Philippina was on her knees by the hearth, cleaning out the ashes; Eleanore was sitting by the kitchen table, adding up the week’s expenses in a narrow note-book.
“You ought-a git married, Eleanore,” said Philippina, as she blew on a hot coal, “’deed you ought; it’s the right time for you.”
“Ah, leave me alone,” said Eleanore angrily.
Philippina crouched still lower on the hearth: “I mean well by you, I do,” she said. “You’re simply killing yourself here. With your white skin and sugary eyes—uhm, uhm! You bet if I had ’em like yours I’d git one. Men are all as dumb as shoats outside of a sty.”
“Keep quiet,” said Eleanore, and went on counting: “Seven from fifteen leaves eight....”
“An angel has made your bed,” interrupted Philippina with a giggle. “I know a fellow,” she went on, her face becoming rather sour, “he’s just the right one. Money? whew! He’s stuck on you too, believe me! If I wuz to go to him and say, Eleanore Jordan is willing, I believe the old codger would give me a bag of gold. Cross my heart, Eleanore, and he’s a fine man too. He can play the piano just as good as Daniel, if not better. When he plays you can see the sparks fly.”
Eleanore got up, and closed the book. “Do you want me to give you a present for finding me a man, Philippina?” she asked, with a sympathetic smile. “And you are trying to sound me? Go on, you fool.”
“Come wind and blow my fire hot, so that my soup be not forgot,” whispered Philippina with a gloomy face.
Eleanore left the kitchen and went upstairs. Her heart was full of longing; it was in truth almost bursting with longing.
It was at the beginning of October that Daniel for the first time visited Eberhard in his doll house up by the castle.
They had met each other in the Peter Vischer on the evening agreed upon, but there was a special party there that evening, a sort of a clam-bake; the place was crowded; the noise was disagreeable, so that they left much earlier than they had intended.
They walked along in silence until they reached the Town Hall,when Eberhard said: “Won’t you come up and sit awhile with me?” Daniel nodded.
Eberhard lighted the six candles of a chandelier in his diminutive room. Seeing that Daniel was surprised, he said: “There is nothing I hate worse than gas or oil. That is light; gas and oil merely give off illuminated stench.”
For a while there was complete silence in the room; Daniel had stretched out on the sofa.
“Illuminated stench,” he repeated with a smile of satisfaction. “That is not bad; it is the new age in which we are living. I believe they call itfin de siècle. The day when things flourish is gone; everything has to be manufactured now. Men have become Americans, gruesomely sobered by the intoxication of doing a big business; women have lost their nicety of instinct; the cities have become colossal steam engines; everybody, young and old, is on his belly adoring the so-called wonders of science, just as if it really meant anything to humanity that a loafer in Paris can sip his morning coffee and crunch his rolls while reading that the Pope spent a restful night, or that a gun has been invented which will send a bullet through fourteen people one after another, whereas the best record up to the present had been only seven to a shot. Who can create anything, who can draw anything from his soul under such conditions? It is madness, it is immoral discipline.”
“Oh, I don’t know; I think a man can draw something from within his soul,” said the Baron, in whose face a bored, peeved expression gave way to one of suspense. “It is possible, for example, to conjure the invisible spirit into visibility.”
Daniel, who had not yet suspected that the Baron was, in a way, speaking from another country and in a strange tongue, continued: “The whole supply of interest and enthusiasm at the disposal of the nation has been used up. The venerable creations of days gone by still have nominal value; that is, they are still gaped at and praised, but creative, reproductive, and moulding power they no longer have. Otherwise hocus-pocus alone prospers, and he who does forgive it is not forgiven. But life is short; I feel it every day; and if you do not attend to the plant, it soon withers and dies.”
“It is not only hocus-pocus,” replied Eberhard, who was now completely transformed, though he did not grasp the painful indignation of the musician. “You see, I have associated but very little with men. My refuge has been the realm of departed andinvisible spirits who take on visible form only when a believing soul makes an unaffected appeal to them. It was my task to de-sensualise and de-materialise myself; then the spirits took on shape and form.”
Daniel straightened up, and saw how pale the Baron had become. It seemed to him that they were both quite close together, and at the same time poles removed from each other. He could not refrain however from taking up the thread of his thought. “Yes, yes,” he exclaimed with the same short, jerky laugh that accompanied the beginning of the conversation, “my little spirits also demand faith, credulity, and whine and cry for form and shape. You have expressed yourself in an admirable way, Baron.”
“And have you given up in final resignation with regard to your spirits?” asked Eberhard, in a serious tone.
“Resignation? To what? Of what? Do you imagine that is necessary in my case? I am the counterpart of Cronos. My children devour me; they devour my living body. I conjure up spirits and endow them with flesh and blood, and in return for what I do they convert me into a shadow. They are rebellious fellows, I tell you, quite without mercy. I am supposed to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of one’s steel there is a distinct pleasure in entering the fray. But my little spirits want to be pampered and have a lot of attention paid them. The hate, consequently, that is being dammed up within me is possibly nothing but rage at my fruitless wooing. No, mine is not an honest hate, because I long to get at every ragged beggar who will have nothing to do with my spirits, because my entire life consists in pleading for an audience with people who do not care to listen, and scraping together pennies of love from people who cannot love, because two or three are not enough for me, because I must have thousands and am nothing if I don’t have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me laugh when he looksme in the face and says, I don’t give a damn for all your art. And yet there is humanity in such people, and so long as this is true I must have them; I must convince them, even if my heart is torn from my breast in the attempt. Would you call this life? This digging-up of corpses from the graves, and breathing the breath of life into them so that they may dance? And doing it with the consciousness that this moment is the only one? I am; I exist; here is the table, there are the wax candles, and over there sits a man; and when I have stopped talking everything is different, everything is as if a year had passed by, and everything is irrevocable. Show me a way to humanity, to men, and then I will believe in God.”
The Baron’s head swam; his brain felt close; it seemed to be sultry, stuffy in his skull. He could not help but think of certain exciting meetings where the people had sat in the dark in trembling expectancy and then suddenly heard a voice from beyond the tomb at the sound of which the marrow froze in their bones. He hardly dared look at the place where Daniel was sitting. The words of the musician caused him infinite pain: there lay in them a greediness, a shamelessness, and a gruesomeness that filled him with terror.
