of the misdeed was removed from her sight, all the bad aspect had
disappeared from the matter, which, after all, had only become wrong
and unpardonable when strange eyes had spied into the well-guarded
secret of a pure artist-soul. Now, when she thought about the work, how
it stood there in the deserted studio, carefully wrapped, with only the
sparrows flying about it, and guarded from every betraying ray of
light, what was there so sinful in the fact that the head of this
beautiful kneeling woman bore her own features?

This figure constantly floated before her, no matter how hard she might
try to turn her attention upon other things. And although in the work
of the artist nothing was finished but the head, her fancy saw the
finished statue, and, for the first time in her life, she looked upon
her own beauty, in her thoughts, with other eyes than her own, which
could find nothing new or especial in it. The cruel lot that had held
her apart from life in her girlish years, and the early experiences
that had given her a contemptuous, if not a hostile opinion of men, had
kept her mind isolated from all those feelings that usually agitate a
girl's soul in its spring-time. It had never occurred to her to look at
herself, as it were, through the eyes of a man, for she had never known
one for whose sake she would have thought it worth while to give
herself so much trouble. When she observed her face in the mirror, and
could not help finding it beautiful, it afforded her just as little
pleasure as if--like a female Robinson Crusoe on some island in the
ocean--she had seen her reflection in clear water, and had known by it
that she was queen of the wilderness. In the next room sat the poor
madwoman, in her arm-chair, and nodded at the beautiful daughter, whom
she was robbing of life, with an idiotic smile. Of what avail was her
beauty against this inexorable fate?

Sometimes indeed, in the spring nights, between dreaming and waking, or
when she read some beautiful moving story, it seemed to her as if the
frost that had settled about her heart were bursting, as if a secret
longing for something sweet and precious swelled her bosom, a trembling
desire for some unknown, unattainable happiness. But this feeling never
took the shape of a being who should strive to gain her love, and whom
she might love in return. At such times she dreamed of nothing better
than to have the liberty of belonging to herself, of being freed from
that horrible duty which, to be sure, had grown less hard through
custom, and which no longer awakened even a shudder, but which held her
a prisoner daily and hourly. If these chains only fell from her--would
she then be so unwise as to voluntarily submit herself to a new form of
restraint?

But by this time she had enjoyed her freedom long enough to have been
sometimes forced to admit, with a quiet sigh, that the longed-for
happiness was not so overpowering that it relieved the soul of all
other desires. What she really did want she did not know. She fancied
that, if she only had a talent of some sort, it would fill this
yearning emptiness within her. Since she believed it to be too late for
her to take up music or drawing, she hit upon the idea of writing down
her thoughts and moods in free rhythmic forms of her own invention.
These were by no means the usual imitations of well-known lyric poets,
in the conventional and occasionally much-abused metres and stanzas.
What she wrote in her secret diary bore about the same relation to this
conventional poetry that the play of the wind upon an Æolian harp does
to a sonnet. But for all that it was an unspeakable comfort to her,
when she felt that she was striking melodious chords within her lonely
soul, to listen to the rise and fall of this melody of thoughts, and to
transcribe it as well as she was able. The secrecy with which she
pursued this art lent it an additional charm; and many a lonely evening
hour was thus whiled away, as quickly and happily as if it had been
spent in the company of an intimate friend, to whom she could have
poured out her innermost heart.

But now, when she had reached her home, and had hurriedly closed the
blinds that she might brood in absolute silence and solitude over what
had happened, she felt a sudden shock pass through her heart as she
reflected that during the past week her thoughts had more than once
been busy with the audacious man who had dared this theft of her
beauty--ay, that he had even entered more than once into her secret
poems. She had not given much more thought to this than to the other
subjects she had touched on in her diary: merely that she had made one
more acquaintance, and that of a man who could scarcely be said to have
an everyday face, and to whom all the others in his circle conceded the
first rank without a moment's jealousy. But was it not a singular
coincidence that, at the very time when she was attempting to describe
the impression that he had made upon her, he should be engaged in
moulding the image of her own features?

She rose thoughtfully to go to her writing-desk. She was obliged to
pass by the glass, and she stood before it for a while earnestly
contemplating her reflection, with the same sort of curiosity she would
have shown had she never seen herself before, but had just had her
attention drawn to herself by some third person. But, at the moment,
she was not at all pleased with her appearance. The face of the Eve
seemed to her fancy a thousand times more beautiful; he himself would
be forced to admit this if he should see her and compare her, face to
face, with his work. "Ten years ago," she said to herself, with a shake
of the head, "I may, perhaps, have looked like that. Oh, for the
beautiful lost years!"

For all this she began to arrange her hair in the same way that he had
arranged it in the statue, and she found this style of coiffure, in a
plain knot, charmingly becoming to her. She blushed at this, and turned
away. And now her heart beat still louder, as she drew forth from the
desk the book containing her confessions, and read over the last pages.
"I really believe I was in a fair way of falling in love with him," she
said aloud, when she had reached the end. "And he--he looked upon me as
he would upon any good model that chanced to fall in his way; studied
my face, so that he might steal it from me, and ruthlessly insulted
every womanly feeling I have. If I had been anything more to him, if he
had even taken a deep interest in me, he would never have had the heart
to make such a display of me, he would never have subjected me to such
ideas!--Oh, it is shameful! I will never, never forgive him that!"

A passionate feeling of pain, like the anger and indignation that had
overwhelmed her in the first moment of the discovery, once more flamed
within her. She threw the book into the drawer and hastily locked it
up. Then she paced up and down through her entire suite of rooms, and
struggled to calm her mood again.

But it was not so easy as she had expected. For the first time she
failed to understand the voices that were speaking in her heart, nor
could she silence them. A feeling had come over this mature, firm
nature, such as seldom takes possession of any but the young in the
time of their earliest development; that oppressing sense of delight
that is almost akin to pain, that threatens to burst the heart, and
that makes the thought of dying and passing quietly away so grateful as
if death were nothing but a gentle sinking into some unfelt deep that
is brimming over with flowers.

Her anger had suddenly passed away. She tried hard, as soon as she was
conscious of this, to picture to herself her insulter in the most
repulsive shape. Not succeeding in that, she made an attempt to be
angry with herself, to reproach herself for her womanish weakness, in
being frivolous enough to feel flattered by this robbery. But she
succeeded little better than before; one thing only stood before her
mind, that he and she were in the world together, and that they had
both thought of one another at the same moment.

The door opened softly; the old servant stepped in and announced that
Mr. Jansen wished to pay his respects.

                              CHAPTER VII.

Of course he had come to apologize. Angelica must have urged the
necessity of his doing so very strongly indeed: must have depicted to
him in pretty glowing colors the anger of her deeply insulted friend,
to judge from the fact of his knocking at her door but two hours after.
Her first thought was to refuse to see him. But then, what if he should
be disposed to treat the matter altogether too lightly; what if he
thought to appease her by some jesting or even gallant apology? Well,
she would soon let him know with whom he had to deal, and that he could
not escape so easily. Had she not been called "the girl without a
heart," and was she not at this moment without friend or protector,
forced to rely entirely upon her native dignity, which had just been so
audaciously insulted?

"If the gentleman would have the goodness--I should be very glad to see
him--very glad!"

She stood in the middle of the room as he entered. Her beautiful face
had struggled hard to assume its coldest and haughtiest expression. But
with the first look that she cast upon the visitor, the armor of ice
that she had fastened about her bosom melted away.

For, in fact, a very different man from the one she had expected stood
before her. Where was the confident smile that sought to make the
matter appear in the light of a jest, or even of an act of homage?
Where the confidence with which the famous master reckons upon
absolution for the sin of having made an unknown beauty immortal?

It was true, he did not appear quite like a penitent malefactor. Erect,
and with a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head, he saluted
her, and his eyes did not avoid hers; on the contrary, they even dwelt
upon her features with so gloomy a fire that she involuntarily lowered
her eyelids, and asked herself in secret whether she was not the guilty
one after all, since this man appeared before her so sad and
melancholy.

"Gnädiges Fräulein," he said, "I have given you reason to be very
angry with me. I merely come to inform you that the cause of your
displeasure is already removed. If you were willing to visit my
_atelier_ again--which, unfortunately, I must doubt--you would see in
the place where your own features confronted you this morning nothing
but a shapeless mass."

"You have--you really ought to have--"

"I have done at once what I owed to you, in order that you might not
form a wrong opinion of me. Sooner or later I should have had to do it
in any case--even though no one had urged me to it. I wish sincerely
that you would believe me when I say this--though I scarcely dare to
hope so, since you do not know me--and are perhaps still too angry with
me not to--not to believe me capable of any piece of discourtesy."

"I?--I confess--I have until now thought neither well nor ill of--"

She did not complete the sentence--she felt that she blushed, as she
tried to assure him of her complete indifference--three steps from the
drawer where her confessions were lying.

"I know it," continued he; and his dark glance wandered over the
dimly-lighted room. "I am so perfectly indifferent to you, that it
must, after all, be very easy for you to pardon something that cannot
have awakened any very strong personal feeling in your mind. One who is
entirely unknown to us cannot insult us. When he has taken back again
that with which he has wounded us, it is as if nothing had happened.
And so I might perhaps take my leave of you, gnädiges Fräulein, with
the renewed assurance of my sincere regret that I have unconsciously
offended you."

She made a scarcely perceptible motion toward the sofa, as if she would
invite him to be seated. He was much too occupied with his own thoughts
to pay any attention to it.

"Perhaps it is folly," continued he, after a pause--"perhaps more than
that--wrong, if I intrude any longer, and give you an explanation for
which you have no desire, and which will perhaps strike you
disagreeably, since it turns upon something that cannot but be a matter
of perfect indifference to you: not much more interesting than if you
should hear there had been a thunderstorm at a place forty miles away,
and that the lightning had struck a tree. Still--now that I have
acknowledged my wrong and have done all in my power to make it good
again--I owe it to myself not to permit you to take a worse view of me
than I have really deserved. When, before a court of justice, one can
put forth the plea of mental irresponsibility, it is considered the
most important of all mitigating circumstances. Now this is just the
case in which I find myself placed in regard to you. I can plead, as an
excuse for the insane thought of giving your features to my Eve, the
fact that since I first saw you I have actually been insane; that
waking or dreaming no other face floated before me except yours; that I
have gone about as if in a fever, and that I knew no better way of
dealing with my hopeless passion than by striving, shut up alone in my
workshop, to reproduce your face--and wretchedly enough did I succeed!"

He made a movement as though he were about to leave her; but once again
he remained where he was, and appeared to be struggling painfully for
words.

"You are silent, Fräulein," he continued. "I know you think it very
strange that I should endeavor to atone for a great and almost
unpardonable act of audacity, by committing a still greater one.
Perhaps you will not believe me, or will consider me a raving madman
for betraying to you, after so short an acquaintance, a passion that
has carried me beyond all bounds of propriety and decorum. But you
would judge differently, if you knew in what dreariness and isolation
of heart I have passed the five years since I came to Munich; that not
an hour's happiness has been vouchsafed to me; that no womanly being
capable of awakening a single deeper thought has come near me. It is
true I have not thought it worth my while to seek for such
companionship. I have deluded myself with the idea that I missed
nothing, that my heart and feelings did not hunger and thirst--until
you suddenly crossed my path--and then this sudden vision of beauty and
grace, coming as it did after long loneliness, brought about an
intoxication that has completely robbed me of my senses.

"I doubt whether this explanation will be clear to you. I know nothing
more of you than your enthusiastic friend, our good Angelica, has told
us. Perhaps you may never have had any experience yourself that would
lead you to believe that a passion which bursts so suddenly upon
reasonable men could be found anywhere but in a fairy tale. Enough, I
thought I owed it to myself to tell you of this fact, merely as a
singular instance that need trouble you no farther. And now, permit me
to take my leave. I--I should really have nothing more to tell you, and
as for you--I find it no more than right that you should prefer to
reply only by silence to such singular and extraordinary disclosures."

"No," she cried suddenly, as he already had his hand upon the
door-knob; "it is not so right as you think, for one to tell all that
he has upon his heart, while the other only accepts it all, and gives
no confidence in return. To be sure, I know very well--I must attribute
much of what you have confided to me to the easily-excited fantasy of
an artist. Nevertheless, I am not so vain as not to imagine that in the
course of five years you have never encountered a face fairer and more
blooming than this of mine, that I have now borne about with me for
full thirty-one. And for that reason I am almost forced to believe that
there really is a secret bond of fate that quickly draws two human
beings together in an altogether inexplicable way. For see--" she
continued, covered with a confusion that only made her more beautiful,
as she opened the drawer of her writing-desk and drew forth her
diary--"I, too, although I perhaps knew less of you than you of me--I,
too, have often had you with me in my thoughts--and since you have
destroyed again the image that you took from me without my knowledge,
ought not I also to destroy those pages in which you are spoken of--"

She made a gesture as if she were about to tear out the pages. In an
instant he had sprung to her side and had seized firm hold of her hand.

