Book + 

V + 

I + 

Dinner had been over an hour at Castle Warnow. Frau von Wallbach, Elsa, and Count Golm, who had been invited to dinner, were sitting in the drawing-room round the hearth, on which but a small fire was burning. Although only just the end of February, the day had been wonderfully sultry. François even had to open the window, and it was not to be wondered at that the Baroness should have been seized with one of her bad headaches at dinner, and directly they got up from the table should have begged leave to withdraw. Carla had gone to put on her habit, not wishing to lose the opportunity of riding once more, escorted by several gentlemen. Herr von Strummin, who had paid a neighbourly morning visit and remained to the early country dinner, now wished, or was obliged, to return home, and had gone to see after the horses. Count Golm, who had really intended to spend the evening at Warnow, now thought it would be better, in consideration of the Baroness’s indisposition, to return to Golm after the ride without again dismounting, and at once took leave of the ladies. + 

He had hoped that Elsa, to whom he had addressed himself, would have protested, at least with some polite phrase, which he might have accepted as genuine. + 

But Elsa was silent, and Frau von Wallbach with difficulty concealed a fit of yawning, as she leaned back in her armchair, and with her hand before her mouth, seemed to be making a minute inspection of the ceiling. + 

The Count bit his lip. + 

“I am afraid we have not been very lively company for the ladies,” he said. “Strummin was really unbearable. I believe he drank three bottles to his own share, and spoke about as many words. I think such silence must be catching, or is it in the air? It is really just like May, when the first thunderstorms come. What a pity that Captain Schmidt did not accept your aunt’s invitation, Fräulein Elsa! he might, perhaps, have told us the meaning of this wonderfully sultry state of the atmosphere. I wonder why he did not come?” + 

The Count seldom missed an opportunity of reflecting upon Reinhold in what he imagined to be a peculiarly sarcastic and witty manner. It could only be the consequence of the blind hatred with which, from the first he had honoured him. + 

Reinhold had once visited Warnow during the last week, and that for an hour only. They had certainly never given anyone the slightest indication by which a clue could be found to the nature of their mutual relations, yet the Count’s last remark sent the blood up into Elsa’s cheek. + 

“Captain Schmidt only expressed his regret that he had no time to avail himself of our invitation today,” she said. + 

“I should like to know what a man like that has to do,” returned the Count. “He does not, so far as I know, manage the boat himself, but looks on comfortably from the shore. A mere sinecure, it seems to me.” + 

“Perhaps you do not clearly understand the duties and cares of a man in such a position, Count Golm?” + 

“Very likely. For instance, I cannot understand why it is his duty, or why he gives himself the trouble to interfere in the strangest and most perverse way with my harbour works. Amongst other things, I know it for a fact that we owe to his suggestion, or rather his denunciation⁠—” + 

“Forgive me for interrupting you,” said Elsa; “the gentleman of whom you are speaking possesses the regard, I may say the affection, of my father; he is my⁠—friend, received by my aunt at Warnow. I do not think it right to allow him to be cried down here⁠—in his absence.” + 

“But,” cried the Count, “you completely misunderstand me. I had not the slightest intention of maligning that gentleman. I call it a denunciation, because⁠—” + 

“Perhaps you will be so kind as to take some opportunity of mentioning the matter before him; I am certain that he will give you a satisfactory answer. Dear Louisa, will you excuse my going to see after my aunt? she may want me.” + 

Elsa bent over Frau von Wallbach’s chair, then, drawing herself up, made the Count a civil but cold bow, and left the drawing-room. + 

“This is too much!” said the Count, looking after her; “what do you think of that, Frau von Wallbach? To make such a fuss about this man, who cavils at everything. Just imagine that he may manage to bring matters to such a pass, that we shall not dare to demolish the dunes on the left of Ahlbeck, in spite of the position being absolutely necessary to us as a depot for our materials! He asserts that the dunes are a protection for the whole coast. Just fancy! Sixty feet of beach at the narrowest part, and then to talk of protecting the coast! Absurd! And our dear President of course⁠—” + 

“My dear Count,” said Frau von Wallbach, turning her head towards the Count, “what does it all matter to me?” + 

“Pardon me, my dear lady,” said the Count; “I thought⁠—” + 

“And I am already bored to death,” exclaimed Frau von Wallbach; “good gracious, how bored I am! This week⁠—oh! this week! If I could only write to Wallbach to come and fetch me back!” + 

“We should miss you dreadfully,” said the Count. + 

“I think you would get on very well without me,” said Frau von Wallbach; “and besides, my dear Count, this cannot go on any longer. Either you must make up your minds, or you must give it up. Do you think Elsa is blind?” + 

“Bah!” said the Count, “Fräulein Elsa has got her interesting Superintendent of Pilots!” + 

“Yes,” said Frau von Wallbach; “you are always talking about that; but I have lately watched them both closely, and I tell you it is nonsense.” + 

“I have it on the best authority.” + 

“From Signor Giraldi, of course; he knows everything! And yet it was Signor Giraldi who originally interested himself in your engagement to Elsa. I cannot understand it. It is such a bore to be groping in the dark like this.” + 

The Count, for whom there were also many obscure points in this delicate affair, thought it high time to break off the conversation. + 

“I think the horses must have been brought round,” he said, rising and kissing Frau von Wallbach’s hand; “excuse me for today; tomorrow, if you will permit it, I will call again. I want to show Fräulein Carla the harbour works. She interests herself very much about them. I hope that you will be of the party. Au revoir!” + 

He hurried away without waiting for the lady’s answer. + 

As he passed hastily through the anteroom, from which doors opened on all sides, Carla came towards him, holding her whip in one hand and in the other her hat and gloves. + 

“Your sister-in-law is still in the drawing-room,” he said out loud. + 

“Thank you,” replied Carla equally distinctly. + 

He made her a sign with hand and eye. + 

“Have you examined this charming old painting yet?” + 

“Which one!” + 

“This one, here! look!” + 

They had moved so far on one side that they could not well be seen from the drawing-room, of which the portières were open. + 

“One only,” whispered the Count. + 

“You are mad!” + 

“The first⁠—and last today.” + 

She put up her lips to him. + 

“Angel!” + 

“Really charming!” said Carla out loud; and then in a whisper, “For heaven’s sake, go away!” + 

She vanished into the drawing-room, and the Count rushed into the corridor. Neither had remarked, their whole attention being directed to the drawing-room, that at the moment when their lips met the portière of a second door, which led to the inner apartments, was lifted, and as quickly dropped again. + 

“Is Elsa gone?” asked Carla. “I wanted to say goodbye to her.” + 

Frau von Wallbach turned her head so far as to be able to see Carla if necessary. “I have spoken to him.” + 

“What did you say?” asked Carla eagerly. + 

“That it is too boring here, and I cannot stand it any longer.” + 

“That was all?” + 

“It was enough for me. You must manage for yourself.” + 

“But Edward himself thinks your presence necessary here.” + 

“Your brother cannot expect that I should bore myself to death for you.” + 

Carla shrugged her shoulders. “You will be in a better temper tomorrow. Goodbye!” + 

“I go tomorrow, you may depend upon that.” + 

To hear a decided resolution from her sister-in-law was something so extraordinary, that Carla, who was already at the door, turned round again. “But, Louisa⁠—” + 

“Well, I do not see it at all,” said Frau von Wallbach. “Elsa is always amiable to me, much more so than you are. I was really sorry for the Baroness today, to see the trouble she took without receiving the slightest thanks from you, and I am sorry for poor Ottomar. Whatever he may be, he does not show me that he thinks me a fool, as you do, and I do not think it seemly that behind his aunt’s back in her own house⁠—” + 

“Warnow has long belonged to the Count,” said Carla. + 

“It is all the same. We are staying here with the Baroness, and not with the Count. If you wish to stay with the Count, marry him⁠—for all I care. But I think you would be sorry if you gave up Ottomar, and I do not see how it would be possible now. However, do as you please⁠—I go!” + 

The unheard-of obstinacy of her sister-in-law began to make Carla really uneasy. She laid her things down on a chair, knelt by Louisa’s side, and as she held and stroked her hand, said in a soft coaxing voice, “My sweet pet will never hurt me so. She will not leave poor Carla in her need. Ottomar is too bad. I know now, from Giraldi, why he proposed to me, because he was refused by Ferdinanda Schmidt, and he is still madly in love with her, and is making use of his former mistress to win her back. And Giraldi says that he has so many debts that his whole inheritance would not pay them, even if Elsa⁠—and Giraldi knows everything, everything, I tell you⁠—married that man; and you yourself would hardly wish to have the wife of a Superintendent of Pilots for a sister-in-law⁠—would you, my sweet pet!” + 

“That is all nonsense,” said Frau von Wallbach, with a feeble and fruitless attempt to draw her hand away from Carla’s. “You never had scruples about Ottomar’s mistresses formerly. I am certain that the Count also has his mistresses⁠—all men have; and the same with regard to his debts. The Count has certainly as many⁠—and perhaps more.” + 

“But not such bad ones,” said Carla hastily. “He has terrible debts, Giraldi says.” + 

“The fact is,” said Frau von Wallbach, “you are over head and ears in love with the Count.” + 

“And if I say yes, will my sweetest Louisa remain here?” whispered Carla, suddenly throwing her arms round her sister-in-law and laying her head on her shoulder. + 

“You will see, no good will come of it.” + 

François looked into the room. “I beg pardon, but the Count has sent to ask if mademoiselle⁠—” + 

“I am coming,” cried Carla, stretching out her hand for her hat. “You will, will you not, sweet pet?⁠—please fasten the elastic of my hat behind⁠—you will remain! Thanks! Adieu, sweet pet!” + 

She once more embraced her sister-in-law, took her gloves from the chair, and hastened away, her skirt trailing far behind her. + 

“If it were only not such a bore!” said Frau von Wallbach, sinking back in her chair. + 

When the Count came down, the horses had just been brought round. Herr von Strummin was sitting on a bench which encircled the trunk of a wide-spreading lime-tree, and playing with the point of his riding-whip in the fine gravel. + 

“You have come at last?” he said, looking up angrily. + 

“Fräulein von Wallbach wishes to say goodbye again to the ladies,” said the Count, seating himself by the side of his friend, “and it is rather a long business. We shall still have some little time to wait.” + 

“So much the better,” said Herr von Strummin; “I have not for a long time had the pleasure of speaking to you for a minute alone. So, without any beating about the bush⁠—I am very sorry, but I must have back my five thousand thalers.” + 

“I am very sorry too, my dear Strummin,” replied the Count, laughing, “because I cannot repay them.” + 

“Cannot repay me!” exclaimed Herr von Strummin, as the colour grew still deeper in his red face. “But you told me that I could count upon it at any time.” + 

“Because I naturally supposed that you would not choose just the most unsuitable time. You know that I must pay off that mortgage tomorrow.” + 

“Why did you give notice to pay it off? It was most imprudent. I told you so from the first.” + 

“I wanted to save the interest; and if you can get back two million for one⁠—in the meantime⁠—of course⁠—as things stand at present⁠—” + 

“You may be thankful that the directors have postponed the date of payment of the second instalment, which was due tomorrow.” + 

“Certainly,” said the Count; “it is very kind of the gentlemen. I should have been in a terrible position; but it has not made my situation even now particularly pleasant. That confounded mortgage! My creditor is most disagreeably pressing; he says he must have the money back.” + 

“Perhaps it may now transpire who this creditor really is whom you make such a mystery about?” + 

“I have given my word of honour⁠—” + 

“Then say nothing. It is all the same to me, moreover; and if you can pay half a million tomorrow to the gentleman in question, you can also raise my five thousand!” + 

“I do not know yet whether I shall be able to pay!” cried the Count impatiently⁠—“Lübbener⁠—Haselow and Co.⁠—I could not stand Lübbener any longer⁠—unlimited orders to sell; but if tomorrow our shares go down still further⁠—they stood the day before yesterday at forty-five⁠—” + 

“And yesterday at twenty-five!” + 

“Impossible!” cried the Count. + 

“Good heavens, man! have you never troubled yourself to inquire, then?” + 

“I⁠—I⁠—my letters lately⁠—the presence of the ladies here⁠—there are so many claims upon me⁠—” + 

“So it seems,” replied Herr von Strummin, taking a letter out of his pocket. “I got my banker to write to me yesterday, as I saw what was impending, and have carried his letter about with me since this morning. I have already been over to Golm, too, to tell you of it.” He unfolded the letter: “ ‘Sundin-Wissows were offered freely today at thirty-five; no buyers. They then rose to forty-five on large purchases. When it became known, however, that Lübbener himself was the buyer, merely to keep up the price, they fell rapidly, and closed at twenty-five! Please telegraph distinct orders whether to sell at any price. A further fall is inevitable.’ There you have the whole affair.” + 

“It is certainly bad,” murmured the Count. + 

“And whom have we to thank for all this?” cried Herr von Strummin. “You⁠—you only! You first led us into the affair, and promised all sorts of things, and then prudently left us in the dark until you had pocketed your profits as promoter. Then we fell further into the trap, and had to pay up heavily; and finally you throw half a million into the market, and bring down the value of our own shares. And I, like a fool, gave you the last penny I had; and instead of looking after your own affairs, as it was your bounden duty to do, you hang about here with the women, and⁠—” + 

“I think that last clause has nothing to do with the matter,” said the Count, getting up. + 

“Nothing to do with it!” cried the other, also springing to his feet. “Very well! very well! ruin yourself if you please, but at least leave other people out of the game. And I tell you, that if by twelve o’clock the day after tomorrow my five thousand thalers, which I lent you on your word of honour, are not lying on my table at Strummin to the uttermost farthing⁠—” + 

“For heaven’s sake do not speak so loud,” said the Count; “you shall have your money, although I am convinced that the great trousseau is only a pretext⁠—” + 

“A pretext? a pretext?” cried Herr von Strummin, raising his rough voice if possible still louder; “pretext indeed! when Meta is herself gone this morning to Berlin, to⁠—” + 

“This morning?” said the Count, with a jeering laugh; “excuse my remarking, mon cher, that was very imprudent of you! Our shares may rise again, and⁠—the stonecutter will not run away.” + 

Herr von Strummin’s light blue eyes almost started out of his burning face. He became suddenly hoarse with passion. + 

“What, what, what!” he snarled. “A stonecutter? An artist! and a great artist, who every year makes his six to ten thousand⁠—a stonecutter?” + 

“I only say it because you always call him so yourself.” + 

“I can call my son-in-law anything I choose, but if anyone else permits himself to do so, he shall eat his words as sure as I⁠—” + 

“You gentlemen must certainly have grown very impatient,” said Carla, who came out of the door just at this moment. + 

“Not at all,” said the Count, turning on his heel and hastening towards her. + 

“Yes, very impatient!” cried Herr von Strummin, who had suddenly recovered his voice. “I was only waiting to take my leave; I must be at Strummin in half an hour. I hope the conversation will get on better without me; I have the honour⁠—” + 

He snatched the reins of his great strong-boned black horse out of the groom’s hand, swung himself into the saddle, and sticking his spurs into the animal’s sides, galloped out of the courtyard. + 

“Good gracious!” whispered Carla, “what does it mean?” + 

“A little row,” said the Count, hiding the excitement into which the altercation had thrown him as well as he could under a forced smile; “nothing uncommon between old friends.” + 

“And the cause?” + 

“A last attempt, it seemed to me, to get a Count for a son-in-law, before accepting a sculptor.” + 

The Count had assisted Carla into her saddle, put the riding-whip into her hand, and was now arranging her skirt. + 

Carla bent towards him: “You bad man, I will give you a lecture on the way.” + 

“Pity it cannot be without a witness,” whispered the Count, with a look towards the groom, who was holding the reins of the other two horses. + 

“You are really too bad!” + 

“At your service,” said the Count out loud, and he stepped back and signed to the groom. He swung himself on to his horse, and started off with Carla, followed by the groom at a considerable distance. He had had some trouble in getting into his saddle. + 

II + 

Frau Feldner, Valerie’s old lady’s-maid, told Elsa that her lady was in a sound sleep, as was always the case with her after a violent attack of headache, and out of which she would hardly awake before evening. Elsa, who had herself suffered from the extraordinary sultriness of the day, and from the uncomfortable conversation at dinner, and was also put out and agitated by the scene with the Count, intended to employ the time in taking a walk; and thinking that Carla and the Count were already gone, was going, out of courtesy, to invite Frau von Wallbach to accompany her. Hat and shawl in hand, she was coming out of the Baroness’s rooms, and innocently lifting the portière of the anteroom, had become a very unwilling spectator of the little scene which took place between the Count and Carla. In her consternation she had let the curtain fall again, and without even thinking whether she had been observed or not, had hastily run downstairs, and now wandered round the garden trying to persuade herself that what she had seen was a mistake⁠—her eyes had deceived her. It was not possible that Carla could have so far forgotten herself, that she could so shamefully deceive her brother. But the more determinately she tried to drive back and destroy the hateful picture, the more terribly distinctly it stood out in her mind. + 

It must be so! The link that should have united Ottomar and Carla was torn asunder forever, even if what she had just seen were only the sudden delirium of the moment. But how could that be, when she thought of Carla’s intense frivolity, which had often caused her such anxiety; and of the Count’s audacity, from which she had from the first instinctively shrunk, and of which he had even now given such proof; when she remembered the confidential whispering, the coquettish flirting, the many, many things which had taken place between the two in her very presence, and which had been so displeasing and offensive, but, above all, so incomprehensible to her, and of which she now found so terrible an explanation! What would Ottomar say? He must hear of it! What would he do? Perhaps exult that the chain which fettered him was broken⁠—in good time! But that would not be like Ottomar. No man would take it patiently⁠—and he! so sensitive, passionate, and violent, who had so often risked his life in a duel on the slightest provocation⁠—a disagreeable word, a look⁠—which gave him offence! But, on the other hand, had he really a right to feel himself offended? Had he really tried to retain Carla’s love, or even first to win it, as it was his duty to do, after he became engaged to her? Had he not neglected her in the eyes of the world? left her, unguarded and unsheltered, to throw herself into that roaring whirlpool of social life in which she had formerly moved with such fatal enjoyment, and in which she had gained such brilliant triumphs? If so, he would have no betrayed love, only wounded vanity to avenge⁠—to risk his life for a thing in which he did not himself believe, only because in the eyes of society this sad comedy of errors needed a sanguinary end. Oh! this miserable slavery, in which she had once fancied herself happy and free, only because she had not learnt how a free heart beats, and for what a soul longs which that heart has set free, and which now spreads out its wings to soar away from all these wretched barriers of prejudice and illusion into the clear atmosphere of a noble and unselfish love! She could no longer bear to remain between the high, straight hedges and the interwoven branches of the beech-walk, in which here and there appeared stone gods and goddesses in odd and exaggerated attitudes, as if startled at the sight of one who could think and feel so differently to those who had their pride and joy in these quaint, old-fashioned splendours. + 

Away! away! to him she loved, if it might be, to seek shelter in his strong arms from this hollow, unreal world, to weep out upon his faithful breast her grief and indignation, to feel free in his presence from all this self-made sorrow, this foolish misery, and never, never again to leave him. And if this highest happiness were denied her, if she must return to the slavery of these intolerable circumstances⁠—out into the open then, over the brown meadows, through the dark fields, to the white dunes which peeped out in the distance, to have one look at the sea⁠—his beloved sea! Might it but bring her a greeting from her beloved, a waft of his breath to cool her hot brow, to refresh her burning eyes, were it only by a tear of unsatisfied longing! + 

Over the brown meadows and through the dark fields Elsa hurried, in the direction of a farm which lay before her at some distance, and which she must pass if she followed any further the sandy path, which looked as if it would take her quickest to her goal. The path led her ever nearer to the farm, and at last directly into it. Elsa did not like it; she would rather have met no one, since she dared not hope to meet him for whom she longed; but an attempt to get round the outside of the barn was frustrated by wet ground here and a hedge there. She must turn back or pass through the farm⁠—a little, melancholy, quiet farm, a few tumbledown outbuildings, from which the dwelling-house was only to be distinguished by the windows⁠—which looked dilapidated enough too⁠—and by the two lime-trees, which in summer made a pleasant shade before the door, but whose bare, leafless branches now projected in a ghostly manner over the decayed thatched roof against the grey sky. + 

A tall, broad-shouldered man came out from a barn-door, followed by a little dog, who flew at the stranger, barking loudly. The man called the animal back. At the first sound of his voice, Elsa, to whom the whole scene had appeared wonderfully familiar, as if she must have seen it before, recognised the honest farmer who had so kindly sheltered her last autumn. + 

“Herr Pölitz!” she said, holding out her hand. “You have forgotten me.” + 

A look of joy came over the sunburnt face. “Come, this is good of you to pay us a visit!” + 

“You knew, then, that I was in Warnow?” + 

The farmer smiled in his melancholy way. + 

“How should the like of us not know such a thing? But that you should have remembered us! My wife will be so pleased.” + 

He went towards the house. Elsa was very sorry to spoil the pleasure of these worthy people, but she could not permit herself even so trifling an untruth. The farmer’s face clouded, as she explained, with some embarrassment, that during the week she had been at Warnow she had never been beyond the garden, and had not now intended any visit; in fact, that she had not known that these buildings, which she had often enough seen from her window across the fields, were Herr Pölitz’s farm. “But,” she added, “I should have come had I known, or as soon as I discovered it. For that I give you my word.” + 