He could almost have asked: And Eleanore? And Eleanore?
But however much he felt repelled, owing to his training, association, and general views of life, there was nevertheless something about the whole situation before which he bowed. He could not have said precisely what it was, but it seemed to be a compromise between fear and convulsion.
As he was pondering over it all, he heard a rattling at the window. He looked up, and saw the face of Herr Carovius pressed so tightly against the pane that his nose was as flat as a pancake, while his glasses looked like two opalescent grease spots on the water.
Daniel also looked up; he too saw the face of Herr Carovius, then distorted with wrath and filled with threats. He looked at the Baron in amazement; the latter got up and said: “You will have to pardon the annoyance; I forgot to draw the blinds.”
With that he went to the window, and pulled down the dark shade over the face of Herr Carovius.
That same night, just as Daniel was crossing the hall of hisapartment, he detected a strong scent of flowers. He had smelt them before, but they had never seemed to be so fragrant as at present. Because of the season of the year, the sensation was all the more pronounced and unusual.
He sniffed around for a while, and then saw that the door to Eleanore’s room was open: her light was shining out on the stairs.
When Daniel was not at home of an evening, Eleanore always kept her door open so that she could hear when he came in. Daniel was unaware of this; he had never seen the light on any previous night.
He thought for a moment, then locked the door, and went up the stairs. But Eleanore must have heard his approaching footsteps; for she stepped hastily out into the vestibule, and said with evident embarrassment: “Please stay downstairs, Daniel; Father is asleep. If you wish I will come down to the living room.”
She did not wait for his answer, but went into her room, got the table lamp, and followed Daniel to the living room. Daniel closed the window, and shook as if he were cold; for it was a cool night, and there was no fire in the stove.
“What is this I smell?” he asked. “Have you so many flowers up in your room?”
“Yes, I have some flowers,” replied Eleanore, and blushed.
He looked at her rather sharply, but was disinclined to make any further inquiry, or he was not interested in knowing what this all meant. He walked around the room with his hands in his pockets.
Eleanore had sat down on a chair; she never once took her eyes off Daniel.
“Listen, Daniel,” she said suddenly, and the violin tone of her voice lifted him from his mute and heavy meditations, “I know now what Father is doing.”
“Well, what is the old man doing?” asked Daniel distractedly.
“He is working at a doll, Daniel.”
“At a doll? Are you trying to poke fun at me?”
Eleanore, whose cheeks had turned pale, began to tell her story: “Yesterday afternoon, Father took advantage of the beautiful weather, and went on a walk for the first time in a long while. During his absence, I went to his room to straighten it up a little. I noticed that the door to the large cabinet was not closed as usual, but was standing ajar. He probably forgot to lock it. I did not suspect anything, and knew that there was no harm in what I was going to do, so I opened the door, and what did I see? Abig doll, about the size of a four-year-old child, a wax figure with big eyes and long, yellow hair. But there were no clothes on it: the lower part of the back and the front from the neck to the legs had been removed. Inside, there where a person’s heart and entrails are, was a network of wheels and screws and little tubes and wires, all made of real metal.”
“That is strange, really strange. Well?”
“He is making something,” continued Eleanore, “that much is clear. But if I could tell you how I felt when I saw the thing! I never felt so sad in my life. I have shown him so little love, just as Fate has been so unlovely to him. And everything—the air and the light and the people and how one feels towards the people and how they feel towards you, all seemed to me to be so hopelessly without love that I could not help it: I just sat down before that doll and cried. The poor man! The poor old man!”
“Strange, really strange,” repeated Daniel.
After a while, as if conscious of his guilt, he took a seat by the table. Eleanore however got up, went to the window, and leaned her forehead against the glass.
“Come here to me, Eleanore,” said Daniel in a changed tone of voice.
She came. He took her hand and looked into her face. “How in the world have you been keeping the house going all this time?” he asked, viewing the situation in the light of his guilty conscience.
Eleanore let her eyes fall to the floor. “I have done my writing, and I have had considerable success with the flowers. I have even been able to save a little money. Don’t look at me like that, Daniel. It was nothing wonderful I did; you have no reason to feel especially grateful to me.”
He drew her down on his knees, and threw his arms around her shoulders. “You probably think I have forgotten you,” he said sorrowfully, and looked up, “that I have forgotten my Eleanore. Forget my Eleanore? My spirit sister? No, no, dear heart, you have known for a long while that we have begun our common pilgrimage—for life, for death.”
Eleanore lay in his arms; her face was perfectly white; her body was rigid; her eyes were closed.
Daniel kissed her eyes: “You must hold me, keep me, even when it seems that I have left you,” he murmured.
Then he carried her in his arms through the door into his room.
“I have so longed, I have been so full of longing,” she said, pressing her lips to his neck.
Before one could realise it, winter had come, and the Place with the Church was covered with snow.
Eleanore had gone skating; when she returned she sat down in the living room to wait for Daniel. There she sat with her fur cap on her head, holding her skates in her hand by the cord: she was tired—and she was thinking.
Daniel entered the room and greeted her; she looked up, and said with a gentle voice: “I am with child, Daniel; I found it out to-day.”
He fell on his knees, and kissed the tips of her fingers. Eleanore drew a deep breath; a smile of dream-like cheerfulness spread over her face.
The following day Daniel went to the Town Hall, and made arrangements to have the banns posted.
Hardly had Philippina heard that Daniel and Eleanore were to get married in February when she disappeared; she did not leave a trace of her whereabouts behind her. Little Agnes cried in vain for her “Pina.” Six days after Philippina had left, she came back just as mysteriously as she had gone away. She was desperately gloomy; her hair was towsled, her clothes were wrinkled, there were no soles on her shoes; she was as speechless as a clod, and remained so for weeks.
No one knew, nor has any one ever found out, what she did during those six days or where she had been.
Eleanore insisted on a church wedding; this caused Daniel a great deal of worry; it made him run many a vexatious errand. But he consented to do as Eleanore had asked; for he did not wish to deprive her of any pleasure she might imagine such a ceremony would give her. Eleanore made her own white dress and her veil. Gisela Degen, a younger sister of Martha Rübsam, and Elsa Schneider, the daughter of the rector of the Church of St. Ægydius, were to be her bridesmaids. Marian Nothafft and Eva were also to come over from Eschenbach; Eleanore had already sent them the money for the tickets.
