether she shows particular interest when the name of a certain Herr Reinhold Schmidt is mentioned in her presence.” + 

“What new idea is this, my friend?” + 

“The last instalment of my news, for which I have to thank the dear Councillor, who learnt it, in his turn, from Count Golm. A little episode of jealousy, to which I attach particular importance, although I am still rather behindhand as regards the details. Still it is an interesting fact, that the gentleman in question, whose acquaintance your niece only made quite lately on the much-talked-of journey, is a cousin of the beautiful Ferdinanda, whose beauty had nearly made you the richer by half a million. The jealousy of the nobleman, and the angry contempt with which poor Antonio speaks of the Captain, lead me to suppose that the cousins are not unlike one another. You will agree with me that so delightful a family should be cultivated. I am dying to make their acquaintance.” + 

Giraldi had risen and gone a few steps to meet the servant, who had just come into the room with a visiting card. “Ah!” he exclaimed, taking the card from the waiter, “beg his Excellency to walk into my room. I will follow in a minute.” + 

He turned once more to Valerie. + 

“That is a happy yet unhappy coincidence⁠—at the very moment when we were expecting your relations. I could send away the Councillor if necessary, the easier, that he is already behind his time. This gentleman is one of those who must be received at all hours and under all circumstances.” + 

He held the card to Valerie. “Who is it?” she asked, reading a name which in her bewilderment she could not recognise. + 

“But, cara mia!” exclaimed Giraldi, “who that is? The man who, half blind as he is, sees clearer than most men do with both their eyes; the man who, divested of all official authority, gives the Chancellor of the German Empire more to do than the plenipotentiary of a large state would do; the man, in a word, on whose feeble form the weight of the struggle which we have to fight in Germany rests almost wholly! But I am quite content that my lady should have no very lively sympathy for the troubles of our Holy Church, if she will bear her own sorrows with patience, if only the unhoped for, miraculous prospect of revenging the injustice of long years, perhaps at one blow, can allure her! There are thousands and thousands of brave men ready to take up the weapons which fall from the hands of the exhausted champions of the Almighty; here in this struggle I stand alone, and the Blessed Virgin will forgive me if even her cause is not dearer to me than that of the mother of my child!” + 

There was a metallic ring in the man’s soft, melodious voice, a curious fire burnt in his dark eyes, the slender elastic figure appeared to grow taller, as he now stood drawn to his full height, with one arm raised as if for the combat. Then, as if by magic, all the heroism vanished from voice, countenance, attitude and gesture. He bent down to the sitting figure, took her hand, on which he pressed his lips with respectful tenderness: “Addio, carissima! addio, anima mia dolce!” + 

He was gone, again nodding a greeting to her at the door with a graceful movement, which she returned with an obedient smile, then sank back, as if shattered, into her seat. + 

“In vain! in vain!” she murmured. “I can never free myself, never. He is a thousand times the stronger, and he knows it only too well! That was the glance of the tiger at the deer that is in his grasp; those were the eyes of the serpent, fixed on the bird in its nest. Lost! lost! his sure prey, his obedient tool; forced to act, to speak, to smile, to breathe as he will! Do I know my lesson? alas for me if I have forgotten one word! He would find it out at once. ‘Did you not see that? Why where were your eyes? Did you not hear that? Why, my dearest, it might have been heard with half an ear!’ He, ah! he, with whom the demons are in league, whom they all obey with all their might, for whom they smooth his path along which he paces with the proud step of a conqueror driving his victim before him! What else is that Antonio but such a slavish demon, a messenger from hell, who is at hand when he is summoned? Here I am, master; what does my master command? To sow dissension between father and son, between father and daughter, between the lover and the beloved? I have done it already, at least tried to do it; pardon, master, your unskilful servant, who struck too soon with the whip; teach me how to chastise with scorpions; I shall soon learn in your service, I shall become worthy of you! And is there more to be done; to draw from a maiden’s heart its tender secret and to give it up to you, that you may taint and defile it, may break and tear it to pieces with your unhallowed, cruel hands? No, that is already cared for; that is best understood by a woman, the well-trained accomplice of your hellish art. It is true she is related to your victim, could, and in the natural course of events ought to, be a second mother to her; so much the better! She will be able the better to creep into her secrets, the finer to spin threads in which the poor bird will flutter. Oh, my God, my God! how boundlessly must I have sinned, that you will not forgive me, that you have so utterly deserted me!” + 

She pressed her hands to her face, her heart beat violently; but the weight did not become lighter, no tears came to cool her burning cheeks. She sat thus alone, in the spacious, sumptuous room, solitary, deserted, helpless, broken, longing for a word of comfort, of love⁠—a singular, touching, moving picture in the eyes of a young girl, who had stood already for half a minute at the door, which she had gently opened and shut behind her, fearing to approach nearer, to give offence, to startle, and who now, casting timidity and fear from her, following the impulse of her heart, hastened with quick steps to the bowed-down form, and before the other could rise from her seat, or even understand clearly what had happened, or how it happened, was kneeling before her, and, seizing her hands, while she exclaimed: “Aunt, dear aunt! here I am! Don’t be angry, I have so longed to see you; have you no kind word for me!” Valerie could not speak; her eyes were fixed on the young girl’s face, which was glowing with tender shame and heartfelt pity. She suddenly flung her arms round her like a drowning man, who in the whirl of the stream grasps at the slender willow-stem; her head sank on the shoulder of the kneeling girl, and the tears which had been so long shut up in her troubled heart burst forth unrestrainedly. + 

II + 

The outburst was so violent, and lasted so long, that Elsa became painfully embarrassed. How likely it was that the man of whom Aunt Sidonie had just said that he was sure to be present at their reception would come into the room⁠—how soon Aunt Sidonie herself must follow her! She had only hastened up the staircase before her aunt, while the latter entered into conversation with the Councillor, who met them in the hall. While they were on their way to the hotel, she had been dreading all the time the solemn ceremoniousness of the good lady’s behaviour on so important an occasion⁠—the long-winded address, the offensive condescension with which she would meet her sister. She had silently regretted that she had persuaded her aunt to an immediate visit, and that she had not rather fulfilled her threat and gone alone. Now, thanks to her prompt decision, everything had happened so favourably; but now, too, poor Aunt Valerie must calm herself⁠—must stop crying, and dry her tears, even if they were tears of joy⁠—if she were really her good angel. So much the more indeed! Her good angel⁠—she would try to be it, most certainly, and, oh, so willingly! She would never leave her again, at least in her thoughts and in her heart⁠—would always be in thought and in heart near her, to comfort her, to help her, where she could, as much as she could; only now⁠—now she must compose herself, and, quick, quick! let the black lace veil be arranged on her beautiful soft hair, and become again the great, dignified, proud lady that Aunt Sidonie had told her off, whom Aunt Sidonie must find there, or lose all belief in the penetration and knowledge of character on which she prided herself so highly. + 

Thus Elsa comforted and coaxed and jested, till she had the pleasure of bringing a smile to the delicate pale lips and the mild brown eyes⁠—the true Werben eyes, said Elsa; a melancholy smile, thought Elsa, but still a smile. And it came just in time, for the next moment the curly-headed young man in black coat, silk stockings, and knee-breeches, whose assiduity Elsa had with some difficulty escaped in the anteroom, opened the door and announced, in polite respect for the stately appearance of the lady whose card he held in his hand⁠—“Madame Sidonie de Werben!” + 

Sidonie rustled through the door, and found herself face to face with a slight, pale lady, who, supporting herself on Elsa’s arm, held out her slender white hand, and who must be her sister Valerie, only that she did not in the least resemble the Valerie whom she had known, and whom she had last seen seven and twenty years ago. Not that the lady who stood before her was not still elegant and distinguished looking⁠—she was even more so than formerly, Sidonie thought⁠—she was still handsome too in her way, very handsome indeed; but the brilliant glance of the dark eyes, the rich carnation of the fair cheeks, the fascinating smile of the small red mouth, the luxuriant masses of her splendid chestnut-brown hair, which had formed a rich crown over her brow, and knotted loosely together at the back, had fallen in a few scented locks over her round, white shoulders, where were gone those magical charms over whose worldliness and sinfulness she had so often sighed and lamented? + 

Sidonie was bewildered, almost dismayed. The little speech which she had prepared on the way was meant for the vain, pretentious, coquettish Valerie of former days, and was evidently quite unsuited to the Valerie of today. But her hurried efforts to think of something else to say were quite unsuccessful. Besides, the longer she gazed on the pale, noble countenance that was turned with a gentle smile towards her, and at every moment discovered an expression that brought back to her the former Valerie, the more she was overcome by a curious mingled sensation of the old love and of a new pity, so that, interrupting herself in the midst of the formal phrases through which she was labouring with a heartfelt “Dear Valerie, dearest sister!” she opened her arms, kissed Valerie on both cheeks, and then, as if terrified at this unjustifiable ebullition, sat down in stiff dignity in an armchair, and looked as severe and unapproachable as her shortsighted, good-humoured eyes would allow her. + 

But the ice was broken, and Elsa took care that it should not form again, although there were some difficult points to be got over still. When Aunt Sidonie had mentioned casually that her brother had already left the house when Valerie’s letter came, and consequently knew and could know nothing of their visit, “though he would doubtless have given his permission for it,” Elsa blushed for Aunt Sidonie when she saw how painfully Aunt Valerie’s lips quivered at the thoughtless words. She hastened to say that, after the letter received yesterday from her aunt, her father had only expected her on the evening of this day, when it occurred to her that her father’s message would now seem very improbable, and, blushing again at the contradiction in which she had involved herself, she was silent. + 

“Never mind, dear Elsa,” said Valerie, kindly pressing her hand, “I am grateful enough as it is. Everything cannot come right at once;” and she added, to herself, “Nothing will come right so long as I am in the power of my tyrant, who has once again seen, with one glance of his unerring eyes, what was hidden from my longing heart.” + 

In the meantime, Aunt Sidonie had entered on a subject which had occupied all her attention since the day before yesterday, and which she talked of now with the greater pleasure that she considered it a perfectly safe one: + 

“Though I hardly know, my dear Valerie, how far your long absence may have influenced your interest in the joys and sorrows of your family. Here it is only a question, of joys. You need not raise your eyebrows, Elsa⁠—it does not improve your looks; besides that, it shows a want of confidence in my discretion, which, to put it mildly, is not very flattering to me, and is so much the more out of place that you ought by this time to be convinced of the groundlessness of your doubts and fancies. It is certainly not saying too much if I declare that I guessed the truth before anyone, not even excepting Ottomar himself. The worldly advantages of the connection, its suitableness from all points of view⁠—good heavens! no reasonable person could doubt it or ever has doubted it, as Baroness Kniebreche assured me yesterday, and she would certainly know if the contrary were the case, and if any one voice had been raised against it. The Baroness, dear Valerie, born a Countess Drachenstein, of the Drachenstein-Wolfszahn branch, the widow of the Lieutenant-General, a comrade and friend of our late father⁠—eighty-two years old, but still astonishingly fresh, an extremely clever, delightful old lady, whose acquaintance you would be charmed to make⁠—very intimate with the Wallbachs, and whose particular favourite our Carla always was. You have upset my ideas with your unnecessary grimaces, my dear Elsa, and it is your fault if I appear to your Aunt Valerie as absent as I am usually collected. You know me of old, Valerie, and Elsa herself knows best what strong concentration of thought is necessary for the conception and carrying out of my ‘Court Etiquette.’ ” + 

Elsa here tried to keep her aunt to her usually favourite topic, but in vain. + 

“There are moments,” said Sidonie, “even in the lives of those who, like myself, most perfectly estimate the whole moral and political necessity of the growth and prosperity of the smaller courts, in which the firmly-rooted love and fidelity to the highest personages must not, indeed, be overpowered by family interests⁠—that would be an improper expression⁠—but allow the latter somewhat more liberty than usual; and in my mind that moment has now arrived.” + 

Sidonie now went on to describe the happiness that she felt at the aspect of the betrothed pair, who were themselves so happy, if they delicately refrained from giving to their happiness that expression which to less observant eyes might seem necessary or at least desirable, but for those who, during a long life at court, had learnt the requisite knowledge of humanity was neither necessary nor desirable. She, at least, must confess that Ottomar’s modest gratitude and Carla’s timid reticence moved her to the bottom of her heart, and all the more that she was constantly reminded by it of the bewitching idyll of the budding love of her Princess towards the then hereditary Prince, now the reigning sovereign; and if Elsa, as it seemed, intended to make the objection that the marriage in question had to be broken off later on account of higher interests, they were higher interests which had nothing to do with the present question, and never could have. + 

Elsa had given up the attempt to stem her aunt’s inexhaustible flow of words; she hardly dared, for fear of drawing upon herself fresh reproaches for her unkindness and frivolity, even to raise her eyes to Aunt Valerie, who, leaning back in her chair, listened with an attention which Sidonie pointed out to Elsa as “exemplary.” Neither she nor Elsa suspected what feelings were tearing the heart of the poor woman, while her smiling lips from time to time put in a courteous, kindly word of interest. She must take notice of every turn of the conversation if she would go through the examination which her inexorable tyrant would impose upon her later. Woe to her if she had overlooked or failed to hear anything! Woe to her if she contradicted herself! Thrice woe to her if she had exclaimed what her heart cried within her: “I know it all already, better than you, foolish sister, or you, dear child! Poor things, do you not see that you are in the tiger’s den, to which there are many tracks that lead, but none that come out again?” + 

And then her anxious glance turned to the door. How did it happen that he left her alone for so long? What was his intention, he who never did anything without intention? + 

III + 

It had not been Giraldi’s intention to remain away so long. He had expected the visit to be only one of civility, in return for that which he had paid his Excellency the day before; but the clever, loquacious gentleman had still so much to say, so much to add with regard to the business that they had apparently concluded the day before, even when he stood at the door with his hand on the lock, sometimes putting the hat which he held in the other hand before his half-blind eyes, hidden behind large grey spectacles, to protect them from the light that streamed too dazzlingly through the window opposite. + 

“It seems foolish to warn the most prudent of men,” he said, with a sarcastic smile which looked like a tearful grimace on his odd face. + 

“Particularly when the warning comes from the bravest of men,” answered Giraldi. + 

“And yet,” continued his Excellency, “he is wise too; you undervalue his wisdom. He too is brave, even to rashness; he gives proof of it daily. I do not think men like him can be understood at a distance; at least half the magical power that they exercise over their contemporaries lies in their personality. One must know such people personally, quarrel with them in the Chambers, see them enter at a court reception, to understand why the beasts grovel in the dust before this lion, and even where they mean to oppose him, only get so far as to wag their tails. Believe me, my honoured friend, distance in space is as unfavourable to the estimation of such real historical greatness as distance in time. You in Rome think you can explain by the logic of facts all that depends solely on the overwhelming personality of the man, exactly as all-wise philosophers of history quite calmly construe the wonderful deeds of an Alexander or a Caesar even to the minutest details by the necessity of the circumstances of the time, as if circumstances were a machine which completes its task all the same, whether set in motion by the master or by a workman.” + 

Giraldi smiled: “I thank your Excellency in the name of his Holiness, for whose ears this witty little lecture was doubtless meant. And it is no doubt as well that his Holiness should occasionally be shown the reverse side of the medal, in order that he may not forget the fear which is the beginning of all wisdom, and may be mindful of the necessity of our counsels and of our support. Only at this moment, when the shadows of the clouds which threaten our horizon on all sides lie dark on his soul, I would not willingly represent to him the situation as more difficult, or the man of the situation as more dangerous, than we ourselves see them to be who have learnt to see. Therefore I purposely took advantage of my farewell audience to raise his failing courage a little. May I give your Excellency a proof of the necessity of this? Well, then, his Holiness spoke in almost identically the same words of the demoniacal power of the arch-enemy of our Holy Church; he called him in turns a robber, a giant with a hundred arms, a murderer, a Colossus whose feet trod the two hemispheres, as that of Rhodes did the two sides of the harbour. Can your Excellency guess what I answered him? ‘I see already the pebble falling from the skies, which will shatter the feet of the Colossus.’ His eyes gleamed, his lips moved; he repeated to himself the words; before long he will proclaim them, urbi et orbi, as he does everything that we whisper to him. Our enemies will laugh, but it will comfort the feeble spirits amongst us, as it evidently sufficed to comfort the poor old man.” + 

“I wish it were as true as it is comforting,” said his Excellency. + 

“And is it not true?” exclaimed Giraldi. “Does not the Colossus in reality stand on feet of clay? Of what avail are all the boasting speeches about the power and splendour and civilising historic mission of the German Empire? The end of the song, which he purposely suppresses, or at least only allows to be heard quite faintly, is always and only the powerful kingdom of Prussia. What avails him that he restlessly throws himself from one character into another, and today proclaims universal suffrage, tomorrow thunders against Socialism, the day after again reprimands the puffed-up middle classes like so many ill-behaved schoolboys? He is and will always remain the majordomo of the Hohenzollern, though he may strive against it in moments of impatience at the occasional prudent hesitation of his gracious master, of anger at the intrigues of the courtiers, or whatever else may chafe his proud spirit. Believe me, your Excellency, this man, in spite of his perpetual display of liberalism, is an aristocrat from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and in spite of his vaunted enlightenment is full of the romantic fancier of the middle ages, and never can and never will from his heart wish for anything but a kingdom by the grace of God. But while he wishes for a kingdom by the grace of God, he works for one by the grace of the people. What else is it, when he uproots from the people all reverence for the priesthood, not the Catholic alone? the interests of all orders of the priesthood have always been identical, and the sympathy which the ill-used Catholic clergy obtain from the Protestant priesthood will soon be seen. Without priests, however, there can be no God, and no kingdom by the grace of God; in other words, he is sawing off the branch on which he sits. Or if he does not take the matter so seriously, if he is, what I do not believe, so narrow-minded and frivolous that he only sees the whole matter in the light of a dispute about etiquette, a quarrel for the precedence which he wishes to claim by the power he has arrogated to himself as head and chief over the priests, the affair will again lead him ad absurdum, as there is no doubt that the priests will never accept this subordination, will at least only endure it if they cannot help themselves. We are what we always were and always shall be. And, your Excellency, his vulnerable point is that he does not grasp this, that he believes that he can frighten us by threatenings and terrors and make us the creatures of his will. As soon as he perceives that he cannot succeed by this means⁠—and I hope he will not perceive it yet⁠—he will try to temporise with us, and step by step will be drawn into the reaction; will be forced ever more and more openly to expose the contradiction between his aim⁠—the kingdom by the grace of God⁠—and his means which he has borrowed from the armoury of the revolution; and this contradiction into which he is being hopelessly driven, and from which must proceed the revolution⁠—for no people will endure the long continuance of so contradicting a rule⁠—is the pebble that is already rolling, and which will loosen the avalanche and shatter the Colossus.” + 

“Serve him right! and good luck go with him,” said his little Excellency, with his sarcastic laugh; and then, after a short pause, “I only sometimes fear that we shall make the salto mortale with him, and⁠—” + 

“Shall stand firmer than ever on our feet,” interrupted Giraldi quickly. “What have we to fear from the revolution or from the people?⁠—nothing, absolutely nothing. If today they dance round the golden calf, tomorrow they will prostrate themselves the deeper in the dust before Jehovah; if today they place the Goddess of Reason on the throne, tomorrow like frightened children they will fly back again into the bosom of Mother Church. And if in reality, as you said yesterday, Darwinism is to be for Germany the religion of the future, so be it; we will be the Darwinians par excellence, and with holy zeal will teach the new faith from the chairs of the universities. We know that nature draws her veil the closer, the more impatiently the too-forward scholar tries to lift it. And when he has gazed into the hollow eyes of Nothing, and lies shattered on the ground, we will come, will raise up the poor fool, and comfort him with the words⁠—‘Go, and sin no more.’ And he will go, and will sin no more in the foolish thirst for knowledge, for the burden of ignorance is lighter and her yoke is easier⁠—quod erat demonstrandum.” + 

The corners of his Excellency’s mouth were drawn as far apart as possible; even Giraldi smiled. + 

“I wish I had you always here,” said his Excellency. + 

“To tell your Excellency things which you have long ago proclaimed from the tribune.” + 

“I generally speak from my place.” + 

“And always in the right place.” + 

“It is often nothing but empty sound, and no one knows that better than myself; one counts upon the echo.” + 

“And not in vain; for us beyond the mountains the little silver bell is the great bell of a cathedral, whose iron clang reminds loiterers of their duty and spurs the brave to fiercer struggles.” + 

“And that reminds me that at this moment I am a loiterer myself, and that a fiercer struggle awaits me in the Chamber today.” + 

His Excellency, who had some time before seated himself on a chair near the door⁠—Giraldi remained standing⁠—rose again. + 

“Your Excellency will not forget my little request,” said Giraldi. + 

“How could I?” answered his Excellency; “in fact, I hope soon to have an opportunity of setting the affair in motion. Of course, it cannot be done without a small douceur. Nobody does anything there for nothing. Happily we have the means always ready. The promise to give one turn less to the screw in Alsace-Lorraine, not to disturb the childish pleasure of the old Catholics in Cologne too rudely, not to sound the alarm too loud in the impending debate on the courageous Bishop of Ermeland, any one of these small favours is worth a General, particularly when the latter has such unpractical antediluvian ideas of State, society and family.” + 

“And it can be done without scandal?” + 

“Quite without scandal. Ah! my worthy friend, you must not consider us any longer as the honest barbarians described by Tacitus; we have really learnt something since then. Goodbye!” + 

“Will your Excellency allow me to escort you to your carriage?” + 

“On no account. My servant waits in the anteroom. Will you let him come in?” + 

“Will your Excellency permit me to be for the moment, as ever, your devoted servant?” + 

Giraldi was in the act of offering his arm to the half-blind man, when a fresh visitor was announced. + 

“Who is it?” asked his Excellency, with some anxiety; “you know I must not be seen here by everybody.” + 

“It is Councillor Schieler, your Excellency.” + 

“Oh! only him. However, do not trust the sneaking fellow more than you can help! He has got some very useful qualities, but must be handled with care. Above all, do not trust him in the matter in question; it would be quite useless. His great protector can do nothing in the matter.” + 

“And therefore it was that I took the liberty of applying to your Excellency.” + 

“Advice to you always comes too late. One thing more. For the little family war which you have to wage here with these North German barbarians you require three times as much of the needful as for the great war. Are you fully provided?” + 

“I have always considered that war should maintain itself. However, I can draw on Brussels to any extent if it should be necessary.” + 

“Perhaps it may be necessary. At any rate, keep the game in your own hands. In spite of your sanguine hopes for the future, in which I fully concur, there are a series of lean years impending; we shall have to live like marmots, and the prudence of the marmot is more than ever necessary to us. You will keep me au courant?” + 

“It will be for my own interest, your Excellency.” + 

The Councillor had entered. His Excellency held out his hand: “You come just as I am going⁠—that is unfair. You know there is nobody I like better to talk with than you. How blows the wind today in the Wilhelmstrasse? Have they slept well? Did they get out of bed on the right side? Nerves down, or steady? Country air asked for, or no demand? For heaven’s sake do not let me die of unsatisfied curiosity.” + 

His Excellency did not wait for the answer of the smiling Councillor, but again pressed the hands of both gentlemen, and, leaning on the arm of the servant who had entered meanwhile, left the room. + 

“Is it not wonderful!” said the Councillor; “such incredible elasticity, such marvellous promptitude, such quickness of attack, such sureness in retreat! The Moltke of guerilla warfare! What an enviable treasure does your party possess in that man!” + 