“We could not have expected it,” answered the farmer; “but since you say so, I believe you. But will you not come in!” he added hesitatingly. + 

“Yes, for a minute, to speak to your wife and to see the children.” + 

“The children!” + 

As they now stood before the door, the farmer laid his brown hand on her arm, and said in a low voice: + 

“Don’t ask after little Carl. Since Christmas he has slept over there in the churchyard. It was a sorrowful Christmas. But in a few days, if God will, we shall again have two.” + 

He left Elsa no time to answer, but opened the low housedoor⁠—how well Elsa remembered the rattling bell!⁠—called out to his wife, and showed his guest into the parlour on the left. As she went in, the figure of a woman rose up from a stool near the stove, whom Elsa in the dusk, which already prevailed in the room, with its small, dull windows, took for Frau Pölitz, but on coming nearer, saw that it was a young and pretty, but pale and sickly-looking girl. She greeted her in a shy and embarrassed manner, and went away without speaking a word. + 

“A sister of mine,” said the farmer, answering Elsa’s look, in a low voice and turning away his head. “Will you not sit down? If you will allow me, I will go myself and look for my wife.” + 

He went out. Elsa would have preferred to follow him. The close atmosphere in the little, overheated room nearly took away her breath; and worse than the atmosphere was the sense of misery which was so palpable here, and spoke so distinctly in the farmer’s melancholy face, in the girl’s white cheeks, in everything on which her glance fell⁠—even in the gloomy silence of the wretched farmyard and in the dilapidated house. Had she fled from the splendid misery of the castle only to find the same helpless sorrow in the little farmhouse! But at least it was not self-made suffering, so that it must awaken compassion, though it could not revolt the soul like what she had just experienced. How could she refuse these poor people the only thing they had asked of her⁠—a tender word of compassion? + 

The farmer came in with his wife. He had already told her all⁠—that the young lady could only say a word in passing today, but that in a few days she would come and spend a longer time with them. “Hardly in a few days,” said the farmer; “we are going to have bad weather. I must even urge the young lady not to remain too long; it may break up this evening.” + 

He had been standing at the window, and now left the room, murmuring a few words of apology, of which Elsa only understood “roof” and “cover.” + 

“It is the roof of the barn,” explained his wife; “it is so rotten he has had to take down one corner, and must now cover it over as well as he can, that the storm may not carry away the rest. To be sure it may be all one to him. We must leave at Easter anyhow.” + 

“How is that?” asked Elsa. + 

“Our lease is not renewed,” answered the woman; “and no new farmer is coming either. Everything here is to be pulled down and a big hotel built, so they say. God knows what will become of us!” + 

The poor woman, who looked even paler and more worn in her present condition than in the autumn, sighed deeply. Elsa tried to comfort her with words of sympathy. “It would be easy for a man like Herr Pölitz to find something else, and if capital was wanting to rent a new, and perhaps larger and better farm, some means would be devised for that also. The great thing was, not to lose courage herself. She must think only of her husband, who took life hardly enough as it was, and whose strength would be paralysed if she lost heart. She must think of the child that remained to her, and of the other that was coming, and everything would come right.” + 

The woman smiled through her tears. + 

“Ah!” she said, “what a comfort it is to hear such words from kind people! It does not last long, but for the moment one feels lighter; and that is a great deal when one’s heart is so heavy. That is what I always say to the Captain. He is just like you.” + 

A thrill of joy passed through Elsa. Reinhold had been here! He had also sought the place to which her thoughts had so often returned. + 

“He has often been here already,” said Frau Pölitz; “only the day before yesterday he came on foot; but generally he goes in his boat to Ahlbeck.” + 

“How far is it to Wissow?” asked Elsa. + 

“About four or five miles if you go right over Wissow Head; three miles to the Head, and half as much down to Wissow. You can see it there from the top. It is very fine up there on a summer’s day. We used to go there very often formerly, but we never go now.” + 

The pale girl here came in, took a key from a shelf near the door, and went out again immediately. + 

“Your sister-in-law is here to nurse you?” said Elsa. “The poor girl seems rather to need nursing herself.” + 

“Yes, God knows?” said Frau Pölitz. She pulled at her apron with an embarrassed look and drew nearer to Elsa on the little sofa, and went on in a low voice, “I ought not to talk about it, but you are so kind and good, and it lies so terribly heavy on my mind. If you would⁠—” + 

“If your husband has forbidden you to speak, you had better not tell me.” + 

The woman shook her head. + 

“No, no, not that; he does not know⁠—at least I hope not, although since yesterday⁠—perhaps it is as well⁠—” + 

“Tell me then, it may calm you,” said Elsa, who was frightened at the woman’s evident excitement. + 

“Yes, yes; true,” said Frau Pölitz; “and you might also advise me as to what I shall do. Marie is⁠—she has⁠—if you look at me like that I cannot tell you⁠—she has always been in all other respects a good, industrious, clever girl, only sometimes a little high-flown, poor thing. She was housekeeper over at Golm to the Count, for two years, although my husband never approved of it, as in a large house like that⁠—you know well how it is⁠—there are so many people, and in a bachelor’s establishment it is difficult to keep order and discipline. But she had good wages, and all went on well till last Michaelmas, when she suddenly gave warning, without saying a word to us, and went to Sundin, also as housekeeper, to the President’s. But that did not last long, and the President’s lady, who is a very good lady⁠—may God reward her!⁠—looked after her; and we knew nothing about it all until the poor infant died, in November. My husband was quite frantic, as he lays great store by his family, which has seen better days, and especially this sister, who had always been his pet. But what was to be done? What is done is done, and when at Christmas our little Carl died, and I could not well manage the household work, I wrote to the President’s lady and she sent her here to us, and wrote at the same time such a kind letter. I will show it to you next time you come. Marie has been a real help to me, and has cost us nothing. She has saved something, and the President’s lady also helped, and she has often offered me her little store. Of course I have never taken it, although I am convinced that it is honestly earned, and that he⁠—the father⁠—has never troubled himself about the poor thing. She told me that herself, but always added, ‘He knew nothing of it⁠—nothing at all.’ But that is impossible to believe, even if we, my husband and I, had no suspicion as to who could be the father. The name should never pass her lips, the poor girl said. And even yesterday it never did so.” The woman paused for a few moments, as if to gather strength for what she still had to relate. Elsa’s heart beat with sympathy, and with a dull fear, which increased every moment, for which, however, she could not account. What possible reference could the poor girl’s story have to her! The woman had come quite close to her, and went on in a still lower voice: “Yesterday afternoon, just at this time, my husband was behind there at the barn, Marie was ironing, with the child in the room next the kitchen, where, if you remember, the window looks on to the garden, and I was here washing, when some riders came up to the farm⁠—” Elsa’s heart gave a leap, and she involuntarily turned away from the woman. “Good heavens!” exclaimed the latter; “I trusted the Captain. He told me the day before yesterday that there was not a word of truth in the report about here that you were going to marry the Count. If it is true, I dare not say another word!” + 

“Thank God it is not the case,” said Elsa, by a strong effort overcoming her emotion. “The Count is then the man!” + 

Frau Pölitz nodded. “She cannot any longer deny it, and indeed she confessed as much to me, when I brought her to herself. They had dismounted and come into the house; the Count said that the young lady was unwell, and begged for a cup of coffee. May God forgive him, but it was certainly untrue, as the young lady was not the least unwell; on the contrary, did nothing but laugh, and they went through the house straight into the garden. A few old trees stand in it, and the hedges are also rather overgrown, so that it is quite sheltered; but Marie must have seen more than the poor girl could bear; and as I stood there by the stove she suddenly shrieked out, so that I thought she had let the heater of the iron fall on her foot, or that the child had hurt itself, and rushed in. There she lay on her back on the floor, and I thought she was dead, as she neither moved nor stirred, and was cold as ice and white as a sheet. You may easily imagine how frightened I was, and I may thank God that it was no worse. I called out, and Rike, our maidservant, came, and I sent her for my husband; and it was well I did so, for Marie came to herself, looked all round her with a bewildered, glassy stare, and then to the window, and asked timidly, ‘Is he still there?’ I knew then for certain, and begged her, for God’s sake, to keep silence before Carl, my husband. But since then he has been so odd; I am afraid he must have remarked something when he went into the garden to tell the Count that they must wait a little for the coffee and so forth. The Count would not hear anything more about the coffee, and the young lady told me how sorry she was. She had had no idea that we had an invalid in the house. Upon which my husband said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, my sister is not an invalid, she has only just been taken ill;’ and he said it so strangely, with his eyes fixed as if some other thought were in his mind. What shall I do? Shall I tell him? What do you think?” + 

Frau Pölitz held both Elsa’s hands clasped in hers and looked anxiously into her eyes. + 

“I think⁠—yes,” said Elsa. “You cannot keep it from him in the end, and a wife should have no secrets from her husband. It seems to me that all the evil in the world comes from our keeping and concealing from one another our most sacred feelings, as if we had reason to be ashamed of them; as if we did not live in them⁠—only in them!” + 

She stood up and seized her hat and shawl from the round table. + 

“You are going already?” said Frau Pölitz sorrowfully; “but indeed it is a long way to Warnow.” + 

“I have much farther to go,” said Elsa, putting on her hat. “Three miles, did you say?” + 

“Where to?” + 

“To Wissow Head.” Frau Pölitz stared at Elsa, as if she were talking nonsense. “Yes,” said Elsa, “to the Head. I cannot miss the way?” + 

“A road goes from here straight through the marshes, but makes a great bend at Ahlbeck on account of the brook. But, my dear young lady, for heaven’s sake what do you want to go there for?” + 

Elsa had put on her shawl, and now grasped Frau Pölitz by both hands. “I will tell you. To have one look⁠—one look only⁠—at the place where the man I love lives. You need not look at me so anxiously, dear Frau Pölitz, He really lives at Wissow.” + 

“The Superintendent of Pilots?” exclaimed Frau Pölitz. + 

She sat down and burst into tears of joy. + 

“You also love him,” said Elsa with a proud smile. + 

“Oh! indeed I do,” cried Frau Pölitz, sobbing; “and oh! how happy my husband will be! May I tell him⁠—” + 

“You may tell whom you will.” + 

“Oh! how pleased I am! You could not have given me greater pleasure than to tell me this. It makes me feel quite young again. Such a charming gentleman as he is, and such a dear, dear young lady! I feel sure that everything must go right now.” + 

She kissed Elsa’s hand again and again, with hot tears. Elsa gently disengaged herself. “I will tell you everything next time. Now I must go.” + 

“No,” said Frau Pölitz, standing up, “you must not walk such a long way; my husband shall drive you.” + 

“I am determined to walk,” said Elsa. + 

“You cannot be back before dark. It is already beginning to get dark, and we are certainly going to have bad weather.” + 

Elsa would allow no objection to weigh with her. She was a good walker and had eyes like a hawk. She feared neither the distance nor the darkness. + 

With that she once more shook Frau Pölitz’s hand, and the next minute had left room, and house, and farm, and was walking quickly through the fields along the road, of which the farmer’s wife had spoken, towards the headland, whose broad mass stood out from the wide plain. + 

III + 

It was three miles, Frau Pölitz had to Wissow Head, but it seemed to Elsa as if the long, winding road would never come to an end. And yet she walked so quickly, that the little empty wagon which at first was far ahead of her, was now as far behind. That wretched vehicle was the only sign of human life. Besides that, only the brown plain, like a desert waste, as far as her eye could reach. No large trees, only here and there a few stunted willows, and some wretched shrubs by the ditches which intersected each other here and there, and by the broad sluggish stream which she now crossed by means of a rickety and unprotected wooden bridge. The stream evidently flowed from the chain of hills on her right hand, at the foot of which Elsa could see far apart the buildings of Gristow and of Damerow, the two other properties belonging to Warnow. + 

Taking a long circuit, she gradually ascended to Wissow Head, which lay straight before her, whilst the plain to the left stretched without the smallest undulation to the low-lying dunes, which only showed white here and there over the edge of the moor. Only once, for a few minutes, a leaden-grey streak showed through a gap by which the brook made its way, which Elsa knew must be the sea, although she could scarcely distinguish it from the sky, for the sky above her was the same leaden colour too, only that towards the east, over the sea, it seemed somewhat darker than over the hills to the west, and in the leaden firmament hung here and there a solitary whitish speck like the smoke of gunpowder, which in the motionless air remained always in the same spot. Not the slightest breath was stirring, but from time to time a strange murmur passed across the waste, as if the brown moor was trying to rouse itself from its long slumber; and through the heavy, gloomy atmosphere there came a sound as of a soft, long-drawn-out, plaintive wail, and then again a deathlike stillness, in which Elsa seemed to hear the beating of her heart. + 

But more fearful almost than the stillness of this desert spot was the shrieking of a great flock of seagulls, which she had startled from one of the many hollows on the moors, and which now hovered hither and thither in the grey atmosphere, their pointed bills turned downwards, and followed her for a long time, as if in furious anger at this intruder upon their domain. + 

Nevertheless she walked on and on, quicker and quicker, following an impulse which she would allow no considerations of prudence to check, which was stronger even than the dread which earth and sky whispered to her with ghostlike breath, threatening and warning her with supernatural voices. And then came another more terrible fear. Far away in the distance, at the foot of the headland, which ever stood out more majestically before her, she had fancied she saw dark moving objects, and now that she approached nearer, she was convinced of it. Labourers⁠—many hundred⁠—who were working at an apparently endless embankment, which had already reached a considerable height. + 

She could not avoid crossing the embankment, even if she made a great circuit; she must pass through the long line of workmen. She did so with a courteous greeting to those who stood nearest to her. The men, who were already working lazily enough, let their barrows stand, and stared at her without returning her greeting. As she passed on, loud shouts and coarse laughter sounded behind her. Turning involuntarily, she saw that two of the number had followed her, and only stopped as she turned, perhaps also checked by the noise made by the others. + 

She continued on her way, almost running. There was now only a narrow path over the short withered grass and across the sandy tracts which alternated on the slope of the hill. Elsa said to herself that she should remain within sight of the men till she reached the top, and might at any time be followed by them. But if she turned back in the deepening twilight the men would perhaps have left off work; no overseer would be there to keep their rudeness in check, and there would be the whole endless plain as far as Warnow in which these rough men might bewilder, terrify, and insult her. Should she turn back at once, while it was yet time? beg for the escort of one of the overseers? or take refuge in the wagon which she had before overtaken, and which was now close to the workmen, or in another vehicle, which from the height on which she stood she could now see in the distance, and which must also have followed her, as there was no other road over the plain. + 

Whilst Elsa was thus deliberating with herself, she hastened, as if under a spell, with beating heart, up the incline, whose top stood out sharply in a straight line against the grey sky between her and the sea. + 

With every step the sea and the line of dunes stretched broader and farther to the left, and her gaze wandered out to where the vapour of the sea and sky mingled together, and over the beautifully curved line of the coast to the wooded heights of Golmberg, whose purple masses hung threateningly over. + 

Above the confused mass of crowded treetops rose the tower of the castle. Between Golmberg yonder and the height on which she stood was the brown plain over which she had passed⁠—inhospitable as the sea itself, from which it was only divided by the yellow outline of the dunes. The only abode of mankind was the fishing hamlet of Ahlbeck, which, close to the foot of the promontory, now lay almost directly at her feet. There also, between the houses and the sea, on the broad strand, were long moving lines of workmen as far as the two piers, which, curving towards each other, ran out into the sea. At the piers were two or three large vessels, which seemed to be unloading, whilst a fleet of fishing-boats, all on the same course, were making for the shore. Though all the sails were set, yet the boats were really only moved by the oars. The uniform position of the brown sails and the monotonous movements of the oars, formed a curious contrast to the confused whirring of the white gulls, who, as before, circled incessantly above her head, between her and the shore. + 

She saw it all with her clear-sighted eyes, as a traveller on the railway mechanically observes the details of the landscape which the train rushes through, while his thoughts are at home, tasting the rapture which he will feel after his long separation from those he loves. And she, alas! dared not hope to look into the dear eyes, to hold the loved hands in hers, to hear the sound of that strong, yet gentle and kind voice. She only wanted to see the place where he lived. + 

And it seemed as if even that small consolation was to be denied to her. She had already wandered some way along the path on the top of the hill, without gaining the slightest glimpse of the other side, where Wissow must lie, only the sky looked leaden over the edge of the plateau. Perhaps she might see it if she followed the broader road that she had now reached, and that, coming from her right, led upwards along the side of the hill to a heap of immense logs, above which rose a huge signal-post, which must be erected on the topmost height of the headland, and probably also on its extreme edge. + 

And in fact, as she now climbed higher and higher, a pale streak appeared to her right⁠—the shore of the mainland⁠—and then again the leaden surface of the sea, on which here and there a sail was seen, and at last, immediately beneath her on this side, a white point of dune, which spread gradually like a wedge towards the headland, until it formed a little peninsula, in the centre of which lay a dozen or so of houses of various sizes between the white sands and the brown moor. That was Wissow! That must be Wissow! + 

And now, as she stood on the point which she had reached by the exertion of all her physical and moral powers, and however lovingly she stretched out her arms, felt that the object of her desires still lay so far off, so utterly beyond her reach⁠—now for the first time she believed that she understood the dumb, terrifying voices of the solitude and loneliness around her, the whispering and rustling of the moor, the wailing spirit-voices in the air. Alone! alone! + 

Infinite sorrow welled up in her heart, her knees gave way, she sank down upon a stone near the logs, buried her face in her hands, and burst into tears like a helpless, lost child. She did not see that a man, who was leaning against the signal-post behind the logs, watching the sea, startled by the strange sound near him, stepped forward. She did not hear his steps as he hastened towards her over the short turf. + 

“Elsa!” + 

She sprang up with a half-stifled cry. + 

“Elsa!” + 

And again she cried out⁠—a wild cry of joy, which rang strangely through the stillness, and she lay on his breast, clinging to him like a drowning woman. + 

“Reinhold! My Reinhold!” + 

She wept, she laughed, she cried again and again: “Reinhold, my Reinhold!” + 

Speechless with happiness and astonishment at the sweet surprise, he drew her down to him on the stone on which she had been sitting. + 

She leaned her head on his breast. “I have so longed for you.” + 

“Elsa, my darling Elsa!” + 

“I was forced to come, I could not help it; I was drawn here, as if by invisible hands. And now I have you! Oh! do not leave me again. Take me with you yonder to your home. My home is there with you. With you! Do not drive me out again into the desolate, false and loveless world which lies behind me. With you only is happiness, peace, joy, truth, fidelity! Oh! how your true loving heart beats, I feel it. It loves me as I love you. It has longed for me, as my poor, distracted heart has longed for you.” + 

“Yes, my Elsa, it has longed for you intensely, unspeakably. I came up here because it gave me no peace. I wanted to have one look only to where you were⁠—one last look, before⁠—” + 

“Before what⁠—for heaven’s sake!” + 

He had led her the few steps to the logs, and now stood, with his arm round her, close to the edge of the hill, which sloped so precipitously down from its frowning brow, that they seemed to be hanging immediately over the grey sea in the grey sky. + 

“Look, Elsa! There comes the storm. I hear it, I see it, as if it were already let loose. It may be hours first, but it will come, it must come with terrible fury. Everything shows signs of it. That leaden sea below us will be tossed in wild waves, whose spray will be thrown up even to this height. Woe to the ships that are not already safe in harbour, and perhaps even there they are not secure from its wild fury. Woe to the low-lying lands beneath us. I meant to have written to you this morning, because I saw it coming even yesterday, and to tell you that you would do better to leave Warnow, but you would not have gone.” + 

“Never! I am so proud that you trust me, that you have told me this. And if the storm breaks, and I know that your dear life is in danger, I will be firm; or if I tremble I will not fear, only to myself I will say, ‘He could not do his duty, he could not be the brave true man whom I love, if he knew that I were weeping and wringing my hands, whilst he must guide and command as on that evening;’ do you remember? Do you know, my darling, that I loved you then! and do you remember you told me that I had the eyes of a sailor? Oh! how I remember every word, every look, and how pleased I was that I was not obliged to give you back the compass directly! I did not mean to keep it, I meant you to have it again.” + 

“You were more honest then than I was, my darling. I was determined not to give you back your glove. You had taken it off when you were looking through my telescope; it lay on the deck and I took it up. Since then it has never left me. See! it has been my talisman. We sailors are superstitious. I have sworn never to part with it, until instead of the glove, I hold your dear hand in mine forever.” + 

He kissed the little grey glove before he returned it to his breast-pocket. They had again seated themselves on the stone⁠—softly whispering, caressing, jesting, in loving talk, heart to heart and lip to lip, forgetting, in the paradise of their young love, the desert which surrounded them, the darkness which was ever deepening, and the storm which was brooding in the leaden air, over the leaden sea, like the angel of destruction over a world which he hoped to annihilate forever, and to cast back into primeval chaos. A dull rumbling sound quivering in the distance attracted their attention; followed immediately by a sound of rushing through the air, without any motion that they could feel even at this height, and then again followed the deathlike stillness. + 