“Help me with my sewing, Philippina,” said Eleanore one evening, and handed her silent house companion the veil, the border of which had to be made.
Philippina took her seat opposite Eleanore, and began to sew; she was silent. In the meanwhile, little Agnes, tottering about on the floor, fell and began to cry in a most pitiable fashion. Eleanore hastened over and picked the child up. Just then she heard a sound as if cloth were being torn. She looked around, and saw that the veil had an ugly rip in it: “You wicked thing! What do you mean, Philippina?” she exclaimed.
“I didn’t do it; it tore itself,” growled Philippina, taking every precaution to see that Eleanore might not catch her cowardly eye.
“You just leave that alone! Keep your hands off of it! You will sew evil thoughts into my veil,” replied Eleanore, filled with forebodings.
Philippina got up. “Well, it’s torn anyway, the veil,” she said in a defiant tone; “if harm is to come it will come; you can’t keep it off by sending me away.” Philippina left the room.
The injury to the veil was not as great as Eleanore had feared. It was a relatively easy matter to cut off the torn piece entirely, and still use the remainder.
But from that hour Eleanore was filled with sadness: her face might be compared to a beautiful landscape on which the first fog of autumn has settled. It is probable that the tearing of her veil had nothing to do with her depression: there was not a shimmer of superstition in her. Perhaps it was merely happiness and fulfilment: it may be that she felt the end had come, that happiness and fulfilment leave nothing more to be desired, that life from then on would be nothing but a hum-drum existence which does not give but only takes.
Perhaps her mind was darkened and weighed down with grief because of the life within her body; for that which is to come sends out its rays of melancholy just as well as that which has come and gone. What was there to hinder a pure soul from having an inner premonition of the fate that was in store for it? Why should this soul not learn in its dreams of the inevitable that was not so far ahead?
It was impossible to notice any change in Eleanore; her eyes were bright; she seemed peaceful. She would often sit before the mask of Zingarella; she hung it with fresh flowers every day: to her the mask was a mysterious picture of all that her own being, her own life, embraced.
Marian Nothafft came to the wedding alone. Just as in the case of Daniel’s wedding to Gertrude, she had left the child with a neighbour. She told Daniel and Eleanore that she could notthink of taking the child out on such a journey in the dead of winter. She mentioned Eva’s name or talked about her only in a half audible, subdued voice, a tender smile playing gently about her lips.
Among those present at the wedding in the Ægydius Church were Judge and Frau Rübsam, Councillor Bock, Impresario Dörmaul, Philippina Schimmelweis, Marian Nothafft, and Inspector Jordan. On the very last bench sat Herr Carovius; underneath one of the pillars, unseen by most of the people in the church, stood Baron Eberhard von Auffenberg.
Philippina walked along in an ugly, crouched, cowering fashion by the side of Jordan; had it not been that she was constantly chewing her finger nails, one would have thought she was asleep.
As the bridal couple was marching up to the altar, the sun broke out, and shone through the windows of the old church. The effect was touching; for just then Eleanore raised her head, stroked her veil back from her forehead, and caught the full light of the sun in her radiant face.
Old Jordan had laid his forehead on the prayer-desk; his back was quivering.
Late at night and in senseless excitement—for he was thinking of a bridal bed that filled him with the most intense pangs of jealousy—Herr Carovius sat in his room playing Chopin’sétudeof the revolution. He would begin it again and again; he struck the keys with ever-increasing violence; the time in which he played theétudebecame wilder and wilder; the swing of his gestures became more and more eloquent; and his face became more and more threatening.
He was squaring accounts with the woman he had been unable to bring before his Neronic tribunal in bodily form; and all the pent-up hatred in his heart for the musician Nothafft he was emptying into the music of another man. The envy of the man doomed to limit his display of talent to the appreciation of what another had created laid violent hands on the creator; the impotence of the taster was infuriated at the cook. It was as if a flunked and floored comedian had gone out into the woods to declaim his part with nothing but the echo of his own voice to answer back.
His hatred of things in general, of the customs of human society, of order and prosperity, of state and family, of love andmarriage, of man and woman, had burst out into lurid flames. It was rare that a man had so cut, slashed, and vilified himself as did this depatriated citizen while playing the piano. He converted music into an orgy, a debauch, a debasing crime.
“Enough!” he bellowed, as he closed with an ear-splitting discord. He shut the piano with a vituperative bang, and threw himself into a rickety leather chair.
What his inner eye saw mocks at language and defies human speech. He was in that house over there; it lay in his power to murder his rival; he could abuse the woman who had been denied him by the wily tricks of circumstances; he chastised her; he dragged her from her bed of pleasure by the hair. He feasted on her sense of shame and on the angry twitchings of the musician, tied, bound, and gagged. He spared them no word of calumniation. The whole city stood before his court, and listened to the sentence he passed. Everybody stood in awe of him.
Thus it is that the citizen of the moral stature of Herr Carovius satisfies his thirst for revenge. Thus does the Nero of our time punish the crimes mankind commits against him in that it creates pleasures and enjoyments of which he is not in a position to partake.
But because he felt more abandoned to-day than ever, and more fearful in his abandonment, and because he felt so keenly the injustice done him by the man on whom he had hung for years with dog-like fidelity, and who avoided him to-day as one avoids an old dog that is no longer fit for anything, he decided in the depths of his embittered soul to avenge himself, and to do it by a means that would be quite different from playing the piano in accordance with the rules of his own perverted fancy.
With this decision in mind he sought sleep—at last.
Jordan was now living all alone in the two attic rooms. He had asked of his own will that he be permitted to take over the clerical work Eleanore had been doing, and her employers had agreed to this arrangement. He was consequently enabled to pay the rent and a little on his board.
Daniel and Eleanore slept in the corner room in the front. Daniel moved his piano into the living room, and did all his work there. Philippina and Agnes remained in the room next to the kitchen.
Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancyprice for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her flowers in Daniel’s presence, or even near him; she did this in the old room up next to the roof.
Her father would sit by her, and look at her thoughtfully. She had the feeling that he knew of everything that had taken place between her and Gertrude and Daniel, but, out of infinite delicacy and modesty, and also in grief and pain, had never said a word about it. For previous to her marriage with Daniel, he had never been with her; he had never sat and looked at her so attentively; he had always passed by her in great haste, and had always shown an inclination to be alone.