"Julie!" he cried, as if beside himself; "is it true--is it possible?
Your thoughts were with me?--and in these pages--I beseech you, let me
have but one look--only let me see one line, so that I shall not think
that you have invented all this in order to give me comfort, and to
relieve me from my shame--"

"Shame!" she whispered. "But cannot you see that in spite of my
thirty-one years I am trembling like a child detected in some
naughtiness? Must I really read aloud to you out of this book what
you--what you might long ago have guessed from my silence--if you had
not been trembling so yourself?"

The last words died away on her lips. The book slipped from her hands
and fell on the carpet, where it lay without his bending to pick it up.

A kind of stupor had come over him. He seized both her hands and
clasped them so tightly that it pained her; but the pain did her good.
His face was so near hers that she could see every muscle in it quiver;
his eyes gleamed with a wild fire, like the gaze of a somnambulist. And
yet she had no horror of him. She would gladly have stood so forever,
and have felt her hands in his, and have encountered the power of his
fixed gaze.

It was only when she felt that her eyes were on the point of
overflowing, and feared that he might misunderstand it, that she said
softly, smilingly shaking her head: "Don't you believe me even yet?"

Then at last he released her hands, threw his arms about her yielding
figure, and pressed her wildly to his breast.

A noise was heard in the front room; the old servant apparently wished
to remind the visitor, by the rattling of plates and knives and forks,
that dinner-time was something that must be respected.

As if startled out of a dream, Jansen suddenly tore himself from
Julie's arms. "Unhappy wretch that I am!" cried he, hoarsely, covering
his face with his hands. "Oh, God! Where have I let myself be carried?"

"You have only followed where our hearts had already led!" said Julie,
with a happy smile, while her moist eyes sought his. "What is the
matter with you, best and dearest friend?" she continued, anxiously,
for he was about to seize his hat. "You are going--and now? What drives
you away from me? Who--who can part us? What have I done that you again
turn away from me? My best and dearest friend, I entreat you--"

He struggled hard to answer; a dark red flush overspread his pale face.
"Do not ask me now," he stammered; "this blessed hour--this
inconceivable happiness--no--it must--it cannot be!--Forgive--forget--"

At this moment the old servant opened the door; he cast a look at the
visitor that could hardly be interpreted as an invitation to stay
longer. Jansen stepped hastily up to the agitated and speechless girl.
"You shall hear from me soon, everything. Forgive--and may you be
forever blessed for this hour!"

He seized her hand and pressed it passionately to his lips. Then he
rushed from the room, followed by the old servant shaking his head,
while Julie gazed after him, lost in a maze of conflicting emotions.

It is true that the moment she was alone again the happiness of knowing
that her love was returned overpowered all feelings of doubt that had
been awakened within her. His mysterious behavior, his sudden flight,
his strange awakening from the sweetest realization of a hopeless
dream, ought that to make her distrust him, when it merely confirmed
what he had said of himself; that this intoxication had driven him out
of his senses? And was it not best upon the whole that this miracle
which had happened to them both should not be reduced all at once to an
affair of everyday life, but that they should part, bearing away with
them in their hearts their new-found treasure in all its fullness?
To-morrow--to-morrow he will come again, and all will be new and
wonderful once more, as it was to-day; and is that day lost which one
can spend in thoughts of one's great happiness, or that night in which
one can dream of it?

She threw back her head, as if in doing so she would shake from her the
last remaining doubts. Then she stepped to the mirror, and began to
rearrange her hair that her violent friend had completely disordered.
What would her old servant have thought had he found her in this state?
As she thought of this she smiled mysteriously at her own image, as if
it were a _confidante_ who alone knew of some great happiness that had
just fallen to her lot. Little as she ordinarily cared to look at her
own reflection, to-day she could not tear herself away from the glass;
"So, to please him, one must look as I do," she said to herself.

"I wonder whether he saw this wrinkle here, and that deep line, and all
those traces that these hateful, anxious years have left upon my face?
But it cannot be helped now; I have not cheated him, at all events, and
besides, he has eyes of his own--and such eyes!"

Then she sighed again and pressed her hand to her heart. "Who would
have dreamed it?" she said, once more walking up and down: "only
yesterday and I was so calm here--wearied and tired of life--and
to-day!--And not a soul besides us two knows anything of it! Angelica,
it is true--I wonder whether she suspects nothing?--the good soul!
Perhaps I ought to go and confess to her.--But would not that look as
if I wanted to boast to her of my happiness? And then I will wager that
she herself is secretly in love with him--who could live under the same
roof with him and resist it?--'Julie Jansen'--It sounds as though it
could never have been otherwise since the world began."

Suddenly the room felt so close and oppressive to her that she sent the
old servant to call her a droschke, that she might go out into the air
for a while. He was allowed to take a seat on the box, and in this way
they drove at a slow trot around the English Garden. The beautiful
weather, and the fact that it was Sunday, had filled all the avenues
and paths with people; all the beer-gardens were gay with music and
thronging crowds. Heretofore she had never felt at home among these
multitudes of merry people, for her solitary life with her unhappy
mother had made her unaccustomed to scenes of noise and confusion. But
to-day, she would like nothing better than to have joined the throng,
feeling that she really belonged there now; for had not she too found a
sweetheart, like all these other girls dressed in their Sunday clothes?
She ordered the carriage to stop in front of the Chinese tower, and sat
there for a long time, listening, and really moved by the music of a
band that would on any other day have provoked a smile. The people who
passed her wondered at the beautiful, solitary Fräulein, who sat, lost
in thought, gazing up at the tree tops. They did not know that the
color of the sky, up there between the two tall silver poplars,
recalled certain eyes that were ever present to the lady in the
carriage.

It was already dusk when she reached home after her drive. A note was
lying on the table, that had been brought during her absence. She felt
a shock of alarm as she took it up. If it should be from him--if he had
written, instead of coming himself; and yet, although she had never
seen his handwriting, it was impossible that these lines could be his;
they were in a woman's hand. With a quieter heart she stepped to the
window, and read these words:

"A person unknown to you, whose name is of no consequence, feels it her
duty to warn you, honored Fräulein, against a man whose attentions to
you can no longer be a secret, since he is regularly to be found every
evening before your window, and to-day even went so far as to pay you a
visit. This letter is to tell you that this man has a wife, and a child
six years of age; a fact, however, which he carefully conceals from all
his acquaintances. Leaving it to you to form your own opinion of this
conduct, the writer signs herself respectfully, N. N."

Half an hour after, the bell in Julie's room was rung. The old servant
found his mistress sitting at her writing-desk, with a calm face, but
with traces of tears still on her cheeks, that she had forgotten to
wipe away. She had just sealed a letter, which she now handed to the
old man.

"See that this letter is delivered to-day, Erich, and at the studio; I
do not know where Herr Jansen lodges. Tell the janitor to hand it to
him the first thing to-morrow morning. And now, bring me something to
eat. We were cheated out of our dinner. I--I shall die of exhaustion
unless I eat something."

The anonymous note was inclosed in the letter to Jansen. Julie had
added nothing but the words:

"I shall be at home all day to-morrow. Come and give me back my faith
in mankind and my own heart.

                       "Your                          Julie."

                             CHAPTER VIII.

On this very afternoon Felix had carried out a resolution that he had
long had in mind, and had sought out the two friends, Elfinger and
Rosenbusch, in their own quarters.

They occupied two rooms in the third story of a somewhat tumble-down
house, which, situated in one of the quaint old streets of the
city, concealed its little fantastically-framed windows under a
far-projecting roof, like purblind eyes under bushy eyebrows.

Felix had often passed without ever having persuaded himself to enter
the untidy-looking vestibule, and climb the dark stairs. To-day, since
the dissipation of the previous night and the fact of its being Sunday
condemned him to idleness, he determined to fulfill at length the duty
he owed to civility. Moreover, he had begun the day before to take a
great interest in Elfinger, and wished very much to have an hour's more
intimate talk with him.

Luckily he chanced, at his first attempt, to knock at the right door,
although, on account of the absolute darkness on the upper landing, it
was impossible to make out the names; and, upon entering, he saw
Elfinger jump up hastily from a chair, where he had been sitting
apparently entirely unoccupied.

As the street, which was not especially lively even on a weekday,
reposed to-day in the most profound Sunday quiet, Felix wondered
what it could have been that had held his attention there, especially
when he noticed that the actor, who was generally so ready and
self-possessed, showed evident signs of embarrassment as he hastened
forward to welcome him, and, as if to keep him away from the window,
forced him to take a seat upon the sofa.

But he soon recovered his easy bearing again.

"You are looking at the walls," said he, "and are wondering that I
still preserve these mementoes of my stage days, these pictures of
great actors and my pretty colleagues of the fair sex, and even the
obligatory laurel-wreath, with its satin ribbons, that is never lacking
in any true actor's domicile. If my present employer should ever by
chance condescend to visit his clerk, I should, it is true, have done
far better had I hung up a bulletin of the stock boards instead of the
lithograph of Seydelmann as _Mephistophiles_. But, as I am safe up here
from all _haute finance_, I think I may be allowed, without injury to
my reputation as a sound accountant, to surround myself with all those
relics that I hold sacred, even that all-too-flaming sword over there,
that drove me from my paradise of the footlights."

He pointed to a rapier that hung on the wall opposite the sofa,
arranged with a few pistols and fencing-gloves in the form of a trophy,
underneath which hung a picture in water colors representing Elfinger
in the costume of _Hamlet_.

"Yes," he continued, with a quiet smile; "if the point of that sword
had not slipped in the hands of an unskillful _Laertes_, and entered
the eye of the unfortunate _Hamlet_, I should hardly have had the
pleasure of seeing you in my chambers just at this particular moment. I
should probably have been sitting in my dressing-room at the theatre,
painting myself to fit the character of an _Alba_ or a _Richard III._,
for this evening's performance. Whether the public has lost much by it,
I can't say. At all events, there is no doubt that I have gained."

"I am amazed that you can speak so cold-bloodedly of something that any
other man would regard as the great misfortune of his life. After the
high opinion of your talents that I was led to form by your performance
of yesterday--"

"Do not allow yourself to be deceived by a little bit of coarse humor,
my excellent friend. A man, can rid himself of any other kind of
homesickness sooner or later; but no one who has once felt himself at
home behind the footlights can ever be free from homesickness for the
stage. I must confess that I felt a real pang of envy when I took my
little troupe of yesterday out of their box, and rigged them out for
the play. Now, does not that positively border on insanity? But reason
counts for nothing in such a case. I know that I, with my average
talent, could never have attained the highest point of eminence, and
that for that reason I ought to feel nothing but gratitude toward my
friend _Laertes_ for pushing me back into that obscurity where I can
plod comfortably along on the golden, path of mediocrity. And yet all
my philosophy oozes away the moment the conversation turns upon the
theatre."

"But should not this be so? and since you are justified in thinking
yourself a born actor, what reason have you for believing that the
highest distinction would have been denied you? Why should not your
fate strike you as a tragical one?"

"Because with all my good qualifications, especially for declamation, I
am not only a born actor but also a born German, which, I admit, sounds
like a very palpable paradox. But just consider our race a moment. In
spite of some rare exceptions, that stand out almost like miracles and
that merely prove the rule, it may be said to possess scarcely a single
qualification that would enable it to reach any decided greatness in
the art! Ought not the actor to be able to shed his own skin when he
slips into that of another? And when did a true German ever exist that
could put himself in another's place? When was he ever untrue to
himself?--when did he ever deny his personal virtues and faults? Don't
you see, the very thing that makes our people so respectable stands in
the way of our acting. We are not a people given to impersonation, to
posing, and to representation. We are sublime in our earnestness, and
silly in our trifling. We like best to sit still in our private corner
behind the stove, and we grow red and awkward if we have to pass
through a room where there are ten unknown men, or even as many ladies,
watching us. Only the highest problems of tragic poetry give us wings
to lift us over these chasms. When we attempt to walk with metrical
feet, which are shod with winged shoes, we get on very well. But on our
own flat every-day extremities, we stumble so wretchedly that an
ordinary Frenchman or Italian, who can neither read nor write, appears
like a prince of the blood beside us."