Reinhold sprang up. + 

“It comes quicker than I thought. We have not a moment to lose.” + 

“What are you going to do?” + 

“To take you back.” + 

“You cannot. You must be at your post. You did not come to Warnow this morning on account of it. How can you now absent yourself so far, when the danger is much nearer? No, no, my darling, do not look so anxiously at me. I must learn to live without fear, and I will. I am quite determined. From this moment there shall be no fear, even before the world. I cannot live any longer without you, and you cannot live without me. If I were still in ignorance⁠—but now I know! And, believe me, my dear father will be the first to understand. He must have known already when he said to me, what he also wrote to you, ‘I leave your fate in your own hands.’ Ottomar and my aunt may share my inheritance; my proud father would have taken nothing from me, and you⁠—you take me as I am, and lead me to your home forever. One more look at my paradise! One more kiss, and now farewell! farewell!” + 

She embraced him fervently, and then would have freed herself, but he held her hand fast. + 

“It is impossible, Elsa; it is already growing dark up here, and in half an hour below it will be night. You cannot be certain of keeping to the road, which can no longer be distinguished from the moor, and that is full of deep bogs. It is really impossible, Elsa.” + 

“It must be possible. I should despise myself if I kept you back from your duty; and how could you continue to love me, and not to look upon your love as a burden, if I did so? How do you know that you may not be wanted at the shortest notice? At this moment possibly the men may be standing helpless, and looking out for their leader. Reinhold, by your love! am I right or not?” + 

“You are indeed right, but⁠—” + 

“No ‘but,’ my darling, we must part.” They were as they spoke hastening hand-in-hand along the path by which Elsa had before reached the top, and now stood on the cross way which led on one side to the Warnow moor, and on the other to Wissow. + 

“Only to the foot. Till I know you are on the right path,” said Reinhold. + 

“Not a step farther. Hark! What is that?” + 

He had also noticed it already⁠—a sound as of horses’ feet, galloping on the hard turf behind the slope of the hill which rose before them and concealed from them any farther view of the other and more precipitous side. The next moment a rider appeared in sight over the hill. He had now reached the top, and pulling up his horse, rose in his saddle and appeared to be looking round him. + 

“It is the Count,” said Elsa. + 

A deep glow came into her face. “You must accompany me a little way now,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “Come.” + 

She took his arm. At that moment the Count, who had been looking above them, looked down, and saw the pair. He put spurs to his horse, and galloping down the slope, was with them in a trice. He had no doubt recognised Reinhold at once, for when he checked his horse and took off his hat, his countenance did not show the slightest trace of wonder or astonishment. He seemed in fact not to see Reinhold, as if he had met Elsa alone. + 

“This is good luck indeed. How delighted your aunt will be. She is waiting there; the carriage could not come any farther.” + 

He pointed with the handle of his whip over the slope of the hill. + 

“I assure you it is so, though you seem so astonished. Your aunt was very uneasy at your long absence⁠—inquired in the neighbourhood⁠—learnt from Pölitz that you had come here⁠—a strange fancy, by Jove!⁠—your aunt was determined to come herself⁠—I had just returned with Fräulein von Wallbach, and begged to escort her⁠—was beginning to despair. Awfully lucky! May I be allowed to accompany you to the carriage? it is not a hundred yards off.” + 

He had swung himself from his saddle, and held his horse by the bridle. + 

Reinhold looked straight into Elsa’s eyes. She understood and answered the look. + 

“We are much obliged to you, Count Golm,” he said, “but we will not trespass on your kindness one instant longer than is necessary. I will myself conduct my betrothed to the Baroness.” + 

“Ah!” said the Count. + 

He had pictured to himself beforehand the terrible embarrassment which, in his opinion, the two culprits would feel on becoming aware of his presence, and the shock that the Baroness would experience if he could tell her in what company he had had the happiness of meeting her niece. He took it for granted that on his arrival the fellow would take himself off to Wissow, with some embarrassed words of explanation. And now he could not believe his ears, and he could hardly trust his eyes, as Elsa and this fellow, turning their backs upon him, walked off arm-in-arm, as if he had not been there. With one spring he was again in his stirrups. + 

“Allow me at least to announce the joyful news to the Baroness!” he cried, as bowing sarcastically he galloped past and hastened up the hill, behind which he almost immediately disappeared. + 

“Wretch!” said Elsa; “thank you, Reinhold, for having understood me, for having freed me forever from him and all. You cannot imagine how thankful I am, nor why I am so thankful. I will not trouble your loving heart yet with the hateful things I have learned. I will tell you another time. Happen what will, I am yours, you are mine. That happiness is so great, everything else is in comparison small and insignificant.” + 

At a slight distance from them stood the open carriage, and beside it a horseman. They thought it was the Count, but on coming nearer they saw that it was a servant. The Count had vanished. As soon as he had imparted the great discovery, with a sneering laugh to the Baroness, receiving no other reply than, “I am obliged to you, Count, for your escort so far”⁠—the two last words being pronounced with peculiar emphasis⁠—he again took off his hat and rode away over the hill. + 

The Baroness got out of the carriage and came towards the lovers. Elsa dropped Reinhold’s arm and hastened towards her aunt. Her impetuous embrace told all that was necessary. As Reinhold stepped forward, the Baroness held out her hand to him, and said in an agitated voice, “You bring me my dear child⁠—and yourself. I thank you doubly.” + 

Reinhold kissed the trembling hand. “There is no time to make speeches,” he said, “and your kind heart knows what I feel. God bless you!” + 

“And you also, my Reinhold,” cried Elsa, throwing her arms round him; “God bless you! Good luck and joy be with you!” + 

He had helped the ladies into the carriage, one more pressure of the loved hand, and the vehicle started off, preceded by the servant. In spite of the hilly nature of the ground, it was possible to go quickly, as the soil was firm and the road good, even up here on the top, and Reinhold had urged the utmost speed. Only a few minutes had passed, therefore, before the carriage disappeared behind the hill, and half an hour must elapse before it again came in sight on the plain. He had no time to wait for that. He dared not lose another moment. The beacons were already lighted below in Wissow. At that moment a light shone over the sea, it was the signal for a pilot. It would be instantly obeyed, he knew; but at any moment some new arrangements might be necessary which would require his presence. He would take a quarter of an hour to get there at his quickest pace. He sprang in great bounds down the hill, when a horseman rose up right before him out of a dip in the ground which lay in the direction of the hills to the right, and remained standing on the path. He appeared so suddenly that Reinhold nearly ran against the horse. + 

“You are in a great hurry now, it seems,” said the Count, + 

“I am in a great hurry,” answered Reinhold, breathless from his quick run, as he tried to pass the horse. The Count turned it round so that he now faced Reinhold. + 

“Make way!” cried Reinhold. + 

“I am on my own land,” answered the Count. + 

“The road is free!” + 

“And you are for freedom in all things!” + 

“Once more! Make way!” + 

“When it suits me.” + 

Reinhold seized the bridle, and the horse, struck sharply by the spurs on either side, reared up. Reinhold started back. + 

The next moment he had drawn a long dirk, which, sailor-like, was always at his side. + 

“I should be sorry for the horse,” he cried, “but if you will have it⁠—” + 

“I only wished to say good evening to you, Captain; I forgot it before. Good evening.” + 

The Count took off his hat with a sneering laugh, turned his horse round again, and rode off down into the hollow out of which he had come. + 

“Such people never learn,” murmured Reinhold, as he put up his knife. It was a speech he had often heard from his uncle Ernst. His uncle Ernst, who must have felt as he now did, in the terrible moment when the sword descended upon him. Her father’s sword. Good God! is it really true that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children? That this strife will last forever, from generation to generation? That we, who are blameless, must take it up against our will and our convictions? + 

A clap of thunder, still in the distance, but coming nearer, rolled through the heavy air, louder and more threatening than the last, followed again by a tremendous gust of wind, not this time in the upper strata of clouds, but already descending upon the heights and slopes, and wailing and groaning as it died away in the hollows. The next gust might strike the sea, and let loose the storm which would come up with the tide. + 

Another struggle was impending before which human malice would seem as child’s play, and human hatred an offence, and only one feeling would remain victorious⁠—Love! + 

Reinhold felt this in the lowest depths of his heart, as he now tried to make up for the moments lost in so painfully trifling a way, and hastened down in spite of all to risk his life if necessary for the lives of other men. + 

IV + 

Few words passed between the ladies until they reached home. The aunt appeared to be suffering from extreme exhaustion that was increased by the rough drive over the bad road, which, as Reinhold had foretold, they could hardly distinguish from the heath in the rapidly approaching darkness; and to all this was added the oppressive sultriness of the thick damp atmosphere, in which even Elsa herself found breathing difficult. She also was silent though her heart was full, for she had thankfully perceived that, come what might, her aunt would be on her side. Had she not answered the announcement of Elsa’s engagement to Reinhold, startling as it must have been to her, unhesitatingly, with a warm embrace which was more eloquent than any words? And now she scarcely once let go her hand, or if she did so for a moment it was only to seize it again immediately as if she wished at least to assure her of her sympathy and love, though in her weakness she could do no more for her. + 

They reached the castle at last. The Baroness sank almost fainting into her maid’s arms, and was immediately conducted by her, with the help of Elsa, to her own apartments. “Thank you a thousand, thousand times,” said Elsa, as she wished her aunt good night. + 

She was the less inclined to look for Carla in the drawing-room where she would probably be, as she heard that Frau von Wallbach had already gone to her room⁠—to read, as she always gave out herself⁠—to sleep, as Carla maintained. The chattering lady’s-maid told Elsa, without waiting to be asked, that the Count had come there again shortly before their return, but only for a few minutes, and had brought Fräulein von Wallbach word that they would soon be back, probably with Captain Schmidt. The girl smiled as she uttered the last word, not so much but that she could have denied it if need were, but still just sufficiently to show the young lady that she knew more, and was quite ready, if asked, to place at her disposal her good advice and experience. The Count then had made good use of his time. Let him! for whatever reasons, whether out of hatred to Reinhold, out of jealousy (the ugly word was only too good in this case), out of miserable offended vanity, or only for the malicious satisfaction of himself and Carla, let him tell all Berlin tomorrow, as he had today told the inhabitants of the castle, what had happened. He would not certainly long have the pleasure of spreading about so precious a secret under the seal of mystery. The announcement of the engagement would soon enough break the seal, and could no longer be delayed. The post from Jasmund to Prora passed through Warnow at nine o’clock. There was just time. Elsa seated herself at the little table in the deep bow which was her favourite seat on account of the view from the window over the plain as far as the sea and Wissow Head, and wrote with flying pen a few heartfelt lines to her father. Neither she nor Reinhold had intended, since they were assured of each other’s love, to do otherwise than wait patiently for brighter and happier days. But after what had happened she must be careful; there must be no gossip connected with the name of her father’s daughter. No one could know that better, or feel it more deeply, than the dear kind father in whose righteous hands she now laid her righteous cause. She gave the letter into the care of an old and faithful servant, who, during the long absence of the owners, had been in charge of the castle, and now walked up and down her room in a strange, half-frightened, half-joyful, but wholly overpowering state of emotion. “Elsa von Werben⁠—Reinhold Schmidt, Superintendent of Pilots. Betrothed. Berlin⁠—Wissow.” A Superintendent of Pilots! How odd! What is it exactly?⁠—and Wissow! Does anybody know where Wissow is?⁠—Wissow, ladies and gentlemen, is a little sandy peninsula, with about twenty houses, not one of which is a quarter the size of the shooting-box at Golmberg, or of one of the outbuildings of the ancestral castle of Golm, whose courtyard gate you pass on the road from Prora to Warnow. How extraordinary! Really! But she always had extraordinary taste!⁠—and how wise of the Count to draw back in time from so unseemly a competition. He is said to be otherwise an agreeable man. That is always said afterwards. An officer of the reserve too. À la bonne heure! In that case the General’s daughter could really no longer hesitate. And Elsa laughed and danced as she pictured to herself many well-known voices in this little concert, to which old Baroness Kniebreche beat time with her great black fan, but she started back as she skipped past the window, when a dazzling flash of lightning lit up the broad plain with a pale light, the Pölitz’s farm lying there as clearly as in broad daylight, and at the same moment a long rolling peal of thunder made the windows rattle. And then it seemed as if an earthquake shook the very foundations of the castle. The tiles rattled from the high roof, shutters clapped to, doors banged, whole windows must have been blown out, as the wind moaned and whistled and howled round the walls and gables and through the joints and crevices. Running, hurrying, and calling resounded through the castle; steps approached her door. It was her aunt’s elderly maid: “Would she come to her aunt? she was so dreadfully restless and excited, and it was impossible even for the young lady to think of sleep in such horrible weather.” Elsa was ready at once. She wanted to go to her aunt to thank her for her kind consideration, and to beg her for her sake on no account to deprive herself of the rest which, after such a trying day, was so necessary to her. She said as much to the maid, who only shook her head and answered nothing, but conducted Elsa in silence to her lady’s door. + 

Valerie came to meet Elsa at the door. Elsa was startled at the deadly-white, tear-stained face. She could only imagine that the shock of the tremendous thunderclap had increased her aunt’s malady to this pitch; she begged her to calm herself; to allow herself to be put to bed; she would remain with her⁠—the whole night. Her aunt would take courage when she saw how courageous she herself was, who certainly had sufficient cause for anxiety. + 

She led the tottering, trembling woman to the sofa, and would have rung for her maid, but the other caught her hand convulsively, and pulled her down by her on the seat. “No, no,” she murmured, “not that; it is you I want; you must stay, but not because I am afraid of the storm⁠—I fear something much worse than that.” + 

She sprang up and began walking up and down, wringing her hands, through the large room, which was but dimly lighted by a lamp on the table. + 

“I cannot bear it any longer. Now or never is the time. I must speak out⁠—I must⁠—I must.” + 

She suddenly threw herself at Elsa’s feet, as if struck down by the thunder which just then pealed above them, and clasped her knees. + 

“It has been my hope and consolation all this time, to confess to you, so pure, so good! To free myself from the thraldom in which my tyrant holds me. To make the highest, greatest sacrifice that I can make of the one bright spot in this dark world⁠—your love!” + 

“You will not lose my love,” said Elsa, “whatever you may confide to me, that I swear to you!” + 

“Do not swear it; you cannot. See, I feel even now, how your dear hands tremble, how your whole body shakes, how you are struggling to keep calm, and as yet you have heard nothing.” + 

“How can I be calm when you are so terribly excited?” answered Elsa. “Look, aunt, I have long felt that something lies between you and me, something more than the unhappy family dissensions, so far as I know them⁠—a secret which you have not ventured to tell me. I have often and often longed to beg you to tell me all, but have never had the courage to do so, though I have reproached myself for not having done it. But lately it has seemed to me that you have been more reserved towards me than at first, and that has made me still more anxious. And I also had a secret on my mind, and did not venture to confess my love to you, notwithstanding that every hour I spend with you only makes me more certain that you⁠—you above all others⁠—would be just in the position to set aside the prejudice with which even my dear father is surrounded. Shall I confess it to you? Your relations with⁠—with Signor Giraldi, however much you must have suffered and still must suffer from them⁠—have seemed to me on this account to be comforting and encouraging. Whether you approve of my love or not, you will at least understand it, will be able to sympathise with what you must once have felt yourself, that one may love a man for himself alone, because one sees in him the ideal of all that appears to oneself to be worth loving. And now chance, if it is not wrong to speak of chance here, has snatched my secret from me. Take courage! Have confidence. Tell me all. You say it is the right moment, and it certainly is so. It must not be let slip. And now, dear aunt, rise up, and if I really am, as you said the first moment we met and now repeat again⁠—your guardian angel, let me prove it⁠—let me prove that in the midst of the happiness of my love for the best and noblest of men, I have the strength to free you, to restore to you the peace and joy for which your soul pines.” + 

With gentle violence Elsa raised up her aunt, whose head had sunk upon her bosom, dried the tears on the lovely pale face, which seemed already somewhat calmer and more composed, threw her arms round her and made her lie down on the sofa, reseating herself on the stool by her side, after she had put the lamp out of the way on the console. + 

“I can only confess by the light of your dear eyes,” said Valerie. “From any other my secret would creep back into my heart.” + 

Outside the storm raged and thundered against the old castle, in long, unequal gusts, and whistled and howled round the walls, between the gables, as if wild with fury at meeting with resistance, and at this resistance defying its omnipotence. + 

“So will he rage,” said Valerie, shuddering, “when he comes tomorrow and demands his victim, and she does not and will not follow him, if he does his worst, even if he annihilates her. + 

“Yes, Elsa, he is coming tomorrow; I found the letter when we came in. The diabolical scheme is ripe, which is to be the destruction of you, Ottomar⁠—all of you. I myself only partly know this scheme. Hard as his heart is, he has yet discovered that my heart has gone from him⁠—how much, how entirely, he does not know, he does not even suspect, or she whom he once loved as well as he is capable of loving, and who so passionately loved him, would certainly no longer be alive. Yes, my dearest Elsa, I must begin with this terrible confession, or you would not understand the worse things that remain for me to tell. You would look upon me as the most degraded of our sex; even your loving heart could not absolve me⁠—if indeed it ever can do so! + 

“I loved him with an infinite, unholy love, the fiend, who to this day entraps all who come under his pernicious influence, and whom you must have known in the beauty and lustre of his youth, to conceive how even good women found it hard to resist his fascinations. + 

“I was not absolutely bad, but neither was I good⁠—not in my heart at least, which longed eagerly for fuller joy; nor was my imagination so pure as not to be allured and captivated by the world and its glory. I may have been so unhappily constituted by nature, or the frivolity and luxury of the court life to which I was so early introduced may have corrupted my young heart, I do not know, but so it was that my heart and imagination were alike undisciplined and uncontrolled. How otherwise could it have been that the bride, whose wedding was to take place in a few weeks, fell desperately in love in one moment with a man whom she saw for the first time, and against whom, moreover, even her dulled conscience warned her, and that, in spite of all and of the utter hopelessness of this passion which she could not tear from her heart and⁠—shame and misery!⁠—with this passion for a stranger in her heart, she stood with her betrothed, in God’s sight, before the altar, to plight him that troth which she had already broken in her heart, and which, indeed, she had already more than half resolved to break in reality. + 

“Do you shudder, my poor darling? I can tell you she had friends who would not have shuddered had they known! Yes, who knew it, and did not shudder, who, laughing, pointed to one who had already done so, and before whom no gentleman took off his hat the less respectfully, before whom the nobles of the land did not bow less low, and to whom learned men and artists did not the less render homage. + 

“Why should we not be allowed what was permitted to her? Were we less beautiful, less agreeable and clever? She borrowed from us the lustre which surrounded her. From whom did the fame of the Medician Court proceed, if not from us and such as we? So might we also allow ourselves the liberty, which she permitted herself behind the cloak she borrowed from us. + 

“And now occurred what I never for one moment believed possible, had never even thought of. My husband gave up his embassy, quitted the public service for good, and wished to live here on his property with me⁠—to live for me. If the latter were not a mere form of words, it did not mean much at least to my mind. The fact is, he had, in his usual methodical way, made a regular programme for his whole life, and in it was laid down, that after he had served the State for a certain number of years he should marry and retire to his estates. He now intended to live for me as formerly for the State; fulfilling his duty with anxious care, without enthusiasm, without pleasure⁠—marriage was to him a task which must be got over like any other. + 

“He had concluded and arranged everything before he confided it to me. I was horrified, rebellious, distracted, furious, and yet⁠—dared not by look or word betray my feelings. There was only one faint consolation for me, that the mission on which Giraldi had been employed at our Court (our duchess was a Roman Catholic, you know) was ended, and he must at any rate return to Rome. We parted from each other with promises of eternal love, ‘Even if we never see each other again,’ I sobbed. ‘We shall meet again,’ said Giraldi, with that imperious smile that you know. + 

“I did not believe it. I was in despair. And with despair in my heart I arrived here. + 

“Was it really despair for the dreamed of happiness? Was it the soothing influence which the solemn neighbourhood of the sea, the melancholy solitude of the shore, exercised on my passionate heart? Was it that my better self was really getting the dominion at last? Little as I can say for myself, I may at least say this, that I took great pains to do my duty as the mistress of this house⁠—the wealthy country lady. I tried even to love my husband, and there were moments when I thought I did love him. But only moments. I must admit that he was always and in all things a well-meaning man, who endeavoured to the utmost to act up to his favourite saying, ‘Give every man his due,’ so far as he understood it, and another woman would perhaps have been very happy with him. I was not, and could not be so. The profound difference between our characters could not be concealed, but seemed to show more clearly, the harder I tried to overcome it. He was extremely well-informed, I might even say learned, but with a want of sensibility which provoked me, and with a poverty of imagination which drove me to despair. Nothing was great, nothing was sublime to him. For him there was nothing heroic, nothing divine. I tried to enter into his prosaic view of the world, into his narrow-minded judgment of people and things. I was forced sometimes to admit that he was right, that the selfish motives which he discovered everywhere had in many cases played a part, had contributed to bring about this or that result. But what was there in this melancholy satisfaction of the intellect, in comparison with all the noble spiritual qualities which were thus left to lie fallow and perish miserably. + 