She had the feeling that he knew a great deal in general about men and things, but rarely said anything because of his superior sense of gentleness and compassion.
Daniel lived about as he did before the wedding. He would sit at the table until late at night and write. It often happened that Eleanore would find him sitting there with his pen in his hand, sound asleep, when she got up early in the morning. She always smiled when this took place, and wakened him by kissing him on the forehead.
He wrote the notes direct from his memory, from his head, just as other people write letters. He no longer needed an instrument to try what he had composed or to give him an inspiration for a new theme.
Once he showed Eleanore eighteen variations of the same melody. He had spent the whole night making changes in a single composition. Eleanore’s heart was heavy: she came very nearly asking, “For whom, Daniel? For what? The trunk up in the attic?”
She slowly began to perceive that it is not brooding reason that climbs and conquers the steps of perfection, but moral will. Like a flash of lightning she recognised one day the demoniacal element in this impulse, an impulse she had been accustomed to ascribe to his everlasting fidgeting, fumbling, and grumbling. She shuddered at the hitherto unsuspected distress of the man, and took pity on him: he was burying himself in darkness in order to give the world more light.
The world? What did it know about the creations of her Daniel! The big trunk was full ofopusuponopus, and not a soul troubled itself about all these musical treasures resting in a single coffin.
There was something wrong here, she thought. There must be a lost or broken wheel in the clock-work of time; there was some disease among men; some poison, some evil, some heinous oversight.
She could think of nothing else. One day she decided to visit old Herold. At first he acted as though he would chew her to pieces, but afterwards he became more civil, at least civil enough to listen to her. Her features were remarkably brilliant and agile as she spoke. He expressed himself as follows later on: “If some one had promised me eternal blessedness on condition that I forget the picture of this pregnant woman, as she stood before me and argued the case of Daniel Nothafftvs.The Public, I would have been obliged to forego the offer, for I could never have fulfilled my part of the agreement. Forget her? Who would demand the impossible?”
Old Herold begged her to send him one of Daniel’s latest compositions, if she could. She said she would, and the next morning she took from the trunk the quartette in B minor for strings, and carried it over to the professor. He laid the score before him, and began to read. Eleanore took a seat, and patiently studied the many little painted pictures that hung on the wall.
The hour was up. The white-haired man turned the last leaf and struck his clenched fist on the paper, while around his leonine mouth there was a play partly of wrath and partly of awe. He said: “The case will be placed on the calendar, you worthiest of all Eleanores, but I am no longer the herald.”
He walked back and forth, wrung his hands, and cried: “What structure! What colourful tones! What a wealth of melody, rhythm, and originality! What discipline, sweetness, power! What a splendid fellow he is! And to think that a man like that lives right here among us, and plagues and tortures himself! A disgrace and a shame it is! Come, my dear woman, we will go to him at once. I want to press him to my bosom....”
But Eleanore, whose face burned with the feeling of good fortune, interrupted him, and said: “If you do that, you will spoil everything. It will be much better to tell me what to do. He will become more and more obstinate and bitter, if some ray of light does not soon fall on what he has thus far created.”
The old man thought for a while: “You leave the score with me; I’ll see what I can do with it; I have an idea,” he replied, after a short time had elapsed.
Eleanore went back home full of hope.
The quartette was sent to Berlin, and placed in the hands of a man of influence and discrimination. Some professional musicians soon became acquainted with it and its merits. Professor Herold received a number of enthusiastic letters, and answered them withcharacteristic and becoming shrewdness. A cycle of sagas was soon afloat in Berlin concerning the habits and personality of the unknown master. It was said that he was an anchorite who lived in the Franconian forests and preached renunciation of all earthly pleasures.
In Leipzig the quartette was played before an invited audience. The applause was quite different from what it ordinarily was in the case of a public that is surfeited with musical novelties.
Thereby Daniel finally learned what had been done. One day he received a letter from the man who had arranged the concert, a certain Herr Löwenberg. The letter closed as follows: “A community of admirers is anxious to come into possession of your compositions. They send you their greetings at present with cordial gratitude.”
Daniel could scarcely believe his own eyes; it was like magic. Without saying a word he handed the letter to Eleanore. She read it, and looked at him quietly.
“Yes, I am guilty,” she said, “I stole the quartette.”
“Is that so? Do you realise, Eleanore, what you have done to me?”
Eleanore’s face coloured with surprise and fear.
“You ought to know; probably in the future you will lose interest in such womanish wiles.”
He walked back and forth, and then stepped up very close to her: “You probably think I am an idiotic simpleton, a dullard. You seem to feel that I am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong. There was a period when I felt more or less like that, but that time is no more.”
He started to walk back and forth again; again he stopped: “It is not because I think they are too good, nor is it because I am too inert or cowardly, that I keep my compositions under lock and key. I would have to have wheels in my head if I did not have sense enough to know that the effect of a piece is just as much a part of it as heat is a part of fire. Those people who claim that they can quite dispense with recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear?providedit is a living thing.”
“Well then, Daniel,” said Eleanore, somewhat relieved.
“That is where the trouble lies,” he continued, as though he had never been interrupted, “it all depends on whether the piece has life, reality, the essence of true being in it. What is the use of feeding people with unripe or half-baked stuff? They have far too much of that already. There are too many who try and even can, but what they create lacks the evidence that high heaven insisted on its being created: there is no divinemustabout it. My imperfect creations would merely serve as so many stumbling blocks to my perfect ones. If a man has once been seduced by the public and its applause, so that he is satisfied with what is only half perfect, his ear grows deaf, his soul blind before he knows it, and he is the devil’s prey forever. It is an easy matter to make a false step, but there is no such thing as turning back with corrective pace. It cannot be done; for however numerous the possibilities may be, the actual deed is a one-time affair. And however fructifying encouragement from without may be, its effects are in the end murderous if it is allowed to drown out conscience. What I have created in all these years is good enough so far as it goes, but it is merely the preparatory drill to the really great work that is hovering before my mind. It is possible that I flatter myself; it may be that I am being cajoled by fraud and led on by visions; but it is in me, I feel certain of it, and it must come to light. Then we shall see what sort of creature it is. Then all my previous works will have ceased to exist; then I will bestir myself in a public way; I will come out and be the man that I really am. You can depend on it.”