"I wish I were able to deny all this," said Felix. "Unfortunately we
have no real society; and where we have the germs of one, actors are as
a rule excluded from it. But though that part of your art that has to
do with the representation of human beings and a characteristic
imitation of life suffers from this, the higher branches still continue
to be our domain; and if you compare the art of tragedy among the
Italians or the French with our representations of Shakespeare and
Goethe--"

"That is all very true," interrupted the actor; "in what is spiritual
and belongs to an inner consciousness, we can always bear comparison
with our neighbors. But only wait ten years longer and you will see
that not a soul here in Germany will ever think of going to see a
tragedy, and our classical theatre will be then just such another
puppet-show as the Théâtre Français is now. Ought we to be surprised at
this? All tragedy is aristocratic. Why should the hero leave this world
with such sublimity and grandeur if it were not that he found it too
miserable for him to feel comfortable in? But he who finds the world a
wretched place insults all those to whom it appears most charming,
because, with their low desires, they are able to take comfort in it.
And inasmuch as the good of the masses will become more and more the
watchword, as time goes on, therefore he who towers above the masses
must not be disappointed if he finds that he cannot be of much use
either in real life or behind the footlights. Tragical heroes are only
possible where social differences exist; where the ordinary man looks
on with a certain respect while a _Coriolanus_ conquers and falls,
without thinking to himself: 'It served him right. Why did he insult us
common folk?' But with our excellent, humane, democratic way of looking
at things--"

"A depressing prospect, certainly! So the longer our nation goes on
freeing itself from prejudices and conforming to true ideas of
humanity, the less hope will there be that we shall ever be able to cut
a good figure on the stage?"

"On the contrary, I think then is the time when we shall really first
begin. Self-respect is one of the most important requisites even in the
acting of a comedy. When we have once taken our place among the nations
of Europe, when we have rid ourselves of our dullness and tactlessness
in our dealings with the outside world, when we cease to be such
wretched crawlers that we will go through any humiliation for our
daily-bread's sake, and cannot conduct ourselves like gentlemen, then
you will see how quickly we shall find the art of acting infused into
our blood--we who have been for so many centuries mere zealous animals.
To be sure, in regard to tragedy it is a question whether we shall ever
succeed, in our better days, in attaining sufficient earnestness and
reverence to enable us to keep in mind the fact that, as old Goethe
says, 'awe is mankind's best quality'--"

He seemed about to talk still further of his hopes and fears; and
Felix, to whom many of these ideas were new, and to whom the speaker,
with his unselfish warmth, grew more and more attractive as he went on,
would gladly have listened half through the night. But the door was
noisily thrown open, and Rosenbusch made his appearance on his friend's
threshold arrayed in a costume the comicality of which irresistibly
swept away all these serious considerations.

He had had his red beard shaved off, leaving only a diminutive mustache
and a pair of side whiskers; his flowing hair was elegantly arranged;
he wore an old-fashioned black coat, and a tall stove-pipe hat, brushed
smooth and shining.

"You may well laugh!" cried he, knitting his brows tragically at his
friends. "If you only knew how a man felt who was yesterday in
Paradise, and to-day is forced to get himself up in such a toilet as
this, as if he were going to his execution. The executioner's minion,
who cut my hair, has just left me. Whoever wishes to have a lock of
hair of the celebrated battle-painter Maximilian Rosenbusch will find
them lying about, like useless wool, on the floor of the adjoining
room. O Delila, for whom I have suffered this! O Nanny, for whose sake
I cut my noble hair!--for whom I dress myself in this Philistine
fashion!"

He stopped, and now revealed to Felix that he was on the point of
taking the most painful step of his life. In the opposite house lived
the object of his desire, the muse of his songs, the beautiful daughter
of a glovemaker, with whom he had been madly in love for the last six
months, so that he could positively hold out no longer. He had received
quite enough tokens to show him that his love was returned; indeed he
had an assurance, written on rose-colored paper and exhibiting one or
two orthographical liberties, that if the parents did not say no their
little daughter would certainly say yes. In order to have this question
decided, he had been obliged to assume his present masquerading
costume, notwithstanding the fact that the carnival was still far off.
For papa glovemaker had no very exalted opinion of artists of the
ordinary type.

"Therefore, my friends, drop a tear for the departed splendors of my
noble head, and pray for my poor soul, that it may soon be released
from this purgatory and admitted to the joys of the blessed. And,
by-the-way, how is it, Elfinger? Don't you want to slip on your best
coat and come with me? Then the whole thing would be finished at one
go."

Felix saw that the actor blushed, and cast a look of displeasure at his
loquacious friend.

"Ah! to be sure!" replied the latter, stepping in front of the glass
and winking at Felix as he passed, "you haven't slept off your headache
from last night. Hm! Another time, then. It seems to me, do you know, I
look devilish respectable, and the glovemaker's little daughter will
make no end of a good match in catching a person of my tone and style.
Look, there she sits over there at her post, the little witch, and at
the other window, completely absorbed in her work, is her pious sister.
_Sua cuique_-- Well, I won't quote any further, Elfinger, my boy! But
now, I must wend my way to the high tribunal. Will you accompany me,
friend baron? You must support me with spiritual comfort, in case I
should show signs of weakness by the way. To be sure, I have just been
working up my courage by three beautiful strophes; but a lyric of that
sort, strongly diluted with water, does not last long, and a more
spiritual elixir for the heart cannot be prepared off-hand. May Heaven
take me in its safe keeping! Amen! Well, Elfinger, you shall hear
before long how it turns out!"

Upon this he pressed his hat down firmly on his forehead, nodded to his
friend with a comical expression of misery and despair, and dragged
Felix with him from the room.

On the stairs he suddenly stood still and said, in a suppressed and
mysterious voice:

"Our friend up-stairs has the same trouble worse than I have. He is
smitten with the other one; but she is a little saint, as much of a
nun, thanks to her education with the English sisters, as my little
witch is a child of the world for the same reason. Now just conceive of
it, the more my little imp carries on--it will be hard work making a
sensible housewife of her--the more zealously does our good Fanny
confess and do penance and pray, and it really looks as if she were
seriously intent upon gaining a saint's halo. The fact is the girls
never associate with sensible people, and for that reason one of us
must sacrifice himself so that the ice will at last be broken, although
I confess it is pure madness on my part to think of marrying. You have
no idea, my dear friend, what extraordinary cobwebs gather in an old
Munich burgherhouse like this. Well, a few fresh fellows like us--I
imagine it would not take us long to bring new life into it, if we were
only once inside!"

He sighed, and appeared not to be in the most courageous mood,
notwithstanding his brave words. Felix accompanied him across the
street and saw him enter the narrow, arched door next to the glove
store, which was closed on account of its being Sunday--going in with
an assumed air of boldness, as if he were going to a dance.

Then he himself wandered aimlessly down the street. In what direction
should he turn his steps? In the whole city there was no one who would
be looking for him to-day, and the one to whom he felt most drawn was,
strangely enough, on Sunday afternoons farther out of his reach than at
any other time.

He was deliberating whether he should not hire a horse again and dash
away across the country, when companionship was unexpectedly thrown in
his way, of a kind that a man in his frame of mind could not but
welcome.

                              CHAPTER IX.

His way led him along the Dultplatz, past the beer-garden in which he
had sat with his friends on his first Sunday in Munich. The music was
playing as before, but the people sat about under the lanterns, that
had just been lighted, in rather a sleepy and listless way, for the day
showed as yet no sign of growing cooler.

Near the fence that separated the garden from the street, a Dachau
peasant-family had taken possession of one of the tables, leaving only
one end free. Their extraordinary, ugly costume attracted the attention
of Felix as he went wandering by. But his gaze soon turned from their
ridiculous dress and fixed on a slim girlish figure, closely wrapped in
a dark shawl, who sat at the other end of the table, with a full glass
and an empty plate before her, at which she seemed to have been staring
for some time, with her head resting on her hands and her elbows
planted on the table, as if utterly regardless of what was going on
about her. Nothing could be seen of the face, but a little, white,
short nose; her straw hat and a veil that hung half down over the
little hands threw the rest into shadow. But the little nose, and the
thick red hair, carelessly confined by a net, left not a moment's doubt
in Felix's mind that this picture of solitary melancholy was no other
than Red Zenz.

As he stepped softly up to her, touched her familiarly on the shoulder,
and pronounced her name, she looked up with a frightened start, and,
with eyes red from weeping, gazed into the face of the unexpected
comforter, as if she took him for a ghost. But the moment she
recognized him, she hastily wiped her eyes with the back of her little
round hand, and smiled upon him with undisguised pleasure. He asked
compassionately what it was that made her so heavy-hearted, and why she
sat here all alone; and, drawing up a chair, he seated himself between
one of the horrible young peasant-girls and the melancholy little
Bacchante. Then she told him what the trouble was. "Black Pepi," her
friend, the girl with whom she had been living, had suddenly "proved
false" to her, because her (Pepi's) lover, a young surgeon, had
declared red to be the most beautiful color. He afterward apologized
for it by saying that, of course, with his profession, it was only
natural that he should prefer the color of the blood to any other. But
it had for some time past appeared to Pepi that her faithless lover
paid rather more attention to her friend than was permissible in such a
case; and so, after a very violent scene, she had not only broken off
the friendship, but had given her notice that she could no longer share
her quarters with her. Furthermore, inasmuch as Zenz was still owing
rent for several months, she had seized upon the few things she had to
hold as security, and had then driven her from the house with only the
clothes she had on at the time.

"Only see," said the girl, lifting her dark shawl; "she did not even
leave me a respectable dress: if it had not been for the shawl that the
landlady lent me, I should have been ashamed to go across the street."

And it was really so; she wore a simple sack of striped cotton under
her black covering, that she carefully wrapped about her again. But now
it began to look as though she no longer troubled herself in the least
about the adventure that had so recently made her weep. The pale
little face that she turned toward her neighbor, brightly illuminated
by the lantern, had even lost its expression of anger at this
insulting treatment and betrayal of friendship, and beamed again with
light-heartedness and irrepressible enjoyment.

"And what are you going to do, Zenz?"

"I don't know yet. I shall manage to find some place to stay at. I
could go to the Rochus garden, or the Neusigl, where I lodged when I
first came here; but the waiters there have keys to the doors, and I
have found that it is not safe there. And anywhere else, where I am not
known, they might think that I would not be able to pay for the room,
and I really have no money but a few kreutzers. I should have to pawn
the ring that I have from my poor dead mother. Well, the day is not
over yet, and I can think the matter over again."

"To be sure," continued she, after a pause, during which Felix sat, as
if in a dream, gazing at her red lips and her white teeth, that one
could have counted when she spoke, "to be sure, I might fare well
enough if I only would! So well, that that false black cat Pepi would
envy me."

"If you only would, Zenz?"

"Yes, if I were willing to be wicked!" she added, in a low tone, and
for a moment her face grew serious. But in the next instant she laughed
merrily again, as if she would laugh away the flush that had suffused
her face.

"Do you know an artist named Rossel?"

"Certainly. Edward Rossel. What of him?"

"He came to see me about a week ago. He said he had seen the figure
that Herr Jansen modeled from me, and he said, if I would come to him
and stand as a model, he would pay me three times as well for it."

"And why haven't you gone to him?"

"Hm!--because I didn't like him. I will not hire myself out in that way
for the gentlemen, so that every one will know me and say: 'Aha! that
is Red Zenz!' I am sorry enough that I stood to please Herr Jansen,
although he is such a good gentleman. But now they know my address, and
they think that is as much as to say that I will go and be a model for
any one who wants me."

"Didn't you like Herr Rossel?"

"No. Not at all. He doesn't look in the least as if he were an artist,
and wanted to study from a model. He made such big eyes--No! I sent him
off with a flea in his ear. And then he went to Pepi to get her to
persuade me. But she knows me. She went to him herself, for she thought
he would just as soon have one as another. But he only gave her a
gulden and sent her away again, saying that he had no time just then,
and that he happened to particularly want red hair. Then she flew out
again about red. I have heard though that Herr Rossel lives like a
prince, and Pepi said that if I were not a fool--at that time she was
not so down on me--I might make my fortune."

"But are you going to continue such a fool all your life long, Zenz?"

"I don't know," replied she, frankly. "Nobody is sure of herself when
she is young and has plenty of time on her hands. But I think as long
as I have my five senses about me--"

She hesitated.

"Well, Zenz?" he asked, taking one of her little hands, with its
fingers' ends roughened by work, in one of his.

"So long," she said, quietly, "I will not do such a thing to please
anyone whom I do not love."

"And how must the man look whom you could love? Only like Herr Jansen?"

She laughed. "Oh! no. He is so much older than I. I only like him in
just the same way that I might have liked my father. He must be younger
and very nice, and--"

She stopped abruptly, looked askance at him, a little coquettishly, and
said: "But what nonsense we are talking! Won't you eat and drink
something, or has the scarecrow next you there taken away all your
appetite!"

She glanced disapprovingly at his neighbors, who looked, with their
nodding cap-borders and strait-laced Sunday suits, for all the world
like stuffed dolls, and did not understand a word of what had been said
by the other two.