“Our party, Councillor? Pardon me, I always have to remind myself that you do not belong to us. Will you not sit down?” + 

“Many thanks, but I have not a minute to spare. I can only hastily tell you what is most important. In the first place, they are furious at the Ministry of Commerce at a vote just passed by the General Staff on the harbour question, which, as I am told by a colleague⁠—I have not yet seen it myself⁠—is as good as a veto. The report is by a certain Captain von Schönau, but the actual author⁠—did you ever hear of such a thing?⁠—is himself a member of the War Office, and is of course no other than our friend the General. This throws us back I do not know how far or for how long. I am furious, and the more so that I can see no way of getting over this difficulty. To be sure, a man has influence, and could, if necessary, bring this influence to bear even against an old friend; but one would not like to do it except in the direst necessity. What do you advise?” + 

“That we should not tarnish the purity of our cause by mixing in it such odious personalities,” answered Giraldi. “If you think yourself bound to spare an old friend, you know that there exists between the General and me an enmity of long standing; and everything that I should do or allow to be done against him would appear justly in the eyes of all as an act of common revenge, which God forbid! If it is His will He will surely bring about an event which will make our opponent harmless, and that need not be an accident because men call it so.” + 

“You mean if he were to die?” asked the Councillor, with a hesitating glance. + 

“I mean nothing positive, and certainly not his death. As far as I am concerned, may he live long!” + 

“That is a noble and Christian-like wish,” answered the Councillor, rubbing his long nose, “and no doubt spoken from your heart; still his opposition is and remains a stumbling-block to us, and I wish that were our only hindrance. But now, Count Golm tells me⁠—I have just come from him; he will have the honour almost immediately; I only hurried on before him because I have something to say about him presently⁠—Count Golm tells me that his efforts⁠—he went over there in his present semiofficial capacity as future chairman of the board⁠—that his efforts with the President in Sundin have been quite useless. He had made up his mind and could not alter it, however willingly he would give way to the Count, for a thousand reasons of neighbourly feeling and personal goodwill, and so forth. Golm, who between ourselves is clever enough and certainly not bashful, naturally allowed the great sacrifice to be perceived that we have determined to make⁠—all in vain. In fact Golm thinks that he has rather done harm than good in the matter.” + 

“As is the case with all half measures,” said Giraldi. + 

“With half measures, my dear sir. How do you mean?” + 

“What was he offered?” + 

“Fifty thousand thalers down and the first directorship of the new railway, with six thousand a year fixed salary, besides an official residence, travelling expenses, and so forth.” + 

“Then about half what he demands?” + 

“He demands nothing.” + 

“A man does not demand under those circumstances; he lets it be offered to him. Authorise the Count to double it, and I bet you anything the business is done.” + 

“We cannot go so far as that,” answered the Councillor, rubbing his closely-cropped head; “our means do not allow it. Besides the rest of us⁠—and then Count Golm himself is satisfied with fifty thousand for the present, we cannot offer the President twice as much without offending Golm. He is not particularly pleased with us as it is, and that is the point I want to talk to you about before he comes. Is it really impossible for you⁠—I mean for the Warnow trustees⁠—to sell the property directly to us, the provisional board?” + 

“Over the Count’s head!” exclaimed Giraldi. “Why I fancy, Councillor, that you are bound to the Count in that matter by the most positive promises.” + 

“True, true, unfortunately! But Lübbener, our financial adviser and⁠—” + 

“The Count’s banker⁠—I know.” + 

“You know everything! Lübbener thinks we might find some pretext in the case of a gentleman who, like the Count, is always getting into fresh difficulties and is always inclined or forced to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. At the same time we do not wish or intend to act contrary to your intentions, and if you insist⁠—” + 

“I insist upon nothing, Councillor,” answered Giraldi; “I simply obey the wishes of my client, which are on this point identical with those of Herr von Wallbach.” + 

“Good heavens!” said the Councillor impatiently. “I can quite understand that for the sake of appearances you would prefer to sell to a man of position rather than to a provisional board, although the man of position in question is a member of that very board; but you must not forget that we should pay you as much, or nearly as much, directly as we must afterwards pay to the Count.” + 

“The Count will not get off so cheaply either as you seem to think.” + 

“Then he will sell so much the dearer to us,” said the Councillor; “and it will be so much the worse for us.” + 

“Nevertheless I must refuse my support in this matter, to my great regret,” answered Giraldi decidedly. + 

The Councillor looked very much disgusted. “The best of it is,” he said sulkily, “that he cannot find the money⁠—not even a hundred thousand, and still less the million or whatever sum we decide upon as the price of the land. He must come to us then; I know nobody else who would advance him so much at once, or even in instalments. I can tell him, however, beforehand, without being Merlin the Wise, that we shall not let him have the money cheap, so it will come to the same thing in the end. But now, my honoured patron, I must make room for the Count and take leave of you. Give my best regards to the lady, whom unfortunately I have not yet the honour of knowing, but for whom I have always had the deepest respect, and for whom I have broken many a lance in knightly fashion. And not in vain, for this family visit⁠—I met Fräulein Sidonie in the hall, Fräulein Elsa had hastened on in front⁠—is a concession which I may, without vanity, look upon as the result of my powers of persuasion. Apropos of my dear old friend Sidonie, you wished to know yesterday what it was that had actually decided the matter of the betrothal and put an end to Ottomar’s obstinate resistance.” + 

“Well?” asked Giraldi, with unfeigned curiosity. + 

“I do not know,” said the Councillor, with his finger on his long nose; “that is to say, my dear friend does not know, or she was sure to have told me. According to the servant’s evidence⁠—that was all she could tell me⁠—an interview took place the night before between the father and son; but I have every reason to suspect that the subject was no romantic one, but on the contrary, the equally prosaic and inexhaustible one of Ottomar’s debts. Farewell, my dear and honoured patron!⁠—You will keep me informed?” + 

“Be assured of it.” + 

The Councillor was gone. Giraldi’s dark eyes were still fixed on the door; a smile of the deepest contempt played upon his lips. “Buffone!” he murmured. + 

IV + 

He stood sunk in the deepest thought, his slender white fingers stroking his dark beard. + 

“It is amusing to be the only well-informed man amongst the ignorant; amusing and sad. I feel it for the first time, now that I can no longer share my thoughts and plans with her. She has brought it on herself, and she is heaping wrong upon wrong. A little while ago and the measure was nearly full. If a spark of the old love remained in her she must have taken it differently. That pallor, that terror, that ‘no!’ at the mere vision of what formerly her soul thirsted for, as the thirsty traveller in the desert longs for the stream of water in the oasis. Only because it was a vision? Because it was not the truth? And if it were made truth?” Giraldi slowly paced the apartment. “His parents are dead, the monk may be disposed of, and the handsome youth can have no objection; he is vain and false, and in love; any one of the three would suffice to induce him to play the part. And then the likeness⁠—it is not very striking, but she cannot convict me of falsehood when she sees him; and she must see him.” + 

In the anteroom was a stir as of several people moving; Giraldi, who was near the door, advanced a step nearer and listened; doubtless the visit announced in the niece’s note. They were all pressing round her now; they who had formerly avoided Valerie as an outcast and castaway hastened to her now that she was their equal and doubly as powerful. They would try to make up by the flatteries and caresses of one hour for what they had for long years committed against her in their stupid shortsightedness. She had said once that she longed for this hour, in order that she might set her foot on the necks of her persecutors, and pay them back in their own coin for their treatment of her. He had just now repeated the words that had often been mentioned between them, but she had not taken them up. The old German love of family was moving in her towards her blood-relations, while her own flesh and blood⁠—his own⁠— + 

He struck his forehead with his clenched fist. “That was the only foolish action of my life. What would I give if I could undo it!” + 

All was quiet again in the anteroom; Giraldi opened the door and beckoned in François, who handed him a number of visiting cards. + 

“I brought them out again, monsieur,” said François; “I was not sure of being able to remember those German names.” + 

“You must practise,” said Giraldi, letting the cards run through his fingers; “Privy Councillor Wallbach, Frau Louisa von Wallbach (née Herrenburg Semlow), Ottomar von Werben, Carla von Wallbach⁠—mon Dieu! it is not so very difficult⁠—I can remember twenty names that I have heard mentioned.” + 

“Oh yes, you, monsieur!” said François, bowing with a cringing smile. + 

“I expect the same of you. How did madame receive the lady who came first, the young Fräulein Elsa von Werben!” + 

“Mademoiselle shut the door when I wanted to follow her. I could not do it with the best will in the world. Mademoiselle seems to be very determined.” + 

“You are a fool. And the second lady, the older one, Fräulein Sidonie von Werben, or were you out of the way again?” + 

“Oh! no, monsieur! She is a great lady who gives herself airs; there was no difficulty with her. She walked ten paces forward and then made her curtsey. Oh, monsieur! such a curtsey! I could not help thinking of Madame la Duchesse de Rosambert, from whose service I came into monsieur’s.” + 

“Good! and madame?” + 

“Madame could not help smiling⁠—a melancholy smile, monsieur, that went to one’s heart.” + 

And François laid his hand with a hypocritical look on his dazzlingly white closely-plaited shirtfront with its large gold studs. + 

“You may dispense with those grimaces in my presence! Go on.” + 

“Madame, who had passed her left arm through mademoiselle’s, and did not let it go now, held out her right hand and said: ‘Ah, que nous⁠—’ ” + 

“In French?” + 

“No, monsieur, in German.” + 

“Then repeat it in German; the same words, if you please.” + 

“Do we meet again thus after eighty-seven years?” + 

“Twenty-seven, idiot! But the actual meeting?” + 

“It was such a confusion, monsieur! I could not distinguish anything in particular; it was impossible, monsieur!” + 

Giraldi shrugged his shoulders impatiently. + 

“If Count Golm calls, tell him that I am at home to him, and add that monsieur can only spare him a few minutes because he is himself expected in madame’s salon. Then mention, casually, who is in the salon. Do you understand?” + 

“Perfectly, monsieur.” + 

“One thing more; I do not pay two hundred francs a month to people to whom anything is impossible. You must perfect yourself if you wish to remain any longer in my service.” + 

“I will do everything to satisfy monsieur, and to prove myself worthy of the confidence with which monsieur honours me.” + 

François bowed himself out of the door. + 

“That is to say,” said Giraldi, “you have confided too much in me already to dare to send me away at a moment’s notice. It is our misfortune that we cannot live without these creatures. In Machiavelli’s time people took the precaution of not letting them live long. In these days one has to pay double without assuring one’s safety. Ah! the Count.” + 

François had opened the door to Count Golm; the Count entered with hurried steps. He looked out of temper and absent; his attitude and the tone of his voice showed the carelessness of the man of rank, who does not think it worth his while to conceal his dissatisfaction. + 

“I am sorry to disturb you,” he said; “but I will not take up your time for long; I have only come to tell you that in all probability nothing will now come of our bargain.” + 

“I should be sorry for that for your sake, Count,” answered Giraldi. + 

“Why for my sake?” + 

“We make nothing by the bargain, Count Golm.” + 

“Which is as much as to say that I should gain by it! I should be much obliged, sir, if you would tell me what.” + 

“If the Count, who proposed the bargain, does not know, we cannot pretend to do so.” + 

“And who are ‘we,’ if I may venture to ask, in this case; the trustees of the Warnow property, or yourself?” + 

“In this case the Baroness von Warnow, whom I have the honour to represent.” + 

There was so much calm superiority in the Italian’s coolly courteous manner, his black eyes shone with such a steady light, that the Count could not bear their glance and looked confusedly on the ground. + 

“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I⁠—I did not mean to offend you.” + 

“And I am not offended,” answered Giraldi; “I never am when I see that people vent on me the vexation which I have not caused; it is like a letter that has been addressed to me by mistake. Shall we sit down?” + 

The Count accepted the invitation unwillingly. + 

“I cannot, however, consider you exonerated from all blame; it was you who told me yesterday that it would not be difficult for me to raise the first instalment of the purchase-money. As I take it for granted that you are in a general way acquainted with my circumstances, and on the other hand, you have been so long intimate with the Councillor, I could not but believe that between him and you on the one side, and him and Herr Lübbener on the other, some conversation had taken place upon the matter in question, and that you were authorised by those gentlemen to make an advance to me in their names, which could not be made by the gentlemen themselves to whom I am to sell again, though only in their capacity as directors of the new railroad. Good! I went this morning to Lübbener; he professed great astonishment, said it was very strange, might create bad feeling if it were known that he had advanced the money, still⁠—to please me, as I was determined to be the seller⁠—in short, he made conditions⁠—impossible, degrading conditions, I tell you⁠—for which I could have horsewhipped the⁠—the fellow! I went away furious, and went straight to Herr Philip Schmidt. Herr Schmidt, you must know⁠—” + 

“I know⁠—a merchant-captain, much thought of by the Werbens. The Councillor spoke to me about him.” + 

Giraldi played with his watch-chain while he said these words in a careless, conversational tone, and looked up in astonishment when the Count exclaimed eagerly: + 

“Heaven forbid! What could I have to do with him! Herr Philip Schmidt is, as I learnt unfortunately too late, a cousin of that otherwise utterly insignificant fellow, who has, with incredible audacity, forced himself into the best circles; a man of no birth⁠—” + 

“I beg your pardon; Herr Philip Schmidt then, to whom you went⁠—” + 

“Is the contractor for the Berlin-Sundin Railroad, and is to build our line also⁠—a successful man, fairly presentable, and immensely rich. Polite reception, as I expected, assurance on assurance of meeting my wishes; but his money was tied up in every possible undertaking; his new house had cost him fearful sums; he must keep a balance in hand for the contract for our new railroad, and⁠—in short, scarcely better conditions than those of Lübbener. Now you see how easily I can raise the half million which you demand as an instalment.” + 

The Count pulled at his fair moustache; his pale blue eyes looked angrily at Giraldi. He made a motion to rise, but on a sign made by the latter with his white hand, remained sitting, as if rooted to his chair. + 

“I must again ask your pardon,” said Giraldi. “I thought I had made myself clear enough yesterday. I had forgotten that German ears are⁠—I will not say duller than Italian, but different to them. I could otherwise have spared you an unpleasant morning; for what could be more unpleasant for a nobleman than to be obliged to deal with crafty men of business, still more when these men, as is apparent, are in collusion! I hope that with us you will be relieved from this and any other unpleasantness.” + 

“ ‘With us?’ With you?” asked the Count in the greatest astonishment. + 

“I must again say ‘we’ and ‘us,’ ” answered Giraldi, smiling; “for if I am myself only the manager, still the savings of an income of ten thousand thalers could not have increased to so large a sum without⁠—what shall I say⁠—some speculation by a lucky hand. For the last few years the money has been really lying idle, and I herewith offer it to the Count in the name of the Baroness.” + 

The Count stared at Giraldi; but the man’s dark eyes shone as calmly as before. It could not be a joke. + 

“In the name of the Baroness?” + 

“If it so pleases you.” + 

“The entire half million?” + 

“As it appears to us⁠—this time I mean the trustees⁠—that the payment of half the purchase-money at once is necessary for the better regulation of the property.” + 

“And the conditions?” asked the Count, after a short pause, with a somewhat hesitating voice. + 

Giraldi stroked his dark beard. + 

“We make really none, with the exception of one special condition, for the registration of the debt as a first mortgage on the property⁠—which, as the Count knows, is quite free from debt⁠—and the low interest of four percent, can hardly be called conditions, but rather natural securities, which the Count⁠—” + 

“Certainly, certainly,” said the Count; “quite natural. And the special condition?” + 

“That the Count pledges his word of honour not to tell anyone, be they who they may, or even to hint from whom he has obtained the money.” Giraldi held out his hand with a pleasant smile. “It is the hand of a friend, not of a usurer, that we hold out to you.” + 

The Count was ashamed of his momentary hesitation. “There you have my hand and my word!” he exclaimed, laying his hand in that of the Italian. “I will speak of it to no one.” + 

“Not even to the Baroness,” continued Giraldi. “She wishes to be entirely unconcerned; that is to say, quite free. The Count will understand this womanly delicacy, not to say weakness.” + 

“Perfectly,” said the Count. + 

“Even her name⁠—that is her particular wish⁠—must not appear in any part of the transaction; so that the mortgage must be made out in my name. Do you agree!” + 

“Of course,” said the Count. + 

Giraldi dropped, with a friendly pressure, the hand which he had till then held in his, and leaned back in his chair. + 

“Then we are agreed,” he said. “I on my side consider myself fortunate in having delivered a nobleman, whose intelligence and energy had won my entire sympathy even before I had the happiness of making his personal acquaintance, from the unclean hands of these roturiers, and in having placed him in a position which, as it appears to me, confers on him that leading position in this affair which in every way is his right. I at least see the road quite clear before him. To raise the second half of the purchase-money⁠—let us for the present fix the 1st of March as the term⁠—I say to raise the second half of the purchase-money cannot be the least difficult, as by that time you will have long ago sold the property to your associates for double the money; you must not on any account agree for less than two millions. And now, Count, if it is agreeable to you, allow me to conduct you to the Baroness, who is longing to make your acquaintance, as I am sure you will be happy to become acquainted with a lady whom no one can know without loving and honouring her.” + 

Giraldi had risen; the Count stood embarrassed and undecided. + 

“You will easily believe that I should prize the happiness proposed to me at its fullest value; but⁠—your servant⁠—there are a lot of people⁠—nearly all the family⁠—in the salon. I fear I should be looked upon as a stranger and an intruder at such a moment.” + 

“But if,” answered Giraldi, “it should just be in the presence of her family that the Baroness especially needs the friendship of men of position and weight? If she lays the greatest stress on showing that wherever she appears the friendship of those men is secured to her.” + 

“Let us go!” exclaimed the Count. + 

“One word more,” said Giraldi. + 

In the hitherto calm eyes of the Italian a deeper fire burned. The Count stood breathless; he had an undefined feeling that now he was to hear the solution of the riddle which, in spite of all, was still a mystery to him. + 

“And if,” continued Giraldi slowly, as if weighing every syllable, “the Count should imagine that the Baroness does not expect to buy his friendship by doing him a service in a matter of business, but rather by using all her influence in his favour, in case he should have the wish, once for all, to make the reproach of being a stranger and intruder in the family impossible. I need say no more, if the Count understands, and I dare say no more if he has not understood me.” + 

The blood mounted into the Count’s face. + 

“If he dared to understand you!” he exclaimed, seizing the hand of the Italian and pressing it warmly⁠—“if he dared!” + 

“That would be my smallest fear,” answered Giraldi, with a crafty smile; “but I feel neither that nor any other. Only let prudence go hand in hand with courage, and let Count Golm kindly trust in this delicate business to the experience and knowledge of the world of an older man.” + 

“I will not take a step without you⁠—not a step!” + 

They had already reached the door when François entered with a card, which Giraldi, after glancing at it, handed to the Count. + 

“You see. Count Golm! Il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte! The cost is not counted on that side! Ask Herr von Werben to come in.” + 

François opened the door for Ottomar. + 

“I come at the general wish of the ladies,” said Ottomar. + 

For the first time he saw the Count, The sarcastic smile left his delicate lips; his bright eyes took a gloomy shade. + 

“I beg pardon,” said he; “I thought I should find you alone, or I would have chosen a better time⁠—” + 

“To me any time is right at which I make the acquaintance of the nephew of my highly revered friend,” answered Giraldi. “Besides, the Count and I were on the point of going to join the ladies in the drawing-room; now, indeed, I must ask the Count’s permission to enjoy the honour of Herr von Werben’s society here for a few minutes more.” + 

“Au revoir, then!” said the Count, leaving the room, and considering as he crossed the anteroom, accompanied by François, whether he ought to be affronted or amused at Ottomar’s distant manner. He came to the conclusion that he had more cause for the latter. Ottomar, indeed, had now reached the important goal; but it was extremely probable that he never would have reached it at all if a certain other person had arrived in Berlin a few days earlier. Everybody said so; and that it was only jealousy which had brought Ottomar’s indecision and faint-heartedness to an end. Faint-heartedness, indeed! To satisfy a woman like Carla von Wallbach, a man must have very different qualifications to any that Ottomar von Werben could boast⁠—must, in short, be a Count Golm. Well, he had kindly released the family from the anxiety which he had caused them⁠—Fräulein Elsa, too, who had evidently trembled for her brother. They owed him some gratitude, and all of them, excepting Ottomar, would feel that⁠—they would be eager to show him that gratitude. And if when he rose that morning he had not quite made up his mind about the other matter, he had done so now. Favoured by the lady here, whom the whole family had hastened to visit the very morning after her arrival, the remaining difficulties would vanish that opposed themselves to his entering that family as a highly desirable member⁠—if he chose to do so! Of course, he should reserve his liberty of decision to the last moment! + 

The Count lingered a little at the door to follow up his agreeable train of thought to the end, and to arrange his fair wavy hair and long moustache to the best advantage, before he desired François, who was waiting respectfully, to open the door for him; no special announcement was needed as he was expected. + 

François obeyed with a low bow the order given him in French, and then behind the closed door, with a still lower bow, said: “Monsieur le Comte, vous parlez français⁠—comme une vache espagnole⁠—je vous rends cette justice, ah!” and drawing himself up the man shook his fist: “que je déteste ce genre là!” + 

V + 

It was not so much the wish of the ladies, as the request of Carla that Ottomar had acceded to when he came in search of Giraldi. Carla was burning with curiosity to become personally acquainted with the man, of whom she had heard such an “immense number of the most interesting things;” it would be dreadful to lose such a pleasure! Could not Signor Giraldi get rid of his Excellency or of the Councillor? Could not Ottomar make a diversion by going in himself, and cutting short the Catholic question, or whatever other matter of high importance they might be discussing? Ottomar was so clever! Do ask him, Elsa! He will do anything for you! Elsa could do no less than say, “Pray oblige Carla!” and even then Ottomar had sat still, muttering that he did not speak Italian, till the Baroness said with an absent smile, “That need not prevent you, my dear Ottomar; Signor Giraldi speaks most European languages, and German in particular like a native.” “Oh! why can’t I go myself!” cried Carla. “If you wish it, my dear aunt,” said Ottomar, and went. + 

With very mixed feelings, however. He had only joined in paying this visit because Elsa seemed to wish it so much, and the Wallbachs had asked him so pressingly. But that he who, after his father, represented the family, should be the first to seek out the man whose name his father would never pronounce; the man who, if he might believe his father, had brought such sorrow and shame upon the family⁠—this was too much for his pride. And yet in this very circumstance lay a demoniac charm which Ottomar, as he crossed the anteroom, with grim satisfaction allowed to take effect upon him. Had not his father just now forcibly interfered in his life, robbed him by his imperious proceedings of the woman he loved⁠—now more than ever, made that life miserable, and brought her to the edge of the grave, perhaps to the grave, itself? Should he bow here again before the mere threatening shadow of paternal authority, or not rather rejoice that an opportunity was given him to set it at defiance? + 

And this defiance had curled his lips in an ironical smile as he met the much-abused man. + 

It seemed like an evil omen that instead of the Councillor whom he expected to find here, he should meet the Count, the last man he would have wished for as witness to a step which was almost a crime against the family honour, and was at least very hazardous. The words he would have spoken died on his lips, and the dark look with which he followed the retreating figure could hardly have been misinterpreted by a less shrewd observer. + 

“You have no love for that gentleman,” said Giraldi, waving his hand after the Count. + 

“I have no cause to love him,” answered Ottomar. + 

“No, indeed,” said Giraldi; “for two more opposite natures could hardly be brought together. In the one, openly expressed, supreme satisfaction with noble qualities which exist only in his imagination; in the other, perpetual gnawing doubt of the admirable gifts which Nature has so freely lavished upon him; in one, the miserable narrowness of a hard heart divided between vanity and frivolity; in the other, an overflow of love, falling into despair because all its blossoms do not ripen.” + 