“I felt that I was deteriorating. That whatever blossoms my mind still bore, were withering as they came under the influence of this dry atmosphere in which he lived, in which he moved and spoke. I felt that in the dry sands of this unvarying commonplace life the roots of my mind were one after another dying down, that I began to hate this life, which was no life to me, I who had so loved life!⁠—that I began to hate my husband, who imposed upon me this torturing existence in place of life. + 

“It could not last so. I had become a mere shadow of myself. The doctors shook their heads. Ah! if I had but died then. But I was still so young, I wanted to live. I swear to you, Elsa, that was all I wished for. In four such years of suffering one fancies one has learned to give up even the faintest glimmer and hope of happiness. Strange delusion! As if one could live without happiness; as if I could have done so, with the ardent, insatiable heart I had; as if I were not at that very time giving proof that I could not do it. + 

“But, truly, it is easy to see this on looking back, but when one looks forward, one does not see it. + 

“My husband naturally considered it his duty to follow the doctor’s advice, and to set off on a journey with his young wife. Let me be silent over the splendid misery of that journey. It brought change, diversion, but neither peace nor happiness; at the utmost, it deadened for a moment the wretchedness that reigned uninterruptedly in my innermost heart, greatly as the young wife in her renovated beauty was admired in the society of all the Courts which we visited. I may boast that I victoriously withstood all the temptations with which I was surrounded; and yet not altogether. For if I did so⁠—if I remained cold in presence of the passionate feelings which I roused in other hearts⁠—if I was not touched by the love with which I inspired men whose worth I well knew, it was not conviction of the sacredness of marriage that guarded me; it was not pride; it was, although I knew it not, a deep, bitter grudge against fate which had denied me my happiness⁠—that happiness of which I had dreamed. It was, in a word, the recollection of that great passion which filled my soul in my dreams at night, so that I saw my daily waking life only through its magic veil⁠—the love which, unknown to myself, still filled my heart, like the aroma of attar of roses, which long after it is gone scents the crystal phial which it once filled. + 

“I discovered this when it was too late⁠—when I had seen him again. It was not my fault. I had learnt from an apparently unquestionable source that he had for some years held an important post in South America, and that he was at that moment in the far West, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. A command from the Pope⁠—or, as he said, his star⁠—had brought him back. You will believe me, Elsa, that I speak the truth, that the agreement which it is said we made together was an invention; it is further said that I, whether by agreement or by chance, seized the cleverly-arranged or unhoped-for happiness with eager hands, and drank it down greedily. + 

“And I? + 

“I went that same evening on which we had met Giraldi at an entertainment at the French Ambassador’s to my husband, and told him that I wished to return home⁠—the next day. He had given no reason when he threw up his post and brought me here into this solitude, and I thought I might also keep silence on the reasons which took me from Rome and the world into solitude. Neither did he inquire. He had already seen⁠—had, like all the world, perceived the extraordinary charm which was even more remarkable in the man who had ripened to such splendid maturity under a tropical sun, than in the fascinating youth of former days; he probably remembered what kind friends then no doubt had told him, and what in his pride and self-confidence he had certainly not believed. And now this confidence was not broken; but it was shaken. The past years, so empty and joyless, stood out before his startled eyes in a strange and suspicious light. All I had suffered and been deprived of must have come before him. But it was still not too late, in his eyes. I wished to do my duty apparently by flying from temptation. He accepted silently what in his opinion was a matter of course. We left the next morning, and went home. + 

“And now commenced a dark and fearful drama which I shudder to look upon, even now that the entangled threads have become clear before my eyes. We had curiously changed our parts. Whilst I, proud of the victory I had obtained over myself, held my head up and took a melancholy pleasure in the renunciation to which I doomed myself, he suffered more and more from the disquietude which had until now possessed me; he was tortured by longings after a happiness which I had resigned. He had married me because I was young, handsome, and brilliant; perhaps had also fancied at the time that he loved me, after his fashion. Now he loved me for the first time with all the passion of which he was capable, and which must be the more fatal to him, that he, to whom a calm bearing had always been the ideal of a gentleman, was ashamed of his passion, and would certainly give no expression to it; and, what was worse than all, he must see, or fancy he saw, that he was too late in treading the path which led to my heart⁠—which perhaps even now would have led to it. It is so hard for a woman to shut her heart against the charm which the knowledge that she is loved sheds around her. I saw how he suffered. I suffered terribly under it; for I held it to be impossible that I could ever return his sentiments; yet I suffered with him, and pity is so near akin to love! If children had played around us, perhaps everything would have happened differently, and I truly believe that their gracious influence at this stage of our affairs would have brought about a happier ending. But as it was, the reckoning was not between father and mother, but always between man and wife, and childless marriages are only too fruitful a source of sorrowful home tragedies. And yet all would have gone, if not well, at least better in time, which gradually buries so many raging flames under its embers, had not my husband been taken possession of by an unlucky thought, which became a fixed idea. What had appeared to him, so long as he had not loved me, as a piece of wisdom and diplomatic reserve⁠—namely, our leaving Rome⁠—now appeared to him in the light of a shameful flight, a miserable cowardice, which he could never forgive himself, which I could never forgive him, and which, infatuated as he was, he now held to be the principal⁠—the only reason, indeed⁠—that I remained cold to him, whilst he was consumed with love. He could not, as usual, find any soothing, explanatory words for the agitated condition of his heart. + 

“I should be in the dark now as to this portion of my unhappy history had I not learnt the real circumstances from letters of your father, which my husband on his second departure from Rome left in his desk, and which afterwards were found by Giraldi and shown to me. It appeared from these letters that my husband confided everything to his friend, and had begged his advice especially with respect to the fatal plan with which he deluded himself. Your father advised most strongly against it; not that he doubted that I should be victorious in the struggle to which I was to be exposed⁠—a Werben would always, and in all circumstances, do her duty⁠—but because he took the whole thing for a romance, that might do very well in a French play, but was altogether out of place in the realities of German life, and particularly in the case of a German nobleman and his wife. If we had not found happiness in our marriage, he certainly deplored it with all his heart; but he knew of no other remedy than the determination not to depart from the good and right course; and should this means prove unavailing, there was nothing for a man to do but to accept in all humility the fate which he had assuredly prepared for himself, and bear it with dignity as inevitable. We were not sent on earth to be happy, but to do our duty. + 

“Oh, Elsa! with what sensations did I at that time read this letter, which I took to be the perfect expression of a mind which had forgotten all human emotions in the formalities of the service, and which revolted me the more as I had clung to him who could so write with true sisterly love, and believed myself beloved by him as by a brother. What terrible experiences were needed before I understood what great though bitter wisdom, and how much true love, was in these words! + 

“A second journey to Rome was announced to me, like all these resolutions, in the most courteous manner, but with a tacit assumption of my assent. It was not my fault that I also had meanwhile learnt to conceal my feelings. In the company of taciturn people even sympathetic minds become silenced at last, and then forever. I saw beforehand what would happen⁠—yes, I was determined that it should happen. I have not concealed from you the frivolous levity with which I approached the altar. The evil disposition of my young and half-corrupted heart had not been fulfilled. I had continued a better woman than I had believed myself⁠—yes, I may say I had grown better in time. Now that all my honest efforts were fruitless, that I knew them to be slighted and misunderstood, that I saw fate insolently challenged by the man who should have been grateful to me for having preserved myself and him from it by such great sacrifices of my own heart⁠—now I became worse than I had ever been⁠—now I became truly bad. I scoffed in my inmost heart at the madman who strove to gather grapes from thorns; I secretly derided the vain fool who could imagine for a moment that he could prevail in the struggle with the noblest of mankind; I triumphed beforehand over his downfall. + 

“It is terrible to have to say all this to you; all the more terrible as it did not remain the mere fancy of a distorted imagination, but was all, all most horribly fulfilled.” + 

Valerie, who sat crouched up on the sofa, hid her face shuddering in her hands. A cold shiver ran through her slender form. Elsa would willingly have begged her to leave off for that day, but she felt that she could not take the bitter cup from the lips of the unhappy woman, to whom it gave one drop of comfort that a sympathising human eye should at last look down into the depths of her misery. + 

She comforted her with tender words, gave her a glass of water, which the exhausted woman hastily drank with feverish lips, and then again seized Elsa’s hand, which she had all along held tightly in hers, and went on with her sorrowful confession, whilst the storm howled without like a band of demons whose victim was trying to escape them from the gates of hell. + 

“Alas that I cannot relate further without offending your pure ears, as I have already troubled your pure mind. But it must be. What is bad cannot be expressed in good words; and from the moment when I again touched Rome’s venerable soil everything in my life was for long, endless years soiled and tainted, until at last I looked almost with envy upon the poor women in the streets. I was in the hands of one who seemed to have risen from the bottomless pit to destroy both body and soul. And yet it was years and years before this knowledge began to dawn upon me; years before the abhorrence grew into secret rebellion, and if this rebellion expresses itself in action, as I hope and pray to God it may, it is you, you only, I have to thank. I owe it to the new life that I have drunk from your loving looks, to the courage with which your strong, noble love has inspired me, which without neglecting one single duty, has looked steadfastly through all impediments to its one lofty star. I owe it to my longing to win your love, to be worthy of it as far as lies within my power, as far as the deepest repentance may expiate the heaviest guilt. I might call it a sudden insanity that threw me into the arms of this terrible man, in other words, that brought me to my ruin; and many things conspired together, too, to dull my feelings and judgment; the long torture which I had borne, and borne in vain, the violence with which I had been torn from such a hard-won act of resignation, the madness of a passion which, after having so long been forcibly restrained, now overflowed all barriers; the unholy charm which guilt offers to an undisciplined mind! How many have fallen who had not such temptations! But that this insanity lasted so long! that I should have known I was mad! that I chose to be so! It all appears to me now like a dark dream, in spite of the golden sun of Italy which illuminated it, of the perfume of orange blossom which surrounded it, and of the gentle tides of the blue sea which flowed about it. My husband had, after a few months, given up the futile struggle; he had gone away, beaten, broken down, without even the strength to come to any decision, only giving me permission in writing to remain away as long as I pleased. Whether he hoped that this apparent magnanimity would touch me, or that his absence would appeal more strongly to my heart than his presence, that the separation would teach me what I might lose in him⁠—what I had already lost⁠—I do not know. I only know that I had nothing but scorn and derision for what I called his pitiful flight, without a shadow of pity for him, even if I thought of him at all, or of anything but of enjoying my freedom to its fullest extent. And had I wished to follow him, as I did not wish, I could not have done so. Even before he fled I was fettered to him from whom he fled, by the strongest chains by which a woman can be bound to the man of her choice. But what so often brings about a transformation in a woman’s life, what leads even the most frivolous to reflection, and awakens in her nobler feelings, brought no repentance to me, even⁠—terrible to say⁠—no joy. I needed no pledge of his love; and it brought to him whose path I would have strewn with roses, only care and perplexity. + 

“He had had no trouble in convincing me that my condition must remain a profound secret to all the world. Our hope was that my husband would himself insist upon a divorce, and as we⁠—thanks to the devilish ingenuity of that fearful man⁠—had never openly violated public decorum, as my husband had gone of his own free will, he leaving me, not I him, the separation could only terminate in my⁠—that is in our⁠—favour. Our fates were now irrevocably joined. + 

“And now came a circumstance which⁠—Oh, Elsa! Elsa! have pity on me! How can I tell you? We reckoned on, we hoped for, my husband’s death. From Giraldi’s spies⁠—he has them all over the world⁠—we heard that my husband was ill, then that his illness was taking a serious turn, at last that the doctors gave no hope, even if the end did not come immediately. We tremblingly awaited the messenger who should summon me to his sickbed; we thought over what excuses I should make if I did not obey the call; but the messenger never came. But neither did that come for which we waited in more intense suspense, as my time drew ever nearer. Though indeed we should not have been easily found. We had hidden ourselves deep in the mountains in a lonely place between Amalfi and Salerno. My old Feldner was our only companion. The loveliest boy was born, and as soon as I was able to move, was left in the hands of the faithful woman. It was necessary again to show myself before the world, and talk in the drawing-rooms of Naples about Sicily, through which we had hurriedly passed, and where I was supposed to have spent the last few months. And not one pang of remorse, not one wish to hear of or see the innocent child, left up in the mountains! To say that I was mad is perhaps the right word! + 

“But my husband still lived, and news came from Feldner that travellers⁠—acquaintances of ours⁠—had passed through her mountain retreat, and that she had only escaped discovery by the merest chance. The faithful soul begged us to liberate her and the child from their isolation. She asked if I did not wish to see the dear little creature again. A queen would be proud of such a child! + 

“Intoxicated though I was with the poisonous draught of sinful passion which none knew better than he how to mix, the cry for help from the faithful woman pierced my obdurate heart. I wanted to see my child; I wanted to have it with me. It was needed to fulfil my happiness. Nothing short of a full, even overflowing happiness would now content me. He had to bring all the force of his powers of persuasion to keep me from a step which he assured me would overthrow all our carefully-arranged plans. ‘And if you do not consider yourself,’ he cried, ‘whom such an open admission of your position would reduce to beggary, think of our son, who would become a beggar with you. His future depends upon our caution, our foresight, our prudence; but prudence enjoins us to leave him in concealment until everything is decided, even, as his present place of abode has been shown not to afford sufficient security, to remove him to deeper concealment. It is only a question of a short time, of a few weeks, perhaps days. Trust me in this, as you have hitherto trusted me in all things. Leave it to me; I have already considered and prepared everything.’ + 

“He communicated his plan to me. We had visited Pœstum in the spring. The young and handsome guide who had conducted us over the ruins had left an agreeable impression on my mind, as well as the plump little wife whom he had lately brought home there. I had envied both these poor people their unconcealed happiness. ‘Those are the people,’ said Giraldi, ‘to whom to entrust our Cesare. The young wife will think but little of such an addition to her cares, and the strong husband will be an admirable protector to the child. Moreover, the presence of a detachment of soldiers at Pœstum is sufficient to ensure his safety.’ He silenced my doubts, set aside every objection, and went to carry out his plan⁠—alone. I dared not at this moment, when a thousand suspicious eyes watched us, when we were assuredly surrounded by invisible spies, leave the town on any account. + 

“He was back by the evening of the next day. All had gone perfectly as arranged. The child was well; the good Panaris (that was the name of the guide) full of joy over the treasure confided to them, which to these poor people became naturally a real treasure. + 

“Quite different indeed was the account of Feldner, who had accompanied him on the expedition. She painted with the utmost horror the wilds they had passed through, and over whose burnt-up surface malaria breathed its poison, and the pale, fever-stricken countenances of the poor inhabitants in the ruinous, dirty huts. The Panaris, too, had been ready enough to undertake the charge of the child, but the man was not without many doubts, which he had secretly imparted to her. The brigands were just then gathered in unwonted force in the mountains, and in spite of the soldiers posted in various places, and of the military escorts which accompanied travellers from Salerno or Battipagha to Pœstum, robberies had taken place in the immediate neighbourhood of the ruins. He could the less answer absolutely for the safety of the child, as he was himself never for a moment sure that his own property, perhaps even his own life, was safe. + 

“Unfortunately, out of fear of Giraldi, Feldner only let out these warnings gradually and cautiously. I myself, who had only been to Pœstum in the spring, and seen the broad plains covered with tender green, and gleaming in the mildest sunshine, naturally looked upon one cause of this anxiety as exaggerated, and Giraldi laughed to scorn the other objections. ‘At the worst,’ he said, ‘it is an attempt on the part of the Panaris to get higher pay, which moreover I am quite willing to give them; and do you buy a silk dress and a coral ornament from the Chiaja for your duenna, that is all she wants. Only patience for a few days!’ + 

“And as if fate itself were bound to serve him, a few days later news came that my husband had breathed his last here in Warnow, and with the announcement of his death came a copy of his will. + 

“I was distracted; I could have wished the world to come to an end, when all the happiness for which I had hoped, in which I had already revelled, lay shattered before me. I swear to you, it is the one bright spot in the infernal darkness of my unhappy soul that I never thought of myself. I lived only for him, lied for him, intrigued for him, stifled the voice of nature for him. I would have lived in a hovel with him, and in the sweat of my brow worked for the daily bread of us both. I would⁠—but let me keep silence upon what I would have done for him⁠—the infamy is too great as it is. + 

“He smiled his sarcastic smile. He did not believe in love in a cottage. My husband’s disbelief in all unselfish sentiments had revolted me; here I only saw the right to a demand which so finely-organised a nature made upon life; nay, must make if it would not lose any of the charm which surrounded it. But if the will forbade me, under penalty of disinheritance, to call the man I loved my husband before all the world, there was no such penalty attached to a shame of which he had never thought, it did not forbid me to recognise my child. I would have my child at once. I had so much at least to retrieve. + 

“Now, I cried, that we are denied the luxury of a legitimate position, now that we are driven back to the sources from which we have drawn so deeply without asking anyone’s permission⁠—to nature and love⁠—not one link shall fail of the chain which nature and love can forge; now for the first time I feel how only the pledge of our love can make our bond complete and indestructible. Let us not lose one moment. + 

“A feverish impatience had taken possession of me, which he⁠—and oh! how thankful I was to him⁠—appeared fully to share. I see him now, pale and disturbed, pacing through the room, and then standing still and spurring on Feldner, who in the hurry could not collect the child’s things, and myself even to greater haste. + 

“ ‘We do not want to lose a moment,’ he cried, ‘and we are losing hours, which are perhaps irretrievable.’ + 

“We were getting into the carriage (there was no railway then), which would take us by Battipaglia to Pœstum, when an old woman, who had been crouched on the steps of the hotel, hobbled up, and in the cool way of a Neapolitan beggar, pulled him back by the tail of his coat, just as he had his foot on the step. + 

“He turned unwillingly, and⁠—I have tried a thousand times in vain to recall the particulars of this scene⁠—Feldner and I must have been just then arranging ourselves in the carriage. I only know that when I looked round at him the old woman was disappearing round the corner of the hotel, with greater activity than I should have given her credit for, whilst he, with his back to us, was standing in the entrance of the hotel apparently reading a letter. He then came out again. ‘I had another direction to give to the porter,’ he said, as he sat down by us and pressed my hand with a smile, saying, ‘Coraggio, anima mia! coraggio!’ + 

“ ‘Coraggio!’ I answered tenderly, returning the pressure. His face was so pale, his eyes looked so gloomy, that he seemed to me to need more encouragement than I did. + 

“It was evening before we reached Battipaglia. The little place, from which travellers over the lonely plain were in the habit of taking their military escort, was in great excitement. A company of Bersaglieri had just marched hastily through, a second company was on its way from Salerno to Pœstum, a third was lying in wait for the robbers in the mountains. Such a measure had become really necessary. The robbers had swarmed before the very gates of Salerno, and for days past no one could venture out of Battipaglia into the country. From Pœstum no news had come for the same time, and the worst was feared for the poor dwellers there. + 

“An inexpressible terror came over me. The unhappy child in the midst of this universal distress, in the very centre of the horrors! It was in vain now that Giraldi attempted to calm me by arguing that the approach of the troops gave promise of safety; I would not, I could not listen to anything; I could say nothing but ‘On! on!’ + 

“The people said we should not get far, and in fact we had scarcely gone a mile before we came up with a large body of soldiers, whose young officer courteously but decidedly ordered us back. The carriage had passed the lines against the distinct order of the colonel, and we could go no farther, as the banditti had rendered the bridge over the Sele impracticable for carriages and horses; very likely at this moment there was fighting in the open field before Pœstum. Tomorrow the roads would be safer than they had ever been before; we must have patience so long. + 

“No prayers, no supplications availed. Back to Battipaglia! The impossibility of reaching the child, the fear of losing it, perhaps of having already lost it, drove me almost frantic. For the first time Giraldi had lost his power over me. He left me to my despair in the miserable inn and wandered about out of doors. It was a fearful night! + 

“The next morning the roads were, as the officer had promised, free. He thought it his duty to bring us the news himself, advising us, however, to postpone to another time our romantic trip. We had wanted to see Pœstum yesterday by moonlight! Good God! It looked melancholy in Pœstum. The little hotel was a ruin, the house of the guide Panari destroyed, he himself dangerously wounded in the defence of a strange child, which had been entrusted to him, and which the banditti had carried off to the mountains. This had taken place unfortunately the evening before last, so that the robbers had had time to convey to a place of safety their prey, on which indeed they must set great store, as they had made the most tremendous efforts to attain it, and had put themselves in such evident danger to place it in safety. There was, however, still a hope of snatching their prey from them. The pursuit was hot, and the precautionary measures well laid out. The lady might for the present calm her compassionate heart, and moreover, even if the child were to be pitied, the unnatural parents who had placed their child in such danger deserved no pity. Who could tell that they had not themselves planned the robbery, the better to hide the living witness of their shame, and that the pursuit of their accomplices was more than inconvenient to them? Such things had happened before. + 

“Oh! Elsa! Elsa! when the young man spoke these words so unsuspiciously, I did not venture to look up for shame and horror; I had provoked this fate. I ‘deserved no pity!’ and yet⁠—and yet⁠— + 