"Zenz," said Felix, without answering her; "do you know you could stop
over night in my quarters just as well as not? I have two rooms: you
could bolt the door between them if you should feel any fear of me, and
each room has a separate entrance. What do you think about it?"

"You are only joking!" she hastily replied, without the slightest
embarrassment; "you would never think of encumbering yourself with such
a poor, ugly thing as I am."

"Ugly? I don't find you at all ugly, Zenz. And if you only cared to be
a model for me, as you do for Herr Jansen--Do you know, he has kept me
for weeks studying an old skeleton and a lay figure, and I am
forgetting over such work the very sight of a human being."

She shook her head, laughed, and then said, becoming serious again:

"That was only meant in joke, of course. I am not so simple as to let
myself be talked into believing that you are really a sculptor!"

"Well, just as you like, Zenz. I won't try to persuade you to do
anything you don't like. Come, take some beer; a new cask has just been
broached."

She drank eagerly out of his glass; and then a spirited overture was
played which interrupted their conversation for a time. Even after this
they talked entirely about other things. She told him about her former
life in Salzburg, how strict her mother had been with her, how often
she had known want, and how often of a Sunday she had sat quietly in
her chamber and had wished she might be allowed, just for once, to join
the merry, gayly-dressed throng outside, that she could only look at
from a distance. No doubt her mother had really cared for her, but for
all that she let her feel that her existence was an eternal reproach
and burden to her. Of course she cried when she lost her mother, but
her grief did not last long. The pleasure of feeling herself free soon
dried her tears. Now, to be sure--all alone as she was, without a soul
in all the wide world to trouble itself whether she lived or died--now,
she sometimes felt that she would give up everything if she could only
be back again at her mother's side.

"That is always the way," concluded she, with a nod of the head that
looked droll enough in its seriousness, "one never has what one wants;
and still, people say one ought to be contented. Sometimes I wish I
were dead. And then again I feel as if I would like to promenade up and
down the live-long summer through, wear beautiful dresses, live like a
princess, and--"

"And be made love to by a prince--isn't it so?"

"Of course. Alone, one can have no happiness. What would be the use of
my princess's dresses, unless I could drive some one perfectly crazy
with them?"

He gazed so steadfastly in her eyes, that she suddenly blushed and was
silent. The strange mixture of lightheartedness and melancholy in the
poor child, of enjoyment of life and reserve, of secret love and
introspective moralizing, attracted him more and more. Then, too, the
night, the subdued light of the lanterns, and the stirring music, and
his own loneliness of heart, and his seven-and-twenty years--

"Zenz," he whispered, bending over so near to her ear that his lips
almost touched her neck, "if you would only care just a little bit for
me, why shouldn't we fare just as well as if you really were a princess
and I a prince?"

She did not answer. Her lips were parted, she breathed quickly, and her
nostrils quivered, while her eyes were tightly shut, as if it were all
a dream from which she did not wish to wake.

"We could lead a life like that in Paradise," continued he, gently
stroking with his own the two little hands that she had laid side by
side on the table. "We are both of us two stray children for whom no
one cares. If we should stay at home a year and a day, and never let
ourselves be seen, who would inquire what had become of us? All about
us people live and love and think only about themselves! Why should not
we think only of ourselves, too?"

"Go away from me!" answered she, in a low voice. "You are not in
earnest. You think about me? Not even in your dreams. How can you care
for me? Such a red-haired little monkey, as Black Pepi called me
today!"

"Your hair is very pretty. I remember yet how pretty it made you look,
when you let it hang loose over your blue cloak that morning in Herr
Jansen's studio, when you ran away so fast. And now I will hold you
tight by it. Come! I thought we were going? It begins to be cool; at
least, I see that you are trembling."

"Not from cold!" she said, in a strange tone, as she stood up and
wrapped her shawl tightly about her.

Then, without waiting for him to ask her, she took his arm and they
left the garden.

                               CHAPTER X.

She did not ask where he was leading her, and indeed spoke very little
more, and scarcely betrayed by any sign whether she was listening to
what he said, or was entirely absorbed in her own thoughts. He had
begun by telling her, with a kind of forced liveliness, about all sorts
of things that he thought would interest her; about the women in the
countries on the other side of the ocean, their way of dressing, their
songs and dances, and their ideas about love and men. As she made no
reply to it all, he at last grew silent too. For a moment he felt a
keen pang of pain, when, by the light of a street lamp, he caught sight
of his own shadow and that of the girl swaying before them on the
ground. How came he to constitute himself the knight of this poor
creature, who clung so tightly to his arm that he realized well enough
it would not be easy to shake her off again?

Six weeks ago, in another city--it was a summer night, too--in what a
different mood had he returned home from a walk, and in what different
company! But that was passed forever. Should he wander about in the
desert all his life long in sackcloth and ashes, and turn his back upon
all the happiness of existence? Who would be benefited by his
sacrifice? And yet, why could he not suppress this obstinate pain, this
remembrance of past days that sought to fill him with disgust at the
lighthearted life of this "city of pleasure?"

He would not let his life be ruined by a spectre, he would carry his
head high and sneer away all attacks of sentimentality. Laughing
defiantly, to silence the low, far-off voice in his heart, he released
his arm from the girl's, only to put it still tighter and more tenderly
about her shoulder.

"Zenz," he said, "you are a darling little sweetheart. It would be a
sin if you should not know where to lay your head. Do you see that
house over there, with the lamp burning in front? That is where I live,
and no one has a key to all the doors. How would it be if we should
play hide-and-seek there for a time, with all this tiresome world?"

He merrily lifted her up from the ground, as if he would carry her over
the street into the house; but she suddenly released herself and
pointed anxiously to two riders, who were already so close upon them
that they were forced to run to get by them.

"You little goose!" he laughed, "surely you are not afraid of two
people on horseback, and they peaceful Sunday riders--"

The word died on his lips. As the light of the lantern fell on the
faces of the two horsemen, he recognized in the one the lean profile
and the black imperial of Lieutenant Schnetz, and in the other a little
mustached gentleman, with a straw hat and a light riding-jacket.

No; it must be a mistake! How came _he_ here? He had been deceived by a
resemblance. It was only because he had so recently been thinking about
past times, that their shadow had risen up before him. What could
possibly bring the uncle of his betrothed to Munich, and in the company
of the lieutenant--he who never left his niece?

And yet--as he looked he heard him say a word or two to Schnetz, and
then there was a merry laugh.

The two rode unsuspectingly by, and long after their voices had died
away, Felix stood gazing listlessly after them in the darkness without
rousing himself from his thoughts.

It was he--Irene's uncle. But how did he come here? True, he had
distant relatives in Munich; but it was years since he had left off all
intercourse with them. Did he know, perhaps, that Felix was here in the
city? Was that why he had come, and had he perhaps brought his ward
with him? And even if it were all an accident--even the acquaintance
with Schnetz--must not he inevitably learn from the latter that the
fugitive had hidden himself here under the disguise of a sculptor's
blouse?

"What is the matter?" asked the girl, at last growing impatient. "Do
you know these gentlemen?"

"Ah! Yes," he answered, suddenly recalling where he was and with whom
he was standing here in the street. With a deep sigh he brought himself
back to the _rôle_ of protector to this poor child. He stammered a
meaningless remark about the breed of the horses and about skill in
riding, and once more offered Zenz the arm he had withdrawn in his
momentary confusion.

He led her thus across the street and into the house.

When they had reached his rooms, where the windows stood open toward
the garden, he hastened to light a lamp. And then he forced himself, in
his character of host, to show the now somewhat silent and shy girl the
arrangement of his rooms, and all the curiosities that he had brought
back from his travels. On the table lay a little Damascus dagger, which
she took up and looked at curiously. He told her how a young Spanish
lady had given it to him in Mexico. And then he remembered a bottle of
sherry that was standing in his closet, and brought it and drew the
cork.

"This is all the hospitality I can offer you," said he, still very
absently, setting down a full glass before her.

She shook her head, and could not be prevailed upon even to taste the
wine. And in all that she did she had grown very shy and timid, like a
young swallow that has flown into an inhabited room, and keeps close
pressed into a corner, where you can see the frightened heart beating
under its feathered breast.

"Will you not look and see whether you can make yourself comfortable on
the sofa?"

She did not answer, and sat still in a chair by the window, her hat
still on her head, and her shawl wrapped closely about her.

"A beautiful night," she said softly, at last. "How far you can see
from here over the city! You are very happy to be able to live in such
a beautiful place."

"Well, you can share the happiness, then. Only make yourself quite at
home. Are you tired?"

"Oh, no! but please don't trouble yourself about me. If you want to go
to sleep, I will sit here and will not stir."

He came and stood beside her by the open window.

"Well, Zenz," he said, "you must not mind if I leave you alone now. The
day has been so hot, the wretched music of that band and all sorts of
other things have given me a furious headache, and I had better get to
sleep. Good-night, child! If you want anything to amuse you, here are
all manner of things--photographs and books of pictures. I will light
you another candle. And now, make yourself comfortable. You can bolt
the door from this side, and my housekeeper goes to market early in the
morning, so that you are quite safe from her. And so, good-night!"

He touched her cheek lightly. She raised her face toward him, quietly
and submissively, and looked at him half inquiringly, half afraid. Her
lips, with their white teeth, were parted--yet now without a laugh--and
her hands lay quietly folded in her lap. Yet, as he bent over her, he
only touched the hair upon her forehead lightly with his lips.

"Good-night!" he said again.

Then he went into the adjoining room, and closed the door behind him.

                              CHAPTER XI.

At the foot of his bed stood a cabinet in which he preserved all kinds
of relics, diaries, letters--mementos of his lost love. He thrust in
his hand at random, and drew out a portfolio containing all Irene's
letters, from the first unimportant notes, in which she sent him some
communication from her uncle--her uncle had an aversion to pen and ink,
and was very glad to make use of his niece as a secretary--to the
sheets on which the fate of his life stood written.

He lit a lamp and spread out before him this chronicle of the happiest
years of his youth. Thus he sat with his back to the door of the
sitting-room, now reading, and now mechanically taking up one sheet
after the other. What could they tell him that was new? And yet these
fine, slender letters reminded him of the hand that had written them.
He had never seen any other hand that had expressed so much character,
so much delicacy and firmness, so much flexibility and noble repose. He
had often teased Irene about this, by telling her that he would
undertake to decide from the appearance of her hands whether she was
glad or sad, laughing or crying. The handwriting, too, was a very
correct expression of her impulsive and self-controlled inner nature.
Now, as he picked out here and there some particular sheet and glanced
over it again, the whole past rose up so vividly before him that he
felt as if he must suffocate in the close, lonely, sad atmosphere that
surrounded him; as if he were lying in his grave, and a voice arose
from these pages and repeated to him the history of his own life, that
now lay ruined and shattered for ever more.

"Your dear, long letter from Mexico," she wrote, "I gave to uncle to
read. He is always teasing me, because I assert that the letters of two
lovers are written to be read by two pairs of eyes only. It was not
possible, he declared, that an epistle of sixteen closely-written
pages, like your last, could be a mere love-letter; no human being
could stand such a thing, and we no longer lived, thank God, in that
paradise of letter-writers--the time of Werther. So I showed him the
Mexican letter, and he gave it back to me with one of his most comical
faces. He declared he had never before come across such a lover; here
he was giving a detailed description of a charming young girl, passing
from one handsome woman to another, as if he could think of nothing
that would give greater pleasure to his far-off sweetheart. That was
certainly rather the opposite of a love-letter; but if I was content to
make the acquaintance of all these Paquitas, Chatitas, and Mariquitas,
he would not begrudge me the pleasure, and congratulated me upon my
slight disposition to jealousy, which, to be sure, was a very useful
trait for me to have in the case of a traveler of this sort.

"I laughed, and he went off to his club, shaking his head.

"But then I grew very serious, and looked into my own heart and tried
to make out why it was that I really did not feel the faintest spark of
jealousy. Perhaps because there is room for nothing in my heart but my
love for you; neither for conceit, nor fear, nor desires, nor doubt. I
have never stopped to consider _why_ it was that we two should have
loved one another. It _was_ so; I felt that even more strongly than I
did my own existence. And for that very reason it seems to me
inconceivable that it can ever be any different. For you do not love me
because I am the most beautiful, the wisest, the wittiest, or the most
lovable person that you have ever seen, but because I am _I_ the one
person, with all that I have and all that I lack, that you will never
find a second time. So, though you may find many beyond the sea who are
more charming, more attractive, more brilliant, you will never find me
again; and because I know that, I can, when evening comes, lay your
sixteen-page letter from over the ocean under my pillow, and very
quietly go to sleep and dream of you, without feeling any desire to
snatch you, with poison and dagger, from the attractions of some
olive-colored Creole.