Daniel had never talked to Eleanore in this way before. As she looked at him, overcome almost by the passion of his words, and saw him standing there so utterly fearless, so unyielding and unpitying, her breast heaved with a sigh, and she said: “God grant that you succeed, and that you live to enjoy the fruits of your ambition.”
“It is all a matter of fate, Eleanore,” he replied.
He demanded the quartette; it was sent back to him.
From then on Eleanore suppressed even the slightest sense of discontent that arose in her heart. She felt that he needed cruelty and harshness for his small life in order to preserve love and patience for the great life.
Yes, she prayed to Heaven that she might leave him harsh and cruel.
“Eleanore is my wife,” said Daniel every now and then; he would even stop in the middle of the street in order to enjoy to the full, and preserve if possible, the blessed realisation of this fact.
He always knew it. Yet when he was with Eleanore he frequently forgot her presence. There were days when he would pass by her as though she were some chance acquaintance.
Then there were other days when his happiness made him sceptical; he would say: “Is it then really happiness? Am I happy? If so, why is it that I do not feel my happiness more fervently, terribly?”
He would frequently study her form, her hands, her walk, and wish that he had new eyes, so that he might see her anew. He went away merely in order that he might see her better. In the night he would take a candle, and go up to her bed: a gentle anguish seemed to disappear from her features, his own pulse beat more rapidly. This was caused by the flame-blue of her eyes.
There is a point where the most demure and chaste woman differs in no wise from a prostitute. This is the source of infinite grief to the man who loves. No woman suspects or can understand it.
It was one day while he was brooding and musing and quarrelling without definite reason, in the arms of his beloved, that the profound, melancholy motif in the first movement of his symphony in D minor came to him. This symphony gradually grew into the great vision of his life, and, many years later, one of his women admirers gave it the modifying title of Promethean. The first time the theme sounded in his ears he roared like a wild beast, but with joy. It seemed to him that music was really born at that moment.
He pressed Eleanore so tightly to his bosom that she could not breathe, and murmured between his teeth: “There is no choice left: we have got to remain lifeless and irresponsive to each other’s presence or wound one another with love.”
“The mask, the mask,” whispered Eleanore anxiously, and pointed over to the corner from which the mask of Zingarella, with the dim light falling on it, shone forth like the weirdly beautiful face of a spectre.
Philippina stood before the door, and listened to what they were saying. She had caught a rat, killed it, and laid the cadaver in the door. The next morning, as Eleanore was going into thekitchen, she saw the dead rat, screamed, and went back to her room trembling with fright.
Daniel stroked her hair, and said: “Don’t worry, Eleanore. Rats belong to married life just as truly as salty soup, broken dishes, and holes in the stockings.”
“Now listen, Daniel, is that meant as a reproach?” she asked.
“No, my dear, it is not a reproach; it is merely a picture of the world. You have the soul of a princess; you know nothing about rats. Look at those black, staring, pearly eyes: they remind me of Jason Philip Schimmelweis and Alfons Diruf and Alexander Dörmaul; they remind me of the reserved table, theKaffeeklatsch, smelly feet, evenings at the club, and everything else that is unappetising, vulgar, and base. Don’t look at me in such astonishment, Eleanore, I have just had an ugly dream; that is all. I dreamt that a miserable-looking wretch came up to me and kept asking me what your name is, and I couldn’t tell him. Just think of it: I could not recall your name. It was terribly annoying. Farewell, farewell.”
He had put on his hat and left. He ran out in the direction of Feucht, and stayed the entire day in the open fields without taking a single bit of nourishment except a piece of black bread and a glass of milk. But when he returned in the evening his pockets were bulging with notes he had jotted down while out there by himself.
He came back by way of the Castle, and knocked at Eberhard’s door. Since there was no one at home, he sauntered around for a while along the old rampart, and then returned about nine o’clock. But the windows were still dark.
He had not seen Eberhard for two months. He could still recall the Baron’s depression and worry the last time he had talked with him—it was toward the end of March: he had spoken very little at that time and had gazed into space with remarkably lifeless eyes. He gave the impression of a man who is on the point of doing something quite out of the ordinary if not distinctly terrible.
Daniel did not become aware of this until now; the Baron’s troubles, whatever they were, had not occurred to him during the past weeks; he was sorry for having neglected him so.
When he came home Eleanore was suffering from premature birth pains. Philippina greeted him with the words: “There isgoing to be an increase in the family, Daniel.” Whereat she burst out in a coarse laugh.
“Shut up, you beast,” cried Daniel: “How long has she been suffering? Why didn’t you get the nurse?”
“Can I leave the child here alone? Don’t growl so!” replied Philippina angrily. She went out for the nurse. In a half an hour she came back with her: it was Frau Hadebusch.
Daniel had a disagreeable feeling. He wanted to raise some questions and make some objections, but Frau Hadebusch’s nimble tongue anticipated him. She grinned, curtsied, rolled her eyes, and went through the entire category of acquired mannerisms on the part of a woman of her type, and then unloaded her life history: Her duly wedded husband had said farewell to this vale of tears three years ago, and since then she had been supporting, as well as she could, herself and her poor Henry, the idiot, by hiring out as a midwife. She seemed already to have come to an understanding with Eleanore, for when she entered the room, Eleanore greeted her as though she were an old acquaintance.
While Daniel was alone with Eleanore for a few minutes, he asked her in an indignant tone: “How did you ever come to get that vicious woman?”
Eleanore replied in a gentle and unsuspecting tone: “She came to me one day, and asked to be called in when the child was born. She said she was awfully fond of you, and that you had once lived in her house. Well, I thought, what difference does it make who comes, so I engaged her, and there she is.”
It was only with the greatest difficulty that she finished saying what was on her mind. Her face, white as a sheet, was pinched with an expression of terrific pain. She reached for Daniel’s hand, and held it so tightly that he became rigid with anxiety.
When she began to groan, Daniel turned away and pressed his fists together. Frau Hadebusch came in with a tub of hot water: “This is no place for men,” she exclaimed with a kindly twisting of her face, took Daniel by the shoulder, and pushed him out the door.
Little Agnes was standing in the hall. “Father,” she said.
“Put that child to bed!” said Daniel, turning to Philippina.