“But there was yet a possibility of escaping from this hell of anguish. Bandits were almost daily brought in⁠—men, women, and children! ‘It is not our Cesare,’ said Feldner. I⁠—Good God! I should not have known with certainty if it were my child. Feldner cried quietly to herself night after night, that she had been robbed of her heart’s-blood, her sweet little Cesare. I forbade her to cry. I threatened to dismiss her. I would not endure that he who appeared to suffer so terribly under the blow should be still further distressed by her complaints. He had in no way given up hope; prisoners had reported that a certain Lazzaro Cecutti, one of their principal leaders, who had for reasons unknown to them conducted the actual robbery of the child, with two others who had fallen in the fight, and his mother, with whom he had sent the child into the mountains, could alone give any information as to the destination of the same. Why should not Lazzaro or old Barbara be taken prisoners, like so many others? But they were not taken. + 

“ ‘They are too cunning,’ said Giraldi; ‘they will not let themselves be taken; but when the pursuit is over, and that will soon be, the ardour of our authorities dies quickly, they will emerge in some distant spot and demand the ransom, which is naturally the only thing they care for; and on that very account we may be easy about our child, they will treasure it as the apple of their eye. Everything for them depends upon the child.’ + 

“ ‘But how will they find us?’ I asked; ‘we who by your direction have never openly claimed the child, have never offered a reward for his restoration?’ + 

“ ‘Those are measures,’ said Giraldi, ‘which would only have drawn upon us the attention of the public and the officials; that is to say, would have made it more difficult for the robbers to come to us unnoticed. You do not know either the loquacity or the cunning of my country people. The Panaris have assuredly not kept their counsel, and Lazzaro, before he achieved the robbery, knew our address better even than the police authorities; and when Italian bandits want to get a ransom they can find their men, wherever they may be. And believe me, they will find us.’ + 

“The pursuit came to an end, very quickly too, astonishingly so, the papers said. It was at an end, but Lazzaro and his mother appeared neither here nor elsewhere. No one talked any more about the affair, it was buried in profound silence; the silence of death! Lazzaro was dead⁠—he must be dead⁠—he and his mother, and⁠—my child! They, wounded to the death, drawing out their last breath in some deep and lonely mountain glen; the child, whom they no doubt kept with them to the end, hungry and thirsty, perishing miserably. + 

“Giraldi himself had to give it up at last. Heaven, he trusted, would send compensation. But Heaven, who had seen our firstborn given over to be a prey to the fox and the eagle, would not confide a second to such unnatural parents. The one so ruthlessly sacrificed remained the only one. + 

“And here I anticipate my narrative by years, in saying, that I thank God it remained the only one. More, I shudder at the thought that this child of sin and shame may still be living, may one day step out from the darkness which has so long enveloped him, may appear before me and say, ‘Here I am; Cesare, your son.’ Oh! Elsa, Elsa, everything is crushed and destroyed in me. How can my feelings be simple and natural like other people’s? How can I do other than shudder at the possibility of finding him again when I think to myself how I must find him, who has grown up amongst robbers and murderers? in whom I have no share, save that I bore him, in whose soul I have no part? The son who would only come to help his father to rivet again the worn-out chain at the very time when I was in the act of breaking the last link? He feels and knows this. And it is by no chance, therefore, that he now, at this very time, has again and again conjured up that terrible picture⁠—ah! no one understands as he does that devilish art!⁠—Cesare is not dead. Cesare lives; wandering about the world in lowly guise, shortly to throw off the peasant dress and stand before us in his bright beauty. + 

“And I am to believe him⁠—I, who have long been convinced, with my faithful Feldner, that what the young officer had thrown out as conjecture and possibility, with soldierly bluntness, was the terrible truth. He had taken the unhappy child to the foot of the mountains in the wilds of Pœstum, from whose barren slopes the robbers descend on to the plain, that he might be carried off at any time, that is, as soon as I showed a serious intention of producing him before the world, before the right time came. He⁠—he himself had thrown the prey to these villains. He had learnt from the woman who came to the carriage-door that the villainous plot was carried into execution, at the moment when he would have given anything not to have contrived it. And then it unfortunately happened that at that very time the raid against the robbers was taken in hand by the Government, but at any rate the crime remained undiscovered; he could still raise his insolent eyes to mine as before. + 

“It is terrible to have to relate this, and to feel that though it was years and years before my blindness was in some measure removed, and I began to estimate the depth of my misery, I still endured it so long. But however slight the bond that unites bad men, that between a thoroughly bad man and one who is not utterly lost to nobler impulses is almost unbreakable, especially when that other is a woman. If she has repented her sinful life, and would turn with horror and aversion from her destroyer, fear prevents it; and if fear is forgotten in the excess of sorrow, she is bound once more and forever by the shame of having to confess that she has so long been the companion of the reprobate. + 

“Oh, Elsa! I have gone through all these horrible phases. I thank heaven and you, whom heaven has sent to me, that at last I have come to the end. + 

“When we came here in the autumn, my soul was filled with terror, like a criminal who has escaped with noiseless tread from his prison, and is terrified at the trembling of a leaf. I knew that the crisis was approaching on all sides, that a word, a look, might betray me, the more so that suspicion had certainly been roused in him. A sure sign of this was that he no longer trusted his accomplices. All our servants have always been such. Even my old Feldner had long been in his pay⁠—apparently. She takes the wages of sin, with which he pays her betrayal of her mistress, and we give it to the poor. She says nothing to him but what we have agreed upon beforehand. But since we have been here, he no longer employs her. He must even have begun to suspect François, a crafty bad man, who had at first promised to be a particularly useful tool, and rightly. Whether Giraldi has offended him, or the clever Feldner has won him over, he has come over to us. But he also has no longer anything to tell. It seems that his last commission, to accompany and watch me here, was only a pretext to get him away from Berlin, where Giraldi is weaving the last meshes of his net. Let him. I fear him and his devilish arts no longer, now that an angel has spread its pure wings over me. + 

“He has long lied to me as he has to all the world. The last time that he divulged his plans to me, and then only in part, was on the morning after my arrival in Berlin, a few minutes before I saw your dear face for the first time. I may not, and will not importune you with the repulsive details; it is enough for you to know, that with the courage to oppose him, I have also the power to frustrate his plans. + 

“The net, into the toils of which he thinks to bring you, will close around his own guilty head. When he comes to me tomorrow, sneering at the intelligence which the Count and Carla will hasten to impart to him, that Elsa von Werben has forfeited her inheritance, he shall have his answer, and if he announces in triumph that Ottomar has also returned to his forsaken love, and equally forfeits his inheritance, he shall not long await his answer; and if with lips trembling with passion he asks how I, his tool, his slave, have dared to rebel against my lord and master, I will seize you by the hand and say, ‘Away from me, tempter! back into the darkness of your hell, Satan! before this angel of light!’ ” + 

With the last words, Valerie had slipped from the sofa to Elsa’s feet, her weeping face hidden in her lap, and kissing her hands and dress in an excess of agitation, which only too clearly proved what terrible anguish the dreadful confession had cost her, with what rapture her poor heart, which so thirsted for comfort, was now filled. It was long before Elsa could in any degree calm her, only at last through the consideration that she must gather up all her strength for the interview with Giraldi next day, and that a few hours’ sleep after such a day was indispensable. She would remain with her. She must allow her good angel to watch even over her slumbers. + 

She got the exhausted, broken-down woman to bed. It was long before her quicker breathing showed that Nature had asserted her rights. But at last she lay really asleep. Elsa sat by the bed, and gazed with deep sympathy upon that still lovely, noble, deathly-white face. + 

And then she thought of him whose image during her aunt’s story had ever stood out in her mind, as if it were to him and not to her that the confession was being made. As if he and not she had here to decide, to judge, and to absolve. And as another tremendous clap of thunder now shook the old castle, and the sleeper moaned in terror, she folded her hands, not in fear, but in thankful emotion that whilst her lover was risking his dear life to save the lives of others, she was also permitted to pilot a human soul out of the storm of passion and sin into the haven of love, and that their works of salvation would succeed for the sake of their mutual love. + 

V + 

The storm was raging that night through the straight streets of Berlin also. + 

Let it! What does one more discomfort signify to us, as we hurry along the pavement? We are accustomed to discomforts of every sort; and if a tile or a slate falls down occasionally at our feet, we have not been struck yet, thank goodness! And if a chimney should be blown down, or a new house fall in, or anything of that sort, we shall read about it in the papers tomorrow. We have weightier matters to consider, truly! The storm which raged through the Chambers today during the debates, will also unroof many a fine edifice on the Stock Exchange in quite another fashion, and many a great house which appeared this morning to stand firm enough, and command the market, will be shattered to its foundations, and will drag others down with it to disgraceful failure. Like this one here for instance; it is just finished after years of labour, having cost untold sums, and its magnificence having roused the astonishment of everybody who was favoured with a view of it, and the eager curiosity of the many who were obliged to content themselves with a sight of the lofty scaffolding. Was it not to be opened tonight with a great ball, of which for the last fortnight such wonders have been related? To be sure! And it is really a curious coincidence that it should take place just today, when the lightning has struck the neighbouring houses, that stand upon the same insecure foundations, have been erected from the same disgraceful materials, and are in every respect the same miserable swindle from basement to roof. I should not like to stand in that man’s shoes. + 

Nor I either, my dear friend, but, believe me, our virtuous indignation, if he could be aware of it, would only be an additional satisfaction to this man. He has landed his goods in safety. What does it matter to him if you, or I, or anybody be drowned in the rushing stream from which there is no escape except for him and such as him? Who asked us to venture into the water? You thought, perhaps, that if he were not prevented from giving this feast by the black Care that sits behind him, he must be so by very shame, especially today when he and the whole brood of them have been branded with the mark of Cain upon their brows. And now look I look up at this splendid façade, see how the light from the innumerable wax candles streams through the great plate-glass windows, with their crimson silk hangings, and shines like daylight upon us out here in the dark! No contemptible gas except in the passages and corridors! That is how it is in the Emperor’s palace, and he must have the same. That splendid awning before the door, which is being blown about by the wind, the Brussels carpet which is laid in the dirt of the street from the door to the carriages, will be thrown into the dust-hole tomorrow in rags and tatters. Why not? That is what they are for. But come⁠—the police are already beginning to look indignantly at us. They suspect our wicked doubts about the sacred rights of order, which consist in plate-glass windows, marble doorways, fringed awnings, and Brussels carpets. Or have you got a card of invitation like Justus Anders there, who is lost in wonder over the varnished boots which so seldom deck his feet, and is in trouble about his new hat, with handsome Antonio following as his aide-de-camp, hastening in without noticing us his best friends; but do not look morosely at him, and hurl no anathemas at him out of the depths of your injured, democratic conscience. The poet is the equal of the king, and the artist must be the equal of the speculator. Those are laws which we must respect. And now let us go and drink a glass to Lasker’s health. Only this one more carriage? Oh! you rogue! because there are ladies’ dresses⁠—it serves you right! Old Kniebreche. Sauve qui peut! + 

The old Baroness was of course there. She was everywhere, it was said, where anything was to be seen. She had been present at the creation of the world, and would assist at its end. She had first intended to let Ottomar get her an invitation, but eventually entrusted the honour to Herr von Wallbach. The dissension between the Werbens and the Wallbachs was no longer a secret, at least from her. Dear Giraldi, who was, however, discretion itself, and really only repeated what could absolutely no longer be concealed, had told her something⁠—too terrible, but still not so terrible as what that good Wallbach, who had fetched her in his carriage, had related to her on the way. + 

“Poor, poor Carla! Absolutely deserted on account of a pretty girl of no family, whom his former mistress had had to intercede with for him. Wallbach was going to show her at this very ball the principal performer in this pretty story, a dancer from an obscure theatre. Wallbach must be sure to remember! She was so curious to see this person. In such an utter scandal, it was impossible to be too careful about the most trifling details. And if dear Carla had tried to comfort herself in her grief⁠—of course, my dear Wallbach, what was she to do? It speaks for itself. And she had the dear Count there under her very hand! Oh! Mon Dieu! How I have been deceived in Ottomar, but they have, none of them, been good for anything. I knew his grandfather, and even saw his great grandfather when I was a little girl. But the old gentleman would turn in his grave if he knew what his great-grandchildren were doing. And Elsa⁠—my dear Wallbach, I suppose I must believe that story, but it is a strong measure for a General’s daughter. As to Ottomar drawing lots of bills of exchange⁠—I know whole regiments who do it; but there I stop⁠—further than that I cannot go, unless I heard it from his own lips.” + 

“But, my dear lady, I conjure you by all that is sacred, be discreet.” + 

“Do you take me for a baby⁠—for a goose, for I don’t know what? You have no business to talk like that to old Kniebreche, who might be your grandmother. Give me your arm, and point out a few interesting people. Will Lasker be here, too? What do you say? One ought not to talk of the hangman.⁠—What is it to me if tag and rag fall out together? But our worthy host⁠—do point him out to me⁠—the big, broad-shouldered man with the fine forehead and full chin? A fine-looking man. Bring him to me at once!” + 

Philip was charmed, at last and in his own house, to become personally acquainted with a lady who was reckoned amongst the few celebrities in which Berlin rejoices. Now, for the first time, he could venture to say that his entertainment had not proved a failure. Would her ladyship allow him the honour of conducting her to the ballroom? Unfortunately he had not been able to restrain any longer the young people’s desire to begin dancing, or he would certainly have asked her ladyship to have led the polonaise with him. He flattered himself that she would not feel herself too isolated at his house, though several illustrious names would not appear in the list of those present; as, for instance, that of Count Golm. One could not have everything and everybody at once. He was, and always had been, a modest man; and that “a king’s glory was his state, and our glory was the labour of our hands,” was a saying which he had, all his life, held to, and hoped to continue to do so. Were the pillars which supported the orchestra real marble? Certainly. He was the son of a worker in marble. He might say that everything her ladyship saw here was real, save, perhaps, a little of the colour on the ladies’ cheeks, about which, for his part, he had secret doubts; and the nobility of a few barons and baronesses, which might also seem a little doubtful to her ladyship. The Stock Exchange seemed nowadays to be all-powerful, but after all, however long the train might be, and whatever quantity of diamonds were worn in the hair, or sewn on the dress, what a difference there was between Baroness Kniebreche and Baroness⁠—He would name no names, but a difference there must always be. Would her ladyship permit him to offer her some refreshments? they were here close by. + 

“Quite a presentable man for a parvenu,” whispered Baroness Kniebreche into the ear of Baroness von Holzweg, whom she met in the refreshment-room in the midst of a group of great ladies. “He understands the art of living, it must be allowed. There is not a more magnificent room in Berlin, even at his Majesty’s, only here it is much more comfortable. What a capital idea to put a refreshment-room so close to the ballroom, and such good things too. What have you got there, my dear! Oyster patties? Delicious! Young man, bring some oyster patties and a glass of Château Yquem. How well that sort of man understands bringing people together. Of course there are all the tag and rag here⁠—actors, dancers, heaven knows what! But if one does not look too closely one might imagine oneself at a court ball. The ballroom absolutely swarms with guardsmen. Well, young people, I cannot blame you; you are cocks of the walk here. Apropos, what brought you here, dear Baroness?” + 

“Quite between ourselves, dear Baroness,” whispered Baroness Holzweg. + 

“Of course between ourselves!” cried Baroness Kniebreche. + 

“Prince Wladimir is expected to be here for a moment.” + 

“ ‘You don’t say so! Of course you and your niece could not fail. But take care! The ‘illustrious lovers’ are getting quite common. Come, come, I meant no harm; I readily allow the greatest latitude in the upper circles, if only the proprieties are observed as regards the lower ranks. But such things are going on now, dear Baroness⁠—such things!” + 

And Baroness Kniebreche began waving her gigantic fan with much energy. + 

“May I venture to ask, dear Baroness?” whispered Baroness Holzweg, drawing nearer, in curiosity. + 

“Well, quite between ourselves, you know, dear Baroness.” + 

“How can you imagine, dear Baroness⁠—” + 

The heads of the two old ladies disappeared for a long time behind the black fan. + 

“And these are all facts, dear Baroness?” + 

“Absolute facts. I have them from Wallbach, who is generally discretion itself⁠—but there are limits to everything. Is not that him there behind the door? Actually! and talking to Signor Giraldi. I must go there. That good man absolutely hears the grass grow.” + 

The old lady got up with difficulty, and rustled off, with her glass to her half-blind eyes, towards the two gentlemen, everyone retreating, scared, before the black fan. + 

Baroness Holzweg remained sitting, with an evil smile upon her pale, puffy face. + 

“Ah!” she murmured, “how pleased Agnes will be. The haughty Herr von Werben, who will not dance with her, because he can understand either secret or open engagements, but not those that cannot be made public! And his arrogant sister, whom he has forbidden to have anything to do with Agnes, and who has now taken up with a merchant-captain. Charming!” + 

“What is amusing you so, my dear?” asked Frau von Pusterhausen, coming back again to her friend. “You were talking such secrets with Baroness Kniebreche, and I could not get away from Madame Veitel, or whatever she calls herself. She chatters and chatters⁠—I only heard a few words⁠—you seemed to be talking about the Werbens? Am I right? And can you tell me what it was about?” + 

“But it remains between ourselves, my dear?” + 

“You may be quite easy, my dear.” + 

And the two ladies put their heads together, one maliciously listening, the other spitefully retailing what she had herself just heard. + 

Giraldi, after he had wandered through the rooms for half an hour, met Herr von Wallbach, who had luckily got away from the Baroness. + 

“I was just going,” he said; “the heat, the noise, the everlasting talk about Lasker⁠—” + 

Herr von Wallbach passed his hand over his bald forehead with a gentle sigh. “To be sure,” he said, “Lasker! it is a terrible blow. Such a splendid business. We shall never recover the blow, although he has not directly attacked us. It is the beginning of the end, believe me.” + 

“I do not think it looks so bad,” said Giraldi. “It is only the first shock; our Ministers have certainly behaved miserably, the mob will triumph, but the reaction cannot be long in coming. They will find that the sun of radicalism, which shines so brightly just now, is itself not without a flaw. The Government, if only to anger the opposition, will guarantee the interest for a sufficient loan for a time, and probably afterwards take over the whole business. The promoters must have acted worse than stupidly if a good slice does not fall to their share, amongst others to our friend the Count.” + 

“Nevertheless we⁠—I mean the Warnow trustees⁠—may have to wait a long time for the payment of the second instalment,” said Herr von Wallbach thoughtfully. + 

“I am certain of that,” answered Giraldi. “You may thank your forbearance, which has lasted until the shares with which you paid him have gone down so far. If I had only been listened to, he must have paid the whole million at once, when the shares stood at seventy-five; it would have been possible, and he would still have retained nearly half a million.” + 

“Yes, true,” said Herr von Wallbach, “it has again been proved that you are the best financier amongst us. It is lucky that we got the first instalment. The money, if all happens as you say, is as good as the Baroness’s property already; but, nevertheless, we must one of these days⁠—I wanted to remind you of that⁠—meet once more, as a matter of form, to receive your report. You have still got the money at Haselow’s?” + 

“Where else?” + 

“I only mention it because we left the investment absolutely to you. I wish to heaven the time had already come when I was quit of the whole thing. At any rate I shall make Schieler represent me at the trustees’ meeting. When a man is on the point of breaking with the son, he cannot very well be on friendly terms with the father.” + 

“Pay Ottomar’s bills tomorrow; close one eye to certain mistakes in the signatures which must be amongst them⁠—how should he have managed otherwise?⁠—shut the other to the fair Ferdinanda, and everything remains as it was.” + 

“Do not joke about it. At the best there will be a fearful scandal.” + 

“Better too early than too late. And besides, if the public hear of the new engagement at the same time that they hear of the breaking off of the other, all will be well again.” + 

Herr von Wallbach looked very thoughtful. + 

“Since this morning, since that terrible speech,” he said, “the Count’s position has become much worse. I don’t know what will become of him now.” + 

“Pardon me,” answered Giraldi; “to my mind the affair looks quite different. The respite is an immense gain for the Count. There are so many chances. The shares may go up again, or the powerful hand which enabled him to pay the first instalment may be held out to him again. If it is not, why, the trustees must agree to a compromise⁠—say twenty-five percent off; that is to say, the Count can pay up seventy-five. And after all he has always got the entailed estates.” + 

“True, true,” said Herr von Wallbach; “that would always remain to him.” + 

He passed his hand over his forehead. + 

“Have you seen Werben yet?” + 

“He will hardly come. He is more agreeably employed. Bertalda has again lent her house to the loving couple, and is dancing away the sorrows of her young widowhood. The polka is over. I will beg for a few more details from the communicative little thing, in case they may be of use to you. I shall see you perhaps tomorrow. For today, Addio.” + 

Giraldi turned away at the very moment that Baroness Kniebreche came up, and slipped into the ballroom, making as he passed a sign to Bertalda, whom he met on the arm of a very smart officer. Bertalda dismissed her partner, and soon overtook Giraldi, who had passed into one of the less-crowded side-rooms. + 

“Well!” he asked, sitting down, and inviting Bertalda by a gesture to take a place by him, “did you get the money, child!” + 

“Yes, and I am extremely obliged to you. I was really in great need of it. My poor brother⁠—” + 