Ottomar looked up, startled. Who was this man whom he now saw for the first time, and who read his inmost heart as if it had been an open book; who at the first moment of meeting not only could, but dared to say this, as quietly as if it were a matter of course, as if it were not worth while to respect the miserable fetters of social conventionalism even for a moment; as if he could wave them away with a single movement of the slender, white hand? + 

He looked into the black eyes as if asking for an explanation, and as he did so there crossed his mind the recollection, of a woodland pool by which he had often played as a boy, and which was said to be unfathomable. + 

“I have surprised you,” said Giraldi. “I might perhaps make use of your astonishment to appear to you⁠—if only for a short time⁠—in a mysterious light, and steal into your confidence by pretending to be in possession of heaven knows what secrets of yours. But I am no charlatan; I am not even the adventurer to whom you have come half-unwillingly, half-curiously; I am only a man whose dearest hopes and warmest wishes have been so long crushed and broken that he has forgotten how to hope or wish, and that only one feeling is left to him, that of pity for all sorrows wherever he may meet them, and especially when the sorrow is so plainly expressed on a young man’s face, at a moment when other faces are beaming with joy and gladness. And now, son of the man who is my enemy because he does not know me, give me your hand and tell me that you are not offended at my freedom!” + 

He extended both hands with a fascinating gesture half of entreaty, half of command, and Ottomar seized them with passionate eagerness. He had suffered so much in the last few days, and had had no one whose hand he could grasp, no one to whom he could unburden his overfull heart! And now from the eloquent lips of this handsome, strong, singular man came the first words of comfort! Were miracles possible then⁠—or, as the man himself said, did the miracle only consist in the fact that one must be unhappy oneself to understand those who suffer? + 

His heart overflowed; his beautiful eager eyes filled with tears, of which he was ashamed, but which he could not check. Giraldi released his hands and turned away, passing his hand across his eyes. When after a brief pause he turned back, there was a look of humble joy upon his expressive countenance, and his voice sounded softer than before as he said: “And now, my dear young friend, you will not forget this hour, nor what I now say; I am a poor man in spite of what people say; but anything in my power shall be done for you, for a glance of the eyes so wonderfully like those for which I would go to meet death this day as cheerfully as I would go to a feast. Come!” + 

He put his arm familiarly within Ottomar’s, and led him to the door which he opened and let his guest precede him. Ottomar did not turn; if he had he would have been appalled at the convulsively distorted face of the man who was holding the handle of the door in his left hand, while he raised the outstretched fingers of the right hand like a vulture’s claws as he strikes down his victim from behind. + 

The Count’s entrance into the drawing-room had greatly surprised the Baroness; but a moment’s reflection had been enough for her quick wits to guess at the state of affairs, and that this surprise was the work of Giraldi, the result of which she was to observe and by-and-by to report upon. Such an incentive was not needed, indeed; Elsa had become so dear to her in this one hour; every look of the joyous brown eyes, which, she well knew, could look so earnest too, every word that came from the little mouth, every movement of the slender, graceful figure⁠—all, all was balm to her aching heart, that was languishing for true affection, for beautiful, undefaced humanity. How far behind the tender grace of her favourite must the brilliant Carla stand! Carla, with whom everything, every tone, every gesture, every turn of her eyes, every movement was called into play by an insatiable thirst for admiration, which did not by any means always attain its object, and often far outstripped its aim. She had closely compared the two girls, and each time told herself that a man who had Elsa for a sister could not really love Carla, and that no good would come of the engagement for Ottomar, even if he had not passed the threshold to it, so to speak, over the body of the forsaken beauty who was breaking her heart now in despair. To her who had been initiated into the secret by her tyrant, the remorse which devoured him spoke only too plainly in the nervous glitter of his beautiful eyes, in his sullen silence or the forced speech to which he again roused himself, and in the constant gnawing of the delicate lip between his sharp teeth. And she, who had given her hand and her word to the unhappy man, seemed to see and suspect nothing of all this! She could chatter and laugh, and flirt with the Count exactly as she had done a minute before with her betrothed, only that her frivolous game was evidently not wasted now, but eagerly and sincerely admired, and gratefully responded to to the best of the man’s ability. And then her observant look returned to Elsa and met a pair of eyes which she had already learned to read so well, and in which she now thought she could perceive the same feelings that moved herself; sorrow, pity, astonishment, blame⁠—all indeed in a lesser degree, as was natural in the young girl, who probably did not know the sad secret of her brother’s engagement. And this sisterly sympathy was certainly not mixed with any selfish feelings. When the Count entered so unexpectedly, he had been welcomed by no joyful lifting of the eyes in which every thought was reflected, no brighter crimson in the cheek on which the colour always came and went so quickly; nothing but a look of astonishment which was little flattering to the newcomer, and which proved to Valerie how well her tyrant was kept informed by his spies, Everything that she had seen and heard in this last hour tallied in every particular with what he had foretold. And now he would appear, accompanying poor Ottomar, whom in these few minutes he would have won, fascinated, enchanted as he did all who came within his reach⁠—he would enter like a sovereign who appears last, when well-trained officials have appointed each guest his place, so that the eye of the ruler need not wander inquiringly, but may glance with a satisfied smile over the assembly which only waits for him. + 

He came in at last, only leaning on Ottomar’s arm long enough for everyone to have time to remark the confidential relations that already existed between him and the nephew of their hostess; and then hastening his step and leaving Ottomar behind him, he advanced to the party grouped round the sofa, whose conversation died away at once, as all raised their eyes curiously and wonderingly to the man they had been so eagerly expecting. And however many proofs Valerie had already received of the man’s tact, she was again forced against her will to admire the consummate art with which⁠—she could hardly herself have said how⁠—he became almost immediately the centre round which everything else revolved, from whom came every impulse and interest, to whom every thought and feeling returned. Even Frau von Wallbach had raised herself from the comfortable attitude in her armchair which she had taken after the first words of civility and had retained unchanged till now, and stared with half-open mouth and eyes which looked almost wide awake at the strange apparition. Elsa had evidently forgotten for the moment everything that had been troubling her before; and as she turned after a little while to her aunt and drew a long breath, there lay in her countenance the silent acknowledgment: “This is more, far more than I had expected.” Carla had the same feeling, and took care by her looks and gestures to let everybody know it, even before she openly expressed it. + 

“In these days,” cried she, “when the want of lively sensibilities and of courage to express the little that still exists is doubly felt, I have reserved to myself the childlike habit of naive admiration wherever and however I find what is admirable, and the privilege of Homer’s heroes of giving unveiled expression to my admiration. And when among the insipid faces of the north⁠—present company, gentlemen, is always excepted⁠—I see a face for whose description even the sunbathed portraits of a Titian, a Raphael or a Velasquez do not suffice, which I can compare to nothing but that miraculous picture to which I owe my most sublime impressions, to that indescribably dignified and yet most divinely benignant Head of Christ over the high altar in the Cathedral of Monreale at Palermo⁠—I must speak it out though Signor Giraldi does raise his hand so deprecatingly, thereby increasing his resemblance to the picture, which will be to me henceforward indeed only a portrait.” + 

“I am delighted to offer a humble theme to so lofty an artistic imagination as undoubtedly inspires Fräulein von Wallbach,” answered Giraldi. + 

“I think we must be going,” said Frau von Wallbach, with an absent look at the ceiling. + 

“Good heavens! Half-past two!” cried Carla, starting up; “how time flies in such interesting company!” + 

The company dispersed; Giraldi, who had gone with them to the door, came back slowly, his head raised, his dark eyes gleaming with triumph, and a smile of contempt curling his lip. Suddenly, in the centre of the room, he stood still, and for a moment his face grew dark as night, but the next he was smiling again, and with a smile he asked: + 

“Is that the look of a victor after the battle?” Valerie had sunk back, with closed eyes, utterly exhausted in her chair, believing that he had left the room. At the first sound of his voice she started. + 

“Which you have won!” + 

“For you!” + 

He bent down to her as he had done before and raised her hand to his lips. + 

“My lady’s hand is cold, however warm I know her heart to be. The noise of the battle is not fit for her sensitive nerves. We must take care that she retires betimes to a quieter spot, where she may await the end in peace.” + 

“What do you mean?” asked Valerie with a smile, though a shudder ran through her. + 

“It is a plan which has just taken shape in my mind, and which⁠—but no, not now, when you need repose! not now; tomorrow, perhaps, when these eyes may shine more boldly, when the blood will run more warmly in this dear hand⁠—the day after tomorrow⁠—there is no hurry; you know that Gregorio Giraldi does not make his plans for a day.” + 

“I know it,” answered Valerie. + 

He now really left the room; Valerie listened, she heard his door shut, she was alone. She rose trembling limbs and tottered to the chair in which Elsa had sat, and there fell upon her knees, pressing her forehead against the back. + 

“And Thou knowest it, Almighty God! Thou hast sent me Thy angel, in token of Thy grace and mercy. I will trust in Thee faithfully. Thou wilt not suffer that this tyrant shall destroy Thy beautiful world.” + 

VI + 

Autumn had come, and was boisterously asserting his authority; the weather was dark and gloomy, even in Reinhold’s eyes. “The gloomiest and darkest I ever experienced,” he said each morning to himself as the same spectacle always presented itself when he opened his window: dark, lowering clouds, trees swaying to and fro, from whose branches blustering winds were stripping the brown leaves and whirling them through the moist, foggy atmosphere across the roofs of the workshops, which looked so drenched and miserable that one would only have expected tombstones to be made there. + 

“And yet I have got through darker and gloomier days without losing heart,” philosophised Reinhold further; “it is not the weather out of doors, it is that whichever way I turn I see people in need and trouble, as if I were on board a ship that must sink shortly and could do nothing to save it, but must sit with my hands before me, and look on idly at the catastrophe.” + 

Reinhold could do nothing; of that he had only too soon convinced himself ever since that terrible morning when the General had come to his room, and in the deepest agitation, which even his iron strength could hardly master, had informed him of the conversation he had just had with Herr Schmidt, and its miserable results. + 

“I made every advance to your uncle,” said the General, “which was possible to a man of honour. I offered to him and to your family the reparation which, at least in the eyes of the world, would put everything straight, and would secure to the young people the possibility of that happiness which they have so recklessly pursued. If they will find it in this way, God only knows, but that is their affair, and must be theirs. What I feel about it, what hopes I bury here, what a sacrifice I make of my personal convictions, is a matter that lies between my God and me. May God guide your uncle’s heart, that he may put his trust in Him, as I do, in the inward conviction that our own wisdom will not help us here. I have come to you, my dear Schmidt, to say all this to you, not that I wish that you should try to influence your uncle; according to my judgment of him, that would be labour lost; but because I cannot endure the thought of being wrongly judged by a man whom we all think so highly of, and who, besides, is connected with me as a brother soldier, even if only for a short time.” + 

Reinhold had, notwithstanding, followed the impulse of his heart, and attempted the impossible. He had been, for the first time since they had been together, harshly repulsed by his uncle, and had been forced to own to himself that neither he nor any other man could persuade the fiery-tempered old man to retract a decision once made “because he must.” But when Aunt Rikchen, unable to rest from fear of the terrible something in the air which yet she could not comprehend, found Ferdinanda an hour later lying senseless on the floor of her studio; when the unfortunate girl was raving in high fever, and the family doctor came and went with anxious looks, and soon returned in company with a colleague, and in the evening the two were joined by a third physician, who seemed no less helpless before this strange seizure⁠—then, when Reinhold’s first words, “It will kill her!” seemed likely to be so terribly soon fulfilled, he bethought himself of the General’s fervent prayer that God might guide his uncle’s heart, and sought his uncle, who had not left his room again since the morning, and asked him whether he would really allow his child to die when it was in his power to save her. + 

“I am convinced that you can save her,” he cried; “that a word from you would pierce to her troubled mind through all the horrors of a fevered fancy, and that she would awake to a new life.” + 

“And what would that word be?” asked Uncle Ernst. + 

“If your heart does not tell you, you would not understand it if I spoke it.” + 

“My heart only tells me that it would be a lie,” replied Uncle Ernst; “and as I understand life, no lie will restore it. What life would it be to which she would awake! Life at the side of a man whose courage holds out just so long as the darkness in which he has followed his course of intrigue; who only steps forth from that darkness when a villain tears off his mask, and he cannot endure his father’s eye upon his miserable face; who would do what he must today, driven on by the reproaches of his conscience and fear of the world’s opinion, only to repent it tomorrow from the same fear, and to hint it to her at first in a thousand different ways, and say it at last to her face. Is that a lot for a father to prepare for his child? No, never! Better a thousand times death, if she must needs die. Every man has his own way of looking at life, and this is mine; and no general officer, with I know not what confused ideas of honour and love, and no relation, however dear he may be to me, who in his good-nature would like to accommodate what never can be put straight, will ever teach me another. And if God Himself came and said to me, ‘You are wrong,’ I should answer, ‘I do right in my own eyes,’ and no God can demand more of man.” + 

“But you ought not to have urged Ferdinanda to a decision which cannot possibly have come from her heart.” + 

“Are not you attempting something of the same kind at this moment?” + 

“I have no authority over you, and your mind is not torn by conflicting feelings as Ferdinanda’s must have been in that unhappy hour.” + 

“So much the better, that one of us at least should know what he wishes and wills.” + 

That had been Uncle Ernst’s last word, and he had said it with a calmness that to Reinhold was more terrible than the wildest outburst of passion would have been. + 

And yet not so terrible as the smile with which the stubborn old man a few days later received the news that Ferdinanda was, in the doctor’s opinion, out of danger. + 

Reinhold could not forget that smile; it haunted him even in his dreams. He had never seen the like on any human face; he could not even describe it to Justus, to whom he had repeatedly mentioned it, till one day he stopped with a sudden exclamation at a face that stared at him from the wall in a remote corner of the studio. + 

“Good heavens, Anders, what is this!” + 

“The mask of the Rhondonini Medusa,” said Justus, looking up from his work. + 

“That was my uncle’s smile.” + 

“I dare say it was something like it,” said Justus, coming up with his modelling-tool in his hand, “although I cannot quite reconcile Uncle Ernst’s beard with the Medusa; but one sees sometimes such diabolical resemblances.” + 

Justus’s friendship was invaluable to Reinhold in these dark days; when he was almost giving way, the artist’s perpetually cheerful temper would keep him up. “I cannot understand you,” said Justus; “I certainly have every possible respect for Uncle Ernst’s splendid qualities, and I take really a sincere interest in Ferdinanda, to say nothing of Aunt Rikchen, poor soul, who will soon have cried her eyes out; but sympathy and pity and all that sort of thing, like everything else in the world, must have its limits, and if anything of the kind affects my own life and incapacitates me from working⁠—why, then, you see, Reinhold, I say with Count Egmont: ‘This is a foreign drop within my veins!’ and⁠—out with it! Have you written to the President?” + 

“Three days ago.” + 

“That’s right. Heaven knows how sorry I shall be to lose you; but you have been here too long already. You ought to have a ship’s planks under your feet again, and a northeaster whistling in your ears; that would soon blow your melancholy and hypochondria and all that well out of you, and clear your brain and your heart⁠—you may take my word for it!” + 

“If only it comes to anything,” said Reinhold; “I almost fear, as the answer is so long in coming, that my report may have roused bad feelings in the other department as well, as the General prophesied it would.” + 

“Then we must think of something else,” answered Justus; “so smart a vessel must not be left to rot in the stagnant waters of a port. For the present you can sit to me occasionally as a model for my bas-relief; not that I want you yet, but one must gather the roses ere they fade. I will take your head now at once, life-size, to be sure of you in any case.” Justus set aside all other work, and busied himself over the designs for his bas-reliefs from morning till night, which came only too early for the busy worker. Two of them, the March Out and the Battle, were already finished, and the Ambulance Preparations had made great progress; but what was to be done about the Return? Heaven only knew! “And the idea was such a splendid one,” cried Justus. “You had been promoted to be an officer meanwhile, and were to be standing at attention in the right corner, your eyes left towards the charming burgomaster’s daughter, who, with the wreath in her hand, also turned her eyes right towards the smart lieutenant, while the two elders exchanged the most beautiful sentiments about union, peace, fraternity, and the like. Heaven help us! beautiful sentiments they have exchanged certainly! Those confounded politics! for after all they are at the bottom of all this trouble. Why must that old Berserker go running about upon the barricades in ’48! And he calls himself a Liberal now, and bottles up his anger for four and twenty years, and so spoils my splendid idea, for the idea was fairly embodied in those two. Who the devil is to make bas-reliefs from disembodied ideas! I, for one, can’t do it; I gladly renounce the doubtful glory of being an inventor; my motto is: ‘Seek, and you shall find!’ I have held by it, and it has held by me. I have always found just what I wanted for the moment; it has fairly fallen in my way, I must have been blind not to see it; and this time it was just as if Abdallah’s wonderful cave had opened before me: ‘Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, only the way between them is narrow⁠ ⁠… the camels laden almost beyond their strength;’ and now⁠—just turn a little more to the right, my good fellow!⁠—‘one only, the last, remained to the dervish.’ Admirable, my dear Reinhold, but, excepting you, every one of my splendid models has left me in the lurch; Uncle Ernst, the General, Ferdinanda⁠—absolutely impossible! Aunt Rikchen declares that in such a time of trouble she cannot have anything to do with such nonsense⁠—it would be quite wicked!⁠—is not that good? Old Grollmann’s face, I positively cannot see through his melancholy wrinkles; our worthy Kreisel, since he has given up Socialism and taken to speculation, has shrivelled up into a mere grasshopper; dear Cilli even has only occasionally the sweet smile with which, gift in hand, she was to grope for the superintendent’s table; and among the new workmen I cannot find a single decent model. A parcel of stupid, coarse, sullen faces; and all comes from politics⁠—those confounded politics!” + 

Thus Justus lamented, and between whiles laughed, over his own “splendid” idea, while he kneaded and moulded the wet clay incessantly in his busy hands, whose dexterity seemed miraculous to Reinhold, and then stepped back a few paces, nodding his half-bald head backwards and forwards, and shaking it gravely if he did not think he had succeeded, or whistling softly and contentedly if he was satisfied⁠—which he generally had reason to be⁠—in any case taking up again outwardly the work which he had not for a moment ceased mentally to carry on. + 

“I never know which to be most amazed at,” said Reinhold; “your skill or your industry.” + 

“It is all one,” answered Justus; “a lazy artist is a contradiction in terms, at the best he is only a clever amateur. For what is the difference between artists and amateurs? That the amateur has the will and not the power⁠—the will to do what he cannot accomplish; and the artist can accomplish what he will, and wills nothing but what he can accomplish. But to this point⁠—to comparatively perfect mastery over the technicalities of his art and knowledge of its limits⁠—he attains only through unremitting industry, which is no special virtue in him, but rather his very self, his very art. Or, to put it differently, his art is not merely his greatest delight, it is everything to him; he rises with his work as he went to bed with it, and if possible dreams of it too in the night. The world vanishes for him in his work, and it is just, therefore, that he creates a new world in his work. Of course this makes him one-sided, narrows him in a hundred other directions⁠—you must have discovered long ago that I am insufferably stupid and ignorant; but ask the ants, who pursue their way, because it is the shortest, right across the beaten tracks, or the bee who commits murder so jovially in the autumn, and roves about in such idyllic fashion in the spring, or any of the other artistic creatures⁠—the whole tribe of them is stupid, and narrow-minded, and barbarous, but they accomplish something. Look at my Antonio; he will never accomplish anything but hewing a figure out of the marble after a finished model, and working it up till it is ready to receive the last touches at the artist’s hands, that is to say, being a first-class workman. Why? Because he has a thousand follies in his head, and in the front rank his own precious, conceited self. And then a feeling heart! Goethe, who was a real, true artist, though he did draw and paint some bad things, had his thoughts about that. The fellow⁠—I don’t mean Goethe, but Antonio⁠—was good for nothing during the first days of Ferdinanda’s illness, so that I had to send him away from his work altogether. What is Ferdinanda to him? Or, at any rate, what is she to him more than to me? and I have been able to work splendidly all these last days. And Ferdinanda herself! such a pity! She was absolutely standing on the threshold of the sanctuary, and yet she will never enter because she cannot grasp the stern saying over the door: ‘Thou shalt have none other gods but me.’ She has begun to work again, indeed, since yesterday; but defiance, and despair, and resignation, and all that⁠—it may be all very fine; but it is not the muse. And neither is love the muse of art⁠—let people say what they will. All this yearning of heart to heart, it is all very well, but just let a man try to work with a yearning heart, and see how soon his art gives way to the yearning! The artist must be cool to the centre of his heart. I have kept it so till now, and intend so to continue, and if ever you see the name of Justus Anders in a register of marriages, you need no longer look for it in the golden book of art; you would see a line drawn through the space where it may once have stood in alphabetical order.” + 

Reinhold would not allow this, any more than he would accept Justus’s theory of the necessary one-sidedness of artists. He saw in the artist rather the complete, perfect man, to whom nothing in humanity was strange; the more than complete man even, who poured out his exuberant wealth, which otherwise must have overwhelmed him, in his works, and thus, beside the real world in which ordinary men dwelt, created for himself a second ideal world. And if Justus maintained that he had never loved, it might be true, although for his part he ventured slightly to doubt the strict truth of his assertion; but even if it were so, this great finder had merely not yet found the right object, and as he boasted of always finding the right object at the right moment, here, too, at the right moment the right object would certainly present itself. + 

“That is a most unartistic view of the matter, my dear Reinhold!” cried Justus. “We, who according to your ideas are something of demigods, know better with what groans and creaks these beautiful creations are brought into life, and that at the best of times, when things go as smoothly as possible, you cannot boil anything without water. And as for love, you certainly have more experience in that, and experience, said Goethe’s grey friend at Leipzig, is everything; but very often it is better to be without that experience.” + 

And Justus hummed the tune of “No Fire, No Coals, No Ashes,” as, with his modelling-tool grasped in both hands, he worked at the forehead of his clay figure. + 

“Do not give expression to such profane notions this evening at the Kreisels’,” said Reinhold. + 

“Why not? It is the simple truth.” + 

“May be so; but it hurts good little Cilli to hear such things, especially from your mouth.” + 

“Why especially from my mouth?” + 

“Because she sees in you her ideal.” + 

“In you, I should think.” + 

“Don’t talk such nonsense, Justus!” + 

“Not at all. She fairly raves about you; she talks about nothing but you. Only yesterday she said to me that she hoped to live to see you as happy as you deserved to be, on which I ventured to observe that I considered you as one of the happiest men under the sun, notwithstanding your temporary want of employment, whereupon she shook her pretty head and said, ‘The best indeed, but happy?’ and shook her head again. Now I only ask you! You not happy!” + 

And Justus whistled the tune of “Happy Only Is the Soul That Loves,” and exclaimed, “There, now I have got rid of the wrinkles in your forehead, and now we will stop for today, or we shall make a mess of it again, as we did yesterday evening.” + 

He sprinkled his figures with water, wrapped Reinhold’s half-finished head in wet cloths, and wiped his hands. + 

“There, I am ready!” + 

“Won’t you at least shut your desk?” said Reinhold, pointing to a worm-eaten old piece of furniture, on and in which Justus’s letters and other papers were wont to lie about. + 

“What for?” said Justus. “No one is likely to touch the rubbish. Antonio will put it all in order; Antonio is order itself. Antonio!” + 

The other workmen had already left the studio; only Antonio was still busying himself in the twilight. + 