Jordan came out of the kitchen. He held an earthen bowl of soup in his hand. It had been saved for him, and all he had to do was to hold it over the fire and heat it up. He went up toDaniel, and said, as his chin quivered: “May God protect her, and be merciful to her!”
“Quit that kind of talk, Father,” said Daniel impatiently. “God rules with reservations that make me insane.”
“Won’t you say good-night to little Agnes?” asked Philippina in a rude, rough tone from the other room.
He went in; the child looked at him timidly. The more it grew, the greater his own shyness became in its presence. And the constant association of Eleanore with the child had always been a source of worry to him. There was one thing of which he was mortally certain: he could not see Eleanore in bodily form and precisely as she was, when Agnes, with her Gertrude eyes and her arched Eleanore mouth, was present in the room with Eleanore. He felt that Eleanore had been transformed into the sister of Agnes, that she was still only a sister. And this he felt was something fatal.
Both of the sisters looked at him out of Agnes’s big childish eyes; in her they were both melted and moulded into a single being. A presageful horror crept over him. Sisters! The word had a solemn sound in his ears; it seemed full of mysterious meaning; it took on mythical greatness.
“Sleep, baby, sleep, outside are two sheep, a black one and a white one ...” sang Philippina in her imbecile way. It was astonishing the amount of malevolence there was in her sing-song.
Daniel could not stand it in the house; he went out on the street, and wandered around until midnight. If he made up his mind to go home, the thought occurred to him at once that Frau Hadebusch would prevent him from going into Eleanore’s room. He felt like lying down on the pavement and waiting until some one came and told him how Eleanore was getting along.
It struck one just as he came home. The maid from the first floor and the maid from the second were standing on the stairs. They had not been able to sleep; they had heard the cries of the young woman from their rooms, had come out, joined each other, listened, trembled, and whispered.
Daniel heard one of them say: “The Kapellmeister should send for the doctor.”
The other sobbed and replied: “Yes, but a doctor can’t work miracles.”
“Lord, Lord,” they cried, as a nerve-racking cry from Eleanore rang through the bleak house.
Daniel sprang up the steps. “Run for Dr. Müller just as fast as your feet can carry you,” said Daniel to Philippina, who was then standing in the kitchen in her bare feet with her hair hanging down her back. Daniel was breathing heavily; Philippina was making some tea. Daniel then hastened into Eleanore’s room; Frau Hadebusch tried to keep him out, but he pushed her to one side, gritted his teeth, and threw himself on the floor by Eleanore’s bed.
She raised her head; she was a pale as death; the perspiration was pouring down over her face. “You shouldn’t be here, Daniel, you shouldn’t see me,” she said with much effort, but her tone was so commanding and final that Daniel got up and slowly left the room. He was seized with a strange, violent anger. He went out into the kitchen and drank a glass of water, and then hurled the glass on the floor: it broke into a hundred pieces.
Frau Hadebusch had followed him; she looked very much discouraged. When he noticed the frame of mind she was in, he became dizzy; he had to sit down in order to keep from falling. “Ah, the doctor will come,” he said in a brusque tone.
“My God, it makes you sick at the stomach to see how women suffer to-day,” said the old lady in her shrillest, one-tooth voice; it was quite plain that she was pleased to know that the doctor was coming. The present case had got her into serious trouble, and she wanted to get out of it. “The devil to these women who are so delicately built,” she had said about an hour ago to the grinning Philippina.
Philippina came back with the announcement that Dr. Müller was on a vacation: “Well, is he the only physician in the city, you dumb ox?” howled Daniel, “go get Dr. Dingolfinger; he lives here close by: right over there by the Peller House. But wait a minute! You stay here; I’ll go get him.”
Dr. Dingolfinger was a Jewish physician, a rather old man, and Daniel had to ring and ring to get him out of his bed. But finally he heard the bell, got up, and followed Daniel across the square. Daniel had left the lantern burning at the front gate, and with it he lighted the doctor through the court and up the stairs.
Then he sat down on the bench in the kitchen; how long he sat there he did not know; he bent his body forward and buried his head in his hands. The screams became worse and worse: they were no longer the cries of Eleanore but of some unsouled,dehumanised being. Daniel heard them all; he could think of nothing, he could feel nothing but that voice. At times the terrible cry ran through his heart: Sisters! Sisters!
Frau Hadebusch came out several times to get hot water. The yellow tooth in her lower jaw stuck out like a cracked, lecherous remainder and reminder of her past life. Once Dr. Dingolfinger himself came out, rummaged around in his leather case, which he had left in the hall, looked at Daniel, and said: “It is going to come out all right; it will all be over in a short while.” At that Philippina poked at the fire, and put on fresh coals. She looked at Daniel out of one corner of her eye, and went on her way. From time to time old Jordan rapped on the wall to have Philippina come up and tell him how things were going.
It must have been about four o’clock in the morning; the gloomy, grey stones in the walls of the court yard were already being covered with rosy tints from the East. There was a cry so fearful, so like that of a voice from the wilds of the heart, that Daniel sprang to his feet and stood trembling in every limb.
Then it became quiet, mysteriously, uncannily quiet.
He sat down again; after a while his eyes closed, and he fell asleep.
He must have slept about half an hour when he was wakened by the sound of footsteps.
Standing around him were the physician, Frau Hadebusch, and Philippina. The doctor said something at which Daniel shook his head. It sounded like: “Unfortunately I cannot keep the sad news from you.” Daniel did not understand him; he drew his lips apart, and thought: “The idea of dreaming such disordered stuff!”
“Mother and child are both dead,” said the old physician, with tears in his eyes. “Both dead. It was a boy. Science was powerless; nature was hostile and the stronger of the two.”
“So delicately built,” murmured Frau Hadebusch, in a tone of disapproval, “as delicate as the stem of a plant.”
When Daniel at last realised that he was not dreaming, that these were in bitter truth Philippina’s glistening eyes and Frau Hadebusch’s goatish tooth and Dr. Dingolfinger’s silvery beard, and that these were actual words that were being spoken to him, he fell over and became unconscious.
Pain, grief, despair, such terms do not describe his condition.
He knew nothing about himself; he had no thoughts; he lay on the sofa in the living room day and night, ate nothing, said nothing, and never moved.