“I do not want to know what you did with the money. So long as you oblige me, that is sufficient. The important point is, are they happy at last?” + 

The girl coloured. “I really did my best,” she said hesitatingly. + 

“She never came?” asked Giraldi vehemently. + 

“Oh yes! I had told her so much about her brother’s ball, and⁠—” + 

“Your dress⁠—and so forth.” + 

“Yes, that also. But it was not needed. I saw in her eyes that she could not hold out any longer, and was delighted that I had given her such a suitable opportunity. She came, too, half an hour before the time, and found everything very charming, just as it was the first time she was there, in November, and helped me to dress, and⁠—well, one knows what it is when a girl, who is really in love, is waiting for her lover. A ring was heard. ‘Who can that be?’ said I. ‘Perhaps it is Herr von Werben,’ said Johanna, who naturally knows all about it. ‘What brings him here today? Perhaps a bouquet; he is always so attentive,’ said Johanna. She turned white and red in one moment, and trembled from head to foot, then fell upon my neck and sobbed, ‘No, no, I have sworn it;’ and before I could turn round myself, she was out of the room, without hat or cloak, down the stairs, and into the carriage, which was waiting at the door⁠—br‑r‑r!⁠—and she was gone. Next time she will not run away, I am certain of that.” + 

“Next time,” cried Giraldi, with scarcely restrained fury, “as if I could wait a hundred years. I had so set my hopes on it. Made so much of it to him. How did he take it?” + 

“He was frantic. I had to spend half an hour in consoling him. There never was anything like it. I really think he will do himself a mischief, if he doesn’t get the girl. It is no joke, I can tell you, to deal with them both. If I were not so fond of Werben, and so sorry for poor Ferdinanda, I would not do it for all the money in the world.” + 

“Did not he want to come here with you?” + 

“He is lying full length on my sofa and would listen to nothing. But I think he will come still. An hour or so of that sort of thing gets tiresome, here it is delightful. There is the quadrille beginning, and here comes my partner; may I⁠—” + 

“Yes, go; and if you see him, tell him that I expect him tomorrow morning between nine and ten. He will know why.” + 

“I have been looking for you everywhere, Fräulein Bertalda.” + 

The black-haired young dandy carried off his charming, tastefully-dressed partner, who smilingly took his arm, blowing a kiss to Giraldi over her shoulder as she went. + 

Giraldi remained seated. While the stream of gaiety rolled uninterruptedly around him, he could snatch a few minutes to think over his position. It was by no means so prosperous as it had been a few days ago. Since midday he had had to give up all hope of the second instalment upon which he had counted at least in part. He had moreover reckoned with absolute certainty, that today the net which he had woven with such untiring perseverance would entangle Ottomar and Ferdinanda. He would have made better use of the interesting facts than Antonio had done about the rendezvous in the park. Ottomar’s and Carla’s engagement had been the consequence of that⁠—this would have been the cause of the breaking off of that same engagement. Who could now blame Ottomar if, irritated by the girl’s absurd prudery, frantic and despairing, he returned to Carla⁠—to Carla, who loved him as much as she was capable of loving anyone, and, frivolous as she was, would, for the mere sake of change, turn back from the new love to the old? And had not his conversation with Herr von Wallbach just now shown him that there were at any rate waverings in that quarter as to whether matters should be allowed to come to extremities? Herr von Wallbach had from the first declared that he did unfortunately share Giraldi’s “suspicion” that there had been some ugly circumstances connected with Ottomar’s continual drawing of bills of exchange, but that he would never directly interfere upon that point himself. If this suspicion should be justified⁠—possibly at the next final settlement of the trustee business⁠—he should of course be obliged to take notice of it; all the more in proportion to the extent to which the report might already have spread, but still he should only do so to express his sorrow and his conviction that such ugly rumours must disappear as absolutely as they had arisen mysteriously. On the other hand, if any positive proof appeared of the relations that Giraldi maintained still existed between Ottomar and Ferdinanda, he⁠—Wallbach⁠—was quite determined to make the proper use of it on his sister’s account, to whom such a rivalry must, in the long run, be disagreeable. But this positive proof was still not procurable. There remained the affair of the bills of exchange! And if Ottomar came to grief tomorrow? and his proud father took the burden upon himself to avert the fearful disgrace which would recoil upon the whole family? He indeed knew the truth; but could he in that case speak? Would he not have to look on silently, while the father and son settled the matter amicably between them? Twenty thousand thalers indeed would not be so easily procured; but in such a case impossibilities might be overcome, and the General would be sure to have good and powerful friends. At the worst, if Baroness Kniebreche and the others who had been let into the secret should have too completely broken the sacred seal of confidence, there might be two or three duels, which would just suit Ottomar, who had laughingly asserted the other day that he should soon have made up his dozen! + 

A duel between him and Herr von Wallbach indeed! That would be decisive. + 

Only Herr von Wallbach, whose nerves were always a little unsteady, was thinking of anything but a duel. How to provoke Ottomar against him? + 

There would be difficulty about that. It would be necessary to speak more plainly, to mix himself up more directly in the business than before, and it had been his well-weighed decision not to let the mask fall, until⁠— + 

The Italian’s face grew still darker as he sat there brooding and meditating, his head lightly resting on his gloved right hand, his crush-hat on his knees, while from time to time joyous couples hastened past him to the ballroom, where they were still being summoned to the quadrille, which was more difficult to arrange now on account of the number of dancers. + 

If Valerie tomorrow, as he still hoped, agreed to everything, as she had always hitherto done, the mine could then, before it was fired, be so deeply laid that not one stone upon another should remain of the edifice of the Werbens’ prosperity; the very bones even of the hated race should be scattered here and there through the air. + 

But if she opposed him? If, after seven and twenty years of dumb submission, she should rebel? and not now, and for once only, but forever, should refuse him obedience? If she should appear as the mistress and superior? Well, she would do so at her peril! He was prepared for it too. The time for temporising, waiting, diplomatising, would be over at once; there would only be a very plain, very clearly-expressed question: Yes, or no? But she would never have the courage. And she was welcome to hate him, if only she feared and obeyed him. + 

A slight noise near him made him look up, and he started as he met the fiery black eyes of his young countryman. + 

“Eccolo!” cried Giraldi, stretching out his hand with his most bewitching smile; “how did you get here, my boy!” + 

“There was a lack of dancing-men,” answered Antonio, pressing the offered hand to his heart; “the maestro was desired to bring a few young artists with him, and was good enough to think of me.” + 

“And why are you not dancing?” + 

“I have not the happiness of being acquainted with so many beautiful young ladies as Eccellenza.” + 

Giraldi smiled, whilst he turned over in his own mind whether Antonio could have recognised in Bertalda the veiled lady who came to see Ferdinanda. It was extremely improbable, but he must give some explanation of his intimate conversation with the pretty girl. + 

“Do you envy me my happiness, Antonio?” he asked. + 

“I do not grudge Eccellenza his happiness. Who can deserve it better?” answered Antonio, with fawning humility. + 

“And since you are modest, you will be happier than all the gold in the world can make me. You are young and handsome, and⁠—you love; and that your love may be crowned with success, you have but to leave it to me and Brother Ambrosio. We are both busy on your behalf. Have a little patience only, and your probation will be ended, and you will have everything your heart can wish for⁠—yes, more than you have dreamed of in your wildest dreams; but, above all, revenge⁠—the most brilliant, triumphant, heart-stirring revenge⁠—upon your enemy! I swear it to you by the Sacred Heart and the Holy Virgin!” The two Italians crossed themselves. “And now, my boy, I will talk to you in a few days. For today forget the cares of love, and pluck the rose of pleasure, without wounding yourself with the thorns.” + 

He pointed towards the ballroom, again pressed Antonio’s hand, and went. + 

The young man looked after him with a gloomy brow, as he slowly walked away. He had never for a moment doubted that the charming young girl whom he had seen talking so earnestly and familiarly to the signor, was the same whom he had met that evening in the dusk⁠—that is to say, the same who had at one time repeatedly visited Ferdinanda; he knew her height and figure so well. She might be his mistress⁠—well, but then what had she to do with Ferdinanda? Why had he not told him the real state of the case? Why did he not tell him the lady’s name today? Why had he passed as quickly as possible to another subject⁠—or rather had only repeated the same fine speeches with which he had so often flattered his confiding companion, although to this day not one of his promises had come true? And were these to suffice him? Was he to prolong his miserable life for this⁠—he whom the clever signor had long ceased to trust? The signor had better beware of a person named Antonio Michele, who, when the signor had sworn by the Sacred Heart and the Holy Virgin, had also taken an oath which stood in the closest connection with that of the signor. There was the signor’s lady. He would not approach her directly⁠—Antonio Michele was not such a fool⁠—but he would try and find out her name, which could not be very difficult; and, above all, he would not lose sight of her. + 

Meanwhile Giraldi had wandered farther through the overcrowded rooms, looking round him from time to time to see if he could discover Ottomar, uncertain whether he wished to do so, or whether he should wait for him, whether it would not be better to go away now and leave things to take their course. The train for Sundin started at one o’clock. It was now twelve; he had still half an hour. Half an hour! Half a minute would have been enough generally for him to decide the most weighty matters. But a man grew stupid from dealing with fools. And now that boy also must get in his way! + 

The sudden and quite unexpected meeting with Antonio had troubled Giraldi greatly. He had not thought about the young man for a long time; he had almost forgotten him, as he did all those whom he did not require immediately, or might not require again, for the furtherance of his plans. He required Antonio no longer. For the net which he was weaving for Ottomar and Ferdinanda, Bertalda was a much more accommodating and convenient tool. About Reinhold and Elsa he had long known all that he wished to know; and over the ardour with which at first he had followed up the idea of making out the handsome young man to be the son who should restore the already shaken relations between him and Valerie, he had himself smiled since. If Brother Ambrosio, indeed, had entered willingly into the affair⁠—if by his hints to Valerie he had awakened her longing, if not hope, for the lost son! But the experiment had entirely failed; it had even rather had the contrary result, and had shown him more clearly than ever that her heart was more and more, perhaps was entirely, turned against him. And even if, perhaps under other circumstances, he returned to his plan, there was no use thinking any more of Antonio, against whom Valerie’s suspicions had once been roused. She would not now believe in the strongest proof, to say nothing of a more or less well-invented fiction. And it was for this, for this hollow mockery, that he had inspired that passionate spirit with brilliant hopes and ambitious dreams, which must soon prove themselves an empty nothing, in which the young man himself perhaps no longer believed. There was sometimes a wild glare in the black eyes that had suggested to him that the young man would sooner or later go mad⁠—perhaps was already so; and at the moment in which he swore to him that he should be revenged upon his mortal enemy, a smile had passed like a flash across his usually firm-set lips, which only admitted of one interpretation. If he ever learnt that the man who had promised to help him to gain the woman he loved had driven her into the arms of his rival, would it not be well while it was yet time to give the murderous weapon another direction⁠—the right direction⁠—to the heart of their mutual enemy? To say to Antonio, “I must confess to you, my son, that what you have above all things feared is true⁠—the woman you love is now in his arms. I could not prevent it. Kill me! Or, if you would avenge yourself and me, keep your dagger ready⁠—I know you always carry it with you. In a few minutes he will be here, still intoxicated with his happiness. Strike him! strike him down!” + 

Giraldi had stood leaning against the doorpost, lost in his bloodthirsty fancies as in a dream, looking with fixed eyes upon the throng, without seeing anything. Suddenly he started. There in front of him, only separated by the width of the room, was Ottomar. He was talking to one or two other officers, and still had his back to him. He could still get away through the door against which he was leaning into the next room, and out of the house. That would be best. After all his arrangements were made, the manager might give up the stage to his puppets. What need was there of a dagger in this domestic drama? A few dishonoured bills, a good deal of gossip, truth cunningly mixed with falsehood and cleverly insinuated in society, and the wished-for result could not be long in coming, even if one or other of the wires failed in its effect. “To be too busy is some danger,” as Hamlet says over the body of Polonius. + 

And Giraldi slipped back into the room from which he had come, and, passing through some side-rooms and down the brilliantly-lighted marble staircase, gained the vestibule and cloakroom. + 

Some guests were still arriving⁠—a few ladies who to judge from their remarks, had been kept late in the ballet, and an elderly gentleman, who took off his fur coat whilst the servant was helping Giraldi on with his. The Italian hastily turned up his collar, but the other had already recognised him, and stopped him as he was going. + 

“What, Signor Giraldi! Are you going already?” + 

“I am tired to death, Councillor, and the heat and noise upstairs are amazing.” + 

“I have already been three times today to your house in vain. I must talk to you at least for a moment. What do you think of it, my dear friend⁠—what do you think of it?” + 

“Of what?” + 

The Councillor almost let his crush-hat fall. “Of what? Good heavens! Is it possible to talk about anything today except this abominable speech?” + 

“It appears not,” said Giraldi. “Every other man and every fourth lady is talking about it upstairs. Fortunately it does not concern me.” + 

“Not directly,” said the Councillor eagerly, “but indirectly. How clever you have been again. The only man who would not hear of a postponement of the date of payment of the second half of the purchase-money. You were only too right. The Count is ruined. He will never pay the second half.” + 

“One must reconcile oneself to the inevitable.” + 

“Very philosophical! But indeed with your genius for finance, you will soon make up for it. I only heard today that you⁠—I presume on the part of the Baroness, but it is the same thing⁠—had lent the Count the half million with which he⁠—” + 

Giraldi’s brows met together like a thundercloud. + 

“Had the Count been talking⁠—against his word of honour?” + 

“The Count! the Count!” cried the Councillor. “As if he troubled himself about anything. He throws his shares into the market, depreciates their value, and in short amuses himself. I regret, by every hair on my head, that we ever had anything to do with a fine gentleman! Lübbener⁠—” + 

“Ah!” said Giraldi. + 

“Of course, Lübbener,” continued the Councillor, “he no doubt only acted in the interests of the railway, when he paid you this afternoon the half million of the mortgage, after you had declared your fixed resolution in any other case to move for an immediate public sale. I cannot blame you either for wishing to get back at once money which seemed in such danger; but it is hard when friends and foes alike work for our ruin⁠—” + 

“I do not consider Lübbener’s finances by any means exhausted.” + 

“Because⁠—pardon me, my dear sir⁠—this supposition suits you; I can assure you I was with him a quarter of an hour after you had finished your business with him. He was furious. He said it had done for him, and for our whole enterprise. Lasker’s speech this morning⁠—shares went down twenty percent; half a million to pay this afternoon, for which he was not in the least prepared⁠—it was the beginning of the end⁠—” + 

“Just what Herr von Wallbach said,” said Giraldi. “But pardon me, Councillor, it is rather warm here⁠—” + 

“You will not come up again!” + 

“On no account.” + 

“Perhaps you are right,” said the Councillor. “I would go with you if it were not for Lübbener, who is sure to be up there⁠—” + 

“I did not see him.” + 

“You must have overlooked our little friend. I wanted to tell him something that I have just heard from the Minister who sent for me, and has only just set me free, and which I hope may be useful to him in tomorrow’s battle.” + 

“Then I will take leave of you. I am really tired to death.” + 

The Councillor had not yet let go the button of Giraldi’s coat. Through the comparative silence of these downstairs rooms sounded from above the wild strains of a furious waltz, and the dumb rush and sweep of the dancers, whose whirling steps made the magnificent building tremble as if with ague. + 

“They are dancing over a volcano,” said the Councillor in a low voice. “Believe me, he cannot hold out; it is impossible. We have been obliged to pay him with shares, of course, like all the world. How he is to meet his engagements now that our shares have fallen to twenty⁠—heaven only knows. I calculate that the man will be ruined in three weeks at the latest, and we with him.” + 

“I regret it extremely, but if the world were coming to an end in half an hour, I should go to bed now.” + 

The Councillor let go the button almost terrified. Such a wicked look had shot out of Giraldi’s great black eyes, although he had spoken with the tired smile of a completely worn-out man. + 

“One would think he might play an active part in the downfall of the world,” murmured the Councillor, as he brushed up his short, dry hair before the big looking-glass. “Strange what odd ideas come into my head when I am with that man! Such calmness at such a moment! He does business to the extent of half a million, of which no human soul is aware, loses another half million, and⁠—goes to bed! Mysterious man!” + 

The Councillor put his brush in his pocket, pulled out once more his white tie, seized his crush-hat, and was on the point of leaving the cloakroom, when another guest stepped hastily in, and throwing his fur coat on the table, called to the servant, in a voice apparently trembling with haste, “Be good enough to keep them separate, I shall only be here a short time. Ah, Councillor!” + 

“Good gracious, Lübbener, what is the matter with you?” + 

Lübbener signed to him to be silent, and laid his finger on his lips at the same time, then drew the horrified Councillor into the farthest corner of the cloakroom, and said, as he stood on the tips of his toes, and stretched his short neck as far as possible out of his white tie, “Is he still upstairs?” + 

“Giraldi?” asked the Councillor, whose mind was still full of the Italian’s image. “You must have met him at the door.” + 

“He! Philip⁠—Schmidt?” + 

Utterly absurd as the question seemed, the Councillor could not smile; his friend’s face, always grey, was now ashy-white; the little black eyes, which generally twinkled so merrily, were now fixed; each one of the short hairs, so thickly covering the low forehead, seemed to stand up of itself. + 

“Do not stare at me so,” exclaimed Lübbener. “I am quite in my right senses; I only hope that other people see as clearly into their affairs as I do with mine. I was with Haselow just before closing-time, to see if he could not help me with a hundred thousand or so tomorrow, as I had had a somewhat heavy payment to make, for which I was not prepared. ‘It is just the same with me,’ said Haselow. ‘Signor Giraldi took away the last fifty thousand of the Warnow money an hour ago⁠—the whole half million in three days.’ ” + 

“Extraordinary! most extraordinary!” said the Councillor; “as the agent of the Baroness, to whom the half belongs, we certainly allowed him to invest the whole, but still⁠—” + 

“Beware! beware!” gasped the other. “There is something wrong⁠—very wrong. Yesterday Golm throws half a million into the market; I keep up the price notwithstanding to thirty; this morning that abominable speech of Lasker’s⁠—down they go to twenty; this afternoon I have to pay Giraldi every farthing of the Golm mortgage. I have struggled, I am struggling still desperately, but there are limits to everything.” + 

“It is very hard,” said the Councillor, sighing. “Our splendid, splendid enterprise! The Minister, too, was quite in despair today; but⁠—shall we not go upstairs? We can go on with our conversation there. I have several things of importance to communicate to you.” + 

“Hush!” said Lübbener. + 

He stood listening intently, then walked quickly to the big window from which he could see out of the cloakroom into the vestibule, shook his head and came back to the Councillor, muttering unintelligibly between his pale lips. + 

“What is the matter now?” said the Councillor anxiously. + 

The banker’s little black eyes glanced towards the servants in the cloakroom. They could hear nothing, and were moreover occupied in arranging their numbers; then he made the Councillor a sign to stoop his tall figure to him. + 

“I ought to have consulted you properly, but the danger that he”⁠—the banker pointed with his finger in the direction from which the noise of the ball came⁠—“was too great. Our four millions preference shares which would have to be issued now⁠—” + 

“Good heavens!” said the Councillor. + 

“It was a mere vague suspicion, but it left me no peace. He and I, you know, have the keys, and when after the office was shut, I told the clerk I had some business still to do⁠—true enough”⁠—the Councillor had bent his head so low that the banker was whispering into his ear. Then they looked fixedly into each other’s eyes. The Councillor’s long face had turned as grey as the other’s. + 

“But this is a matter for the police,” he said. + 

An evil smile crossed the banker’s compressed lips. + 

“It has cost me a great deal of trouble to convince them of it.” + 

“So then⁠—” + 

The banker nodded. + 

“And when?” + 

“I expect them every minute. They wanted me to show myself here, because my remaining away altogether⁠—” + 

“Quite right! Quite true!” said the Councillor. “It is very, very painful⁠—still⁠—I will certainly⁠—under these circumstances⁠—” + 

And he made a step towards the cloakroom table. + 

“Councillor, you will not,” cried Lübbener, holding fast by his coattail. + 

At this moment a tremendous flourish of trumpets sounded in the vestibule. The servants rushed from behind their table to the window. The pretty girls who had been waiting upon the ladies ran past them; “They are coming, they are coming.” + 

The two gentlemen had also gone to the window, as the flourish sounded a second time, from long trumpets, which eight men dressed as heralds were blowing on the broad landing of the staircase. They turned their instruments upwards to right and left, as if to summon the assembly from above. And in fact they had scarcely uttered their call for the third time, before the company, who had been prepared beforehand, began to appear. + 

A splendid sight, whose magnificence even the Councillor, in spite of his thoughts being full of anxiety and care, could not but allow, whilst the servants broke out into loud cries of admiration; only Herr Lübbener’s grey countenance kept the look of a man who is too much behind the scenes to take much pleasure in the play himself. + 

The guests came down the marble stairs from both sides, the width being more than sufficient for two couples at once. The brilliant streams met on the landing, but only to separate again, and swarm down the lower stairs to the vestibule, which already began to fill, whilst the staircase and surrounding passages were still swarming with the gay crowd, which while waiting for the stairs to be free for them, could meanwhile enjoy the brilliant spectacle from above all the longer. Preceded by the trumpeting heralds they paraded the vestibule, which was decorated by Justus’s four statues, and brightly lighted by an immense chandelier and numerous candelabra, while it was divided from the outer hall by splendid columns, till suddenly the great folding-doors were flung open, and, as the trumpets ceased, soft music sounding from within invited to the pleasures of the table. + 