“Put these things a little tidy, Antonio. Come!” + 

The two young men left the studio. + 

“Do not you leave too much in Antonio’s hands?” asked Reinhold. + 

“How so?” + 

“I do not trust that Italian; so little indeed that I have repeatedly fancied that the fellow must have had a hand in betraying Ferdinanda.” + 

Justus laughed. “Really, my dear Reinhold, I begin to think that Cilli was right, and that you are an unhappy man! How can a happy man torment himself with such horrid ideas? I will just run up and make myself tidy. You go on, I will follow you in five minutes.” + 

Justus was just hastening away, when the door of Ferdinanda’s studio opened, and a lady came out dressed entirely in black, and muffled in a thick black veil. She hesitated for a moment when she saw the two, and then with hasty step and bent head passed them on her way to the yard. The two friends thought at the first moment that it was Ferdinanda herself; but Ferdinanda was taller, and this was not her figure or walk. + 

“But who else could it have been?” asked Reinhold. + 

“I do not know,” said Justus. “Perhaps a model⁠—there are shy models. I hope at any rate that it was one. It would be the best sign that she was going to work again, that is to say to come to her senses.” + 

Justus sprang up the steps which led to his apartment. Reinhold continued on his way. As he turned the corner of the building, the black figure was just disappearing through the entrance to the house. + 

Antonio also, who had begun to tidy Justus’s desk as soon as the two friends had left the studio, had observed the lady in black as she glided past the window. He threw the papers which he held in his hand into the desk, and was about to rush out, but remembered that he could not follow her in his working dress, and stopped with much annoyance. The lady in black had been with Ferdinanda at the same hour yesterday, but as the studio was full, he had not been able to make his observations through the door. She was no model⁠—he knew better than that! But who could it be, if not an emissary from the man he hated? Perhaps she would come for the third time at a more convenient hour. He must find out! + 

He returned to the desk. “Bah!” said he, “what is there to be found here? accounts, orders⁠—the old story! And what use is it to listen to their conversation? Always the same empty chatter. I can’t think why he wants to know what the Captain talks about to the maestro!” + 

He knew that Ferdinanda was no longer in her study, but yet his gleaming eyes remained fixed on her door as he sat here brooding in the twilight. + 

“I will do everything that he commands. He is very wise, very powerful, and very wealthy; but what good can he do here? Is not she now even more unhappy than she was before? And if she should ever find out that it was I⁠—but the signor is right there, one thing always remains to me⁠—the last, best of all⁠—revenge!” + 

VII + 

Latterly, while Ferdinanda still kept her bed, Uncle Ernst hardly left his room, and the Schmidt family circle therefore was to a great extent broken up, the two friends had divided their evenings between it and the Kreisels pretty regularly as they said, or very irregularly as Aunt Rikchen said. Reinhold was forced to agree with his aunt, and attempted no further excuses, as he did not want to tell any untruths, and could not acknowledge the true reason. The real truth was that his aunt’s perpetual complaints threatened to destroy his last remnant of cheerfulness, while on the contrary he found the comfort and consolation that he so greatly needed in the atmosphere of sunshine which the sweet blind girl diffused around her. Latterly, indeed, even this sunshine had been a little clouded. The two friends had a suspicion, which they did not however impart to the poor girl, that the eccentric old gentleman, having made up his mind, as he said, that he could no longer with honour remain a Socialist, had sacrificed his dislike to speculation to the darling wish of his heart, to provide for Cilli after his own death, and had been speculating eagerly with the scanty means that he had toilsomely scraped together in the course of years. He was very mysterious about it indeed, and denied it roundly when Justus laughingly taxed him with it; but Justus would not be deceived, and even thought he could gather, from a casual expression the other had let fall, that it was the doubtful star of the Berlin-Sundin Railway to which the old man had confided the fragile bark of his fortunes. It seemed some confirmation of this opinion that latterly, when the almost worthless shares had become, in consequence of the new and dazzling prospectus, an object of the wildest speculation, and had consequently risen to double their value, the old gentleman’s cheerfulness had returned also, and he had even ventured upon some of the dry witticisms which he only uttered when he was in the brightest spirits. Cilli said that now everything went well with her, and Reinhold, as she asserted this with her sweet smile, tried to stifle another and much worse anxiety⁠—an anxiety which he had once hinted to Justus, whereupon the latter had replied in his careless fashion: “Nonsense! Love is a weakness, angels have no weaknesses; Cilli is an angel, and so⁠—basta!” + 

He found Cilli alone in the modest little sitting-room, in the act of arranging the tea-things on the little round table in front of the hard, faded old sofa. She performed such small household duties with a confidence which would have quite deceived a stranger as to her infirmity, and with a grace which always had a fresh charm for Reinhold. She would not permit any assistance either. “It is cruel,” said she, “not to let me do the little that I can do.” + 

So he sat now in the sofa corner, which was always his place⁠—the other belonged to her father when he came in from the office⁠—and looked on as she came and went with her gliding step, and as often as she returned to the table seemed smilingly to bid him welcome again and again. + 

“Where is Justus!” asked she. + 

“He has just gone to dress.” + 

“How far has he got with you?” + 

“I shall be finished tomorrow, or the day after.” + 

“Then it will be my turn; I am looking forward to it so⁠—I mean to the portrait. I should so like to know what I look like. However often I do so”⁠—she drew her soft finger slowly along her profile⁠—“and that is just like looking in the glass, yet you never know how you look till a great artist shows it to you in your portrait. Justus is going to do me in life-size too.” + 

“But he might have given you that small satisfaction long ago.” + 

“It is not a small thing, even though he does work so wonderfully quick,” answered Cilli eagerly; “every hour, every minute is precious to him; he owes them all to his work. Now that he can make use of me for his work, it is different of course.” + 

“Do you know then, dear Cilli, what we all look like?” + 

“Perfectly; you are a tall man, with curly hair and beard, and a broad forehead, and blue eyes. Justus is not so tall, is he?” + 

“He is a little shorter, dear Cilli.” + 

“But only a very little,” Cilli went on triumphantly; “and his hair is not so thick, is it?” + 

The last words were said with some hesitation. + 

“Not at the temples, dear Cilli.” + 

“Only not at the temples, of course!” said Cilli quickly; “but his great beauty is in his eyes⁠—great, flashing artist’s eyes, which can take in a whole world! Oh, I know what you both look like, and my father too! I could draw his portrait!” + 

She laughed happily and then suddenly became grave. + 

“That is why I am distressed, too, when the faces I love are not cheerful. Justus’s face is always cheerful, but then he is an artist, and can only live in sunshine; my father, too, has recovered his old cheerfulness, and now you must return to what you were at first⁠—do you remember?” + 

“Indeed I do, dear Cilli. So many things have happened since then; you know what I mean. They have troubled me, and trouble me still. And then Justus is right, I am an idler; I must manage to get to work again.” + 

“How did the General receive your work?” + 

Reinhold looked up in astonishment; there was nothing surprising indeed in the question. He had mentioned the subject, as he had nearly all, excepting one, the most important⁠—often enough at the tea-table here; but the tone in which Cilli had asked was peculiar. + 

“How do you mean, dear Cilli?” he asked in return. + 

“I only wanted to remind you that you had not been idle even here,” said Cilli. She was standing opposite to him at the other side of the tea-table, and the light of the lamp fell full upon her pure features, on which was expressed some uneasiness. She seemed to be listening for the step of her father or Justus on the stairs. Then, as everything remained still, she felt her way round the table, sat down on the edge of the sofa, and said, while a deep colour suffused her whole face: “I did not tell you the truth; it was for another reason that I asked you. I have something else to ask you⁠—a very great, very bold request⁠—which you will perhaps grant me, if you are sure, as you ought to be, that it is not idle curiosity that prompts me, but heartfelt sympathy in your weal and woe.” + 

“Tell me, Cilli; I believe there is nothing in the world that I would deny you.” + 

“Well then, is it Elsa von Werben?” + 

“Yes, dear Cilli.” + 

“Thank God!” + 

Cilli sat still, with her hands in her lap; and Reinhold was silent too; he felt that he could not have spoken at the moment without tears. Cilli knew that he was not ashamed of his confession, but she had to a certain degree forced it from him, and as if in apology, she said: “You must not be angry with me. Good as Justus is, one cannot confide such things in him. I think he would hardly understand it. And you have no one else here excepting me; and I thought perhaps it would not be so hard for you if you could speak openly of your feelings even to blind Cilli.” + 

Reinhold took her hand, and carried it to his lips. + 

“I am as grateful to you, dear Cilli, as a wounded man is when balm is poured upon his wounds, and I know no one in whom I would rather confide than in you, purest, kindest, best!” + 

“I know that you like me and trust me,” said Cilli, warmly returning the pressure of Reinhold’s hand; “and I am well punished for my cowardice in having, notwithstanding, kept silence so long; for, only think, Reinhold, I believed at first⁠—” + 

“What did you believe, dear Cilli?” + 

“I believed at first that it was Ferdinanda; and I was very, very unhappy about it, for Ferdinanda may be as beautiful as you all say, and as talented, but you would never have been happy with her. You are so kind and so good-tempered, and she is⁠—I will not say ill-tempered, but haughty. Believe me, Reinhold, I feel it, as a beggar feels whether what is given him is from kindness or only to get rid of him. I have never put myself in her way, God knows; but He knows also that she has never gone a step out of her way to say one of those kind words to me which fall so readily from your lips, because your heart is overflowing with them. For some time, too, I trembled for Justus, till I learned to understand his nature, and saw that an artist⁠—inasmuch as he is unlike other men⁠—cannot love either like other men. But you, with your tender, loving heart, how should you not love⁠—and love immeasurably⁠—and be immeasurably unhappy if your love is misplaced! I have said this often to Justus when we were talking about you⁠—at first; now I do not do so any more, for he chatters about everything that comes into his head, and I have observed how carefully you have guarded your secret.” + 

“That I have indeed!” cried Reinhold. “I might almost say from myself; and I cannot think how you have discovered it.” + 

“It seems almost a miracle, does it not?” said Cilli; “and yet it is not one, if you seeing people knew how well the blind hear, how they pay attention to every trifle, and to the tone in which you mention a particular name, as you bring it in at first shamefacedly, and then a little more boldly, as soon as you feel secure, till at last all your conversation is full of the music of the loved name, as in the East the dawn is filled with the name of Allah, cried by the Muezzins from the roof of the minaret. And ah! what sadness there often was in the tone in which you spoke it! What trembling hope of joy breathed in it, when you told me the other day that you were going to spend the evening with her, to pass hours in her company at that large party! They were your only happy hours, my poor Reinhold, for the very next day fell the frost upon the young green shoots, and since then the beloved name has never passed your lips. Are you then quite in despair now?” + 

“No, dear Cilli,” answered Reinhold; “I only see a happiness which I thought I might grasp with my hand, as a child thinks it may grasp a star, vanish from me in grey distance.” + 

And Reinhold related everything from the beginning, and how he was certain, though she had never spoken a word of love to him, not even on that delightful evening, that she understood him; and that so noble and high-minded a creature could never trifle with a man’s silent, respectful devotion, and therefore the favour with which she distinguished him⁠—her kind words and friendly looks⁠—could not be mere trifling, and if not love was yet a feeling that under happier circumstances might have blossomed into true, perfect love. But circumstances could hardly be more unfavourable than they were at present. So melancholy an event as that which had occurred would in any other case have united the other members of the two families in sympathy; in fact it could only have occurred between two families, the heads of which were so utterly opposed in their social views as were the General and Uncle Ernst. He was himself quite independent of his uncle, and should always assert that independence, particularly in his love-affairs; but Elsa was most especially the child of the house, the daughter of a father she so justly and highly honoured, and he feared the reaction which such an event might produce upon the General, who otherwise⁠—from affection for his daughter and regard for him⁠—might perhaps have sacrificed his class-prejudices, but now⁠—and who could blame him?⁠—would intrench himself doubly and trebly behind these very prejudices, which in his eyes were none. And there was another thing! From some remarks made by the General, at the dinner-table at Golmberg, he had taken the Werbens for one of the many poor noble families; and now Elsa suddenly appeared to him as a wealthy heiress, to whom, if she were really prepared to sacrifice her inheritance to her love, as would be necessary, he had nothing to offer but a faithful heart, and such a modest livelihood as a man like him could at best provide. Under these circumstances every prospect seemed so closed to him, every hope so crushed and forbidden to him by the feelings of simple propriety, that there could be no question of wooing on his part, and that it would require a positive miracle to change for the better the present miserable state of affairs. + 

Cilli’s face had reflected every sentiment that Reinhold expressed, as the crystal surface of a calm mountain lake reflects the light and shadows of the sky. But now the last shadow faded before the sunny smile with which she said: + 

“Love is always a miracle, Reinhold; why should not a second happen? Did you not tell me that Elsa understood and did not resent the silent language of your eyes? And even if, as I suppose, the late sad events have been concealed from her, she must have known the conditions of the inheritance, and also her father’s character and views, and yet she had no fear and saw nothing impossible in it, but believed, and so surely still believes, that all things work for the best with true love.” + 

“A pious belief, Cilli, such as well beseems a woman, but very ill beseems a man who is expected and rightly to understand and respect the world and the laws which regulate the world.” + 

“Understand!” said Cilli, shaking her head, “yes! But respect them! How can anyone respect what is so senseless, so godless, as that must necessarily be which will not allow the union of two hearts that God has formed for each other? What God has joined together let not man put asunder!” + 

“Ferdinanda and Ottomar might say that for themselves too, dear Cilli.” + 

“Never!” cried Cilli. “God knows nothing of a love which believes in nothing, not even in itself, and therefore bears nothing: no delay, no remonstrance, however just; no obstacle, however unavoidable; and proves thereby that it is itself nothing but pride, arrogance, and adoration of self. No, Reinhold, you must not do yourself the injustice of comparing your modest, noble love, with that dark, unholy passion! And you ought not either to have such a difficult road before you as those unhappy people. Your path must be free and light as your love; you owe that to yourself and to the woman you love.” + 

“Tell me what I ought to do, Cilli. I will believe in you as if an angel spoke to me!” + 

“Only be yourself, Reinhold; neither more nor less. You, who have so often opposed a bold front to the merciless, raging elements, must not stoop your head before your fellow-men; you must, when the hour comes, as it perhaps soon will, speak and act as your pure brave heart prompts you. Will you?” + 

She put out her hand to Reinhold. + 

“I will,” said Reinhold, taking her hand. + 

“And, Reinhold, as surely as these eyes will never see the light of the sun, will that sun shine on your path, and you will live to be a joy to yourself and a blessing to mankind.” + 

“Good gracious, Cilli!” said Justus, opening the door and standing still on the threshold; “are you celebrating Christmas in November?” + 

“Yes, Justus!” cried Reinhold; “Christmas, for Christmas it is when the heavens open and the messengers of love come down to announce peace.” + 

“Then,” said Justus, shutting the door, “I strongly recommend to them my Memorial Committee, which will not hold its peace, but is always plaguing me with suggestions of which each one is wilder and more impossible than the last. I have just found another letter four pages long, which I have answered in as great a heat as it put me into. And now, Cilli, give me a cup of tea with a little rum in it to cool me, for such⁠—ah! here comes Papa Kreisel! and in the best spirits, as I can see by the twinkle of his eye. Berlin-Sundins have gone up another half percent; now we shall have a jolly evening!” + 

And a jolly evening it was, and when Reinhold went to his room late at night, he found a letter from the President, containing the official announcement that the Minister approved of his appointment, and he must present himself at once at the place in question, as he must enter upon his duties on the 1st of December at latest. + 

Reinhold let the letter slip from his hand musingly. + 

“The hour may soon come, she said, and here it is already; it shall find me worthy of her who is purity and truth personified.” + 

VIII + 

“Must I really pay the driver twenty silver groschen for my small self and my small box?” asked Meta, bursting into Elsa’s room. + 

“Good gracious, Meta!” + 

“First answer my question!” + 

“I do not know.” + 

“Fräulein Elsa does not know either, August!” cried Meta into the passage; “so pay him what he asks. And now, you dear, darling, best of creatures, tell me if I am welcome!” + 

Meta threw her arms round Elsa’s neck, laughing and crying both at once. “You see, here I am at last, without any letter, after announcing my arrival fifty times. I could not bear it any longer. As often as papa said, ‘You can have the horses tomorrow,’ it never came to anything; for when tomorrow arrived the horses were always wanted for somebody or something else. So when he said it again this morning, as we were having our coffee, I said, ‘No! not tomorrow, but today, immediately, on the spot, tout de suite!’⁠—packed my box⁠—that is why it is so small, my clothes had not come home from the wash⁠—you must help me out⁠—and here I am. And as for the cabman, that was only because my papa said: ‘Take care you are not cheated!’ and my mamma said: ‘Cheated! nonsense! if only she has her wits about her!’ And so on the way I vowed most solemnly to be desperately wise and not to disgrace you, and so I began at once with the cabman, you see.” + 

And Meta danced about the room and clasped Elsa round the neck again, and exclaimed: “This is the happiest night of my life, and if you send me away again early tomorrow morning it will still have been the happiest night!” + 

“And I hope that this evening will be followed by many happy ones for both of us. Oh! you do not know, dear Meta, how glad I am to see you!” cried Elsa, taking Meta in her arms and heartily returning her kiss. + 

“Now that I know that,” said Meta, “I do not in the least want to know about anything else; that is to say I should like it dreadfully, but it is a point of honour with me now to be wise and discreet, you know; and you do not know that side of my character yet⁠—neither do I myself. We must make acquaintance with me together, that will be awfully amusing. Good gracious! what nonsense I am talking just from sheer happiness!” + 

Meta’s presence was for the house in the Springbrunnenstrasse like a sunbeam penetrating a chink in the shutters of a dark room. It is not broad daylight, there are heavy shadows enough still; anyone who happens to pass a looking-glass starts at the dim reflection of his own sad face; and people move carefully so as not to stumble, and speak with bated breath for fear of what may yet be hidden in the darkness. But still they move and speak; there is no longer the former silent darkness with all its terrors. + 

Hardly a week had gone by, then, before the bright, talkative little girl had become the favourite of one and all. The General, who had almost entirely shut himself up in his own room lately, now spent a few hours every evening, as he used to do, with the rest of the family, unless, as had happened several times already, they were going out. He allowed himself to be instructed by Meta in agricultural matters, in which she declared herself to be an authority even with her papa⁠—and that was saying a great deal⁠—and permitted her to question him as to “what a battle really was like?” “Did Moltke sometimes yawn when it lasted too long?” and “Might a lieutenant wear varnished boots in battle?” + 

“It makes me shudder when I hear it all, Elsa; your friend is quite an enfant terrible,” said Sidonie; but was calmed and consoled at once when Meta expressed the greatest interest in her “Court Etiquette,” and declared that it was a very different sort of thing from Strummin etiquette. One found oneself always in the best society with highnesses and serene highnesses; and if one did sometimes come down to the backstairs, in her eyes a page of the backstairs was a person highly to be respected. + 

“She really has very considerable talents,” said Sidonie, “and a great desire for instruction. I have given her the first part of Malortie’s High Chamberlain; you might read it aloud together for half an hour this evening, instead of chattering till two o’clock in the morning. Heaven only knows what you find to talk about!” + 

Even Ottomar, who since his engagement was hardly ever seen at home⁠—“He is not with us,” said Carla⁠—appeared again now, if he knew that his father would not be there, and made so merry with the mischievous girl, “that it cuts one to the heart,” thought Elsa. + 

The servants even were enchanted with the strange young lady. Ottomar’s man protested that she would suit the Lieutenant ten times better; the lady’s-maid praised her because one could at any rate quarrel with her, which was quite impossible with Fräulein Elsa; and August said she was A 1. + 

In society, too, Meta made many conquests. Old Baroness Kniebreche thought her tout à fait ridicule, mais délicieuse. The saying went the round, like all that came from that toothless old mouth, and la délicieuse ridicule was welcomed everywhere. Wartenberg was of opinion that the girl “always brought life into the place.” Tettritz was always reminded by her of the shepherd’s flute in Tristan; Schönau said she was an original; and Meta, in return, found everybody and everything charming. She had never thought there were so many charming people; “but you are the best of all, Elsa, and nothing else really signifies!” + 

And indeed while the kindhearted girl seemed to give herself up entirely to the enjoyment of the gay bustle of society, and often indeed to be quite absorbed in it, she really had only one serious interest, and that was to love and please Elsa. She had come because the melancholy tone of Elsa’s last letters had startled and distressed her, and she thought she knew better than anyone else the cause of this depression. That her brother’s engagement, however much against Elsa’s wish, should distress her friend so deeply, she could not believe; that the differences between her father and her Aunt Valerie and their consequences could depress and discourage the usually cheerful brave temper, she could not make up her mind to, either. Elsa, however, had put forward no other reasons, and either could not or would not give any others, as the actual connection of the tragical circumstances attending Ottomar’s betrothal was happily a secret to her and to Aunt Sidonie, and her own secret was carefully guarded by her modest pride. + 

So carefully, that even now in the confidential talks which to Aunt Sidonie’s horror extended so far into the night, when after tea with the family, or on coming home from a party, they retired to their rooms, no word passed her discreet lips, and Meta began to doubt her own acuteness. All the more as the engagement which distressed Elsa so much, really did look much more serious when looked at closely than it had seemed to Meta from the brief, written accounts. Meta had now made acquaintance personally with Ottomar and Carla; Ottomar, although Elsa said he was only a shadow of his old self, had fascinated her, and Carla was the only lady of their whole acquaintance whom she thoroughly disliked. She too began to think that the union of such a dissimilar couple could not possibly bring happiness, that Ottomar indeed was already unhappy. Added to this was the uncomfortable state of affairs which according to Elsa had certainly existed even before the betrothal, between the father and son, but which now, when everything was apparently put straight, had grown much worse, and for which Elsa could discover no reason excepting Ottomar’s still doubtful, perhaps desperate, financial condition. + 

Meta had been taken also to see the Baroness Valerie, had learned to sympathise with Elsa in her feeling for the interesting, and evidently most unhappy woman, and here too stood with Elsa on the threshold of a dark and terrible mystery. What were the relations between this woman and the man whom she must have passionately loved, when she sacrificed to him what is most dear to a woman; whom she must love still, as she still made such sacrifices to him, sacrifices which yet seemed to be so difficult to her! Had she not again and again said to Elsa that she could no longer live without Elsa’s love, or without her brother’s forgiveness? And yet in Giraldi’s presence she did not venture to show the smallest sign of love to Elsa, she did not venture to fulfil the condition imposed by the General, if there was to be any questions between him and her of a real reconciliation, of anything more than a mere superficial renewal of social intercourse⁠—did not venture to separate from Giraldi, but seemed rather to stand now as ever under the absolute dominion of that hateful man! + 

“It is a dreadful state of things of course,” said Meta; “but I do not see why you are to wear out your bright young life over it. Dear me! there is something of the kind, after all, in every family. I do not like my sister-in-law at all; my brother is a true Strummin, always jolly and lighthearted, and she is a real wet blanket, who drives the poor man wild with her dry matter-of-factness and perpetual considerations. And as for one’s uncles and aunts⁠—there I really may speak. Uncle Malte⁠—at Grausewitz, you know, ten miles from us⁠—we only see once in three years, and then he and papa quarrel dreadfully; Uncle Hans⁠—he was a soldier, went into the Austrian service later, and afterwards into the Brazilian⁠—we have not heard of him these six years; Aunt Gusting⁠—who married a Baron Carlström in Sweden⁠—has grown so fine that she only stayed half a day with us when she came to Strummin last autumn; she wrote afterwards that the combined smell of tobacco-smoke and plum-jam had been too disagreeable to her, and I could tell you a thousand other heartbreaking stories of our family. My papa always says: ‘If a man is to be responsible for all his relations, there is an end of all pleasure.’ ” + 