"For I know, dearest love--vain as it may sound, and little store as I
set by my few talents and attractions--that I alone can make you happy
as no other can; not so happy that you will never have a wish
unfulfilled; that I shall appear to you at all times the crown and
jewel of all wives, and you the chosen favorite of fortune; but as
happy as it is possible for one human being to make another, so happy
will I make you and you make me; and because we can never comprehend
this, but ask ourselves each day why it should be so, therefore our
happiness shall have no end, and no phenomenon of beauty, grace, or
wit, that ever crosses your path, will be capable of disturbing this
happiness.

"My old Christel would raise her eyebrows very ominously at this point,
and would repeat 'unjustified, entirely unjustified!' But I cannot help
it; as a rule I am timid and skeptical about anything good that is
promised to me. But when I think of our love, I overflow with boldness
and confidence. What harm can fortune do us? Is not our love itself
fortune? What tricks of fate ought we to fear, when we hear this fate,
the most important and the greatest of all, within us?

"You will not feel tempted to translate this letter for the benefit of
your Spanish lady friends. They would only pity you for having a
sweetheart who would write you about such serious matters. Ah! and yet
my whole heart laughs when I think that they are so serious with us!"

In a later letter, that had been addressed to Paris, she wrote:

"Yesterday, I was at court again, and to-day I thank heaven that I
managed to bear it, and that the headache which was caused by its
tiresomeness is only a moderate one. This undoubtedly proceeds from the
fact that I sat at supper next to the embassador for ----, who has been
in India, and who described to me, in great detail and for the third
time, the burning of a widow that he had once been present at. (They
say that he always tells the gentlemen a similar story about a
tiger-hunt.) For this reason it happened that I could think a great
deal about you, and when I can do that I am always happy. My darling,
have you yet learned to put a good face on a bad matter? To howl with
the wolves? To do homage to 'his serene highness your sovereign
prince,' without letting your own sovereignty come out too plainly? I
am afraid that, inasmuch as they don't dance the bolero here at the
court balls, and as the whole _tempo_ of our life is an _andante
maestoso_, you will soon grow impatient with all this again, and give
umbrage to some of the best and best-intentioned people in the world.
No one can understand your feeling better than I do; only to think that
your poor sweetheart, whom you have always teased about her good
breeding and her respect for conventional forms, is looked upon by the
society of this city as a very emancipated individual, or, at all
events, is notorious for being a _tête forte_! The reason of this is,
that I generally am quite dumb in the midst of all tiresome talk and
whispered gossip; but if the conversation happens to turn upon anything
deeper, upon affairs of real human interest and not merely upon court
events, then I express my true opinion, without troubling myself to
care whether it falls in with the court tone or not. And the good
people look on this as very pronounced, and not at all good form for a
young lady.

"But don't you see, my dearest, in this way I manage to make this whole
world of forms bearable, by holding my human part ready in reserve, and
looking upon all these absurd prejudices and narrow conventionalities
as something purely superficial and accidental, as unimportant as the
other habits and customs we have in our toilet, behavior, and our
living and dying? And although the forms of the circle in which our lot
has happened to place us are very often more tiresome and senseless
than in other stations, still existence can nowhere be entirely
formless, and at the most can only seem so to one who only looks upon
it as a traveler may look, and who, as an irresponsible spectator, does
not feel bound to submit himself to any of the constraint that is
incumbent upon the natives. Have not you yourself told me that even
among the students a severe etiquette prevails, according to which they
sing and drink, and fight duels, and make up their quarrels? If young
people, in the years of their happiest freedom, cannot amuse themselves
without submitting to the restraint of customs and conventionality, why
should you be so angry with our poor aristocracy, that endeavors to
console itself by these wretched devices for the emptiness of its
existence?

"It is only among ourselves that we need not submit to any formality!
Only when in his most intimate circle can one be a human being! And,
since it is so, I think we can easily spare the little tribute of
restraint that we have to render to our social equals.

"So do come back, and behave like a pink of propriety, my darling
scapegrace; and try and make your seven-league boots accommodate
themselves to the minuet step of our dear capital at least once in
every month or two. Then when we are alone again in our own four walls,
I will do all I can to make up to you for the _ennui_ you have
suffered; and I will gladly dance the bolero with you, if you will only
teach me how."

This letter was soon followed by their reunion. With what a feeling he
took up all the little notes, that at that time had but a few streets
to go, to bring messages about a walk, a visit for which he was to call
for her, or some incident that had made it impossible to keep an
engagement! These notes showed, now and then, traces of some more
serious misunderstanding that had taken place between the two lovers:
an appeal to be very gentle to-day, a promise not to refer by a
syllable to the dispute of the day before. He seemed to see again all
that he had once read between these lines.

And then came her last letter, the letter of parting:

"I am quite quiet now, Felix, or at least as quiet as one is when pain
has exhausted all one's strength. I write to you this very night, for
of course there can be no thought of sleep. I have again and again
thought it all over from the beginning, and have each time arrived at
the same conclusion--that I deceived myself in believing through all
these years that I was necessary to your happiness. Do not try to shake
this belief; I am sadly humbled, Felix, very wretched and miserable
because of this confession; but I am as sure that it is true, as I am
that I still live and breathe.

"I know that you still love me, perhaps quite as much as you have
always loved me. But one thing I did not know before, and I learn it
now with pain: you love something better than you do me--your freedom.

"You would be willing to sacrifice it, partly from chivalry, in order
that you might keep your promise; partly from kind-heartedness, for you
must feel how my whole life has hung on you, and how slowly these
wounds will heal. And yet, _it must be!_ How could anything that would
not make you perfectly happy ever be happiness to me?

"You shall be free again, and you may be so without any anxiety about
me. I have more strength than I seem to have. There is only one thing I
cannot bear: to see a sacrifice laid at my feet.

"Even if you were now willing to disclose your secret to me, it would
not alter my resolve. I would not have you think that I wanted to wring
anything from you, which you would not give to me of your own accord.
But that you should make a distinction between that which you share
with me, and that which belongs only to yourself ... it may seem
narrow-minded or weak or arrogant of me, but I cannot help myself, I
cannot rise above it.

"I shall never feel toward you, Felix, any differently from what I do
now; I shall never feel toward another as I do toward you. I have to
thank you for the best and dearest feelings that I have ever possessed
and experienced. No lapse of time can change this in the least--as
little as it can my resolve.

"Think kindly of me, too--without bitterness. And now
farewell!--farewell forever!                          Irene."

He knew this letter by heart, word for word, and yet he read it through
again, word for word, and when he came to the end all the pain, and
defiance, and anger against himself and against her blazed up within
him, as it had in the hour when he first read it. Her calmness, her
gentle strength, that he used to laugh at as artificial, although he
knew how free she was from all feminine tricks; her clear comprehension
and her courage in asserting it: all this humiliated him anew. Then,
indeed, he had comforted himself with the belief that a word from him,
a look, her name merely pronounced by his lips, would demolish the
barrier that she had raised up between them, as easily as one blows
down a tower of cards. He had bitterly deceived himself. Neither by
entreaties nor stratagems had he succeeded in again gaining access to
her. He had to admit, with a new feeling of humiliation, that she was
the stronger. Then at last he too had, as he believed, bound his breast
in the seven-fold bands of iron, and had turned away from her. For the
last time he wrote to her a short, proud, but not unkind letter, almost
like an ultimatum from one power to another. He had felt some hope in
regard to it for that very reason. When it remained unanswered, he
acknowledged that all was over.

His face had sunk down on the little portfolio, he had closed his
eyes and had given himself up, with a kind of ecstasy, to all these
bitter-sweet memories. The thought that there was any one near him had
passed completely out of his mind, and his dreams began to lapse deeper
and deeper into the haziness that usually precedes unconsciousness.

Suddenly he roused himself with a start. A light hand had touched his
shoulder. As he turned hurriedly, he saw Zenz standing behind him. She
hastily stepped back again as far as the threshold of the door, which
she had softly opened, and stood there in the frame thus made in the
exact attitude of Jansen's "Dancing Girl," her arms thrown back and
holding, instead of the tambourine, the little plate on which Felix had
handed her the wine. The candle-light that streamed in from the
sitting-room, and the little lamp by the side of Felix's bed, doubly
illuminated the slim, youthful figure, and its shadow flickering back
and forth heightened the weird charm. She stood there with her profile
slightly turned upward, motionless as a statue, gazing straight before
her. It was not until quite a time had elapsed, and she had begun to
feel tired, that she asked, still without turning her head, whether he
was not going to begin to sketch? He rose and took a step toward her,
and then stood still again.

"My dear child," he said, controlling himself with difficulty, "it is
too late for that. The night has grown cool--you will catch cold. Come,
I thank you very much. You are a beautiful girl, and I--am not made of
stone. Now go back and go to sleep. To-morrow--tomorrow we will
sketch."

She gave a start, and he noticed with amazement that she began to
tremble violently. She gave but one timid glance at him. Suddenly, the
tears streamed from her eyes, she threw down the plate with such force
that it shivered into fragments, rushed back from the threshold into
the sitting-room and violently slammed the door behind her.

An instant after, he heard the bolt pushed to.

"For God's sake, child!" he cried, "what has come to you all of a
sudden? What have I done to offend you? Open the door, and let us have
a sensible talk together. Didn't I tell you that I had a headache? And
who ever heard of such an idea as sketching in the middle of the night?
Zenz! don't you hear? Won't you make it up again?"

All in vain. After wasting his entreaties and at last his anger, for
some time longer, on the tightly-closed door, he was finally obliged to
give it up. His blood was in a whirl; he could not conceive now how he
could have repulsed the poor creature in such cold-blooded fashion.
"Perhaps her anger will pass over, if I leave her to herself for a
while," he thought.

"I am going out to take a little walk," he cried through the key-hole.
"I must have a breath of fresh air. When I come back again, perhaps my
headache will be gone and your fit of temper, too. In the mean while,
pass away the time as pleasantly as you can."

And he really did go out into the night; but he returned again before a
quarter of an hour had passed--he was drawn back by some power that he
himself could not understand.

As he entered his sleeping-room, where the lamp was still burning
steadily, it was empty. He passed quickly through the door, which was
now unbolted, into the sitting-room. But here, too, no trace could be
found of his guest, search as he would behind the curtains and in the
dark corners. The light had not been extinguished and a bat had flown
into the room, and the exertion of hunting him out again threw him into
a perspiration. When at last he succeeded, and, exhausted by such a
variety of excitement, had sunk back upon the sofa, he found that all
the little knickknacks, which he had spread before her when they first
arrived, were still lying on the table in the same order in which he
had left them. The little dagger which his Creole friend had given him
was the only thing he missed, and he could not find it though he
searched for it everywhere.

                              _BOOK III_.

                               CHAPTER I.

There are summer nights that are not made for sleep. The moon shines
far brighter than at other times, as if a lamp were burning at its full
height in the sleeping-room instead of a mere night-light. People
strolling along, absorbed in thought and feeling the flagstones under
their feet still warm--for they have been drinking in the fierce glow
of the sun the livelong summer day--catch themselves in the act of
crossing over out of the moonlight to the shady side, just as one does
in the hot noontide. On such nights as this, sounds of life and
merriment are heard throughout the city long after the police have
sounded the hour for retiring; the couples that wander through the
streets seem unable to find their way home; young fellows march along
arm-in-arm, in long rows stretching the whole width of the road, as if
advancing to battle against some invisible enemy, singing all the while
as tenderly and sweetly as they know how, or else shrieking and yelling
like a troop of wild Indians. Here and there, where a window stands
open and a _sonata_ of Beethoven floats out into the night, they
suddenly hush their noise and listen, only to break out in a wild burst
of applause the moment the music ceases. On such a night solitary youth
lies dreaming, with open eyes, till long past midnight, of the glories
of the future; and solitary age thinks sadly how glorious the past was;
and at last they fall asleep over their musing, and slumber quietly,
until some young cock in a neighboring roost, who cannot sleep himself,
gives a glance up to heaven and begins to crow with such vigor at the
setting moon, which he mistakes for the rising sun, that the sleepers
start up again, throw off the bedclothes from their hot limbs, and
creep to the window to see whether the night is really at an end. After
this there is no more sleep for the aged; but they who are young lie
down once more and soon make up for all that they have lost.

Such was the night that followed that Sunday. Of those in whose fate
and adventures we are interested, none went to bed before midnight,
though in truth some other sprite than the charm of the sultry night
had possession of their hearts and senses. Even the good Angelica, who
to the best of our knowledge was not in love, and who rejoiced moreover
in that softest of pillows, a good conscience, sat at the open window
of her little virgin bower, in which a lamp was dimly burning, half
through the night, twining her curls and heavily sighing and dropping
into a doze, until her head would strike against the window-sash,
when she would start up and begin once more to spin her sorrowful
summer-night's thoughts. She had been at Julie's door that afternoon to
inquire what had been the upshot of this bad business. But no one was
at home. And so she was waiting impatiently for the following day.