When they carried the empty coffin into the death chamber, he burrowed his face into the corner of the sofa. Old Jordan tottered through the room to take a last look at his dead daughter. “He has sinned,” Jordan sobbed, “sinned against God in Heaven.”
In the hall some people were whispering. Martha Rübsam and her husband had come in. Martha was crying. Her slender figure with her pale face appeared in the doorway; she looked around for Daniel.
“Don’t you want to see your Eleanore before the coffin is closed?” asked Philippina in a hollow voice.
He never moved; the twitchings of his face were terrible to behold.
Beside him on the table was some cold food; also some bread and apples.
They carried the coffin out. He felt that where his heart once was there was now a dark, empty space. The church bell rang, the rain splashed against the window panes.
During the second night he felt his soul suddenly become incoherent, lax. This was followed by a brief flaring up within him, whereupon his eyes were filled with hot, burning tears. He resigned himself to the situation without audible display of grief; he felt all of a sudden that he had now for the first time in his life really sensed the beauty of the pure triad in the major key.
Another day passed by. He could hear old Jordan walking about in the room above him, ceaselessly and with heavy tread. He felt cold; Philippina came in; he asked her to get him a blanket. Philippina was most eager to be of service to him. The door bell rang; Philippina opened.
Before her stood a lady and a gentleman. There was something so refined about them that Philippina did not dare raise any objections when they quietly came in and went straight to the living room: the door had not been closed, and they could see Daniel lying on the sofa.
Daniel looked at them quite indifferently. Gradually he began to collect his thoughts, to compose himself, to come to himself.
His guests were Eberhard von Auffenberg and his cousin, Sylvia von Erfft. They were betrothed.
Taken up as he had latterly been with the marked changes and transformations in his life, Eberhard had not heard of the death of Eleanore until a few hours ago.
It was a rare visit. None of the three said a word. Daniel lay wrapped in his blanket; he never moved. Finally, when his friends were about to leave, Sylvia got up, and turning to Daniel, said: “I did not know Eleanore, but I feel as if I had lost one of my own dear friends.”
Eberhard tossed his chin in the air, turned pale, and was as silent as the tomb.
They repeated their visit on the following day, and then on the next day, and so on. The presence of the two people came in time to have a beneficent effect on Daniel.
A fewdays later, Herr Carovius carried out the scheme he had decided upon at the time his heart became so embittered at Eleanore’s marriage.
It was the end of March. Herr Carovius had learned that the old Baron had just returned from Berlin. He went around to his house, and sent in his card. The butler came out, and told him that the Baron could receive no one, that he should state his business in writing.
Herr Carovius, however, wanted to see his debtor face to face: this was the heart of his dream. When he came back a second time and was again told that he could not see the Baron, he began to storm and bluster, and insisted that they should at least let him talk with the Baroness.
The Baroness was just then taking her music lesson. The fifteen-year-old Dorothea Döderlein, who gave promise of developing into a remarkable virtuoso on the violin, was playing some sonatas with the Baroness.
Andreas Döderlein had recognised her talents when she was a mere child. Since her tenth year, she had been obliged to practise six hours every day. She had had a great number of different teachers, all of whom had been brought to the point of despair by her intractability. In the presence of her father, however, she was meek: to him she bowed.
Andreas Döderlein had recommended his daughter to the Baroness in words replete with objective recognition. The Baroness declared her willingness to play with Dorothea. Andreas Döderlein had said to her: “Now you have a chance to rise in the world through powerful influence; don’t neglect it! The Baroness loves the emotional; be emotional. At times she will demand the demoniac; be obedient. Like all rich people, she is pampering some griefde luxe; don’t disturb her!”
Dorothea was docile.
They were playing Beethoven’s spring sonatas, when the altercation began out in the vestibule. The maid came in and whisperedsomething to her mistress. The Baroness arose and went to the door. Dorothea laid her violin in her lap, and looked around in affected astonishment, as though she were coming out of a dream.
At a sign from the Baroness the old servant gave Herr Carovius a free path. He went in: his face was red; he made a quite ridiculous bow. His eyes drank in the velvet portières, the cut glass mirrors, the crystal vases, and the bronze statuettes. In the meantime, and without fail, he had placed his right hand against his hip, giving the fine effect of right akimbo, and set one foot very elegantly a trifle more to the fore than the other: he looked like a provincial dancing-master.
He complained of the presumptuousness of the servants, and assured the Baroness that she was in complete enjoyment of his deference. He spoke of his good intentions and the pressure of circumstances. When the impatient bearing of his sole but distinguished auditor at last obliged him to come to the real purpose of his visit, the Baroness twitched; for from his flood of words there emerged, as she heard them, nothing but the name of her son.
With panting sounds she came up to Herr Carovius, and took him by the coat-sleeve. Her dim, black eyes became as round as little bullets; the supplicating expression in them was so much balm to the soul of her visitor.
Herr Carovius was enchanted; he was having the time of a scurvy life; he became impudent; he wanted to take vengeance on the mother against the son. He saw that the Baroness did not correspond to the picture he had made of a creature who belonged to the aristocracy. In his imagination she had lived as a domineering, imperious, inaccessible phenomenon: and now there stood before him an old, obese, worried woman. On this account he gave his voice a shriller tone, his face a more scurrilous expression than was his wont. Then he launched forth on a graphic narration of the unhappy plight in which he now found himself as a result of his association with Baron von Eberhard, Jr.
He claimed that it was nothing but his own good nature that had got him into this trouble. And yet, what was he to do? The Baron would have starved to death, or become morally depraved, if he had not come to his spiritual and pecuniary rescue, for the young man was sadly wanting in the powers of moral resistance. And what had he gained by all this altruism? Ingratitude, bitter ingratitude!
“He plundered me; he took my last cent, and then acted as ifit were my damned duty to go through fire for his baronical excellency,” screamed Herr Carovius. “Before I came to know him I was a well-to-do man; I could enjoy myself; I could reap the higher pleasures of human existence. To-day I am ruined. My money is wasted, my house is burdened with mortgages, my peace of mind has gone plumb to the Devil. Two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks is what the young man owes me and my business friends. Yes—two hundred and seventy-six thousand marks, including interest and interest on the interest, all neatly noted down and signed up by the duly authorised parties. Am I to let him slam the door in my face because of his indebtedness to me? I think you will see yourself that that cannot be expected of me. He at least owes me a little respect for what I have done for him.”