So spoke Meta to comfort her friend, as she plaited her long red-gold hair, of which she was rather vain now since Signor Giraldi had said, at a large party at Aunt Valerie’s, that it was of the true Titian colour; or sat prattling coaxingly by the side of Elsa’s bed as she had done on the first evening at Golmberg. + 

Meta often recurred to that evening. “It had been the birthday of their friendship,” said Meta; and the sight of Count Golm, whom they met at every party, and who had even lately once or twice joined their family circle at teatime, kept the dear remembrance always fresh. + 

But though Meta seemed inclined to be always indulging in recollections, she had no idea of doing so in reality, and her supposition that Elsa did not care a bit about the Count had been confirmed every time she saw the two together; but when she spoke of all that had happened at Golmberg, of the evening meal and the morning walk, it was quite natural, quite unavoidable that amongst others a name should be mentioned which Elsa never voluntarily allowed to pass her lips, and which Meta was convinced sounded day and night in Elsa’s heart. + 

Just because it never passed her lips. “There must be a reason for that,” said Meta to herself; “and also for his never appearing here where he has been invited and, as I hear from Aunt Sidonie, was so kindly and even warmly received; and the reason must be one and the same, and can only be a sorrowful one, and that must be why Elsa is so sad.” + 

But any remaining doubt of the justice of this conclusion vanished when one day, quite accidentally⁠—she had not been looking for it, really not, but her clothes had the most obstinate disposition to get mixed up with Elsa’s⁠—she felt a hard substance in the pocket of the blue tarletane dress that Elsa had worn the evening before at the Sattelstädts’, which she took at first for a purse, and as she did not quite trust the lady’s-maid she thought it best to take it out; and when she had taken it out she found to her great surprise that it was a pocket-compass in a pretty little ivory box. And in the inside of the box was engraved in very small, but quite legible, golden letters, a certain name which Elsa seemed quite to have forgotten. Meta had thought that as wisdom and discretion were now a point of honour with her, she could not do better than keep silence as to her discovery; had closed the box again⁠—not without a most indiscreet smile⁠—slipped it back into the pocket, and sat down in the window to write to her mamma, and was so deeply absorbed in her writing that she never looked up once when Elsa, who had only gone to look after her household affairs, returned and walked up and down the room two or three times without saying a word, each time coming a little nearer to the tarletane dress, which was hanging carelessly over the back of a chair; and at last⁠—Meta had again got into trouble with her writing and could not of course look up⁠—took the dress from the chair and hung it up in the wardrobe. And in doing so the case must have fallen out, though Meta heard nothing drop; at any rate, there was nothing now in the pocket, as Meta assured herself when Elsa again went out⁠—not by accident this time. “I must know how matters stand,” said Meta, “for her sake!” + 

During the next few days Meta was most palpably false to her rule. Very contrary to her custom, she was silent and absent in society, and, on the other hand, exhibited a most indiscreet curiosity towards the servants concerning the circumstances and customs of the neighbours, particularly of the Schmidts, carrying her indiscretion even so far as to talk of her approaching departure, and that it was high time to pay various visits to friends of her parents whom she had most shamefully neglected until now. She did, in fact, go out several times without Elsa, and on the afternoon of the third day in particular disappeared for several hours, and, though she came back to tea, was so extraordinarily agitated that even Aunt Sidonie observed it, and Elsa began to be seriously uneasy. + 

But she was horrified when, both having retired earlier than usual, Meta flung her arms round her, and with a flood of tears exclaimed, “Elsa, Elsa! you need have no more fear or trouble! I swear it to you by what is to me most sacred⁠—by our friendship⁠—he loves you! I know it from his own lips!” + 

The first effect of these words did not seem to be that wished and hoped for by Meta, for Elsa too burst into tears; but Meta, as she held her friend in her arms, and pressed Elsa’s head against her bosom, felt that her tears, however hot and passionate, were not tears of grief; that the dull anguish that had so long oppressed Elsa’s poor heart had been removed at last, and that she might be proud and happy to have done this service to her friend, and broken the spell. + 

“And now let me tell you how I set about it,” said she, as she drew Elsa down to the sofa beside her and took her hands in hers. “The whole difficulty, you see, was in speaking to him; for how could I speak to a man who never comes here, whom we never meet anywhere, either in society or in the streets, although we live next door to each other, and whom one cannot visit, even with the best intentions in the world? So I laid myself out to hear what the servants had to say. August gave me the most information; he is some sort of cousin to the old servant over the way, and I heard from him, in addition to what I knew already, that he always spends the morning at work in his room, and the afternoon in the studio of a sculptor called Anders, who is ‘modulating’ him, according to August. I thought it might be modelling, although for my part I did not know what that was either. Well, perhaps you will remember that on Thursday evening, at your Aunt Valerie’s, there was a great discussion about art, and Signor Giraldi repeatedly mentioned Herr Anders, and that he had long intended to visit Herr Anders some day in his studio, and look at his newest production, since, unfortunately, the Satyr and Cupid was already sold. I hardly paid any attention at the time, but now I remembered it all word for word, and my plan was made. I paid a visit yesterday to Aunt Valerie, brought the conversation again round to art, and said how immensely I should like to see a sculptor at work for once, and would Signor Giraldi take me some day to a studio, and if possible to that of Herr Anders, because he lived so near us and my time was getting so short now? Signor Giraldi, I must allow him that, is more courteous than any of the other gentlemen, so he was ready at once; and your aunt agreed to go too, but only, I thought, because Signor Giraldi wished it. And I was right; for when this afternoon, punctually at four o’clock⁠—that was the time settled⁠—you are not angry with me now, are you, that I ran away from you?⁠—I went there. Signor Giraldi received me alone. I must put up with him⁠—your aunt had got a headache; all said with his polite smile that you know so well. But his eyes looked wickedly dark: I thought at once, ‘There has been a scene.’ I was dreadfully sorry, and the thought of making the expedition alone with Signor Giraldi was not particularly consoling; but you were in question, and I would have gone through the Abruzzi with Rinaldini⁠—keeping my eyes open, you know. However, it was not so bad after all, for just as we were going out, who should appear but your heavenly aunt, with red eyes, alas! and looking very ill, but dressed and ready to go out. Signor Giraldi kissed her hand⁠—Ottomar himself could not have done it so well⁠—and whispered a few words in Italian at which your aunt smiled. I tell you, he can twist her round his little finger. So out we went; and now pay attention, you dear, sweet, darling creature!” + 

Here the two friends embraced each other tearfully, till Meta, in her wisdom, sobbed out: “I am sure I do not know why you are crying, and you do not know either, you see; and if you get so excited and spoil the thread of my story I cannot tell it properly, you see! So now, were you ever in a studio? Of course not. Imagine to yourself a room, like our church at Strummin⁠—you do not know it, by the way; imagine, then, a room as wide and high as you please, and the whole high wide room full⁠—no, it is indescribable, particularly for a young girl. I assure you I did not know sometimes where to turn my eyes; but he⁠—no, you really must be a little sensible now⁠—he helped me safely over everything, and only took me about wherever it was quite, or at least very nearly proper; and then we had⁠—oh, dear! I had arranged everything so nicely while we were at tea, and now I have forgotten it all. I only know that when we came in, quite unexpectedly, you know, he jumped up from his chair as if he had been electrified, and turned quite red with pleasure; and when at last we were able to say a few words quietly together, he said nothing but, ‘Fräulein von Strummin! how is it possible! how is it possible!’ Dear me, Elsa, it was really quite unnecessary for him to say anything more; I knew all about it now! But of course we did not stop there. I had to tell him how it was possible, and that I had been here for a fortnight with you⁠—and⁠—you must not think, Elsa, that I was foolish or indiscreet⁠—we talked about you, of course, and why he never showed himself now⁠—I was obliged to ask that! And then he said, ‘How gladly I would come I need not assure you’⁠—with an emphasis on the you, Elsa, you know⁠—‘unfortunately’⁠—now listen, Elsa!⁠—‘there are circumstances so powerful that with the best will in the world we cannot set them aside; and I beg you to believe that I suffer more from these circumstances than I can or dare say.’ And then he passed his hand across his brow and said, ‘I will certainly come once more, however, before I go away.’ ‘Where?’ ‘I had a letter yesterday evening from’⁠—you will never guess, Elsa; he had a letter from the dear President, and⁠—only think, Elsa!⁠—he really has got the post of Superintendent of Pilots at Wissow⁠—at Wissow, Elsa! I really did not know what to say for joy, but he read my feelings in my face, and smiled and said, ‘We shall be almost neighbours, then, Fräulein von Strummin.’ ‘And we will be neighbourly,’ said I. ‘That we will,’ said he. ‘And if we ever get a visit from Berlin,’ said I⁠—‘And you honour me with an invitation,’ said he⁠—‘you will come?’ said I. And then he said⁠—no, then he said nothing, Elsa; but he pressed my hand! There, Elsa, take it back, for it was not meant for me, but for you, you dear, dear sweet thing!” + 

The two friends held each other in a long embrace, and then there ensued a searching investigation of the important question: What could Reinhold have meant by “circumstances!” + 

“We shall never get to the bottom of it,” said Meta at last; “the circumstances are just the circumstances that you are called Elsa von Werben and he is called Reinhold Schmidt, and that you are a wealthy heiress and might if you pleased marry the richest and most distinguished man, and that he is poor; and wife of the Superintendent of Pilots certainly does not sound so well as baroness or countess. Perhaps he has heard, too⁠—people hear everything in Berlin⁠—that you would lose your inheritance if you followed the dictates of your heart, and so he really is right in talking of ‘circumstances,’ dreadful circumstances.” + 

Elsa agreed with her in it all, but still could not see any reason why he had not come again to see them, and why even her father apparently avoided his name. She would confess now for the first time that three days ago she had been rejoicing exceedingly at the thought of the Sattelstädts’ party, because she knew that Reinhold had also been invited, and even there he had sent an excuse⁠—a proof how he avoided every possibility of meeting her even on neutral ground. + 

“I will get to the bottom of it,” said Meta. + 

“How would it be possible?” + 

Meta laughed; “I never do anything by halves, tomorrow I shall go there again. Will you come with me?” + 

“Meta!” + 

“You would not do, either,” said Meta; “it must be an old lady, and a lady of some position. We have got one, however; tomorrow morning I shall pay her a visit, and tomorrow afternoon, as I said, we will begin.” + 

“But for goodness’ sake, Meta, what are you talking about?” + 

Meta said it ought to have been a surprise; but she could not manage it under three sittings at the best, and she could not keep it secret so long, so that after all it might be better to confess everything at once. + 

“We were obliged, you see,” said Meta, “to break off our conversation at last, and take a little notice of the others, who, meanwhile, had been wandering about the studio and talking Italian together, which Herr Anders speaks beautifully, Signor Giraldi says. There was an Italian there too, such a handsome man, with a paper cap on his raven-black hair. ‘They all wear paper caps on account of the marble dust,’ said Herr Anders, who certainly is not handsome himself. I never could have believed that an artist, and such a great one as he is said to be, could look so little dignified and be so small. And when you hear him speak, you cannot believe it at all; for the way he chatters, Elsa, is just like me, you know; and he laughs, Elsa, I cannot describe how he laughs, so that one laughs too with all one’s heart only to see and hear him laugh. You never saw anything so funny, excepting his little curly poodle, which is just as funny as himself. We were standing then before Reinhold’s portrait⁠—round, you know, and raised⁠—in relief they call it, and such a likeness! fit to be kissed, I assure you.’ ‘For whom is that?’ asked I. ‘For the future wife of the original,’ said Herr Anders; ‘she can wear it on a black velvet ribbon round her throat as a locket.’ Just think, Elsa, what nonsense! a locket as large as a small carriage-wheel! he always talks like that. ‘It is a study for that design,’ said Reinhold. So then we looked at the designs⁠—exquisite, I assure you. A battle, that would suit your papa! and Ambulance Preparations, with an old gentleman sitting behind a table, and a blind girl coming up with her gifts⁠—I nearly cried when I saw that, and your aunt had tears in her eyes⁠—and other women and girls. ‘How delightful to be one of them,’ cried I, quite from the bottom of my heart. ‘You might have that pleasure at any moment, and give me the greatest possible satisfaction at the same time,’ said Justus⁠—that is his Christian name⁠—funny one, is not it? ‘How so?’ said I. ‘Look, here is a splendid place still,’ said he⁠—he says splendid, you must know, at every third word⁠—‘for a really bright cheerful face, such as I have been wanting for a long time, because the thing was getting too sentimental to please me, only I had no good model for it; do, please, be my model!’ Dear me, Elsa, I did not know in the least what that might be, and as I told you before, there were some wonderful things in the studio; but I just looked at your Reinhold, and he said, ‘Yes, do it,’ with his eyes, like that, you know! and so I said quite boldly, ‘Yes, I will do it;’ and Signor Giraldi said that a queen might envy me the honour of being immortalised in such a work of art, and so the day after tomorrow I am to be immortalised!” + 

Elsa could have listened all night long; but Meta, who had gone through such an eventful day, and had never quite got over the habit of being tired to death at ten o’clock at latest, could hardly keep her eyes open while she talked, so Elsa put her to bed and kissed the good little thing, who put her arms round her neck and murmured sleepily: “Is it not, Elsa⁠—blue tarletane⁠—compass⁠—one more kiss!” and before Elsa had drawn herself up again was fast asleep. + 

IX + 

Meta carried out her heroic design without allowing herself to be intimidated by anything, even by Aunt Rikchen’s spectacles, “And they are no joke,” said Meta, when in the evening she reported the result of the first sitting. “I could easier hold out against Baroness Kniehreche’s eyeglasses. Behind those there is nothing but a pair of old blind eyes, of which I feel anything but fear; but when Aunt Rikchen allows her spectacles to slip to the end of her nose, she then begins really to see so clearly, that one would feel anxious and uneasy if one had not so good a conscience. And do you know, Elsa, that something particular must have occurred between you and the Schmidts⁠—what, I am quite in the dark about, as the good lady mixes everything together higgledy-piggledy; but she is very angry with you Werbens, as papa is with the Griebens, our neighbours, who are always trespassing on his boundaries, he says; and you must have been trespassing on the Schmidts, and that is the reason, you may depend upon it, why Reinhold has got so distant. We shall hear nothing from him; but Aunt Rikchen never can keep anything to herself, and we are already the best of friends. She says I am a good girl, and that after all I really had nothing to do with it, and the dove who brought the olive branch from the earth did not know either what it had in its beak: and then I saw that Reinhold, who was in the studio with me, looked at her, and Herr Anders also looked quite grave, and glanced again at Reinhold. They three know something, that much is clear, and I will find it out, you may depend upon it.” + 

But Meta did not find it out, and could not do so, as Aunt Rikchen did not herself know the exact state of affairs, and the others were most careful to keep her in ignorance. Meta’s communication therefore by no means contributed to Elsa’s peace of mind, and if Elsa had at first, at least, had the happiness of hearing of Reinhold through Meta, how he had come to the studio and kept her company for a long time, and what he had said, and how he had looked, even this source of consolation was now decreasing, and seemed gradually to be drying up altogether. One day he had scarcely been there for five minutes, another time only just passed through the studio, a third time Meta had not seen him at all, a fourth time she could not even say whether she had seen him or not. Elsa thought she knew the meaning of this apparent negligence. Meta had found out something which she could not tell her, or had in some other way become convinced of the hopelessness of her love; and the ample details which she gave from her other experiences and observations in the studio, only served to conceal her embarrassment. + 

It was therefore with a very divided heart that Elsa heard how Meta daily grew in favour with Aunt Rikchen, who was really a most excellent old lady, and whose heart was in the right place, if her spectacles did always get crooked, or slipped to the end of her nose. And how there was something especially touching to her in the good lady, for she herself would look just like that fifty years hence. But far more touching to her was a lovely young blind girl, who now came every day, because Herr Anders wished to bring the two together in one group. “When she spoke it was just as if a lark were singing high up in the blue sky on a Sunday mornings when all is still in the fields; and Justus said that Nature had never before produced such a contrast as she and Cilli made, and if he succeeded in reproducing it, no one could speak to him again save hat in hand. There was also next to Justus’s studio another which aroused all her curiosity, because the owner of it never allowed herself to be seen, and she could form no idea of what a lady could be like who modelled in clay or hammered at the marble, least of all of such a beautiful, elegant lady as Justus said Fräulein Schmidt was, for you know, Elsa, a sculptor looks like a baker, only that he has clay in his fingers instead of dough, and is powdered with marble-dust instead of flour, and you would hardly take such a queer-looking creature for a respectable gentleman, much less for a great artist, and Justus says the one who looks cleanest and most elegant in spite of his working blouse, and is handsomer than anyone I ever saw in my life, is no true artist, as he can do nothing more than point and block out; but you, poor child, do not know what pointing is. Pointing, you must know, is when you take a thing like a stork’s bill, you know⁠—” + 

And then followed a very long and very complicated explanation, out of all which Elsa only gathered Meta’s desire to talk of everything excepting what alone lay near her own heart. “The work will soon be finished,” said Elsa to herself, “and the whole result of the fine plan will be that I can no longer consider Reinhold’s holding back as a mere chance,” But the work did not seem likely to be finished. + 

“Such a countenance had never before come under his notice,” said Justus. “You might as well model the spring clouds, which every moment change their form.” And again, when the portrait for the bas-relief was finished, “You can have no idea how dreadfully absurd I look, Elsa, like a Chinese!” Justus had begun to work at the completion of the “Ambulance preparations.” “And I cannot leave the poor man in the lurch after all his trouble, for you know, Elsa, it is no longer a question of the head only⁠—that is done⁠—but of the whole figure, the attitude, gesture, in a word, a new subject, you know; but I really believe, poor child, you do not know what a subject is. A subject is when a man has no idea what he shall make, and then suddenly sees something, where in reality there is nothing to see⁠—say a cat or a washing-tub⁠—” + 

This was the longest, but also the last explanation which Meta gave to her friend out of the fullness of her newly-acquired knowledge. + 

For the next few days Elsa had more than usual to do in the household, and another matter imperiously claimed her attention. The final conference over the future management of the Warnow estates took place at her father’s house, after two months of discussion backwards and forwards over it, and the three votes of Herr von Wallbach, Councillor Schieler, and Giraldi, as the Baroness’s proxy, in opposition to the General’s single voice⁠—who recorded his dissentient view in a minute⁠—had determined the sale of the whole property at the earliest possible opportunity, and Count Axel von Golm had been accepted as the purchaser in the event of his agreeing to the conditions of sale settled at the same by the trustees. + 

Her father appeared after the long conference paler and more exhausted than Elsa had ever seen him. + 

“They have done it at last, Elsa,” he said. “The Warnow property, which has been two hundred years in the possession of the family, will be sold and cut up. Your aunt Valerie may justify it if she can, since she and she alone is to blame that an old and honourable family falls miserably to the ground. Had she been a good and faithful wife to my friend⁠—but what use is it harping upon bygone things? It is folly in my own eyes, how much more so then in those of others, to whom the present is everything! And I must confess the gentlemen have acted quite in the spirit of the age, cleverly, rationally, and in your interests. If the results are as brilliant as the Councillor flatters himself, you will be at least twice as rich as before. It is very unnatural, Elsa, but I hope he triumphs too soon. The Count⁠—whom he proposes as purchaser⁠—can only pay the outrageous sum named⁠—for the entire property is really scarcely worth half a million, let alone a whole million⁠—if he is certain that so great a burden will be immediately lifted off his shoulders; that is to say, if the scandalous project is carried out, the danger and folly of which I so strongly urged with the help of the staff and Captain Schmidt. If it does, however, come to anything, if the concession is granted, it would be an affront to that small authority which I can lay claim to, but which I do claim, so that I should look upon it in the same light as if I had been passed over in the approaching promotions. I should at once send in my resignation. The decision must be made soon. For Golm it is a question of life and death. He will either be utterly ruined or a Croesus; and I shall be his Excellency or a poor pensioner⁠—all quite in the spirit of the age, which is always playing a game of hazard. Well, God’s will be done! I can only win, not lose, since no one and nothing can rob me of the best and highest⁠—my clear conscience⁠—and the knowledge that I have always stood to the old colours, and have acted as a Werben should act.” + 

So said the father to Elsa in a state of agitation, which, hard as he tried to control it, quivered and broke out in his words, and in the very vibrations of his deep voice. It was the first time that he had given her such a proof of his confidence, as to let her be a witness of a struggle which formerly he would have fought out in silence in his proud soul. Was it chance? Was it intentional? Was it but the outpouring of the overflowing vessel? Or did her father suspect or know her secret? Did he mean to say to her, “Such a decision may soon be awaiting you also. I trust and hope that you, too, will stand to the colours which are sacred to me, that you also will prove yourself a Werben.” + 

This had taken place in the morning. Meta, after another sitting, had unexpectedly received an invitation to dinner from a friend of her mother’s. She should not return till the evening. For the first time Elsa scarcely missed her friend. She was glad to be alone, and to be able to give way to her thoughts in silence. They were not cheerful, these thoughts. But she felt it a duty to think them out, so as to see her way clearly if possible. She thought she had succeeded, and found in it a calm satisfaction, which, as she said to herself, was truly her whole compensation for all she had renounced in secret. + 

And in this resigned frame of mind she received with tolerable composure the news which Meta brought on her return home, which otherwise would have filled her with sorrow, that Meta was going⁠—must go. She had found at the lady’s to whom she had gone a letter from mamma, in which mamma made such terrible lamentations over her long absence, that she could not do otherwise than go at once⁠—that was to say, the first thing tomorrow morning. What she felt she would not and could not say. It was an extraordinary frame of mind, in any case, as whilst she seemed to be drowned in tears, she broke into a smile the next moment, which she in vain attempted to suppress, until the smiles again merged into tears; and so she went on for the rest of the evening. The next morning this state of mind had reached such a pitch that Elsa became really uneasy about the extraordinary girl, and begged her to postpone her journey until she was somewhat calmer. But Meta stood firm. She was quite determined, and Elsa would think her quite right if she knew all; and she should know all, but by letter; by word of mouth she could not tell her without dying of laughter, and she did not wish to die just yet, for reasons which she also could not tell her without dying of laughter. + 

And so she carried on the joke till she got into the carriage, in which August was to take her to the station. She had absolutely forbidden anyone else to accompany her, “for reasons, Elsa, you know, which⁠—there! you will see it all in the letter, you know, which⁠—goodbye, dear, sweet, incomparable Elsa!” And off drove Meta. + 

In the evening August, not without some solemnity, gave Elsa a letter which the young lady had given him at the last moment before starting, with strict injunctions to deliver it punctually twelve hours later, on the stroke of nine in the evening. It was a thick letter, in Meta’s most illegible handwriting, from which Elsa with difficulty deciphered the following: + 