“Did you see him?” asked Lübbener, with a grim smile. + 

“How could I avoid it?” answered the Councillor, sighing; “with my old friend Baroness Kniebreche on his arm. Wonderful! The man has nerves of steel.” + 

“I think you had better come in with me, Councillor,” said Lübbener; “if only for the reason that I suspect you could not get out of the house now.” + 

“Do you think so?” said the Councillor, sighing; “then there is really nothing else to be done.” + 

And he followed his resolute companion, with anything but a festive countenance, into the vestibule, where they mingled with the last comers, who, now that the ranks had been broken, were pressing most impatiently into the supper-room. + 

VI + 

Any anxiety about finding places proved quite unfounded. There would have been room for the whole party in the gorgeous dining-room, if every seat had been occupied at the little tables laid for eight or ten people each. But as it had been foreseen that this would not be the case, tables were also laid in the great conservatory, which stood at right angles with the dining-room and connected this wing of the house with the other. The last comers had the privilege of supping under palm trees, as Justus laughingly remarked to Ottomar, both being amongst the latest arrivals. + 

“Stay with us,” said Ottomar, pointing to his table, at which three or four officers and some ladies belonging to the theatre, amongst whom was Bertalda, were trying to arrange themselves. “I think there is room enough, if not we will make room.” + 

“I am sorry,” answered Justus; “but I am already engaged to a few friends there in the corner, and if our garden is not quite so brilliant as yours⁠—yet you see we also have roses blooming.” + 

“And magnificent ones. Who is the lady in silver grey? What a splendid figure!” + 

Justus laughed. “You must not betray me. Perfect carnival freedom reigns here. She is a cousin of my colleague Bunzel, alias⁠—his model, alias⁠—” + 

“Werben! Werben!” resounded from the officers’ table. + 

“Justus! Justus!” from that of the artists’. + 

“Hope you will enjoy yourself,” cried Ottomar. + 

“Same to you,” said Justus; and to himself he added, “poor boy!” + 

He knew the sad story, and had besides heard lately from Reinhold, with whom he kept up a constant correspondence, new and worse things of Carla, which Meta, who had arrived quite unexpectedly this morning, fully confirmed. + 

“You will see,” said Meta, “it will turn out badly. Dear Elsa suspects nothing; but I have a pair of sharp eyes, you know, and I am sure that the Count and Carla have got some understanding between them. If only Ottomar would let her go! but he is the sort of man who, if anyone tries to take from him what he ought to be thankful to let go, says, ‘No, not now.’ He is not so sensible as we are, you know. And now make haste and be off to your great party!” + 

How laughing and beaming were his Meta’s eyes, who by her great good sense had overcome all obstacles⁠—“Tomorrow we will order the furniture to suit your artistic tastes, you know!”⁠—and how darkly and restlessly gleamed the eyes in which he had just looked! “The handsome face sunken and wasted as if in the last ten weeks he had aged twice as many years,” thought Justus, “and in spite of his gay words, how bitter a look there had been upon his lips! Poor boy!” + 

“What are you making such a wry face for?” cried Kille, the architect, as the newcomer approached the table. + 

“No mooning allowed here!” cried Bencke, the historical painter. + 

“He is thinking of the left hip of his Industry, which is so much awry that it is almost dislocated!” cried friend Bunzel. + 

“Or of Lasker’s speech, which has been cutting everybody up!” cried the architect. + 

“I am thinking just now of what you are always thinking of, nothing at all!” said Justus, taking a place next to Bunzel’s “cousin,” and passing his hand over his bald forehead to brush away the unpleasant impression. + 

It would have been hard indeed for even a less cheerful disposition to have given way to gloomy thoughts at this table and in such company. They talked and laughed and joked in the most extravagant way. They had all worked at the great building, especially the architect who had drawn the plan and directed the execution, and now were showing up each other’s mistakes in good-humoured banter. And between whiles came serious and weighty talk upon art and artists, or upon Lasker’s speech, which Justus, who in the sweat of his brow had sat out the whole debate⁠—“for reasons, you know, Meta”⁠—thought splendid beyond all belief, while the architect declared that the man might certainly be right on the whole⁠—there were stranger stories even connected with some of the railroads⁠—but of actual building he knew no more than a newborn babe; till one or the other who thought the conversation was getting too serious, threw in some wild joke, and the laughter that had been for a short time checked resounded again louder and more heartily than ever. And at the other tables, if there was perhaps less mirth, there was no less noise. The champagne flowed in streams. The innumerable servants had enough to do to renew the empty bottles in the silver wine-coolers; and great irritation seemed to be felt at the smallest neglect of the servants in this, matter. Everybody gave orders; everybody wanted the best wine, the second best was good for nothing, People passed the wine or the dishes from table to table, “just as if it had been a public dinner,” said Baroness Kniebreche, surveying the crowd through her eyeglass; “quite like an hotel. I never saw such a thing in a private house before. It is extremely amusing. Do you know, Wallbach, that when you passed behind my chair just now I was within an ace of addressing you as the head waiter.” + 

“Ha! Very funny!” answered Wallbach absently. “You cannot expect to find the good company and manners to which we are accustomed in such a house as this. It is and will always remain the house of a parvenu. But I was going to ask you, my dear Baroness, if you had kept your counsel as to the last piece of information I gave you, as I asked you to do?” + 

“The last piece of information?” cried the Baroness; “but, my dear child, you have told me so much, that I positively have forgotten which is the first and which is the last. Why do you want to know?” + 

“Ottomar avoids me in a way which, notwithstanding that our relations have been disturbed lately, is most marked. Just now he looked straight over my head.” + 

“Then look over his head, my dear child. I really can give you no other advice. Besides, what is it you want? You can’t wash fur without wetting it. That’s nonsense. If you want to have a row, have it⁠—if not, let it alone; but don’t bother me any more about the matter. And now give me some of that lobster salad⁠—there, at your elbow⁠—it is delicious.” + 

“The old woman is drunk,” muttered Wallbach, as he returned to his place at the next table. + 

Philip had excused himself for a quarter of an hour from the old lady to go round the room, and was now going from table to table with his glass, which had to be constantly replenished, in his hand, received here with praises of the splendid feast, there with cordial shouts, “Splendid, my dear fellow!” “Well done, my boy!” and at several points with hurrahs and drinking of healths; while at others people seemed to require a reminder that the gentleman in the white tie and waistcoat, with the broad forehead, and the courteous smile on his red, clean-shaven face, who stood there glass in hand before them, was the master of the house. + 

Philip had gone the round of the room, and must now pay a visit to the conservatory which opened out of the room. He came here at once upon a large table surrounded by young men, who received him with such enthusiasm that he seemed quite to overlook a smaller table close by, and with a wave of his hand and a jesting word to the young men was passing on farther, when a hoarse well-known voice said: “Now then, Schmidt, are not we to have the honour?” Philip’s face quivered, but it was beaming as if in joyful surprise as he turned round and threw up his arms, crying, “At last! Why, Lübbener, Councillor! Where the deuce have you been hiding? I really thought I was to be deprived of this pleasure. And you are quite alone, too! Like the lions, you keep apart!” + 

“We were late comers,” said the Councillor, touching Philip’s extended glass with his; “it was a mere matter of chance!” + 

“As long as you are amusing yourselves,” said Philip. + 

“Certainly,” answered Lübbener. “We can see here into both rooms. It is the best place of all.” + 

“Then it belongs to you by right,” cried Philip. “The best place in the room. The best in the house! Where would room and house be without you, my good Hugo? Dear old man!” + 

And, as if overcome with emotion, he took the little man in his arms, and held him, not daring to resist, pressed to his breast, when a loud voice a few steps from them cried, “Gentlemen!” + 

“Oh, horror!” exclaimed Philip, letting Lübbener out of his embrace. + 

“Ladies and gentlemen⁠—” + 

The speaker was a bank clerk from the young men’s table, famed among his companions for his extraordinary talent for after-dinner speeches. He had so placed himself, glass in hand, between the dining-room and the conservatory that he might have been heard in both rooms, if, in the noise which increased every moment, one man’s voice had not been as much lost as a drop in the ocean. + 

“Stand on a chair, Norberg!” + 

“Hear, hear!” + 

“Stand on two chairs, Norberg; one is of no use.” + 

“Ladies and gentlemen⁠—” + 

“Louder, louder! Silence! Hear, hear!” + 

Nobody could hear anything, but here and there people could see someone standing on a chair gesticulating, and apparently making an attempt to speak; they drew the attention of their neighbours, and though silence was not attained, Herr Norberg, with renewed hopes, exerted the full force of his lungs, so far overpowering the noise as to make himself audible, at least to the circle which had gathered round him, and which was increasing every moment. + 

“Ladies and gentlemen! Our German proverb says that every man forges his own fortune⁠—” + 

“Bravo! hear, hear!” + 

“But, unfortunately, everyone does not understand smith’s work, and the work fails in consequence. For the smith’s work we need a Schmidt⁠—” + 

“Very good! Hear! Silence there!” + 

“And if a smith forges his fortune, we may be assured that it is a work which he need not be ashamed of before masters or apprentices.” + 

“Capital! Bravo! Bravissimo!” + 

“And, ladies and gentlemen, the masters, and more particularly we young apprentices who have still much to learn, and who wish to learn, will watch his fingers in order to find out how and with what tools he works; for the tools are the first consideration!” + 

“Bravo! Bravo!” + 

There was almost perfect silence. Herr Norberg, now sure of his effect, continued in a pathetic tone of voice: + 

“But what are his tools? First, of course, the anvil⁠—the immovable anvil, formed of the cast steel of honesty⁠—” + 

“Hear! hear!” + 

“Of honesty, which can bear every blow and shock, because it rests on its own merits, and tested as it is by the enduring and flattering confidence of the initiated, and, if I may so express myself, polished by the good report of all honest people⁠—” + 

“Bravo! bravo!” + 

“May laugh to scorn the rust of slanderous tongues which are raised against it and its like, if such there be, even should it proceed from the tribune of a certain great House⁠—” + 

The last words were scarcely to be heard in the indescribable uproar which arose at the first allusion to the great event of the day, with which the minds of all were still filled, or at least occupied. Whether the opprobrious word was approved or condemned by the majority of the company, it was impossible to decide. Encouraging, even enthusiastic acclamations, in which Norberg’s particular friends were the loudest, words of dissatisfaction, of disapproval, even of the greatest indignation, all this buzzed, resounded, and reverberated, till almost suddenly the storm abated, as if all, friends and foes, were curious to hear what the man would utter further, as they all took it for granted that he would not rest satisfied with this one sally. + 

But the prudent Norberg was careful not to stake the issue of his well-considered speech by another impromptu. He spoke again in the flowery language in which he had begun, of the “Heavy hammer of Strength,” which the master he honoured could wield better than any other; of the indefatigable “Pincers of Energy,” with which he held fast to plans that he had once made; even of the “Bellows of strong breathing Courage,” which ever renewed in his own breast and in the hearts of his fellow-workmen the flame of inspiration which belongs to all creative power. Provided with these tools, and gifted with these qualities, it had been possible for the master to attain to this imposing result; to carry through his vast plans in spite of the indifference of the public, in spite of the ignorant opposition of the authorities; to make new roads for trade, convenient ways for commerce, towards the completion of which he was now working, it might reasonably be hoped not in vain, in spite of all and everything. Lastly, as the keystone of the edifice of his fortune, or to keep to his simile, “as the last link in the long chain of famous works which he has forged, to erect this house, which he has made so great, so splendid, not for himself, for he is the most retiring of men, but for his friends, whom he has assembled around him today in hundreds, as representatives of the remaining thousands, and who may now prove their representative powers by three times three, as from the thousands, for the brave, disinterested Schmidt, the smith of his own fortune.” + 

The company acceded to the invitation, some from conviction, the majority excited by wine, not a few out of mere politeness, with loud hurrahs, accompanied by a noisy flourish from the band, while the speaker descended from his chair and received, with proud modesty, the thanks of his host and the congratulations of the guests. He had surpassed himself today; he had been magnificent, it was only a pity and a shame that he had not given it stronger to Lasker, who really had deserved more. + 

“I do not think he will be too pleased as it is,” answered Herr Norberg complacently; “but now, Schmidt, old boy, up with you! You can’t help yourself!” + 

“No, you can’t help yourself!” chimed in the guests; “up with you! fire away!” + 

“But, gentlemen,” exclaimed Philip, “after such a speech! Let me have a few minutes to think at least.” + 

“It won’t do you any good!” said Herr Norberg encouragingly and patronisingly, “I know all about it! Improvise as I did, it always answers best.” + 

“If you think⁠—” + 

“Silence! listen! don’t you see?” + 

The tall, broad-shouldered man who now stood on the chair was visible enough; and as his appearance in that place was already expected, there ensued at any rate sufficient quiet to enable him to begin with a certain amount of dignity. + 

He would be brief, as fortunately he was in a position to be. The gratitude he felt for the distinguished honour which had just been shown him, for the kindness, the friendliness, yes, he ventured to say the word⁠—the affection which was showered upon him⁠—such gratitude, heartfelt as it was, could be expressed in a few words which, however, came from the heart. Besides, it was not expected from the man of deeds, in which capacity he had just been honoured, that he should be an orator like his predecessor, whose speech it was easier to criticise than to surpass; he had detected one defect. His strength, his courage, his honesty had been praised; those were qualities which, the latter especially, he expected from every man; and he therefore ventured to accept a small portion of the exuberant praise lavished upon him. + 

“The whole of it!⁠—without deduction⁠—without discount⁠—with interest!” exclaimed the enthusiastic crowd. + 

“Well, well, gentlemen!” exclaimed Philip, “if you will have it so, the full praise! But, gentlemen, what of the head, the mind and understanding! Perhaps you will say they do not exist⁠—” + 

“Oh, oh! I will take a hundred thousand shares in you!” shrieked the enthusiastic auditors. + 

“No, no, gentlemen!” shouted Philip over the heads of the shouters; “where nothing exists, the King himself must lose his rights. I am no Prince and Imperial Chancellor, who has not only his heart, but his head also in the right place.” + 

Here Philip was compelled to pause, till the storm of applause which his last words had called forth was somewhat abated. + 

“Yes, gentlemen, I acknowledge it; he is my ideal, but an unattainable one! The qualities that a great man, world-renowned as he is, unites in himself⁠—the most opposite qualities, yet all equally necessary to success⁠—for these we small people must combine. And with me it is no accidental chance, but a dispensation of Providence, and a sure confirmation, that in this moment, without any previous agreement, as you will believe me on my word, the two men who are my associates in business and in every sense of the word, are standing near me; and in this association if I am really the heart, they have unquestionably the department of the head; here to my right, Councillor Schieler⁠—to my left, the banker, Hugo Lübbener.” + 

Uproarious applause followed, which changed to shouts of laughter, in which even the impartial spectators joined, when the next moment, raised and held fast by the irresistible hands of the half-intoxicated crowd, the two gentlemen named by Philip appeared in person on chairs to his right and left. Philip, with quick presence of mind, seized the hands of both, and cried: + 

“Here! I have you, I hold you, my two heads who are only one, and who are all in all one with me; one heart and one soul! I was about to call for a cheer for these two, without whom I were nothing; but as we three are one, and cannot with the best wishes for health drink our own healths, I ask you, we ask you for a cheer, a hearty cheer for those whom we have to thank for the satisfaction of being here together this evening, and I think I may say, of enjoying ourselves; the architect of this house and the artists who have decorated it.” + 

While the company willingly complied with his request, and the band again accompanied them with a shrill flourish of trumpets; while Herr Norberg embraced Philip and assured him that he himself could not have done it better; while the two other gentlemen, who had sprung quickly from their chairs, were overpowered with shaking of hands and congratulations, great excitement reigned in the group of artists. Of course somebody must answer, but who should it be? The historical painter would just as soon have mounted the scaffold; one or two others “could have done it, but it was not in their line;” the architect, as a native of Berlin, freemason, and member of numberless societies, a born and bred orator, did not see why he who had done the most should do anything extra now. + 

“Justus must speak!” exclaimed Bunzel; “he can take the opportunity of putting to rights that dislocated hip.” + 

“As you will,” said Justus; “there is something here that requires setting to rights undoubtedly, of which your empty heads would never think.” + 

“Silence there! Hear! hear! Silence!” thundered the artists. + 

“Bravo! bravo! da capo!” shrieked the young men. + 

“I think once will be enough, gentlemen,” said Justus, who was already mounted on the chair. + 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you as a boy before his schoolmaster. For though it is only proper that we artists should express our thanks for the kindness shown to us, I am neither the eldest nor the youngest amongst us, neither the one who has the greatest merit with regard to this beautiful house, nor perhaps the one amongst us who has sinned most with regard to it; but as I am here, I offer in all our names my most grateful thanks for your goodness, and as I feel by no means steady on this rickety pedestal, and as I have learnt from my predecessors⁠—” + 

“Bravo! bravo!” exclaimed the artists. + 

“That if one wishes to leave this place one must first look out for a successor, but feel that in this way the matter would never come to an end, I have chosen for the purpose a person who is not in this company; and I ask you to give a cheer for him, who has already spoken himself today, and has spoken to my heart, and, I know, to the hearts of many in this company; and to give a second cheer for him, because it would ill become this company if a word were spoken against him here, as has been done, without an answer being forthcoming from amongst us; and a third cheer, and long life to him who requires three lives in order to carry out the herculean labour he has undertaken!” + 

Justus drew up his slender figure, and his clear voice sounded like a trumpet: + 

“Long live Edward Lasker!” + 

And his “Hip! hip! hurrah!” resounded in shouts from the artists, whilst the astonished opponents remained silent, and all who had been shocked at the previous offensive words, and they were many, cheered with them, and the music sounded in the midst, so that the whole room shook, and old Baroness Kniebreche shrieked out to Baroness Holzweg, “I really believe I can hear again with both ears!” + 

The storm was still raging when Anton, the valet, came up to Philip, who stood shrugging his shoulders and trying to smooth matters amidst a group of gentlemen who were all talking to him at once, with violent gesticulations, hoping and expecting that he would properly resent and punish such a public insult. Anton must have had something very urgent to say, as he pulled his master repeatedly by the sleeve, and dragged him almost by force out of the group. + 

Philip’s face had got very red, but at the first words which the servant, as he unwillingly bent towards him, whispered in his ear, it became white as ashes. He now himself hastily drew the man a few paces farther on one side. + 

“Where is the gentleman?” + 

“He is close at hand, in the billiard-room,” answered Anton; “here is his card.” + 

The servant was as pale as his master, and brought the words out with difficulty from between his chattering teeth. + 

“Anyone with him?” + 

“They are in the vestibule and out in the street and in the court⁠—oh, sir, sir!” + 

“Hush! Will you help me?” + 

“Willingly, sir.” + 

Philip whispered a few words into the man’s ear, who then went hastily through the room into the vestibule, from which, unchecked, he disappeared, through a door, into the cellar regions. Philip stood there for a few minutes, his firm lips tightly compressed, and his fixed eyes bent on the floor. He had not expected this; he had hoped to have had at least another week’s law. The devil must have prompted Lübbener. However, the great haul must in the end have failed, and he had got the ready money, at any rate, provided; but he must venture it! If he could only get out of the house, they must be more than cunning⁠—he had had everything prepared for weeks in case of this happening. As he again lifted his gloomy eyes, his glance encountered Lübbener’s, who, only a few paces off, apparently in eager conversation with the Councillor and some other gentlemen, had closely observed the short scene between the master and servant, and, as the former stepped back to the group, now turned his back upon him. + 

“Excuse me for a few minutes, gentlemen,” said Philip; “I have still some arrangements to make for the cotillon, and then, if you please, we will leave the table.” + 

He said it in his usual loud and swaggering tone, whilst at the same time he caught Lübbener by the wrist, as if in an overflow of hilarity, and drew him out of the group. + 

“What do you want?” gasped Lübbener. + 

“To tell you,” said Philip, grinding his teeth, “that you shall pay me for this, sooner or later!” + 

He flung the little man from him so that he tumbled backwards into the group, and making his way through the conservatory with a firm step, passed into the billiard-room, to meet a gentleman who stood there alone with folded arms, leaning on one of the tables, and apparently studying the ornamentation of the door through which Philip entered. + 

“Inspector Müller?” said Philip, who still held the card in his hand. + 

“I have that honour,” answered the inspector, unfolding his arms so slowly that he could not well take Philip’s outstretched hand. + 

“And what procures me this pleasure?” asked Philip. + 

“The pleasure is a very doubtful one, Herr Schmidt. I have a warrant against you!” + 

The officer took a paper from his breast-pocket, and so held it that Philip could easily have read it by the lamp over the billiard-table; but Philip had taken up a ball, and was making a hazard. + 

“A warrant! How very strange! Look there! a double hazard too! Are you a billiard player, Herr Müller?” + 

“Occasionally, when I have time, which I seldom have⁠—for instance, not at present. I must therefore beg of you to follow me without delay.” + 