It was later still before Julie could bring herself to go to bed. The
windows in her chamber stood open so as to let in the night-air through
the openings in the closed blinds. But with the air the magical
moonbeams streamed in too, and made a pattern on her green silk
coverlet; her thoughts were lost in its mazes, so that she could not
close her eyes. She felt as if she had never been at once so happy and
so wretched. At heart she did not doubt for a moment that everything
really was just as it stood in the baleful letter; that she would never
possess him whom she loved. His own puzzling behavior, the way in which
he had suddenly broken off and rushed out of the room, confirmed the
anonymous accusation only too well. But the thought that she loved him,
and that he returned her love, crowded out all others, and made her so
glad in the depths of her heart, that no hostile fate could crush the
rejoicing within her. So he is to "give her back her faith in her own
heart!" What a senseless phrase! When had she ever believed in anything
as she believed in the strength and truth and invincibility of this
feeling, in the feeling that it was worth while to have lived through a
long youth without love and happiness for the sake of this man, so that
now she might lavish upon him a hoarded wealth of passion?

She could not help smiling when it occurred to her how often she had
thought that she had done with the world, and could look back without
regret upon the years of youth she had lost. What had become of those
ten anxious years? Had she really lived in them or only dreamed of
them? Was she not as young and inexperienced, as thirsty for happiness
and as coy in its presence, as she had ever been in the first blooming
years of her girlhood? Yes, she felt the courage of her earliest youth,
when she still believed in miracles, bubbling up within her from an
inexhaustible spring. She made no attempt to close her eyes to what
could and would happen. But that this love, hopeless as it seemed,
would be a source of unspeakable happiness to her, that in the
sanctuary of her heart she would never cease to look upon this man as
belonging to her--all this she admitted to herself in words so plain
that, as she lay there wide awake in the moonlight, they sometimes
found utterance in a half-audible soliloquy.

Then she marveled at the suddenness with which it had all come about,
but she soon convinced herself again that this was just as it should
be. She tried hard to picture to herself the kind of wife he might
have. But she could not; it seemed to her impossible that he could ever
have loved any one but herself. She closed her eyes and tried to recall
his features to her mind. Singularly enough she met with no great
success. His eyes were all that she could distinctly call up before
her, and his voice seemed always to be close to her ear. She rose and
stepped to the window, and opened the blinds a little to see if the
night were not almost over. She herself did not know why she should
thus look forward to the morning, for there was little hope that it
would bring her anything new or good. But it would bring _him_, she
could count on that. With burning lips she drew in the mild night-air,
and listened to a love-song, which a solitary youth sang as he passed
under her window.

She understood each word, and as he ended she repeated the closing
verses softly, and sighed as she shut the blinds again. Then she lay
down and at last fell asleep.

The day had long dawned outside, but the green twilight in which she
lay caused her to dream on undisturbed. It struck seven, eight, nine,
from the clock on the Theatinerkirche. Then at last she awoke, feeling
as refreshed as if she had just emerged from bathing in the sea. It was
some time before she could think clearly of all that had happened
yesterday and would probably happen today, but as she did so a vague
fear and anxiety came over her. She hastened to dress, so that she
might go out and ask whether any letter had come. When at last she
opened the door into the parlor, her figure wrapped in a loose robe,
and her hair thrust carelessly under a pretty cap, her foot hit against
some heavy object that took up the whole breadth of the threshold. As
the blinds were closed in this room also, she did not see at first,
owing to her short-sightedness, what it was that lay in her way. But
the object immediately began to move of its own accord, and raised
itself up before her, and she felt a cold tongue on her hand and saw
that the intruder was no other than Jansen's venerable Newfoundland
dog. The start he gave her was almost instantly lost in the greater one
with which she found herself saying, "Where the dog is, the master will
not be far away." And she was right, for there, in the back part of the
room, leaning against the stove, was a dark figure with disheveled
hair, standing as immovable in its place as she herself stood in the
doorway, deprived of all power to move a limb or open her lips.

Just at this moment the other door opened, and the old servant stepped
in and turned to the man at the stove with a gesture which was half
indignant, half timid, but which said plainer than words that it had
been impossible to turn away this uncomfortably early guest; he had
made his way in by force.

"It is quite right, Erich," said his mistress, who had now completely
recovered her composure. "I will ring when I want breakfast. And,
by-the-way, I am not at home in case any one calls."

The old man retired, shrugging his shoulders, and muttering to himself.
The moment he closed the door behind him, Julie stepped quickly up to
Jansen, who stood in silence at the opposite end of the room, and
cordially extended her hand.

"Thank you for coming," she said; and from her voice it would have been
hard for any one to have believed how her heart beat as she uttered
these few words, "But sit down. We have much to say to one another."

He bowed slightly, but remained standing where he was, and appeared not
to notice that she had offered him her hand.

"Pardon this early visit," he said. "Your note did not reach me last
evening. Early this morning, when I went into the studio--"

"Have you any suspicion as to who could have written the letter?" she
interrupted, wishing to come to his aid. She had sunk down into a
chair, and the dog lay beside her on the carpet, occasionally giving a
growl of content as he felt her soft hand on his head.

"I think I know," replied Jansen, after a short pause. "I am certain
that some one in this city is dogging all my steps, very likely in the
interest of another. What was in that letter is nothing but the pure
truth; and when I went to my studio this morning, I carried a letter in
my pocket which I had written overnight, and which tells you almost the
same thing. Here it is--if you would like to read it."

She shook her head slightly.

"What for, my dear friend, if it tells me nothing new?"

"Perhaps it may. But you are right; this piece of paper cannot prove to
you the fact I most desire to have proved: that is, that I really wrote
this letter last night before I knew of any other. That is something
you can only believe from my personal assurance--and that is the reason
of my being here."

"That is the reason? Oh! my friend, as if I needed such an
assurance--as if your hasty departure yesterday had not told me that
you did not trust yourself to stay because you--because you had only
said what you did in a moment of self-forgetfulness--and yet, believe
me, that was a thoughtless word that slipped from my pen, that only an
explanation from you could give me back my faith in my own heart. I
have never lost that faith. I believe to-day, as yesterday, that my
heart knew perfectly well what it was about when it surrendered itself
to you."

"You are an angel from heaven!" he cried, his grief breaking forth;
"you seek to defend me even from myself. Yet for me with my hopeless
lot to have forced myself into your quiet life, will never cease to be
a crime. That is what I said to myself yesterday the moment I left your
door. This letter attempted to say the same thing, and informed you
also of my firm resolve never to show myself in your sight again. But
the strange hand that tugs at the chords of my ruined life, and seeks
to tear them asunder, has shattered this resolve. Now I owe you a
longer confession than could be written in a letter. For not until you
know all about me will you be able to understand that, though it was a
sin, it was still a human one, that caused me so to forget myself; and
that you need not withdraw your respect from me--though you do your
heart--and your hand."

He was silent again for a moment; she, too, said nothing. She trembled,
but she strove hard to appear calm, so that he would go on. How
willingly she would have heard her fate in two words--her "to be or not
to be!" What did she care for all the rest? But she felt that he had
more to tell her, and she would not interrupt him.

"I hardly know," he continued, "how much our friend Angelica has told
you about me. I am a peasant's son, and had to struggle through a hard
childhood; and it was a long time before I could bend my stiff
peasant's neck so that it fitted without chafing in the yoke of city
etiquette. Few men have ever gone such strange ways as I have, always
wavering between defiance and humility, audacity and shrinking, as
well in my dealings with my fellow-men as in my art. I had a mother of
the true old yeoman nobility--which is synonymous with true human
nobility--at least in our part of the country. She finally succeeded in
making a strong, silent man of my father, who had a streak of the
tyrant in him. If she had lived longer, who knows whether I should ever
have left her? But soon after her death I prevailed upon my father to
let me go to the art-school at Kiel. I did little good there. There was
a wild element among the scholars, and I was not the tamest. I always
had a great contempt--perhaps because I was ashamed of my peasant's
manners--for what we were pleased to call the Philistinism of the
worthy citizens. That I, as an artist, was permitted all sorts of
liberties that were denied to officials, scholars, and tradespeople,
pleased me greatly; and I abused my freedom without stint. But as I
moved in a very narrow circle, and seldom came in contact with any high
type of humanity, I had no great field in which to display the
profligacy of my thoughts and habits. A few wretched _liaisons_, and a
number of silly and by no means edifying scrapes, were all that came of
it.

"Then I moved to Hamburg. There the same wild life was continued on a
somewhat larger scale. You will readily spare me the details. Now, when
I think back on that time, I have to stop and reflect whether it really
could have been _I_ who wasted his days and nights in such shameful
dissipation with such worthless companions. They were my Prince Hal
days. 'The wild oats had to be sown.' But now I thank my good star for
having led me safely, though by dubious ways, past all that kind of
crime and wrong-doing which could not have been covered by this trite
saying."

"Well, one evening, when my aching head and my gnawing rage at my own
idiocy unfitted me for anything else, I went to the theatre, and saw
for the first time an actress who was just entering on an engagement
there. The piece was a flat, sensational, social drama, in which she
took the part of the noble, generous, young wife, who plays the saving
angel to the dissipated husband. It was a moral lecture that appealed
directly to my own case; and as the sinner, even in his deepest
degradation, seemed an enviable creature as compared with me--for he
invariably fell into the arms of his guardian angel--I could not help
wishing myself in his place; and so was led to examine that angel very
carefully.

"She was certainly well worth looking at. A most charming young person,
with a figure, a bearing, and a certain indolent grace in all her
movements, such as I had never seen before. In addition to all this a
childlike face, with dove-like eyes, and such an innocent, plaintive
mouth, that you would have been willing to storm the very heavens just
to bring a smile to those pretty lips. When this really appeared at the
close of the play (for the young husband reformed), it was all over
with me. As I noticed that half the audience--indeed, the entire male
part--had gone mad over her, I considered my sudden infatuation not
extraordinary; especially as I have a way of not being very slow in my
feelings of love and hate. You have had experience of that yourself."

He paused for a moment, and gave her a hasty glance. But she did not
stir, so breathlessly was she listening to him, her eyes fixed on the
head of the dog, who lay quietly sleeping at her side.

"I will spare you any account of the further course of my love affair,"
he continued. "It is enough that in eight days I gained my case by
ardor and flattery: and Lucie was my betrothed.

"The strange manner in which she bore herself in this position ought to
have warned me. To my first passionate wooing she had opposed a
prudishness and a maidenly reserve such as I had not expected to find
in an actress, especially as she let me see plainly enough that she
felt anything but indifferent toward me, and that the homage of an
artist whose reputation was then in the ascendant was exceptionally
flattering to her. But no sooner did I, somewhat taken aback by this
severe maidenly reserve, make her a proposal that aimed at nothing less
than our marriage and her retirement from the stage, than her tone
changed. She began to treat the subject with greater lightness, to
utter platitudes against marriages among artists, and in praise of the
happiness of liberty; to tease me with moods, and to attract me again
by all kinds of pretty coaxing; so that my passionate obstinacy was
urged higher and higher, until at last I forced her, half against her
will, to fix the wedding-day.

"Of course this excited the greatest amazement among my former
companions, who could scarcely believe their ears. To those with whom I
was most intimate I expatiated on the matter as an exceedingly
practical undertaking, as a truly sensible marriage. I should never
again find a being who was thus equally removed from Philistinism and
evil courses. Besides, one cannot go on sowing wild oats forever; and
it seemed to me that now, when my prospects had begun to seem quite
favorable on account of a number of orders I had received, was the most
suitable time to settle to a steadier life. This is what I said to my
most intimate friends. I said nothing to the others. One of them, our
Falstaff, who was the one most concerned at my loss, took me aside one
day and asked whether I was really in earnest about this foolish
affair. Upon my replying that I was sufficiently in earnest to forbid
any contemptuous criticism upon my conduct, even from a good friend, he
shrugged his shoulders and excused himself: he had not had the
slightest intention of offending me, but he merely wished to call my
attention to the fact that this freak of mine might cost me too dearly.
Then, when I pressed him further, he remarked that 'in his opinion
there were such things as artificial violets, and that the most genuine
thing about this creature was her acting, which, unfortunately, she
kept up in real life as well as on the stage.' And then followed a
short sketch of her adventurous career, which this well-meaning man had
collected, not without considerable trouble, from numberless inquiries
at the theatres where she had appeared.