“Do not believe a word of what, when I return home, I⁠—ah! that is no use. You will not read this letter till⁠—I write it here at Frau von Randon’s, so as to lose no time⁠—August will give it to you when I am gone. Well, it is all untrue! My mother has not written at all. For the last week I have deceived and imposed upon you abominably, as since then I have no longer been on your behalf, and it would have been quite useless if I had; for it is now clear to me that your Reinhold has discovered long since how matters stood with us, and kept out of the way, even before we ourselves had a suspicion; for you may believe me, Elsa, that when two men are such good friends, they stand by one another in such matters as well as we girls could. And before dear blind Cilli we did not think it necessary either to have any reserve, because she always smiled so merrily when we teased each other; and then she could not see, and in such cases, you know, the eyes play a great part. It began, indeed, with the eyes, for till then everything had gone on quite properly; but when he came to them he said, ‘I shall now have an opportunity of finding out exactly what colour your eyes are; I have been puzzling my brains about it all this time.’ I maintained they were yellow, Aunt Rikchen said green, he himself brown; and Cilli, to whom the decision was left, said she was certain they were blue, because I was so cheerful, and cheerful people always had blue eyes. So we went on joking about it; and every day he began again about my eyes, and as you cannot very well talk about eyes without looking into them, I looked into his eyes while he looked in mine, and⁠—I don’t know whether you have made the same discovery, Elsa, but when one has done so for a few days, one begins to see more and more clearly⁠—quite down to the bottom of them⁠—quite curious things, I can tell you, which makes one turn hot and cold, and one often does not know whether to laugh and to give the man who looks at you like that a box on the ear, or to burst into tears and fall on his neck. + 

“I had felt like this already once or twice, and today again, only rather worse than before. The assistants had gone to dinner, and Aunt Rikchen to see after her household affairs; there were only he and I, and Cilli, and Justus wished to go on working if we did not mind, that he might finish once for all. But he did not work so industriously as usual, and because I saw that, I also did not sit so still as usual; and we⁠—that is, he and I⁠—played all sorts of tricks with Lesto, who must lie down and pretend to be dead, and who barked furiously at me when I pretended to beat his master, and other nonsense, until we suddenly heard the sound of the door shutting which leads to the garden, and⁠—good gracious, Elsa! how can I tell you?⁠—Cilli had gone away without our having noticed it. We thought we must have gone rather too far then, and so became quite quiet⁠—as still as mice⁠—so that you might have heard a pin fall; and I was so embarrassed, Elsa⁠—so embarrassed, you know⁠—and getting every moment more so, when he suddenly knelt down right before me⁠—my knees were trembling so, that I had sat down⁠—and again looked so into my eyes, and I⁠—I was forced to, Elsa⁠—I asked quite softly what he meant. ‘I mean,’ said he⁠—but also quite softly⁠—‘that you must do what I ask you.’ ‘I shall box your ears if you do not get up directly,’ said I, still more softly. ‘I shall not get up,’ said he, but so close to me that I could no longer box his ears, but instead fell upon his neck, upon which Lesto, who evidently thought that his master’s life was in danger, began to bark furiously; and I, just to quiet Lesto and to make Justus get up off his knees, said ‘Yes’ to everything he asked⁠—that I loved him, and would be his wife, and everything else that one says in such a terrible moment. + 

“And now only think, Elsa, Elsa! when, in the course of five minutes, we had quieted Lesto and were going out⁠—as I said I had sworn to be discreet and to do you credit, and that I would not remain a second longer with so dangerous a man in so lonely a place, with all those dreadful marble figures⁠—and as we went out arm-in-arm, Cilli suddenly stepped towards us from between two of the statues, herself as white as marble, but with the most heavenly smile on her sweet face, and said we must not be angry with her, as the door had shut itself and she could not get out, and she had heard all⁠—her hearing was so acute, and there was such an echo in the studio. Oh, Elsa, I almost sank into the floor, for I think there had not been words only. But that divine creature, as if she had seen how red I grew, took me by the hand and said I need not be ashamed; there was no need to be ashamed of a true, honourable love; and I did not yet know how happy I was, how proud I ought to be; but I should learn it gradually, and then I should be grateful for my proud happiness, and love Justus very, very much, as an artist needed far, far more love than other men. And then she took Justus’s hand, and said, ‘And you, Justus, you will love her like the sunshine, without which you cannot live.’ And as she said so, a ray of sunshine fell through the studio window right upon the dear thing, and she looked transfigured⁠—so marvellously beautiful, with the poor blind eyes turned upwards, that at last I could not help crying, and she had great difficulty in quieting me. And then she said: ‘You must not remain here in this state of agitation; you must at once return home and tell your mother, and no one before her, for my knowing it is a mere chance for which you are not to blame.’ And I promised her all she wished, and I feel now how right the dear angel was, as I am quite mad with delight, and should certainly have done some folly for very joy; and that I must not do, since I have sworn to be sensible and to do you credit. I shall start tomorrow morning, and shall be home tomorrow evening at eight o’clock, by half-past shall have told mamma all, and at nine August will give you this letter, as after mamma you are, of course, the next. I told Cilli so at once, and she quite agreed to it; and her last words were, ‘Pray to God that your friend may be as happy as you are now.’ And I will do so, Elsa, you may depend upon it; and in all other respects also depend upon your ever loving, wise + 

“The dear, foolish child!” said Elsa, as she finished the letter, with a deep sigh; “I congratulate her with all my whole heart.” + 

And as she sat there and thought over how wonderfully it had all come about, and how happy the two must be in their love, her eyes became more fixed, her breathing ever harder, and then she covered her eyes with her hands, bent her head upon Meta’s letter, and cried bitterly. + 

X + 

Three days later⁠—the autumn sun was going down, and it was already getting dusk in the large room⁠—Giraldi sat at his writing-table near the window, reading the letters which had arrived for him. A considerable number had accumulated in the course of the day, which he had spent since early morning in important business in the town, for the sale of the property to the Count had taken place today; there were political letters from Paris and London, ecclesiastical matters from Brussels and Cologne, a detailed report from a trusty friend at Strasburg upon the state of affairs in Alsace-Lorraine, business letters of the most varied kind⁠—English, French, Italian, German. Giraldi read one as easily as the other; he even made his marginal notes always in the same language as his correspondent wrote in. “It grows and grows,” murmured he: “we are not far now from the crisis; and how delightful it is to hear from the mouths of others as extraordinary news, things that could not have happened without us. Unfortunately they are beginning to find out here the importance of the untitled and undecorated Signor, the mere private secretary to a lady of rank, and the best part of my working powers will be lost. So long as one is a nobody one can hear everything and hear it correctly; but the moment people begin to point at one, one learns very little, and that little wrong. That is the curse of royalty.” He took up a letter, which he had before thrown on one side, taking it from its shape to be one of the begging letters which he constantly received from poor fellow-countrymen, or from native chevaliers d’industrie. “It is a priest’s hand,” he said. “Ah! from my correspondent at Tivoli. Well! the worthy man has kept me a long time waiting for an answer.” He hastily opened the letter, ran through the contents, and then leaned back in his chair with a look of annoyance. + 

“H’m!” he muttered, “the old fox will not fall into the trap. He has understood me, that is clear. He admits that there are many wonderful dispensations of Providence, he even hints that the boy’s birth is shrouded in mystery, which means, in Italian, that he is not the son of his parents, only that circumstances are too much against my paternity. Idiot! He must himself know that best; or is he not so stupid? Have I not offered him enough? I ought to have left the price to himself. I would pay anything. I⁠—” + 

He had got up, and slowly paced up and down through the darkening room. “That is to say, I do not care to throw away my money, and the first experiment has miserably failed. Her reluctance to see the boy was decided enough, and she will not even discover a trace of likeness; says he is the type of the Roman peasants, such as are found at Albano, and Tivoli, and everywhere. Not even his beauty will she allow. There is no soul in the countenance, only the commonplace, brilliant stamp of a strong, sensual nature. And to that she holds with an obstinacy which she has never shown in anything else. It seems that the mother’s instinct cannot be deceived. Bah! what deception cannot be carried out, if a man only sets about it in the right way! I have been too hasty, that is what has startled her. I must allow that I have been, too sanguine, must play at resignation, and then perhaps like a woman, out of sheer caprice, she will come round herself⁠— + 

“What is it, François?” + 

“The lady in black, monsieur.” + 

“Once for all, she is to be shown in to me by the other passage.” + 

“They are working in the other passage today, monsieur.” + 

“Never mind. You will take her back by the other passage.” + 

“Very well, monsieur; can she come in?” + 

“One moment. Madame dines at home. I dine out, at Herr von Wallbach’s⁠—the carriage for me at half-past five. Let madame know, and that at a quarter-past five I will come and take leave of her. Has Signor Antonio been here in the course of the day?” + 

“No, monsieur.” + 

“No one else is to be admitted. Let the lady come in.” + 

Giraldi did not get up as the lady entered, and now only gave her a sign to take a place near him at the writing-table. + 

“I was expecting you. How are we getting on?” + 

“No better than on the first day.” + 

“That is bad.” + 

“It is very wearisome,” said Bertalda, throwing back her veil, “very wearisome. I have come to tell you so; I am sick of the whole thing.” + 

She lay back in her chair, with a look of ill-humour, knocking the tips of her boots against each other. + 

“Bah!” said Giraldi, “how much do you want?” and he stretched out his hand to a casket which stood before him on the table. + 

“I want nothing,” said Bertalda. “I told you at once, the first time you sought me out, that I only did it out of pity for poor Werben, and because I have a weakness for him, and because I wish to annoy that fine Philip, who behaved so abominably to Victorine, and I wish from my heart that his sister should be no better.” + 

“I have told you already that it was not from Herr Schmidt that I learnt that Herr von Werben is visiting you again.” + 

“Then you heard it from Count Golm, and I cannot abide him; he will have to wait a long time before I give him a good word, and now⁠—” + 

“My dear child, permit me to observe that you are not very judicious,” said Giraldi, smiling. “You have half a dozen personal reasons for doing what you are doing; I pay you besides, and beg you moreover to consider me at your disposal in that matter, and you want to give the whole affair up because⁠—” + 

“It bores me! I can bear anything except being bored.” + 

“What is it that bores you? Explain that to me.” + 

“What is there to explain?” cried Bertalda; “it is just tiresome. If one is foolishly in love with a man, and he comes and weeps in one’s arms, and one hears from others why he weeps, why should one not do him a kindness and help him to gain the woman he loves? Why, goodness me, there is nothing very hard in that; I am a good-natured creature, and if there is a little acting to be done⁠—why one learns to cut a few capers in the ballet, and it is all the more amusing. And the acting you suggested was very pretty so far, and there is no great harm in standing as a model for a couple of days, when there is nothing to be done but to hold up your bare arms, and half the time is spent in talking too; but on the third day one ought to be able to say, So-and-so is waiting for you at such a place, and make an end of it!” + 

“I gave you permission yesterday to hint at the real state of affairs.” + 

“Oh yes, hint!” cried Bertalda. “I told her the whole story today. There!” + 

Giraldi half started from his chair, but immediately recovered himself, and asked in his quiet way: + 

“What do you mean by the whole story, my dear child?” + 

“Why, that I am not a model, and that I have come on Herr von Werben’s account⁠—” + 

“Sent by Signor Giraldi⁠—” + 

“What! as if I would have allowed myself to be sent if I had not chosen.” + 

“Of your own accord then⁠—so much the better! And how did she take it?” + 

Bertalda burst into a ringing laugh. + 

“My goodness!” cried she, “it was a farce! She did not know whether to thank me on her knees, or to trample me under her feet. I think she mentally did first one and then the other, whilst with clasped hands, and crying as I never saw a girl cry before, she stood in front of me, and then raged about the room with uplifted arms, as I never saw anyone rage before either. First she called me a saint, a penitent Magdalen, I don’t know what all, and a moment after a hussy, a⁠—well, I don’t know what either. It went on so for at least an hour without pause, and the end of the story was⁠—” + 

“That you were not to presume to return?” + 

“Heaven forbid! Tomorrow I was to return, and then it would all begin over again, and it really is too wearisome, I say, and I shall not go there again tomorrow.” Bertalda got up with one last energetic tap of her boots. Giraldi remained sitting, stroking his beard. + 

“You are right,” he said; “do not go there again tomorrow, nor the next day; on the third day she will come to you.” + 

Bertalda bent forward to look more closely at the man, who said this with such certainty, as if he were reading it from a paper which lay on the table before him. + 

“Supposing, of course,” continued Giraldi, “that you do not answer the letter which she will write to you on the second day, and that altogether you play at drawing back a little as a person whose kindness has been misunderstood, and so on. If you can and will do this we remain friends; if you will not⁠—it is not well to make an enemy of me, believe me.” + 

Bertalda rose and went behind her chair, and leant both her elbows on the back. + 

“If I only knew,” she said, “what you have to do with it all?” + 

“And if you knew?” + 

“Then I should know what to do myself. I am not afraid of you⁠—what can you do to me? but I fear for poor Ottomar. I do not wish that any harm should happen to him.” + 

Giraldi got up also, seated himself sideways in the chair on which Bertalda leant, and took her hands in his. + 

“Good girl!” he said; “and if I swear to you that I am Ottomar’s best friend, that he has no secrets from me, not even that of his debts; that it is I who have just now helped him up again, that it is from me that he has the hundred-thaler notes, of which, perhaps, one or two have found their way into your pocket; and if in case you will not believe me, I show it to you in black and white, in Ottomar’s own hand, what would you say then?” + 

“Nothing at all,” answered Bertalda. She had, while he still held her hands, come round the chair, and suddenly sat down on his lap, with her hands, which she now freed, stroking his soft black beard. “At most, that you are a charming uncle, such as are scarce, and that you deserve a kiss, and⁠—there, you have one.” + 

She had wound her arms round his neck, and kissed him, first teasingly, then with a passion which seemed to surprise even herself, and which also deprived him for the moment of the full use of his faculties, so that he did not hear the knock at the door, and only let Bertalda slip off his knee when François was already in the room. Bertalda gave a shriek of surprise, and hastily drew her veil over her face. + 

“What do you want?” cried Giraldi hotly. + 

“Monsieur Antonio, monsieur!” said François in a whisper; “he begs so urgently.” + 

“All right,” said Giraldi. “Show mademoiselle out. I will let in the young man myself. I shall hear from you, mademoiselle. For the present, adieu.” + 

He walked hastily to the door of the anteroom, whilst Bertalda, conducted by François, rushed to another door leading into his bedroom, and from thence into the second corridor, and only opened it as Bertalda was on the point of disappearing behind the portière, one side of which François had drawn back for her. Antonio, who, standing close to the door and listening, had heard Bertalda’s shriek, and whose mind was filled with the image of Ferdinanda, had immediately concluded that he recognised her voice, and at once stepped in; Bertalda could not so quickly get out. In her embarrassment she had run against the side of the portière which was down, and entangled herself in it, and it was a moment or two before, with François’ help, she was free, long enough for the sharp-eyed Antonio to discover that the lady whom he was putting to flight was not Ferdinanda herself, but the mysterious unknown who had lately come so regularly to Ferdinanda’s studio, and whom he had taken for an ambassador from his deadly enemy. So she did not come from him, but from here! And why should she run off so hastily the moment he was admitted? If the signor mentioned the lady⁠—well, perhaps it was all right⁠—he would try and trust him still, as heretofore; if he did not mention her, he would never believe another word that passed his lips⁠—never! + 

These thoughts flew through Antonio’s mind as he made his bow; meanwhile Giraldi had recovered from his surprise, and taken his resolution. He had taken it for granted that Antonio, from the studio in which he worked, would remark the coming and going of the black-veiled lady to the other studio, and had consequently enjoined the utmost circumspection upon Bertalda. Antonio was not to learn who she was, least of all that she had any connection with him. Now, in consequence of the youth’s hasty entry, the secret was within a hair’s-breadth of escaping; but that he should have seen, or in any way recognised Bertalda, was quite impossible. The end of the great room was buried in almost total darkness, and as his own attention had been entirely centred on the door by which Antonio would enter, the delay in Bertalda’s departure by the other had escaped his notice. “A second later would have been too late,” he thought to himself, as he took the youth’s hand and⁠—now completely master of himself⁠—said in his usual quiet, friendly tone: + 

“Welcome, my dear Antonio⁠—no, no, my son⁠—I am not consecrated yet.” + 

Antonio, bending low, had raised the hand which Giraldi had offered him to his lips. “The less you trust him the more submissive must you be,” said Antonio to himself. + 

“You are sacred to me, signor,” he said aloud. “The good Brother Ambrose, the benevolent guardian of my wretched youth, is not in my eyes more revered and sacred than you are.” + 

“I am glad to hear it,” answered Giraldi. “The best ornament of youth is a grateful disposition. As a reward for it I can impart to you the good brother’s blessing. I have just received a letter from him. But of that later. First, as to your business here. Have you at last again seen and spoken with her?” + 

“Only seen, signor⁠—as she left her studio just now to go home. I do not venture to speak to her. She talks, they say, to no one, and no one dares go into her studio except⁠—” + 

“Her father, probably.” + 

“A lady, signor, in black, and thickly veiled, who goes to her studio regularly every afternoon. The students take her to be a model.” + 

It must be decided now; Antonio’s heart beat till Giraldi’s answer came. + 

“A lady in black and thickly veiled,” repeated Giraldi slowly, as if he was deeply considering the matter; “and only a model? That is surely very unlikely, and very suspicious. We must try to get to the bottom of this.” + 

He lied. It flashed like lightning through Antonio’s mind that to this man he had confided his secret, the treason which he contemplated, his criminal desires, the very plan of his revenge; he had given all⁠—all into his hands, as to the priest in the confessional, and he lied! + 

“I have tried to get to the bottom of it, signor,” he said, “but in vain. As she comes and goes while our studio is full of men, I cannot watch her through the door, nor absent myself without causing a sensation. Yesterday I tried under some pretext, but I was too late. A carriage⁠—not an ordinary cab, signor, but a fly⁠—was standing a few yards from the house under the trees near the canal; the unknown got in, and vanished from me in a moment.” + 

“He will be more cunning next time,” thought Giraldi; “she must on no account go again.” + 

“At what time does she come?” he asked. + 

“Between five and six at first; now, I suppose on account of greater security, between four and five.” + 

“Good! Tomorrow I will myself keep watch in my carriage; she shall not escape us, you may depend upon it. And now to continue, has nothing of importance transpired in the conversations between your maestro and the Captain? The name in question not been mentioned?” + 

“No, signor; on the contrary, since the young lady went away⁠—” + 

“I know, three days ago.” + 

“They have been very prudent, and speak so low, that it is impossible to catch more than a word here and there. But instead I have just found this letter, which the maestro received today and has read through at least a dozen times, and also showed it to the Captain, who came in the middle of the day.” + 

“It was dangerous to steal a letter which awakens such interest.” + 

“The maestro threw it into his desk, as he does all his letters, and when he went out, locked it up, and took the key with him; but I have long known how to open that frail lock without a key. Tomorrow he will find the letter again in his desk.” + 

“Who is it from?” + 

“From the young lady, I think. It is an abominable handwriting, signor.” + 

“Give it to me!” + 

Giraldi took the letter out of Antonio’s hand, and stepped to the window to get the advantage of the last gleam of daylight. + 

A superstitious dread ran through Antonio, as he saw the extraordinary speed with which the man at the window ran through the sixteen pages of the letter, of which he, who so prided himself on his knowledge of German, had hardly been able to read a line. How could he venture to enter into a struggle of cunning and skill with him, who saw through everything, knew everything as if he were in league with the evil one? And yet, one thing he did not know, that he would have pierced him with his dagger as he stood in the window, with the evening light shining like an aureole round his head with its black locks, did he venture to deceive and betray him, as he had undoubtedly deceived and betrayed all the world besides. + 

Giraldi had read the last two pages more slowly than the first ones. He now read them over again. Then without saying a word, he lighted the candle which stood on his writing-table, sat down, and began as it appeared to copy out these two last pages. The pen flew over the paper almost as quickly as his eyes before over the pages. In a few minutes it was done, and he gave the letter back to Antonio. “There! now return it again to its place with the greatest care, and bring me every letter in the same handwriting. You will thereby be doing me the greatest service, and my gratitude will keep pace with your willingness to help me.” + 

“I do what I do for your sake, signor,” said Antonio; “without hope or expectation of reward. The only one for which I care, even you cannot give me.” + 

“You think so,” answered Giraldi. “Boy, what do you know of what I can or cannot do? I tell you that kings tremble when they feel that Gregorio Giraldi’s hand is upon them; that the Holy Father in Rome even, only knows himself to be infallible so long as I am near him. And shall I not fulfil the desire of your heart? Not give into your arms that beautiful woman, whom you may possess at any moment you choose? Are you not young and handsome? Are you not strong and courageous? What is impossible to a handsome and young man who is strong and courageous, where a woman is in question? I tell you that the times of Saul are not yet gone by, who went out to seek his father’s asses, and found a kingdom. The letter in your pocket might prove it to you. Do you fancy yourself worth less than that clumsy German sailor? Surely not. And he has won the love of a German maiden, to whom men of his position would not generally dare to lift their eyes. And now you! Do you not know that God has ever specially loved shepherds and shown Himself gracious to them? Have you never, as you drove your goats on the mountains near Tivoli, heard a voice out of the thundering cataracts of the Arno, or out of the sighing of the wind in the oak trees of Arsoli, which said, ‘Poor sunburnt, ragged boy, in a few years you, a beautiful youth, dressed like the gentlemen who approach yonder in their smart carriages over the dusty roads, shall walk through streets of the capital of the northern barbarians, whose very names you do not yet know?’ Believe me, my son, such voices may be heard by all, only one must understand them, as I have always understood those which speak to me. Or if you will not trust my guidance, let me speak to you through the mouth of the worthy man who protected your tender youth, and whom you may thank, that you do not still tend your goats. I had written to him about you, and how wonderful it was that you, favoured with these gifts of mind and body, should be of such low birth as are the people you have respected as your parents. And what does he reply?” + 

Giraldi had seized the priest’s letter, and read: “ ‘A miracle, truly, my dear sir, but are we not surrounded by miracles, so that they often appear no miracles just because they are so near us? And has God lost His omnipotence because the serpent of doubt and unbelief lifts its head now higher than ever? Can He not breathe His Spirit into a clod if He will? make the dead to live again? lighten the darkness in which the origin of so many men, and⁠—I must admit⁠—of our good Antonio also, is enveloped? Can He not raise up for a man who stands solitary and pines for love, a dear relation in a seeming stranger?’ Look, Antonio! there it stands, written in your honoured friend’s own hand.” + 

He held out the letter to Antonio⁠—just long enough for the youth to be certain that it really was his old preceptor’s hand. He might not see what immediately followed; that according to all human calculation Antonio could not possibly be the son that Giraldi had so long lost, and whom he had so eagerly sought after, and still sought in spite of all disappointments, and for whose recovery no reward was too great. + 

As if overcome with emotion, he had thrown the letter into the drawer and stretched out both his hands: “Now go, in God’s name, my son, and remember that no father could more truly mean well towards you than I do!” + 

Antonio bent down and kissed the outstretched hands, moved and conquered by the superior mental power of the man, his mind filled with a confusion of ambitious hopes and dazzling dreams of satisfied love, as quickly followed by the fear that all was but a dream and an illusion, and that this great magician was playing with him, as he himself as a boy had often, enough done with a bird fluttering on a string. + 

He was gone. Giraldi touched the bell. François came in. + 

“I told you that no one was to come in, without exception!” + 

“Monsieur had always received the young man, and he was so pressing.” + 

“It may pass for this time; the next time you commit such a blunder, you are dismissed without appeal⁠—mind that.” + 

He locked his letter into his drawer. + 

“I will dress without assistance; see that the carriage is ready in ten minutes.” + 

He went into the next room through which Bertalda had previously taken flight. François shook his fist behind him, and then again smiled his fawning smile, as if he would not admit even to himself that he had ventured to threaten the mighty man. + 

XI + 

“You will see, Carla, he will not come today either,” said Frau von Wallbach, trying to find if possible a more comfortable position in her armchair. + 