“And leave my guests? But, Herr Müller, just imagine⁠—four hundred people, and no host! It is absolutely impossible!” + 

“It must be possible.” + 

“But it is not necessary. You are my guest. Toilette at this hour is of no consequence; besides, you are got up regardless. Remain by my side, of course⁠—a cousin who has just arrived⁠—what you will! Your men, in plain clothes I take it for granted, can amuse themselves finely meanwhile with my people. Afterwards we can drive together in my carriage⁠—” + 

“You are very kind, but a carriage is already provided, and now stands in the courtyard amongst a number of equipages, so that we need not again pass through the vestibule. You see, Herr Schmidt, I go to work with the greatest consideration; but I must now really beg that you will not put my patience to a longer test.” + 

Philip rolled the ball which he held in his hand from him at random, and turned round. + 

“Well, if nothing else will satisfy you; but I hope I may change my dress?” + 

“I have no objection to that, only you must submit to my presence meanwhile.” + 

“No apologies, Herr Müller, between men! Will you be so good?” + 

And he led the way, the officer following on his steps. In the library, which opened out of the billiard-room, an assistant officer was waiting, who now joined them. + 

“You are very cautious, Herr Müller,” said Philip over his shoulder, + 

“My duty, Herr Schmidt!” + 

He touched Philip’s arm, and said in a low voice, “If you will give me your word of honour to make no attempt at escape, which would moreover be quite fruitless, I can”⁠—and the inspector made a sign over his shoulder⁠—“spare you at least this escort.” + 

“No attempt at escape!” said Philip laughing; “oh! Herr Müller, I can think of nothing else. I would vanish through the floor or the walls if I only could.” + 

The officer could not help smiling. + 

“Go back into the vestibule again, Ortmann,” he said. + 

“Thank you for your confidence,” said Philip, as they went up a winding staircase, guarded by a handsome richly-gilt railing, by means of which the library was connected with the upper story of the right wing, which was separated from the ballroom by the whole width of the courtyard, that was partially glazed like the conservatory. + 

“The fact is, Herr Müller, that inconvenient as it certainly is to me, I cannot take this episode really in earnest⁠—” + 

Philip had opened a door in the corridor in which they now stood. + 

“This is a passage-room,” he said in an explanatory tone; “I should prefer to turn to the right, through that door into my living rooms, which are today being used also as company rooms. But as there is no help for it, we must go through the one on the left to my bedroom.” + 

He pushed the door open. “Pray go first; for the time being, at least, I am still the host here.” + 

The officer did as he was asked, ready, if his prisoner should attempt to shut the door upon him, which opened inwards, to stop it with his outstretched foot. But Philip followed him close, shutting the door behind him. + 

“My bedroom!” said Philip, waving his right hand, whilst the left still played with the lock, to the magnificent apartment, which, like all they had passed through, was brilliantly lighted with wax candles; “furnished in French style, and as if it were for a young lady who had just returned home from school! but these upholsterers are autocrats. This way, please, Herr Müller⁠—my dressing-room⁠—the last in the row⁠—and dark⁠—but that we can rectify.” + 

Philip held up the branch candlestick, which he had taken from the console under the looking-glass in the bedroom, and threw the light all round as if to assure the Inspector that there was no second door in the space left free by the carved oak wardrobes, and that the one they had come in by was the only entrance and exit. He put the candlestick down on a table, took off his coat, and opened one of the cupboards. + 

“I will wait in your bedroom while you are dressing,” said the officer. + 

“Pray do,” said Philip, as he took off his white waistcoat and undid his tie; “I hope you will find the armchairs to your taste⁠—” + 

The officer returned to the bedroom without quite shutting the door, and took his place on one of the magnificent sofas. + 

“From Delorme in Paris,” said Philip, opening and shutting the cupboards in the dressing-room; “it is supposed to be something quite out of the way, although I cannot see it. Only a few minutes, Herr Müller; I am just as if I had come out of the river. My whole house is ventilated after the newest principles, and yet this awful heat! Apropos, I suppose I may give notice downstairs that I have been taken suddenly unwell, and so forth.” + 

“I have no objection,” said the officer. “I am only afraid that, discreet as I have been, the rumour will have spread; it is generally so at least.” + 

“It can’t be helped then,” said Philip, who seemed busy with his boots; “will the thing never come out? There, at last! What a pity that it is midnight, and the magistrates cannot be got hold of, or I should certainly be back again in half an hour. I have never asked what it is about. I know without asking; it is some wretched trick of Lübbener’s, to drive me out of the board of directors. I knew that he had been for some days in frightful difficulties, and was certain that our preference shares were not safe from him. No respectable bank would advance him a farthing upon the whole four million; but some swindling firm⁠—he knows plenty of them⁠—might advance him six or eight hundred thousand⁠—a mere nothing in his position, but when there is nothing better to be had the devil himself eats flies. So, thought I, they are more secure in my hands than in the safe. In proof that I was right, he has found me out. You must know from experience, my dear Herr Müller, that no one thinks of looking for a man behind the bushes unless he has been in hiding there once or twice himself. It was a bold thing to do, I know, but mine is a daring nature. There! now another pair of boots, and I am ready.” + 

Herr Schmidt, who must have been going about in slippers for the last five minutes, appeared to have gone again to one of the cupboards, in which he was hunting about. “Varnished boots? Impossible! these are the right ones⁠—these,” the officer heard him say, as if to himself. The creaking of a chair⁠—he was a heavy man⁠—a smothered oath⁠—the boots apparently did not go on easily⁠—then silence. + 

Absolute silence for a minute, during which Herr Müller got up from his armchair and went to the window to look across the glass roof of the courtyard, to the illuminated windows of the ballroom, behind which one or two ladies and gentlemen could be seen. The supper had apparently lasted too long for the lovers of dancing, and since the master of the house had vanished, they wanted to set the ball going again of their own will. And indeed the music began again now from beyond, whilst beneath the glass roof sounded the stamping of horses, and the talking and shouting of the coachmen. + 

“A terrible business for Herr Schmidt,” thought the Inspector; “the affair is certainly not literally as he represents it, but Lübbener is perhaps the biggest swindler of the two. They generally get off free. He might really be ready now.” + 

Herr Müller stepped from the window back into the room. “Are you ready, Herr Schmidt?” + 

No answer. + 

“Are you⁠—Good God! the man must have done himself an injury!” + 

The officer pushed open the half-closed door⁠—the candelabra burnt on the dressing-table⁠—coats and linen were strewed about⁠—the room was empty. + 

“Don’t play any foolish tricks, Herr Schmidt,” said the officer, looking towards the big cupboard, whose door stood partly open. + 

But he no longer believed in a joke, as after having hastily glanced into the open cupboard, he threw the light of the candelabra right and left over the hangings, which were leather coloured to represent wood. No trace of a door! And yet there must be one! There, at last! This scarcely perceptible crack, where the darker stripes of the hangings met the lighter wainscoting⁠—wonderfully done!⁠—and here below, hardly visible, the tiny lock. Herr Müller pushed and kicked against the door, only to discover that it was made of iron and would defy his utmost efforts. He rushed out of the dressing-room into the bedroom⁠—the door into the anteroom was locked! There, close to the handle, was the same lock as that on the concealed door, no bigger than the keyhole in the dial plate of a clock. He was a prisoner! + 

The infuriated officer threw open the window, and called as loudly as he could to his men, of whom two should be in the courtyard. But on the other side the fiddles squeaked and the violoncellos growled, and below the horses stamped and the coachmen shouted and laughed. No one heard the cries from above, until in his despair he took the first thing that came to hand and flung it through the glass, so that the fragments fell upon the heads of a pair of fiery horses, which, frightened out of their wits, reared and backed, driving the carriage into another one behind them, which rolling back again made the horses of a third recoil. In the midst of the frightful confusion and the tremendous noise that ensued, the shouts of the officer were overpowered, until at last one of the policemen remarked them, but without being able to understand a word his superior said. Nevertheless, he hurried out of the court into the vaulted passage which, running on the right side of the building and round behind the court, connected the latter with the street, and was used for the exit of the carriages, those coming in entering on the opposite side, to tell his comrades who were posted there that something had happened, and that they must be on their guard. He had done so in a few breathless words, and was in the act of running back, when from one or other of the doors opening into the passage, two servants rushed out, one an elderly man, who seemed to be trembling from head to foot with excitement, and one younger and very tall who nearly ran into his arms. The policeman connected the hurry of these servants with what had just occurred, and he was confirmed in this opinion by the fact of his remarking at the same moment, that a narrow, steep stone staircase led up from the door which the servants had in their haste left open. + 

“What has happened upstairs?” cried the policeman. + 

“Herr Schmidt has had a fit of apoplexy,” answered the tall servant. “I am going for the doctor, do not detain me. Here is the Inspector’s card.” + 

“All right!” said the policeman, throwing a glance at the card. “Let him pass. He is going for the doctor. How can I get upstairs?” + 

“Straight up these steps,” was the breathless reply. + 

“Then be off with you!” + 

The man rushed breathlessly to the exit past the policeman, who willingly made way for him, ran to the string of cabs which stood before the house, only carriages being allowed inside the courtyard, and sprang into the end one, calling to the driver to go as quickly as possible; he should be well paid. It was a matter of life and death! + 

In the supper-room the confusion increased as the absence of the host continued. + 

Amongst the few who still kept their place was Baroness Kniebreche, although Herr von Wallbach urgently pressed her departure. + 

“Only a few minutes more,” cried the Baroness, without taking her glass from her eye; “it is so interesting. In spite of my eighty-two years, I have never seen anything like it. Only just look, my dear Wallbach, at that table where the little bald-headed man is sitting who a little while ago proposed that man Lasker’s health; tell me⁠—I did not hear a word of it for my part. The man with the long fair hair is positively kissing his neighbour⁠—an artist too of course⁠—enviable people! Who is the handsome young man with the black hair and fiery eyes; at the same table? I have noticed him already this evening⁠—a foreigner, we do not grow such plants. He, moreover, never takes his eyes off Ottomar’s table. He seems to be struck by the pretty ballet-dancer. I cannot understand how Ottomar can go on flirting with Ferdinanda, when he has such a choice before him. But it is no use disputing about taste; it is a wonderful thing. That faded Agnes Holzweg and Prince Wladimir. Well, he cannot be very particular, and it seems to be going off too, as he has not even been here for a few minutes. Take care of the old lady! Pooh! She can hear me? I can hardly hear myself speak. That old woman is a tremendous chatterer. She was talking just now for ever so long to young Grieben of the Hussars, who I think is somehow related to her, and has also paid attentions to Agues in his time, before the Prince began to do so. There he is talking to Ottomar. If the old lady has been chattering, Grieben will take the greatest satisfaction in boring Ottomar with it, as he knows of his dislike to Agnes, whom Grieben, I hear, in spite of all, still adores.” + 

“But, my dear lady,” cried the horrified Wallbach, “you have not told that notorious gossip⁠—” + 

“Look! look!” cried the Baroness, giving Wallbach a sharp blow with her closed fan, “there, at the first⁠—second⁠—fourth table! The men are coming to blows! it is really splendid! I never saw anything like it in my life.” + 

“It really is high time for us to go,” said Herr von Wallbach; “it is getting too bad. Allow me to send a servant for my carriage⁠—” + 

“Well, if you really are determined,” said the Baroness, “but I am still amusing myself immensely.” + 

Herr von Wallbach had stood up, but the servants who were hurrying about with wine and ices seemed little inclined to do his errand, and he was forced to look elsewhere through the room for someone more accommodating. + 

Whilst he was still talking to the Baroness, Ottomar went up to Justus, who was talking to his friend Bunzel as quietly as if the storm which he had raised, and which increased in fury every minute, was not of the slightest consequence to him. + 

“A word with you, Herr Anders.” + 

“Ten, if you like,” rejoined Justus, jumping up; “but for heaven’s sake, Herr Von Werben⁠—” + 

“What?” + 

“Pardon me! you did not look very cheerful before, but now⁠—has anything unpleasant happened to you?” + 

“Indeed there has. Tell me, Herr Anders, I am in a great hurry, and cannot stop to explain⁠—I know that you are very intimate with Captain Schmidt, and I have just heard that there exists, some understanding between him and⁠—my sister. Do you know anything of this?” + 

Justus did not know what this meant. Ottomar’s eyes, blazing with fury and an excitement which rose above the fumes of wine, boded no good; but no evasion was possible. + 

“Yes, Herr Von Werben; and I am convinced that only the lack of any friendly advance on your part has made my friend hold back, and caused him to leave you in ignorance of his understanding with your sister, whilst, so far as I know, your father has long been acquainted with it.” + 

“Very likely, very likely,” said Ottomar; “my family and I have long been⁠—but no matter! And in any case⁠—I deeply regret that I did not cultivate Captain Schmidt’s friendship⁠—however, I admire and esteem him highly, very highly⁠—I should always have considered it an honour⁠—everything might have been so totally different⁠—” + 

He passed his hand over his brow. + 

“Is there still no possibility?” asked Justus quickly. + 

A melancholy smile passed over the handsome face. + 

“How I wish there were,” he said. “I thought myself⁠—but it is too late, too late! I have found that out⁠—this evening⁠—just now⁠—a man in my position cannot allow his name to be in everyone’s mouth; and that fact is used with great skill⁠—the greatest skill⁠—confounded skill!” + 

His teeth were gnawing hard at his lip, his angry eyes looked beyond Justus into the room as if seeking someone, and they kept their direction as he asked, even more hastily and abruptly than before: + 

“Perhaps you are also acquainted with Car⁠—with Fräulein von Wallbach’s relations with⁠—with⁠—I see by your eyes that you know what I mean. And you⁠—but the others, who are talking of it all round, and reckoning that for well-known reasons I must keep quiet about it; but I’ll be hanged if I do!” + 

“Only a man cannot have everything at the same time,” said Justus. + 

“But I will keep quiet before those chatterers until it suits one of them to speak out. I will settle it, believe me, in five minutes!” + 

Ottomar suddenly rushed away from Justus, “Like a falcon after its prey,” thought the latter, “Oh, this fatal honour! What sacrifices has Moloch already required! Poor boy! I like him in spite of all the harm that he has already done and that he still seems intent upon doing. Well, I cannot hinder him with the best will in the world. Good gracious!⁠—already half-past one!” + 

Justus had of his own accord promised Meta to leave the party at twelve o’clock punctually. He looked round for Antonio, who was talking eagerly, near the table at which Ottomar and the other officers had supped, with the piquante young lady whom one of the officers⁠—not Ottomar⁠—had conducted to supper, and who, now that Ottomar was also gone, appeared to have been left behind by the whole party. + 

“He is always making up to somebody, is Antonio,” said Justus, as he watched the insinuating manners of his handsome assistant and the smiles of the young lady. “Let him be; I shall not get him to come home with me.” + 

He looked from Antonio to the tall painter who was in hot argument with a few men who belonged to the “young men’s table.” “He will soon finish them off,” thought Justus, just as two or three men left the group and came with angry faces towards him. + 

“You took upon yourself to wish long life to Lasker!” said a swarthy youth. + 

“And I hope that he will long gratify that wish,” answered Justus, with a courteous bow, as he continued on his way past his astonished interlocutor. + 

Ottomar, meanwhile, had gone up to the Baroness, and, without taking the chair next to her, although it, as well as half those at the table, had long been unoccupied, said in a loud voice, as was necessary to the deaf old lady in the noise which prevailed around: + 

“Pardon me, Baroness, but will you allow me to trouble you with a question?” + 

The Baroness looked at him through her immense glasses. She knew at once what Ottomar wanted to ask, and that Baroness Holzweg must have repeated what she had told her, and she was determined not to allow herself to be mixed up in the matter. + 

“Ask anything you like, my dear child,” she said. + 

“Certain rumours which are circulating in this company, about myself on the one hand, and Fräulein von Wallbach on the other, and which have come to my ears from Herr von Grieben amongst others, are traced hack to you, Baroness, as Grieben has them from his aunt, Frau von Holzweg, and she asserts that she had them from you.” + 

“That is a long preamble, my dear child,” said the Baroness, to gain time. + 

“My question will be so much the shorter. From whom did you hear this story?” + 

“My dear child, all the world is talking about it!” + 

“I cannot be content with that answer, my dear lady; I must know the actual person.” + 

“Then find him for yourself!” said the Baroness in her rudest tone, turning her back upon him. + 

Ottomar bit his lip, and went straight up to Herr von Wallbach, who, having vainly sought for some willing messenger through the whole room, now returned to the Baroness to tell her that he would go and look for the carriage himself. + 

“Baroness Kniebreche has commissioned me to discover the actual person who has set in motion certain rumours about myself and your sister. Am I to find him in the person of that sister’s brother?” + 

“Really, Werben,” said Herr von Wallbach, who had turned very pale, “this is not the place to talk about such things.” + 

“That comes rather late, it seems to me, from you, who have spoken of it here, as it appears, not once, but often, and with many people. However, I have naturally no desire to enter into a controversy, but simply to make sure of the fact that this story, impossible as it seems, emanates from you.” + 

“But really, Werben, I may have⁠—it is just possible⁠—made some communication to our old friend Baroness Kniebreche.” + 

“Pardon me one moment, Herr von Wallbach. Herr von Lassberg, would you be kind as to come here for a minute to hear an explanation which Herr von Wallbach will be good enough to give me? You say, Herr von Wallbach, that it is quite possible you may have made a certain communication to our old friend Baroness Kniebreche. Will you oblige me by going on?” + 

“I really do not know what communication you are thinking of!” cried Herr von Wallbach. + 

“Do you mean to compel me to mention names?” asked Ottomar, with a scornful movement of his lip, whilst his flashing eyes seemed to pierce Herr von Wallbach’s, who stood there helpless, in painful perplexity. + 

“I think this is sufficient,” said Ottomar, turning to his companion; “of course, I will put you au courant at once. Herr von Wallbach, you will hear more from me tomorrow, for today I have the honour⁠—” + 

Ottomar took his companion by the arm, and walked back to his place with him, talking to him with passionate eagerness, whilst Wallbach was surrounded by several of his acquaintances, who from a distance had watched the scene between him and Ottomar, and now wished, with all discretion, to know what had passed between him and his “brother-in-law.” + 

“I cannot engage myself without first speaking to Herr von Werben,” Bertalda was just saying, her eyes shining with the desire to dance with the handsome young Italian. + 

“Are you engaged to that gentleman?” asked Antonio. + 

“No, but he brought me here in his carriage, and is to take me back again. He wanted to go before. There he comes, ask him⁠—or I will do so myself.” + 

Ottomar, who had just parted with his companion, with a shake of the hand and the words, “Tomorrow, then, at eight,” was now close to them. + 

“This gentleman⁠—Herr Antonio Michele, wishes to dance the next waltz with me,” said Bertalda. “They are dancing upstairs quite merrily.” + 

Ottomar did not answer immediately. He had already once or twice looked at Antonio, who had sat corner-wise to him at the artists’ table, without being able to recollect where he had seen that handsome dark face before. Now as he looked into the black eyes, he knew it was in Justus’s studio. This was Justus’s Italian assistant, whom Ferdinanda had warned him against, of whom she had said that he persecuted her with his love, that she trembled before his jealousy! In the black eyes which were fastened upon him there gleamed, in spite of the courteous smile upon the lips, an evil flame, as of hate and jealousy mingled. An inexpressible mixed feeling of contempt, disgust and terror passed through Ottomar. After all he had already suffered this evening, that this should be added! + 

“I must beg you to excuse the lady,” he said in his haughtiest tone; “I was just going to offer her my carriage to return home in.” + 

Antonio had discovered long ago from the artists, who were greater frequenters of the theatre than himself, who Bertalda was. + 

“I will see the lady safely home by-and-by,” he said, with an equivocal smile. + 

The blood flew into Ottomar’s face. + 

“Insolent fellow!” he cried between his teeth, as he lifted his hand. + 

Antonio started back and put his hand to his breast pocket. Bertalda threw herself almost into Ottomar’s arms, and drew him on one side. At that moment, a perfect swarm of men, who had assembled for a game of pool in the billiard-room, poured into the conservatory between the disputants. + 

Their startled countenances, their violent gesticulations, their loud and confused words, all proclaimed that something unusual had occurred, and that they brought terrible news. But the terrible news had already spread from the other side⁠—from the vestibule into the supper-room. It had already reached the dancers above, who were hastening down the broad stairs, whilst many others met them from the supper-room. “Is it possible?⁠—Have you heard?⁠—Good heavens!⁠—Pretty work!⁠—Who would have thought it!⁠—A man like that!⁠—Let us get away⁠—No one can get away till the house has been searched!⁠—We shall see about that!⁠—Good gracious! where is papa?⁠—A glass of water. For heaven’s sake! don’t you hear?” + 

No one heard. Neither the servants, nor the guests, who were streaming out of the rooms into the vestibule and cloakroom, where there was soon a positively dangerous crowd. + 

It was in vain that some calmer people attempted to quiet the mob; in vain that the released police officer and his men tried to stem the current. The terrified people crowded in confused masses from the brightly-illuminated house, which was still echoing with the noise of the festival, into the dark streets, through which the midnight storm was howling. + 