"Of course I expressed my appreciation of his kindness in the plainest
possible words, broke with him once and for all, and ran off to my
betrothed, to whom I excitedly related the whole chronicle of what I
had heard about her way of life. The idea had never even entered my
head that she would answer me in any other way than with a burst of
burning indignation, and I had already been considering what kind words
I should make use of in order to soothe her. But she heard me through
without emotion, indeed without even blushing, so that for a moment I
was fool enough to say to myself, 'I really believe she is so innocent
that she doesn't even understand what I have been telling her.' But
when I ceased speaking, she looked me full in the face, quite unabashed
and with her most angelic expression, and said: 'This is all a lie,
except in one particular. I committed a single wrong when I was a mere
child, and that was the reason why I refused to become your wife. Do
now as you like; you know what you take when you take me.'

"This confession, which she made with her irresistible melodramatic
voice, blinded me completely; and I was more convinced than ever that
all the rest of the talk about her deceitfulness and coquetry, and her
heartless flirting with foolish young admirers, was a lie. 'No,' I
cried, folding her in my arms, 'you shall not find yourself
disappointed in me, you shall not find a narrow-minded Philistine, when
you thought you were giving yourself up to a free artist's soul. What
lies behind you shall cast no shadow over our future. If it is true
that you love me, why then--' and here I quoted, slightly changing it
to suit the occasion, a verse of poetry that I had read but a short
time before and had thought very profound. 'Was _I_ a saint before I
asked your hand? And yet I was master of my fate, and knew what I did.
No, let there be day before us and behind us night, that none may look
upon us! Only promise me that in the _future_ all your thoughts shall
belong to me alone.'

"She sobbed violently in my arms, and made me the fairest promises. I
almost believe that at that moment she did indeed mean what she said,
for there was a sound spot in her that had not yet been touched by the
worm--a longing for what was pure and good. If this had not been the
case, how would it have been possible for me to have continued in my
blindness longer than the few weeks of the honey-moon? But she herself
seemed so happy in those first months, though we lived quite by
ourselves--for I had broken with my old cronies, and had no particular
desire to form new acquaintances, whom I could only have found among
the Philistine class that I so heartily despised. Then, too, she grew
more charming with each day. Once in a while, however, I caught her
poring over her prompt-books; and then I told her bluntly, for I could
see that her eyes were red with weeping, that she longed to be back
behind the foot-lights again, that she missed the applause and grieved
because she could not any longer turn the heads of the whole parquet.
'What can you be thinking of!' she laughed. 'In my condition! Why, I
should feel like sinking through the deepest trap-door, I should be so
ashamed!' In this way she would drive away my suspicions; and when at
length her child was born, I really thought she was so taken up with
household joys and cares that she cared for nothing else.

"It is true she was not such a foolish mother as to think her child an
angel of beauty. It was a rather plain, unattractive-looking little
thing--'the father over again,' remarked the women, very justly. But
she played the _rôle_ of mother with considerable talent; and not until
a long time later, when she was sent to the sea-shore to recuperate,
did it occur to me that she parted without any particular grief from
the laughing and cooing little creature that clung so tightly to her. I
staid at home and let her go over to Heligoland by herself, in the
charge of an elderly friend of hers--an actress, but a woman bearing an
irreproachable name. I happened to have a few orders that it was
necessary to execute just as soon as possible--among others two busts
of a rich wharfinger and his wife--and as our household, small as it
was, made pretty heavy drains upon my purse, I felt that I ought not to
let these chances slip through my fingers. It was our first separation,
and I found it hard enough to bear. But, as I had to work hard and also
to fill a mother's place toward the child, the first two weeks passed
pretty quickly.

"But after that the little one began to give me a great deal of
anxiety. Teething set in, there were bad days and worse nights, and the
letters I received from my wife--in which she said she was doing
admirably and had grown quite young again--did not tend to raise my
spirits especially, for it appeared as if nothing were wanting to her
happiness, not even her husband and child.

"Heretofore I had had neither disposition nor occasion for jealousy.
Suddenly I was to learn what an abyss can be uncovered in a man's soul,
into which everything sinks that he has before believed firm and true.

"I had been sitting up late; the child was very feverish, and toward
midnight we had been obliged to call in the doctor. For the first time
I thought with bitterness about my wife, who could stay at such a
distance and nurse her own health while the little life, that should
have been dearer to her than her own, was trembling in the balance.
When the child had been quieted a little, so that I could think of
taking some rest, it was a long time before I could close my eyes,
though as a general thing I could reckon on my peasant's sleep under
all circumstances. At last it came, but with it came dreams--dreams
such as I would not have wished to the damned in hell. Always about
_her_, in ever-new costumes, playing the old play of pledged and broken
faith. Out of the last scene, where, in the very presence of her lover
and with the quietest mien in the world, she sought to demonstrate to
me her right to transfer her love from one man to another, until I
sprang forward with a cry of fury to seize her by the hair--out of this
wretched vision of hell I was awakened by the crying of my child; so
that I did not take time to wipe the cold sweat from my forehead, but
ran into the nursery quite prepared to find Death standing at the head
of the little bed. But once again it passed, and in the morning we were
both able to get a couple of hours of quiet sleep. Then, at last, I sat
down and wrote to my wife just how things stood.

"For some days before, I had not sent her any very encouraging reports.
Any other woman would have returned at once, and not have tried to
excuse herself on the ground that the water-cure ought not to be
interrupted. But she--enough! I must try and control myself when I
speak of her. After all the poor creature cannot be blamed because she
had no heart, and because my love and passion could not conjure up one
within her breast.

"But at the time I wrote in all the roughness and bitterness of my
mood, and insisted upon her immediate return. I had almost forgotten
the dreams of the night before. But a little later, when I was taking a
walk through the city, chance willed it that they should again be
recalled to my mind.

"I met a gossiping acquaintance, who had also been passing a few weeks
at the island. Heaven knows how it came about that I stopped him and
inquired about my wife. He was very much surprised to hear that she had
been there, indeed that she was there still. As in such a small place
everybody met everybody else, he could not understand how so beautiful
a woman could have escaped his notice. 'To be sure, she has lived in
great retirement,' I stammered, and he found this very natural and
praiseworthy of a charming young lady, and hoped the cure would be
successful, and so left me; while I stood there like a fool for a full
quarter of an hour, staring vacantly at the same flag-stone, and
blocking peoples' way as if I had been a stopping-post. Yet she _must_
have been there; letters had daily passed back and forth; and then,
what earthly reason could she have for trying to deceive me in this
respect? But then again: you will readily understand that this
incident, trifling as it was in itself, was well calculated to add new
fuel to the fever that was raging within me.

"I could not expect her back before the following day. How I survived
the intervening hours will always remain a mystery to me. I was
incapable of any occupation, of any connected thought or action. I had
just sufficient strength and reason left to sit by the side of the
poor, feverish child, and apply the ice-bandages, and count the hairs
on its forehead.

"Even when night came I would not leave my post. I dreaded to dream.
Then came the morning again, and noon and afternoon, and still no news.
But at length a drosky drove up, the house-door was opened, the stairs
creaked under a light step, I sprang to my feet and rushed to meet her;
just then she entered the door, and my first look in her face
strengthened all my horrible suspicions.

"Or no; it was not her face. I have no right to do this actress an
injustice; she had her face as completely under control as ever--the
innocent violet eyes, the Madonna mouth, the clear forehead--and yet it
_was_ her face that sent a shudder to my inmost heart. Was that the
mien of a mother, hastening to her child that lay at the door of death?
of a wife returning, after such anxious weeks of separation, to the
husband whom she pretended to have married for love?

"Enough! The fate of our lives was decided in the first few hours. But
I was crafty too, and played my _rôle_ bravely. That we should refrain
from all demonstrations of tenderness, while our child lay in such
danger, was so natural--she herself could find nothing wrong in this.
But on the following morning, after the night had brought a change for
the better and we were able to breathe freely once more, she said to
me--and I can see her before me now, as she knelt at a trunk and turned
over the gay contents trying to find a comfortable dress to put on, for
she had not taken off her clothes during the night--'Do you know,
Hans,' she said, looking up at me with her dove-like eyes, half
petulantly, half pleadingly, 'do you know that it isn't at all nice of
you not to have paid me a single compliment upon how well I am looking?
I left a gallant husband, and find a cold-hearted bear. Come, as a
punishment, I will let you kiss this little slipper, that I might have
put on the neck of the whole male population of the island if I had
wanted to.'

"'Lucie,' said I, 'I want first to make a request of you.'

"'About what?' asked she, innocently.

"'That you will swear to me, by the life of our child, that it is only
a devilish delusion, sprung from my jealous dreams, that makes me think
you do not come back to me what you were when you went away.'

"I had arranged this sentence word for word, just as one loads with the
greatest care a gun with which one wants to take sure aim. And I did
not miss the mark. She suddenly flushed purple, bent down her head over
the trunk, and fumbled nervously with the heap of sashes and scarfs.

"But she quickly recovered herself.

"'You have had bad dreams?' she asked, still quite unabashed. 'What did
you dream, then?'

"And I replied: 'That you had been unfaithful to me. It is nonsense; I
know that you can give me back my peace by a single word. But, unless
you speak this word--did you understand me, Lucie? By the life of our
child, who lies there barely escaped from death--I only want to hear
one word. I cannot reproach myself with any neglect of my duty toward
_you_. Do you hear me, Lucie? Why don't you answer me? Can't you bear
my look?'

"She actually succeeded in forcing herself to look at me, but there was
not the flash of innocent pride, of offended womanly honor; it was an
unsteady, flickering defiance, and the flaring up of a hostile feeling,
that I read in her eyes.

"'I have no answer to such a question,' said she, with a gesture that
carried me back to the time when she was on the stage. 'You insult me,
Hans. Let us talk about something else. I will pardon you for the
child's sake, and because of the anxiety you have been suffering.'

"I was still so under her influence that I hesitated for a moment
whether to mistrust the voice in my heart, or this serpent look. She
had risen, and was standing at the window, her face turned away and her
hand before her eyes, such a picture of insulted majesty and innocence
that I already began to curse my heat, and to accuse myself of having
done the greatest injustice and wrong that can be done to a helpless
woman. But just as I was on the point of going up to her and trying the
power of kind words, I heard my dog give a strange sort of a growl and
bark, as if he were angry and provoked; for which I could see no
reason. He did not like the woman. Either she had never known how, or
else she had never thought it worth while, to gain his favor. But
heretofore he had seemed to feel the greatest indifference toward her,
and I could not understand why her offended speech and bearing should
now enrage him. The truth is he was not paying the slightest attention
to her, but seemed to have been excited by something that he had
dragged out of the pile of things she had taken from her trunk. I
called out to him to lie down and keep quiet; he was still in a moment;
but, wagging his tail violently, he ran up to me, holding something in
his mouth which he laid on my knee. It was a man's glove.

"Can you believe it?--my first feeling at the sight of this evidence
was a wild joy and satisfaction. I was suddenly at one with myself
again, and the wretched feeling of shame that perhaps after all I had
let my suspicious heat get the better of my reason, gave place to an
icy calmness.

"'If you would only turn round,' I said, 'perhaps you would speak in a
different tone. Without knowing it or wishing it, you have brought me a
present from your journey for which I ought to thank you.'

"As she turned round, even she was not actress enough to repress a
gesture of terror.

"'I swear to you--she stammered, pale as death.

"'Very good,' I said; 'that is precisely what I have been asking you to
do. But--do you hear?--consider well what you swear and by what you
swear it. By the life of the innocent creature lying in that chamber,
by that God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation--'

"'I don't know what you mean--I--I have done no wrong and have no need
to swear. This glove, Heaven knows--'

"'Heaven does know!' I shrieked, my smouldering rage breaking out
furiously.

"I reached out my hand toward her; everything reeled before my eyes; I
have no further recollection of what I said and did at that moment,
except that I was very near seizing her by her long locks, as in my
dream, and dragging her across the room and down the stairs, and
casting her out into the street. I am sure, however, that I did not
touch her, but my looks and words must have been so relentless and
unmistakable that she herself found it advisable to leave me. Half an
hour later I was alone again with my child.

"That very day I received a letter from her, full of well-turned
periods and insidious accusations. I read it without emotion. I was
like a well that has been choked forever--nothing can make its water
bubble up again. I answered this letter with a single word--'Swear!' No
second letter came; a last remnant of human feeling, sunk deep in
superstition, made it impossible for her to utter a lie that might be
revenged upon her child.

"I waited three days. Then I wrote her a note that contained no word of
reproach, but simply said that it would be impossible for me to share
my life with her longer. I told her I would provide for her as I had
done heretofore, under the single condition that she would take her
maiden name again and never make any claim upon the child. When I wrote
this--I can't help confessing my foolishness to you--something within
me said, 'She will never consent to this condition. She will come and
fall at your feet, with a full confession of her guilt, and pray you
rather to kill her than to separate her from her child.' Then--what
might I not have done then?--it makes me shudder to think of it. I
almost believe I should have pardoned her--and been wretched ever
after, with my honor wounded and my confidence shaken at the very
roots. But I had loved her too dearly for me to become master of my
weakness so quickly.