“Je le plains, je le blâme, mais⁠—” Carla, who was sitting at the piano, played a scale very softly with her right hand. + 

“And Fräulein von Strummin has also gone away without paying us a farewell visit.” + 

“Silly little thing,” said Carla, repeating her scale. + 

“And Elsa has never once been here to apologise for the omission.” + 

“So much the worse for her,” said Carla. + 

“I wash my hands of the blame,” said Frau von Wallbach, slowly rising and going into the reception-room which some of the dinner guests were entering. + 

Carla was also getting up, but remained sitting when she heard that it was a lady, and moreover one of little importance. She let her hands fall into her lap, and looked thoughtfully down before her. + 

“He is not half so clever, he often evidently does not understand what I say; I think even he is un peu bête. But he⁠—adores me. Why should I give up my adorers for a betrothed who never troubles himself about me? He would soon drive them all away.” + 

The door behind her into the anteroom was opened. Only intimate friends at small entertainments ever entered through this apartment⁠—her room. The newcomer must be either Ottomar or the Count. She had heard nothing, and as the steps came nearer over the thick carpet, let her fingers wander dreamily over the keys, “Already sends the Graal to seek the loiterer⁠—” + 

“Fräulein von Wallbach!” + 

“Ah! my dear Count,” said Carla, looking up a little, and giving the Count her left hand over her shoulder, whilst the right played “My Trusty Swan.” “Will you not go first and say ‘how do you do’ to Louisa? She is in the drawing-room with Frau von Arnfeld.” + 

The Count lifted the carelessly-given hand to his lips, “And then?” he asked. + 

“You can return here⁠—I have something to say to you.” + 

The Count came back in half a minute. + 

“Draw that chair here⁠—not so near⁠—there⁠—and don’t let my strumming disturb you. Do you know, my dear Count, that you are a very dangerous man!” + 

“My dear Fräulein von Wallbach!” cried the Count, as he twirled his moustaches. + 

“You must be so, when even Louisa already thinks so. She has just preached me the most charming sermon.” + 

“But what have I done? All the world worships you; why should I not dare what all the world may do?” + 

“Because you are not all the world.” + 

“Because⁠—” + 

Carla lifted her eyes; the Count was always bewitched when he could look into those blue eyes, unhindered by glasses, under whose weary, drooping eyelids a secret world of tenderness and archness seemed to him to be concealed. + 

“Because I have come too late,” he whispered passionately. + 

“A man should not be too late, my dear Count; it is the worst of faults in war, in politics, in everything. You must bear the consequence of this fault⁠—voilà tout.” + 

She played: + 

“Only one year beside thee, + 

As witness of thy bliss, I asked.” + 

The Count gazed before him in silence. + 

“He takes it for earnest,” thought Carla. “I must rouse him up again a little.” + 

“Why should we not be friends?” she said, reaching out her right hand to him, whilst the left played: + 

“Return to me! and let me teach + 

How sweet the bliss of purest truth.” + 

“Certainly, certainly!” cried the Count, imprinting a long, burning kiss on the offered hand; “why should we not be friends?” + 

“Friendship between pure souls is so sweet, is it not so? But the world is not pure. It loves to blacken all bright things. It requires a security. Give it the best possible under the circumstances. Marry!” + 

“And that is your advice to me?” + 

“Mine more especially. I shall gain immensely by it; I shall not quite lose you. More, I cannot⁠—more, I do not expect.” + 

And Carla played, with both hands: + 

“Let me convert thee to the faith, + 

One bliss there is, without remorse.” + 

“Good God, Carla⁠—my dear Fräulein von Wallbach! do you know that something similar⁠—almost in the same words⁠—” + 

“You have heard from Signor Giraldi,” said Carla, as the Count paused, embarrassed. “You may say it out, I do not mind. He is the cleverest of men, and one can keep nothing secret from him, even if one wished to do so, and⁠—I do not so wish; you also⁠—need not wish it. He is very fond of you. He wishes you well; believe me and trust in him.” + 

“I believe it,” said the Count, “and I should trust him implicitly, if the engagement which is in question did not also include just a little touch of business. You are aware that I have today bought the Warnow estates, I should hardly have taken such a tremendous risk upon myself, indeed could not have done so, if it had not appeared that at least half the money in the form of dowry⁠—” + 

“Fi donc!” said Carla. + 

“For heaven’s sake, do not misunderstand me!” cried the Count. “It is evident that this suggestion could only come from Signor Giraldi, and from no one else. The thing is simply that Signor Giraldi, as the Baroness’s agent⁠—” + 

“Spare me anything of that sort, my dear Count,” cried Carla. “Once for all, I understand nothing about it. I only know that my sister-in-law is a delightful creature, and that you are a terribly blasé man, whom every well-behaved girl must really be afraid of. And now go into the drawing-room, I hear Baroness Kniebreche, and she would never forgive you if you have not kissed her hand within the first five minutes.” + 

“Give me courage to go to execution,” whispered the Count. + 

“How?” + 

The Count did not answer, but took her hand off the keys, covered it with passionate kisses, and hurried in a state of emotion which was half affected and half real, into the drawing-room. + 

“He is a good creature after all,” murmured Carla, turning, and looking after him with her glass in her eye. + 

“That he is,” said a voice close to her. + 

“Mon Dieu! Signor Giraldi!” + 

“Always at your service.” + 

“Always at an opportune moment. You have not yet been into the drawing-room? Of course not. Come! let us have a few minutes’ chat. A tête-à-tête with you is a much envied privilege, which even Baroness Kniebreche herself would respect.” + 

“And then this respectable tête-à-tête is not quite so dangerous as the preceding one,” said Giraldi, sitting down by Carla on a little sofa, which stood at the end of the room beneath a candelabra on the wall. “Did you speak to him?” + 

“Just now!” + 

“And what did he answer?” + 

“He understands everything⁠—except⁠—” + 

“Not everything then?” + 

“Do not smile ironically; he is not quite a nonentity. He is clever enough, for example, to ask what the special interest is which you can have in his engagement with Elsa.” + 

“Do not be angry if I still smile a little,” said Giraldi. “What, the Count inquired as to the interest I have in the matter⁠—he, on whose side the whole profit lies! But there! I confess the sale would have been delayed for a long time, as the General out of sheer obstinacy would not consent at all, and your brother, from some reasons of propriety, would not sell direct to the provisional board, and insisted upon a go-between; I further admit that the Count is not only in every other respect more convenient and more suitable than anyone else, but he is also more lucrative to us, because as a neighbour he can really pay more than anyone else. But that is an advantage on our side, which we fully compensate to him by granting him other advantages, with the details of which I will not trouble you. Believe me, my dear Fräulein von Wallbach, that the Count knows all this as well as I do, and he only affects ignorance and consequently hesitation for reasons which I will set before you. Firstly: It is always well not to see the hand which throws fortune into your lap; you can then, if convenient, be as ungrateful as you please. Secondly: He loves you, and⁠—who can blame him?⁠—he does not consider the matter quite hopeless, so long as you remain unmarried. Thirdly: It is not absolutely certain that Fräulein von Werben will accept him, and he has in fact better reasons for this uncertainty than his philosophy and vanity combined will allow him to imagine.” + 

“You are again referring to the fancy that Elsa is supposed to have for the handsome merchant-captain,” said Carla. “Much as I admire your acuteness, my dear Giraldi, here you pass the limits of my belief.” + 

“But supposing I have unquestionable evidence? supposing I have it in black and white, from the hand of Elsa’s most intimate friend, that little Fräulein von Strummin, who went off in such headlong haste, to startle us, from the security of her island, with the news of her engagement to the sculptor, Justus Anders. Pray do not laugh. What I am telling you is absolutely true. Herr Justus Anders, again, is the Captain’s most intimate friend; the two pairs of friends it appears have no secrets of any sort between them; Fräulein von Strummin also has none from her betrothed, and she writes in her letter, which arrived this morning, word for word⁠—” + 

Giraldi had taken an elegant pocketbook from his coat pocket, and out of it a paper, which he unfolded. + 

“If anyone comes in, it is supposed to be a letter from the sculptor, Enrico Braga, from Milan. She writes the following, word for word⁠—I am not responsible for the peculiar style: + 

“ ‘One thing more, dearest man, over which Lesto would howl himself to death with joy if he could understand it, and you also will rejoice like a child, as you always are. My Elsa loves your Reinhold with all her heart and soul, and that is saying something for anyone who knows as I do that she is all soul, and has the most divine heart in the world. I have no permission, still less any commission, to tell you this. But we are never again to play at hide-and-seek with one another, you know, and must also inspire our poor friends with courage, and the best way to do that is to be always saying to them, “He,” or in your case, “She loves you!” I have proved it at any rate with Elsa. Ah! my dearest heart, we ought indeed to feel ashamed of being so happy, when we think how unhappy our friends are, and only on account of these horrible “circumstances.” If I only knew who had devised these “circumstances” I should just like to have a few words with him, you know.’ ” + 

“This is wonderfully interesting,” said Carla; “and it will interest the Count extremely.” + 

“Without doubt,” said Giraldi, returning the letter to his pocketbook. “By the way, what a wonderful woman you are, never once to have asked where I got this. In the meantime, I propose that we do not communicate this until you are certain of one thing.” + 

“And that is?” + 

Giraldi bent towards Carla and looked straight into her eyes. + 

“That you do not finally prefer to bestow your hand upon Count Axel Golm, instead of on Ottomar von Werben.” + 

“You are really too bad. Signor Giraldi, do you know?” said Carla, flicking him on the hand with her pocket-handkerchief. + 

“If you say so! But look here, my dear young lady! any communication with regard to Elsa’s maritime fancy would in the end determine the Count to give up his suit; and until now it has appeared to us most convenient for all parties to marry him to Elsa. If you want him for yourself, and it seems so, well, that may also be managed; but in your place I would not be too hasty. We can keep the game going as long as we like. Why not drain the sweetness of courtship to the last drop? The more so that Ottomar⁠—great minds are never shocked at truth⁠—scarcely appears to appreciate, at its true worth, the happiness which awaits him in the arms of the cleverest and most agreeable of women.” + 

“Which means, if I am not mistaken,” said Carla, “that Ottomar must do as you wish; you have got the whip-hand of him. Well I know, dear friend, how powerful your hand is; but I confess that in this case I do not understand where the power lies. That Ottomar has had mistresses⁠—very likely has them still⁠—well! I have read Schopenhauer, who says nothing about monogamy, because he could nowhere discover it, and I should not like to be the first woman to find her beloved the less interesting because he is pleasing to other women. His debts? Good gracious! name anyone to me who has none! and my brother says they are really not so bad. My brother urges our hastening on our wedding, and so does my sister-in-law now. The General is, as you know, most inconveniently obstinate in carrying out his plans; and society will be greatly injured if we are not on our wedding tour by the beginning of March; on the 15th Ottomar must enter upon his office at St. Petersburg.” + 

“Let us make our arrangements accordingly then, if we are otherwise agreed,” answered Giraldi. “By the middle of February you will discover that your finely organised nature will no longer stand the strain of the season, and that, before you enter upon the new period of your life, you absolutely require quiet and repose, which you cannot procure in town, and can only find in the retirement of the country. And then it falls in admirably, that at that very time the Baroness, my dear friend, impelled by the necessity of rest, seeks a shelter in quiet Warnow. I have for this purpose reserved the castle and park from the Count, who this morning became the possessor of the property. He will be delighted that Fräulein von Wallbach should share the retirement of her betrothed’s aunt. Not alone! The Baroness, at her own urgent request⁠—mark that⁠—will be accompanied by Fräulein Elsa. The Count, whose business at that time⁠—and particularly the harbour works at Warnow⁠—makes his residence in the country a duty, will do everything to cheer and enliven the ladies’ solitude. Your brother⁠—I myself⁠—will come and go. What a spectacle, to watch the spring awaking in the country, on the shores of the ocean, perhaps to see the further blossoming of dear Elsa’s quiet fancy for the man of her choice, who has gone to his new post⁠—he has lately been made Superintendent of Pilots⁠—I think they call it so⁠—at Wissow, just the same distance from Warnow as the Count is at his house. How do you like my little plan?” + 

“Charming,” said Carla, “à deux mains. But is it practicable?” + 

“Leave that to me. Give me your two pretty hands upon it, that you will support me.” + 

“There, you have them.” + 

“And I impress my lips upon both of them in confirmation of the agreement.” + 

“I really must venture to disturb your tête-à-tête,” said Herr von Wallbach, entering from the drawing-room. “The company have all arrived. Only Ottomar, whom we must again give up, and the Baroness still fail us.” + 

“I forgot to tell you,” said Giraldi, as he greeted Herr von Wallbach, “that the Baroness begged me to make her apologies⁠—an indisposition⁠—her nerves are so shaken⁠—” + 

“What a pity,” said Herr von Wallbach. “Will you have the kindness, Carla, to tell Louisa? It makes no difficulty, as I was to have taken in the Baroness. Baroness Kniebreche claims you, Signor Giraldi.” Giraldi bowed. Carla had gone. “One moment,” whispered Wallbach, holding back Giraldi by the arm. “I am glad, very glad, that the Baroness is not coming. This is a day of surprises. Today, to our inexpressible astonishment⁠—Lübbener cannot get over it at all⁠—Golm paid the half million down! The concession, for the publication of which we feared we should have weeks to wait, as there was still some difficulty about the security, will appear tomorrow in the Gazette. Yes, my dear sir, you may rely upon it. I know it for certain from Herr von Stumm, who implored me not to betray him. It was to be a delightful surprise, on the part of the Ministers, for us; and⁠—and⁠—my dear friend, I am not easily put out of countenance, but c’est plus fort que moi⁠—from the same unquestionable source I have learnt that the General’s name does not appear in the Military Gazette which will be published tomorrow.” + 

“Which means?” asked Giraldi. + 

“Which means that he is passed over, and that, according to our ideas, he will be forced to send in his resignation.” + 

“How extraordinary!” said Giraldi. + 

“There is no doubt about it,” continued Wallbach excitedly; “I could certainly understand the step, even see its necessity, if it had been the only means by which our affair could have been carried through; but as we have the concession in our pocket without that, it is⁠—” + 

“An unnecessary cruelty.” + 

“Is it not? and one which will have further consequences. I prophesy that Ottomar will not go to St. Petersburg.” + 

“But that would be more than cruel, it would be absurd,” said Giraldi. + 

“You do not know our ways. There is great consistency in such things with us.” + 

Giraldi was spared an answer. In the doorway to the drawing-room appeared, supported on Carla’s arm, the bent form of an old lady who was waving an immense black fan up and down, and cried out loudly in a cracked voice: + 

“If Signor Giraldi will not come to old Kniebreche, old Kniebreche must go to Signor Giraldi.” + 

“I fly, my dear madam!” said Giraldi. + 

XII + 

Elsa’s old cook sat on her stool, with her elbows resting upon her knees, staring at the brick floor; August, who was leaning against the window, went on silently cutting his nails with his knife; and Ottomar’s servant was perched upon the table, swinging his long legs. + 

“It has just struck twelve,” said the cook, with a despairing look at the hearth, on which the kettle still hung in solitary state over the fire, as it had done since early morning. “Can neither of you at least open your mouths?” + 

“What is there to say?” answered August. “It will always be likely to happen with us soldiers.” + 

“It’s a sin and a shame!” said the cook. + 

“A 1,” affirmed August. + 

The Dutch clock ticked, the kettle bubbled. Friedrich let himself slide off the table, and stretched his arms. + 

“I can’t say that I am generally much in favour of these parades,” he said, “but it is my opinion that today we servants might as well have joined it.” + 

“Yes; the young master always has the best of it,” said the cook. “It is well to be out of range of the firing. If I had been in his place, I would have paraded them today.” + 

She smoothed down her apron. August shook his head. + 

“With us military men, that would⁠—” + 

“Oh, stuff!” interrupted the cook. “Military here, military there! If anyone dismissed my father, I should dismiss him, and that pretty sharp, too!” + 

She gave her apron another energetic pull, stood up, walked to the hearth, turned the kettle round, and then, as that manifestly did not help matters, began to cry vehemently, from a sense of her helplessness. + 

“Hullo!” said the lady’s-maid, who just then stepped into the kitchen, “have the lamentations broken out here also?” + 

She sat down on the stool from which the cook had risen, and stroked down her black silk apron as the other had her coarse kitchen one. + 

“There, I’ve had enough of it! I can’t stand playing at nursing old women who faint every time anything goes wrong in the house! And to be turned out of the room by the young lady because one treads too heavily, and told to send that stupid goose Pauline, doesn’t suit me any better! And, moreover, I am not accustomed to a party once a fortnight at the outside, and now I suppose even that will come to an end! No, I thank you! Tomorrow they may look out for another lady’s-maid, if suchlike require another lady’s-maid, indeed! And⁠—” + 

“There, I’ve had enough of that!” said the cook. + 

“I may talk, I suppose, if I like!” said the lady’s-maid. + 

“But not in my kitchen!” cried the cook, sticking her still strong arms akimbo, and walking up to the audacious speaker. “What! you will talk about ‘suchlike’ here, in the face of an old, respected servant, who has been twenty years in the house, or eight years like August, to say nothing of Friedrich, although he also is a respectable man, and would rather have gone to the parade today than sit here and see such misery! Do you know who ‘suchlike’ are? All your tag and rag, from whom you ran off to us⁠—they are ‘suchlike,’ with their yard-long trains, and fallals and crinolines! And you are ‘suchlike,’ you shameless hussy, you! and if you don’t leave off grinning this very minute, and get up off my stool, and clear out of my kitchen, I’ll give you a couple of boxes on the ear that will make you remember ‘suchlike’ to the end of your days!” + 

“I shall not dispute with you,” said the lady’s-maid, getting up in haste, and slipping towards the door from under her antagonist’s raised arm. “You are too⁠—” + 

“Out with you!” said the cook. + 

“Too vulgar!” + 

And the lady’s-maid slammed the door behind her. + 

“That is one of the A 1’s,” said August. + 

“A regular one,” said Friedrich. + 

“And you are dunderheads,” cried the cook, “to put up quietly with such a thing!” + 

“One should not enter into any discussion with such a person,” said Friedrich. + 

“The housedoor bell has rung,” said August, delighted to be able to break off the conversation, which was taking so disagreeable a turn. “Our master can hardly be back yet? And we cannot receive anyone today?” + 

“That depends,” said the cook. “Our poor young lady has not seen a soul today, and the poor thing must want to speak out. But it must be to a real friend.” + 

“Of course,” said August, buttoning his livery-coat, “one of the A 1’s. Herr von Schönau or⁠—” + 

“Well, make haste and go upstairs.” + 

“Ah! the Captain!” cried August, seeing Reinhold in the anteroom. + 

The Captain stood high in August’s favour, and the Captain, who always looked so amiable, looked so grave today. + 

“The Captain, of course, knows all about it already,” said August. + 

“For heaven’s sake!” cried Reinhold, “what has happened? Is anyone ill in the house?” + 

“Ill⁠—yes,” said August, “but only from fright. Fräulein Sidonie fainted immediately, and so of course we heard all about it. The Lieutenant is, of course, gone to the parade, and will not be back till evening, as he is on duty afterwards at the barracks; and I had to put all the General’s orders on his uniform, and he went to his Excellency the Minister and the other Excellencies to say so-and-so; and our young lady is with Fräulein Sidonie; but she will certainly wish to see you, and if you will come in here and wait⁠—” + 

August had ushered Reinhold, who, in his bewilderment, followed him mechanically, up the stairs, and opened the door of the drawing-room. + 

Reinhold remained alone for a few anxious moments. What could have occurred to have caused the family such a shock as he saw reflected even in the servant’s face? And today, of all days! As if his heart were not heavy enough already! + 

A light step crossed the floor of the dining-room and over the carpet in the next room, and Elsa stepped in, holding out her hand to him. + 

“You have come to take leave. I know all from Fräulein⁠—from Meta.” + 

“I have come to take leave,” answered Reinhold; “but before we speak of that, tell me, if you can, what misfortune has happened to you? It must be some misfortune.” + 

He still held her hand in his, and gazed, himself pale from emotion and sympathy, into her pale lovely face, with the beloved brown eyes, which, formerly so bright and happy, now looked so anxious and sorrowful. + 

“My father would reproach me if he heard me call that a misfortune of which he affirms himself to be proud. And yet⁠—who knows how it appears to him in his heart, or how he bears it in his heart, and how he will bear it?” + 

She suppressed her sorrowful emotion with a deep-drawn breath, and offering Reinhold a chair, and herself taking a place on the sofa, continued in a calm voice: + 

“My father has been passed over in the promotion for which he stood next! You know what that means. He has just gone to offer his resignation in person to the Minister!” + 

“Good God!” said Reinhold, “an officer of his high character, of his vast services to the nation⁠—is it possible!” + 

Elsa sat there, her fixed burning eyes looking down, a bitter smile trembling on her lips, while she slowly nodded her head once or twice. Reinhold saw how forced was the self-command with which she had come to meet him, how deeply she felt the insult which had been offered to her father. + 

“And to think,” he said in a low voice, “that I myself assisted to bring about this catastrophe. Your father has repeatedly impressed upon me what difficulties he had to struggle with, how precarious, how insecure his position was, and that a mere trifle might suffice to make it untenable⁠—” + 

Elsa shook her head. “No, no!” she said, “it is not that. My father was determined to retire if ever this unhappy concession was carried through against his will. But that they should not even have waited, even given him time to carry out his resolution, that is what he resents, and what I fear will make his proud heart bleed.” + 

The tears ran from her fixed eyes down her pale cheeks. Reinhold’s heart was full to overflowing with love and sympathy. A voice within him cried out, “My poor, poor darling,” but he dared not speak out yet. + 

Elsa had dried her tears with her handkerchief. + 

“You must not look so miserable,” she said, trying to smile; “my father has done his duty, and you have done your duty. Is not the consciousness of this the best, the only consolation in such a case as this, which we must accept whether we will or no?” + 

“Certainly,” said Reinhold; “and yet how sad it sounds from such lips.” + 

“Because I am a girl,” said Elsa. “I think it is just we girls who can do so little for ourselves, who are often so helpless in the face of circumstances, who are not early enough impressed with this idea. What would have become of me in these last few days if I had not done so. If I had not at least tried to do so, so far as lay in my power. And now today, when I have heard everything from my father about Ottomar⁠—” + 

Reinhold looked up startled. + 

Elsa’s eyes had fallen, a burning colour had come into her cheeks; she went on slowly in a low voice, “I have learnt everything!” + 

“Could not that, at least, have been spared you?” said Reinhold after a silent pause. + 

“I think not,” said Elsa, again looking up. “I think that my father followed a right impulse this morning when he told me everything, as to a friend (and, oh! how thankful I am to him for it, and proud!), told me of his position, of our position⁠—confided to me even that. Oh! I cannot get rid of the thought that it would have been better, that it would have turned out better⁠—for us all, if I had known it, if not from the beginning, at least after that terrible morning. Only a woman’s hand could, had it still been possible, have smoothed out the entangled threads of all the faults and follies there and here. What would I not give for the minutes that have been irreparably lost. Ah! I know I should have found the words to touch Ottomar’s and your cousin’s hearts. Poor Ferdinanda! What must she have suffered? What must she suffer? And my poor Ottomar, too! He is really not so guilty as he perhaps appears to you. It is not your fault that you have not learnt to know him better, that the wish of my heart has not been fulfilled⁠—that you might become true friends. We know now why he shunned you, as indeed he did even his best friends, Schönau and the others⁠—even myself⁠—all of us. And so he has strayed so far, so helplessly away in the loneliness of his heart. And yet I know him from earlier, better days, how tender, how loving and affectionate his heart was; how susceptible he was to all that was beautiful and good, even if he had not the strength to let it ripen in him, to live for that alone. But it must be very difficult in the life that he leads, that he must lead, which I also have led in my way, and have enjoyed myself in it⁠—all these prejudices of rank, these social fetters, which we no longer feel as such, because we have grown up amongst them and can never free ourselves without a hard struggle. And if he failed in this struggle, the strange circumstances of our family will certainly have contributed to it; and, lastly, the rebuff which he has experienced in the person of his father, whom, I know, in the bottom of his heart he deeply reverences. I will not defend him, when, passionate and hotheaded as he is, he rushed out of the house⁠—we none of us knew what he intended⁠—and returned engaged to Carla; but he must not, he cannot be utterly condemned.” She gazed anxiously, with clasped hands, into Reinhold’s face, a bitter feeling was stirring in him. If she spoke so eloquently of the singular position in which her brother was at the decisive moment, was not this position hers also? Would not she so speak at the last moment for herself? So decide for herself? or was it already on her account that she spoke? Had she so decided? Was he to read her decision between the lines? + 

“I always find it difficult,” he said, “to condemn anyone⁠—in men’s hearts there are so many depths, which no lead can reach⁠—and I have not condemned your brother. On the contrary, I have for his sake and⁠—I cannot deny it⁠—for yours⁠—” + 

His voice shook, but he collected himself by a strong effort and went on quietly, “Done everything which a brother would at such a time do for a brother. I have even set my uncle’s friendship and affection, which are very dear to me, at stake, and I fear, lost them. That it was all in vain, that I must let that be, which I foresaw would be to those most nearly concerned a deadly blow, which would more or less recoil upon us all without exception⁠—I do not know whether I need tell you how hard this has been to me, how hard it is!” + 

“You do not need,” said Elsa. “Take the thanks of the sister for the brother. You do not perhaps believe how grateful I am to you, and how your words have comforted me. Since this morning, through all the trouble which has come upon us, I have continually asked myself how you would be affected by it. I have longed to hear these words from you. Now that I have heard them my heart feels lighter, and now, between us two at least, all will be again as it was.” + 

“Do you believe that? do you really believe it?” asked Reinhold. + 

The smile died away upon her lips. She gently drew back the hand which she had given him, and which he firmly held; the blood flew again into her cheeks, which then became whiter than before. + 

“Have I been mistaken?” stammered Elsa. + 

“I do not think so,” said Reinhold, “because, forgive me, I cannot think that at this moment you have been quite sincere. And⁠—you have yourself said it⁠—what brought ruin upon your brother, and upon my cousin, save that they were not open, neither to themselves, nor to each other, nor to their friends⁠—that they never had the courage of their opinions⁠—that they never had the true courage of their love? Well! I, for my part, will not and dare not burden my soul with this reproach. I will keep my conscience free, however heavy my heart may remain. May I speak out what is in my heart? and will you answer me as your heart dictates?” + 

She sat there, pale and motionless, only the hand which she had given him, and which now lay in her lap, trembled. + 

“I will,” she said, in a low voice. + 

“Well then,” said Reinhold, “I came to take leave of your father, and before I took leave of him, to thank him from the bottom of my heart, for the kindness with which he had overwhelmed me, and for the confidence with which he honoured me. Perhaps, thought I, since I still remain in your neighbourhood, and my duties will also often bring me here, he would then have said that he hoped and wished to see me again. And I must have replied, that as an honourable man I could only take advantage of this permission under one condition. And I should have said ‘That condition, General, is impossible. I have had the fullest opportunities in this unfortunate business, and in the many confidential conversations with which you have honoured me, of entering into your thoughts and feelings; you have condescended even to initiate me into the circumstances of your family, and I am convinced that you will never of your own free will, grant me the hand of your daughter whom I love.’ ” + 

Elsa neither answered nor stirred, only her bosom rose and fell wildly. + 

“ ‘Whom I have loved,’ ” continued Reinhold, in a voice trembling with emotion, “ ‘I may say from the first moment that I saw her. Since then I have thought of her every hour of the day; and when I lie awake at night, her image stands out before my soul, clear, steadfast, immovable, like the north star; and I am as sure as that I am a living man, that this love can only end with my life.’ That is what I should have said to your father.” + 

“And then,” said Elsa softly, “then should you have come to me?” + 

“Yes,” said Reinhold, “then I should have come to you.” + 

A lovely colour lay upon her cheeks; her eyes resting full and steadfastly upon him, gleamed through tears, whilst her voice seemed as if it would cry out for joy, and again trembled with emotion. + 

“I should have said to you, that I was unutterably happy in the knowledge that I was loved by you, and that I love you with my whole, whole heart, and will so love you forevermore.” + 

They held one another in a close embrace. He kissed her hair, her forehead, her lips; she leant her head, sobbing, on his shoulder. + 

“Oh! my God! is it possible? This morning⁠—even when I came in at the door⁠—here, see! see! I wanted to give you this⁠—my treasure! I meant to part with it, to renounce all happiness. And now, now! I may keep it, may I not, and look to my lord, as the needle does to the pole? I have learnt it from it.” + 

She kissed the compass and let it slip again into her pocket, and threw her arms again round Reinhold, and said: + 

“And now, my dearest, that you know that I will be true to you, waking and sleeping, and will be your wife, and will follow you to the ends of the world whenever you call me, do not call me yet, but leave me here with my father, whose support and comfort I am in this affliction, with my Aunt Valerie, who clings to me in the anguish of her heart. Ah! there is so much suffering which I only partly guess, but which does not therefore the less exist, and which I know will overflow so soon as I turn my back. It will perhaps come even now, and I cannot check it, but I shall have done my duty, you know, as Meta would say.” + 

The old sweet smile gleamed in the brown eyes which shone upon him. “We must just have patience and be sensible, and love each other very, very much, and then everything must come right, will it not, my darling?” + 

“The man who knows himself beloved by you,” whispered Reinhold, “can only fear one thing in this world⁠—not to deserve your love.” + 

XIII + 

The two friends wandered up and down the brightly-illuminated platform of the station, waiting for the train. Uncle Ernst’s carriage which had brought them, had come very quickly, the train was only just being made up, they had still nearly half an hour. + 

“You will not stop in Sundin?” said Justus. + 

“Only tomorrow,” answered Reinhold; “I hope that will suffice to present myself before the President, and my immediate superiors, the Government surveyor, and the other gentlemen, and to receive my instructions.” + 

“I think the President has been here,” said Justus, “for the last four days. He is to be Chairman of the Board for the new railway. They made him the most splendid offer, I am told.” + 

“So the papers say, but I do not believe it,” answered Reinhold. “A man like the President could not agree to such a project, and moreover, if he were here, he would certainly have sent for me.” + 

“And the day after tomorrow you will be at your post with a northeaster whistling in your ears, and will swagger about in your pilot coat. What a lucky man you are!” + 

Justus sighed; Reinhold looked at his friend, who, with downcast eyes walked dejectedly beside him, and then burst into a fit of laughter. + 

“It is all very well to laugh,” said Justus; “ ‘laden with foreign treasures, he returns to his former home,’ but how do I stand? A leafless stem.” + 

“Do not cry yourself down, Justus.” + 

“Ah! cry myself down!” said Justus; “do you mean to say that it is not enough to drive a poor fellow mad! I meant to have spared you this today, so as not to disturb your happiness and joy; but perhaps it is better for me to tell you now, instead of writing to you as I intended. You will be in his immediate neighbourhood, and will surely do me the kindness to go over some day and appeal to the old gentleman’s conscience⁠—though I don’t believe he is old.” + 

“Alack!” said Reinhold, “blows the wind in that quarter?” + 

“And how it blows!” cried Justus, “so that one can neither see nor hear. You know that Meta wrote to me on her arrival that everything was going capitally. Mamma was, as she foresaw, entirely on her side, but papa, of course, made a tremendous row⁠—only then, as she also foretold, to give in utterly a little while after, supposing that the ‘stonecutter’ could maintain his daughter suitably, as he could give her nothing⁠—not a shilling⁠—he was a poor, ruined man. Good! I accept the ruined father-in-law, and he accepts me upon my showing that I had already for some years made⁠—but you know all about that, and I only repeat it now to set before you in its proper light the abominable treachery of this man.” + 

Justus had halted under a lamp, and took a letter out of his pocket. “If the spelling leaves something to be desired, the letters are big enough, as you see, and the interpretation is clear enough from one point of view at any rate.” + 

Justus struck the crumpled leaf with the back of his hand, and read: + 

“ ‘Sir’ (the first time I was ‘Dear Sir’), + 

“ ‘In consequence of a telegram that I have just received from Berlin, the state of my affairs is so completely altered, my daughter’s future prospects are so entirely changed, that the position which you can offer her at the best no longer appears sufficient to me; and before I give a final answer’⁠—as if he had not done so already, the Jesuit!⁠—‘I must, as a conscientious man and provident father, beg for a few weeks delay, until the fortunate conjuncture of circumstances which has just occurred for me can be completely gone into. + 

“I can’t read that⁠—but it is enough!” + 

And Justus crumpled up the unfortunate letter, and with a scornful snort stuffed it again into his pocket. + 

“Am I not right, Reinhold? Every possible difficulty stands in your path, I admit, but through it all, at the worst, you have to deal with a man who is the very soul of honour, and on whose word once given⁠—and he will give it⁠—you may rely. You can build your house upon a solid foundation, but how can a man build a house upon sand⁠—treacherous quicksand, which, when he thinks he is as firmly fixed as the Colossus of Rhodes, gives way under his feet? If I only knew what the ‘Lord of the Manor’ really means! It is my belief that the whole story⁠—telegram, conjuncture, everything⁠—is all dust which he wants to throw into my eyes to get rid of me⁠—don’t you think so?” + 

“Of course he wants to get rid of you,” answered Reinhold, “and the man’s meaning is pitiful enough; but the matter to which he alludes has some truth in it, and I think I can tell you what it all means. Herr von Strummin has probably, for some reason or another, been kept in the dark as to the position of the question of the concession, so as to shut him out of a share of the first rich booty, possibly has been persuaded that the concession will not be granted. Disordered as his affairs appear to be, perhaps in a desperate condition, he was delighted to see his daughter provided for, and shut both eyes (which, by the way, are somewhat prominent) to the ‘stonecutter’s’ position. Now he has been informed that the concession is a fait accompli, some additional promises⁠—God knows what⁠—have been made to him, and everything looks bright to him. He reminds himself that he is lord of the manor and so forth, and that it is his duty to protect his daughter from a mésalliance. You see it is again the old pitiful bargaining with men’s hearts, sticking to insane prejudices at the expense of all sound morality. But console yourself, Justus, it is not you, but Herr von Strummin who has built his house upon sand. He will find it out soon enough, and he will come to you and say, ‘My dear sir, I have been terribly in the wrong, and here is my daughter’s hand.’ ” + 

“That would be splendid,” said Justus, smiling in spite of his trouble, “only⁠—I do not believe in it.” + 

“Justus! Justus!” cried Reinhold; “do I hear this from you? From whom have I learnt that sandstone is hard to work, but marble much harder, and that whoso works all his life in sandstone and marble must take life easy, if he would not have the devil take possession of him. Do you really mean him to take possession of you?” + 

“You may well say that,” answered Justus; “I do not recognise myself any longer. It is as if gipsies had stolen me in the night, and left a miserable, dismal, incapable sneak in my place. All that I have lately done has been rubbish, which I would undo were I not certain that I should make it still worse. Oh! this love! this love! I have always foreseen it, I have always said it would be fatal to me; it always has been fatal to every artist. Today, whilst you were paying your visit, I glanced into Ferdinanda’s studio. She is working at a Bacchante⁠—in her present mood! but there is genius in it, only it is carried to madness, to absolute caricature. That is what she has got by it, that glorious creature! Uncle Ernst is all right again. He has allowed himself to be elected delegate of the city, because he has not got enough to do, and next year will have himself elected to the Chamber of Deputies and the Imperial Diet, and will stupefy himself with work, which is at any rate more wholesome than wine. But poor, poor Ferdinanda! I think, Reinhold, you must get in.” + 

The platform had meanwhile filled with travellers, some of whom hurried into the opened carriages, or after taking possession of their places, stood chatting at the doors. Amongst the latter was a party of young men in shooting dress, whom the two friends had just passed. + 

“I don’t think he will come,” said one of them, in whom Reinhold thought he recognised Herr von Tettritz. + 

“Seems so,” said another⁠—Herr von Wartenberg, as Reinhold, turning his head, convinced himself. + 

From the door of the waiting-room hastily appeared a gentleman, also in shooting-dress, followed by a soldier-servant carrying the game bag and gun over his shoulder. It was Ottomar. + 

And Ottomar, for all his haste, had at once recognised the two friends. They saw how he started, and then, as if he had remarked nothing, passed on, but suddenly turned round. + 

“I am not mistaken. Good evening, gentlemen. You are coming with us?” + 

“I am,” said Reinhold, “to Sundin.” + 

“Ah! I heard as much from my sister, who, I think, had it from Fräulein von Strummin, and also at Wallbach’s, from whom I have just come. You have got the post; I congratulate. Sorry I was not at home this morning. Parade, barracks⁠—nonsense! You may be thankful that you have nothing more to do with such stuff. I envy you, by Jove! It’s shameful that we have seen so little of each other lately. It’s a little your fault too; you might have let yourself be seen again. I shall heap coals of fire on your head, and visit you at Wissow⁠—next spring. Golm has invited me to shoot snipe⁠—best in all Germany, so he says, and I believe him⁠—for once. My sister will very likely come earlier⁠—to Warnow; perhaps Fräulein von Wallbach also. My aunt Valerie, who finds this place too noisy, has invited both the young ladies. Au revoir, then, or will you⁠—but that will not do⁠—we are already six. We are only going as far as Schönau, a property belonging to an uncle of the Captain’s. Au revoir, then. I will soon pay you a visit too, if you will allow me⁠—it was delightful in your studio. I must also see Fräulein von Strummin; I hear she is wonderfully⁠—” + 

“Take your seats, gentlemen!” said the guard. + 

“Werben, Werben!” + 

“Coming! Goodbye, goodbye!” + 

Ottomar shook hands with the friends in passing, and hurried to his clamouring companions. + 

“Does he know?” asked Justus. + 

“No⁠—by-and-by, perhaps; it is, for the present, a strict secret between Elsa and me. I shall write to the General from Wissow.” + 

“It is better so,” said Justus. + 

Reinhold did not answer. The evening of his arrival stood out suddenly, with all its details, in his memory. How eagerly Ottomar had then sought his friendship, how heartily Uncle Ernst had received him, how Ferdinanda herself had welcomed him! And now! It was not his fault⁠—that was at least a consolation. + 

“Here is an empty carriage,” said Justus. + 

“Farewell, my dear Justus! Say goodbye again to Cilli for me, and Herr Kreisel, and tell him not to trust in the Sundin-Wissow; and hearty thanks for your friendship and affection.” + 

“Not a word more, or⁠—I am desperately sentimental today. This love⁠—this horrible⁠—” + 

Justus smothered the rest of his blasphemy in a mighty embrace, pulled his broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, and rushed away. + 

“Good fellow!” said Reinhold to himself, as he arranged his goods in the carriage. “I never should have credited him with it. Strange! What has restored to me courage, and the old feeling of security, has robbed him of his ready creative power and his cheery humour. And yet the impediments which lie in his way are child’s-play compared to those that surround us. God grant he may soon smile again! Cilli is right⁠—he cannot live without sunshine.” + 

Reinhold had seated himself. The signal for starting had already been given, when the door was again thrown open, and a gentleman was hastily bundled in by the guard. + 

“Here, please, I have no more empty carriages. Your ticket at the next station!” + 

The guard shut the door. + 

“Good evening, President; allow me,” said Reinhold, taking the President’s great travelling-bag and putting it in the net. + 

“Good gracious! is it you?” cried the President. “Where are you going?” + 

“I would not fail to present myself before you in Sundin on the 1st of December, according to your orders,” answered Reinhold, rather surprised. + 

“Yes, yes, of course!” said the President. “Pardon me⁠—such a stupid question! I am so worried, so perplexed⁠—once more, forgive me!” And he stretched out his hand to Reinhold with his accustomed gracious friendliness. + 

“It is quite unnecessary, President,” said Reinhold; “I know that you are busied about more important things and men.” + 

“Yes, yes, more important things,” said the President⁠—“evil things! And the men⁠—these men, these men⁠—pray sit opposite to me! One can talk so much better, and I am very glad to see an honest face again.” + 

The President wrapped his rug round his knees. His fine, clever face looked pale and worn, and the touch of quiet irony and sarcastic humour which Reinhold had noticed at their first meeting had altogether failed him. + 

“I have been four days in Berlin,” said the President, “and should certainly have begged you to come and see me, only, to confess the truth, I have been skulking about like a criminal with the police after him, so as not to be seen by any respectable men, if I could avoid it. Perhaps you know what took me to Berlin?” + 

“The papers, President⁠—” + 

“Yes, yes, the papers. Unfortunately there is no longer any decent obscurity. Everything will come out, and if it were only confined to the truth!⁠—but unfortunately it is generally neither the whole truth, nor even the half. What falsehoods have not people⁠—that is to say, the gentlemen concerned in the matter⁠—told about me! I was concerning myself actively in the existence of the railroad, working for it, dinning into the Minister’s ears that the concession must be granted⁠—I, who have fought against it from the first, and warned the Minister most strenuously against it! Then, as that would not do, they attacked me from the other side. I had been an opponent, a determined opponent⁠—I had been convinced at last⁠—Saul had become Paul. That sounded more probable, but not probable enough. I was not convinced⁠—I was simply bought. That was believed at once⁠—it spoke for itself. A President, with his few thousand thalers salary, notoriously devoid of private fortune, the father of six children⁠—how could he withstand such inducements! It is a shame and disgrace that it was believed, as it will be believed tomorrow, that there was not enough offered! The crafty fellow knows only too well what he is worth; he will quietly bide his time, watch for his opportunity, and feather his nest well! That is the worst, you see. Confidence, is shaken in the honour and integrity of our officials. It is the beginning of the end for me⁠—the threatening cloud which foreshadows a future which I pray God I may never live to see!” + 

The President tugged here and there at his rug which he was generally so careful to keep smooth, unfastened his kid gloves which he had just buttoned, and drew them off his trembling hands. Reinhold himself was moved by the intense emotion of a man usually so cautious and so shrouded in diplomatic mists. + 

“It would be presumption in me,” he said, “if I ventured to contradict a man of your great experience and judgment. Nevertheless I cannot refrain from suggesting that, just because the case concerns you so nearly, you may perhaps see it in too black a light.” + 

“May be, may be!” said the President, “but this is no isolated case; there are others which unfortunately speak on my side, where high officials have succumbed to the temptation put before them. And then⁠—” + 

He was silent for a few minutes, and then continued even more excitedly: + 

“If the higher powers only had tact, I say⁠—only tact not to strengthen this most dangerous, and I confess exaggerated, tendency of the public mind to suspicion and distrust. But you will feel it painfully⁠—the slightest acquaintance was sufficient to make one honour and respect the man⁠—General von Werben⁠—” + 

“I know, President,” said Reinhold, as the President again became silent; “and my acquaintance with that excellent man has not been a transient one.” + 

“Well then, what do you say to this?” cried the President. “Differences have existed between him and the Minister, I know; differences which must have been settled by a superior authority. It is difficult, it is almost impossible to work with anyone who is determined not to act in concert. One must give way, and of course the inferior; but just at this time that should have been avoided. It will throw fresh oil into the fire, as if it did not burn fiercely enough already, as if matters had not already been made easy enough for these promoters! They will laugh in their sleeves: ‘Do you see that? do you hear that? We had just intended, modest as we are, to take our shares into the market tomorrow at 75; but now we ask 80⁠—85! Paper that can send a General von Werben flying, cannot be difficult to float!’ + 

“You will see, my dear sir, they will trumpet it in all the papers, and⁠—even if it is all false⁠—if the General’s position were untenable, the mob goes by outward appearance, judges by outward appearance, and⁠—outward appearance is against us.” + 

The rug slipped from his knees, but he never seemed to observe it. + 

“And if that were all! But we, of whom our illustrious sovereign has so rightly said that we are appointed by fate to eat our bread in the sweat of our brow, we begin to desire to live for show, for glittering useless show. Take this railway business; it is all show whichever way you look at it⁠—good high roads, decent communal roads are all that we need for the moderate requirements of our island, which the prospectus boastfully calls the ‘granary of Germany.’ Show is the security upon the ground of which alone the concession can be obtained; I know that they could not raise even the few hundred thousand thalers. The subscriptions according to rule from ‘good and substantial houses,’ are show⁠—shameful show; the only real subscription is from Prince Prora, through whose territory nearly a third of the railway passes; the other ten million are from Count Golm, and Co.⁠—and not one thaler is paid up, or ever will be paid. So it goes on, so it must go on. You can’t gather figs from thistles, and as to what is to be expected from that magnificent harbour which is to crown the whole, well, you know all about that as well as or better than I do.” + 

The President stood up and went to the window, through which the lights of the town were already disappearing. Then he came back to his place and said as he leant over towards Reinhold, in an almost mysterious voice: + 

“Do you remember a conversation on the evening when I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance at the Count’s table at Golmberg? I have so often thought of it lately. Your storm⁠—I hope to God it may not come⁠—but if it comes as you have prophesied, I should take it for a parable of what is hanging over us. Yes! for a sign from heaven! to awaken us, to startle us out of our criminal intoxication, out of our empty, visionary life, to withdraw the glittering show from our eyes, to show us, as Fichte says, ‘that which is.’ Ah! where is the hand which would now write us ‘Speeches to the German nation?’ I would bless that hand. Instead of it our philosophers prate about the intellect, which is meant for nothing but to lead the will into absurdities, and to crush and destroy all joy and cheerfulness which is yet the mother of all virtues; and our poets are disciples of the French school, and learn how to be frivolous and disreputable to the heart’s core without offending external proprieties, or wander, poor creatures, with their beggar’s staves in the ruins of the age, and try to make us believe that the clouds of dust that they raise are creatures of flesh and blood; and our composers show forth the blasé impudence, the shameless sensuality of the age in music which fairly bewilders the moral and aesthetic feelings of the great and small world, or heats the fevered blood to madness. + 

“It cannot remain so. It is impossible; a nation cannot continue to dance before the golden calf and sacrifice to Moloch. Either it will be overwhelmed in the flood of its sins, or it must cling to the saving Ararat of honest, manly, and middle-class virtue. God grant that our people may have strength for the latter. There are times when I despair of it.” + 

The President leant back and closed his eyes. Did he wish to break off the conversation? Was he too much exhausted to pursue it further? At any rate, Reinhold did not venture to express the thoughts with which his heart was full. Each sat silent in his corner. The last lights of the town had long disappeared. Over the broad, dark plain, through which the train rushed, lay a light covering of snow, from which the woods rose up gloomily. Above, in the darkening sky, sparkled and shone, in countless numbers, the eternal stars. + 

Reinhold’s eyes were gazing upwards. How often had he so gazed from the deck of his ship on stormy winter nights with an anxious, fearful heart! And his heart had again beat high with courage, if only one of the loved and trusted lights illuminated his lonely path. And now, when they all beamed upon him, those silver stars⁠—and greater, mightier than all, the star of his love⁠—now, should he lose courage? Never! The storm might come⁠—it would find him ready; it would find him at his post. + 