"She spared me the temptation. In a few days her answer came; she
refrained from making any explanations, which she knew would never be
satisfactory to a person so inclined to be suspicious as I was. Great
God! I suspicious--I, whom a lie would have quieted again! She accepted
what I had proposed to her, intended to return to the stage--for which
she was undoubtedly born--thanked me for all the goodness I had shown
her, hoped all would go well with me, and much more--a letter well
written, friendly, and icy cold.

"Not a syllable was said about the child!"

                              CHAPTER II.

He had thrown himself down on a lounge that stood near the door, and
his head sank on his breast. For a long time he remained in this
position apparently forgetting where he was, and to whom he had been
telling his dreary, melancholy story.

The dog rose up, and, with a singularly wistful expression in his eyes,
went to the side of his master, who now roused himself with an effort,
and made as though he would take his departure.

But Julie did not change her position, nor look at him, but merely said
in her soft voice:

"What must you have suffered!" Then, after a moment's pause, she went
on: "And you have never seen her since?"

"No. I only waited until the child had recovered sufficiently to bear
the journey. Then I broke loose from all that held me there, and came
to this city. Here I might be a new man--or so I sometimes imagined
when I did not think of the past. Yes, the doctors are right--a change
of air will work wonders. Do you suppose it was in the slightest degree
hard for me to set up my 'saint-factory?' I merely did it so that I
might be safe from all dunning letters, and might send the stipulated
and very considerable sum, every quarter, to our intermediary in
Hamburg. In this way I freed myself from importunities, and consoled
myself with the thought that a man need not scruple as to how he earns
money that is going to pay for his own shame. A fortunate man, one who
lives openly and uprightly, has a right to give himself up to that
noblest of all luxuries, the luxury of sacrificing himself to his
convictions. If I had had a wife with a pure and noble soul, then it
would have been glorious to have accepted even poverty and want in
order to remain true to my ideals, and never to have moved a finger
except in the service of true art. But as it was--a broken man, a
disgraced life--that very stolidity that helped me to bear my
fate alone, dulled my susceptibility to all that was base in my
money-getting. It was all one, after all.

"And yet, for all that, the old defiance, the old peasant's pride was
not quite dead in me even now. One day, in the midst of my work, the
thought came over me--'What is she doing now?--who is with her?' Then I
sprang to my feet as if I had been stung by an adder, and immediately
sat down and wrote to her that I thought it would be more dignified and
better for us both to cut the last wretched bond that held us together,
so that she might have full freedom. I added that I would provide for
her all the same, if she would only consent to a legal separation. I
was not ashamed to humiliate myself so far as to beg her to do this. It
seemed to me as if the happiness of my future life depended upon my
accomplishing this end.

"She kept me waiting for an answer for more than a fortnight. Then she
wrote that she could only yield to my request if I would give up the
child to her. Who dictated this answer for her, I do not know.
Certainly not her heart.

"Give the child into her hands! I would rather have caught it up like a
kitten, and thrown it into the sea! I had found a family here--good,
honest people--to whose care I could intrust it, and with whose
children it is growing up. I myself have a room under the same roof.
When I come home of an evening, I only need to open the door a little
to see the little motherless thing asleep in its bed. But on Sunday I
either stay at home in the afternoon, or take a drive or a walk with it
to some place where I am sure of not meeting any curious acquaintances,
who might ask me whose child it is. I pass in the city for unmarried.
But, for some time past, I have been led to suspect that I have an
enemy who is determined I shall not bear that character any longer.
Lucie's mother appeared here a year or two ago. Had I known this woman
before my marriage, I might perhaps have been warned not to trust those
violet eyes. She has some hidden object for being here; she follows all
my movements--I know that she wishes me ill--that letter to you
confirms it. But, perhaps, it was better so. The letter that I wrote to
you last night, who knows whether I should have had the courage to send
it to-day? And yet, every hour longer that I kept you in the dark would
have been a reproach to me. And now--"

"I have a great favor to ask of you," she suddenly interrupted.

"Julie, what could you ask that I would not joyfully--"

"I would love so dearly to see the child. Will you bring it to me? or
will you go there with me?"

He took a step toward her; now, for the first time, he ventured to look
her in the face. She rose and went forward to meet him.

"Dear friend," she said, "I must know this child. No matter how well it
may be taken care of where it is, it is and always will be motherless.
It can only find a mother again in her who loves the father more than
all else, and who would take to her heart all that belongs to him. Do
you not see that you must bring the child to me?"

"Julie!" he cried, in a tone that burst from his innermost heart, just
as when a dreamer with a loud cry shakes off the nightmare that is so
suffocating him. He staggered toward her, and tried to seize her hand;
but she drew back a step, shook her head gently, and said, with a
blush:

"Listen patiently to what I am going to say, or else it will be hard
for me to control myself and find the words. The sad story you have
just told me has given me a great deal to think of; I have not yet
clearly fixed it in my mind. But one thing is already clear to me: that
nothing in your past life can ever separate me from you. On the
contrary, I have been continually testing my feeling during your
confession, and have found that I love you now even more wholly than I
did yesterday, and that I know better _why_ I love you, if this is not
a senseless thing to say. My heart is old enough to be wise, and to
know why it loves any one, though my head is not quite so ready. And
so, my dearest friend, I now seriously declare to you, I have not the
slightest intention of ceasing to love you because so and so many years
ago you made the mistake of believing another human being to be better
than she really was. I will go still further: you shall not cease to
love me either, unless you made a second mistake yesterday, which I
confess would be much more painful to me than that first one."

She did not succeed in uttering these last words, for, overwhelmed with
joy, Jansen had seized her in his arms. He held her long in this
embrace, until at last she recovered breath enough to beg for her
release.

"No, no," she said, as she gently freed herself, "do not do so, dear,
or I will take it all back again; for you and I are not to be spared
our time of trial. Sit down here opposite me like a sensible man, and
let go my hands and try to understand all that I have to say to you.
You see, your sweetheart is no longer young, and much too experienced
and worldly not to keep her senses about her, and think for two even at
such a time, hard as it may be. I will not retract a word of what I
just confessed--that I will not relinquish the happiness of feeling
myself to belong to you, because you are not yet free. I love you all
the more dearly for what I now know, for the delicacy with which you
have tried to spare her who has so cruelly wounded you; for the fact
that you have not sought, even at the cost of a public trial, to break
the bond that holds you together; for the affection that has grown up
within you for your child, so that you do not hesitate to sacrifice
your liberty for its sake. Whether this sacrifice is necessary we will
consider more fully. But let this be as it may, let human justice come
to our aid or not: this I know, that from this time forth I will devote
my life to you, that I could no longer belong to myself even if I
tried. Everything else seems petty beside it, and there must be some
place in the world where we shall find our happiness in one another.
But one thing must happen first; you must learn to know me thoroughly.
Do not smile and say needless things that I know beforehand. You really
do not know me as I am, or as I know you, because I have seen your art
and know your life, and more especially because I, as a woman who has
been looking at the world for thirty-one years, know human nature much
better than a man like you, who have the additional disadvantage of
being an artist, and therefore blinded by a touch of beauty. Do you not
see that in ten years I shall be an old woman, no longer like your Eve,
and then what would you think of me, unless my inner being was
necessary to your life and worthy of your love and constancy? And for
that reason you must resolve to let a barrier remain between us for a
whole year yet. You may be sure it has cost me a hard struggle to lay
such a condition on myself; we have already lost so many happy years of
youth. It seems cruel that, in addition to all this, we must have a
long engagement. But the more dearly I love you, and wretched as I
should be if you did not stand the test, the more bravely I must and
will adhere to my resolution. Then, besides, have I not to win your
child's heart, so that it will not draw back, as from a stranger, from
her whom it is to call mother?"

She gazed in his face with a look of the deepest faith and tenderness,
and reached him her hand across the table at which they were both
sitting. He grasped it so tightly that she smilingly tried to withdraw
it again.

"Perhaps you are right," said he, seriously. "At all events I think you
understand all these things far better than I do, for to tell the
truth, I am still so stunned with the thought of this happiness, that
you could make me consent to anything you asked. Good God! with what a
heart I came in that door--a doomed man, a lost wretch--and now, and
always--"

He was just on the point of starting up again--the place at her feet
which the dog had occupied seemed to have an attraction for him--when
they heard old Erich's voice in the front parlor, saying to some one,
in its driest tone, that his mistress was not at home for anybody
today.

"Not even for me?" queried this some one. "I must hear her say so
herself before I will believe it."

"Angelica!" cried Julie. "We ought not to shut out this dear creature
from our happiness."

She sprang up and hastened out before her friend--to whom any third
person was hateful at such a moment--could make any objection.

"Don't be afraid of him!" she cried, leading the astonished Angelica
into the room triumphantly. "It is true he is a perfect Berserker, and
not a good man to quarrel with. But for that very reason you must take
my part against him. Two staid women of our age ought to have no
difficulty in controlling such a violent man. And isn't it your duty to
help me out of the trouble into which you got me yourself? Dear Jansen,
do not put on such an angry face! Tell this dear, good, astonished
friend that we are resolved, in all seriousness, never again to lose
sight of one another after having been brought together in so strange a
way, thanks to art and to this excellent artist, whom we will not leave
without her reward!"

There was nothing left for Jansen but to make the best of the matter,
and say a few friendly words to Angelica. But his whole soul was in
such commotion that he soon relapsed into a state of absentmindedness.
He listened with half an ear to what his beloved was saying to
Angelica, who did not sustain her part of the conversation very well,
and who uttered none of those bright sayings with which she was
generally so ready. That the two women friends should take up their
quarters together; that the visits of the _fiancé_ should only take
place on certain days and in her own presence; that, for the present at
least, they would not disclose the great event even to their most
intimate friends in "Paradise"--all this and more was discussed, the
burden of the conversation falling almost entirely on Julie. A certain
lightheartedness had taken possession of her, such as her friend had
never seen her show before. She insisted upon Jansen and Angelica
taking breakfast with her, and played the part of hostess most
charmingly. Jansen followed every movement she made, as if he were
attracted by a magnet; and was caught more than once returning the most
irrelevant answers.

At last, when he really had to go--it was already past noon, but no one
had taken any heed of the time--Angelica too rose in great haste.

"I will go on ahead," said she; "lovers don't go through with their
leave-takings quite as quickly as we single people."

But Julie detained her. She merely gave Jansen her hand to kiss, and
closed the door behind him. Then she fell on her friend's neck and
kissed her, her eyes overflowing with tears.

"Forgive me my happiness!" she whispered. "It is so great I am almost
afraid of it, as though I had stolen a crown!"

"What a child you are!" said the artist, bending over her and blushing.
"I told you how it would be--though really I was not so reckless as you
have been. To love this man just as one would any ordinary mortal, to
take him to your heart in this sudden fashion--well, I must say, I
admire your courage. It is true you are a perfectly charming piece of
human nature, from top to toe, and can do things other folks can't.
Now, such miserable institutions as we common people are, mere images
of God in _gouache_ or water-color--well, we have to be sensible, at
all hazards, unless we would bring down ridicule as well as injury upon
our heads. _Addio, cara! Iddio ti benedica!_" and with these words she
rushed out of the door.

                              CHAPTER III.

It was close upon midnight when Rosenbusch, with a heavy sigh, shut the
little sketch-book in which he had been scribbling verses on the empty
leaves between portraits of horses' heads and studies of costumes and
armor, and proceeded to drink off the last drops of his red Würtemberg
wine. For more than three hours he had been sitting in the same place
in the corner of a quiet little beer-house, where few of the regular
guests were to be found to-day on account of the beautiful weather
outside, and where those who were present were fully occupied with
their customary drink. It would not be very hard to divine what had led
our friend hither. First of all, the certainty of not meeting any one
whom he knew. Then, probably, an unconscious attraction in the name.
The landlord of this little wine-room bore the name of the first man,
and it is probable that one who had just been driven from Paradise felt
a strong inclination to go and console himself with another Adam over
the common fate of the race. In this object he seemed to have been
wonderfully successful, partly because of the innocent power of the red
Würtemberger, of which this desperate man had managed to empty four
Schoppen; partly because of the soothing influence of the muses.

What Rosenbusch had written in his sketch-book had been a melancholy
strain; a sad lament over the misappreciation of the world, its
hardhearted realism, its effect upon his own fate, and, finally, over
his own desperate love affair.

Any one who knew how to read poems might easily have derived from this
one the consolation that the author's life was in no immediate danger
from the stunning blows which had fallen upon it. The truth is he
belonged to those delicately-strung, romantic souls, who consider it
almost a moral duty to suffer continually from some gentle inflammation