The Baroness had listened to all this with folded hands and unfixed eyes. But the close of the story was too much for her: she threw herself on a great divan, overcome—for the time being—with worry and maternal weakness. A grin strayed across Herr Carovius’s face. He twirled his Calabrian headpiece in his hands, and let his leery eyes wander about the walls. Then it was that he caught sight of Dorothea, whom he had thus far failed to see in his intoxication of wrath and rapture.
When Herr Carovius entered, Dorothea, out of discretion rather than with serious intent, had made herself as small as possible in the most remote corner of the room. Trembling with curious excitement, she had wished to evade the eye of her uncle Carovius, for in very truth she was ashamed of him.
She regarded him as a sort of comic freak, who, though he had enough to live on, could not be said to be in the best of circumstances. When he rolled the sum the Auffenberg family owed him from his tongue, she was filled with astonishment and delight, and from then on she took a totally different view of him.
During the last few years Herr Carovius had seen very little of Dorothea. Whenever he had met her, she had passed by him in great haste. He knew that she was taking violin lessons: he had often heard her screechy fiddling on the stairs and out in the hall.
He fixed his eyes on her, and exclaimed: “Well I’m a son-of-a-gun if there isn’t Döderlein’s daughter! How did you get here? Aha, you are going about and showing the people what you can do! I should think you and your creator would have had enough of music by this time.”
The Baroness, recalling that the young girl was present, raisedher eyes and looked at Dorothea reproachfully. For the first time in her life she felt that the resources she had managed to extract from a life of neglect were about exhausted; for the first time in her life she felt a shudder at the thought of her musical stupefactions.
She asked Herr Carovius to have patience, adding that he would hear from her in a few days—as soon as she had talked the matter over with her husband. She nipped in the bud a zealous reply he was about to make, and nodded a momentary farewell to Dorothea, who put her violin in the case, took the case in her hand, curtsied, and followed her uncle out of the room.
She remained at his side; they went along the street together. Herr Carovius turned to her from time to time, and made some rancorous remark. She smiled modestly.
With that began the strange relation that existed between the two from then on.
It had looked for some time as though the Baron von Auffenberg had retired from the political stage. In circles in which he had formerly been held in unqualified esteem he was now regarded as a fallen hero.
His friends traced the cause of his failure to the incessant friction from which the party had suffered; to the widespread change that was taking place in the public mind; to the ever-increasing pressure from above and the never-ceasing fermentation from below; to the feverish restlessness that had come over the body politic, changing its form, its ideals, and its convictions; and to the more scrupulous and sometimes reactionary stand that was being taken on all matters of national culture.
But this could not explain the hard trace of repulsion and aversion which the Baron’s countenance had never before revealed when in the presence of men; it threw no light, or at most an inadequate light, on the stony glare, gloomy impatience, and reticence which he practised now even in those circles and under those circumstances in which he had formerly been noted for his diverting talents as a conversationalist and companion.
In his heart of hearts he had, as a matter of fact, always despised his political constituents, their speeches, their action, their enthusiasm, and their indignation. But he had never kicked over the traces, for during the course of a rather eventful life he had madethe discovery that contempt and an icy disposition are invaluable adjuncts to any one who wishes to control men.
Even though he had fought at the beginning of his career with all the eloquence and buoyancy at his command for freedom and tolerance, it remained a fact that he regarded liberalism as nothing more than a newspaper term, a means of keeping men busy who were too indolent to think for themselves, and a source of obstructive annoyance to the openly hated but secretly admired Bismarck.
He had wielded a power in full consciousness of the lie he was acting, and had done it solely by gestures, calculations, and political adroitness. This will do for a while, but in time it eats into the marrow of one’s life.
In his eyes nothing was of value except the law, unwritten to be sure, but of immemorial duration, that subjects the little to the big, the weak to the strong, the immature to the experienced, the poor to the rich. In accordance with this law humanity for him was divided into two camps: those who submitted to the law, and the undesirable citizens who rebelled against the law.
And of these undesirable citizens his son Eberhard was the most undesirable.
With this stinging, painful thorn in his flesh, oppressed by the feeling of loneliness in the very midst of a noisy, fraudulent activity, and filled with an ever-increasing detestation of the superfluity and consequent effeminacy of his daily existence, he had created out of the figure of his son a picture of evil incarnate.
He visualised him in dissipation and depravity of every kind and degree; he saw him sinking lower and lower, a traitor to his family name; as if in a dream that appeases the sense of obscene horror, he saw him in league with the abandoned and proscribed, associating with thieves, street bandits, high-flying swindlers, counterfeiters, anarchists, prostitutes, and literati. He saw him in dirty dives, a fugitive from justice wandering along the highway, drunk in a gambling den, a beggar at a fair, and a prisoner at the bar.
His determination to wait until the degenerate representative of the human family had been stigmatised by all the world he finally abandoned. His impatience to find peace, to throw off the mask, to rid himself completely of all entanglements, dissimulation, and the life of luxury to which he had been accustomed became so great, that he looked forward to the day that would eventually mark his release as the day of a new birth.
But why did he hesitate? Was there still an element of doubt in his breast? Was there still slumbering, deep down in theregions of his heart that were inaccessible to bitterness and revenge, another picture of his son? Why did he hesitate from week to week, from month to month?
In the meantime he had donated great fortunes to poor houses, hospitals, foundations, and similar causes. He wanted to give away other millions, at least so much that his heirs would receive only the gleanings of what had once been a field of riches. Emilia was to be given the income from the breweries and the country estates.
To this extent he had firmly made up his mind. Now that his wife had told him of the actual condition in which Eberhard found himself, he felt justified in going ahead and carrying out his pre-determined plans. The proofs of dishonourable conduct on the part of his son could now be brought forward. The debts he had contracted, either through flippancy or downright deception, in the name of his father were sufficient to condemn him forever. And if not, then let them fight it out after he was dead and gone; let his last will and testament be a ghost, a spectre that would strike terror into their hearts and embitter such pleasure as they might otherwise derive from life.
His will had been drawn up seven years ago; all that was needed was the signature of the notary public.
But why did the Baron hesitate? Why did he pace back and forth in his room with pinched lips? Why did he ring for the butler with the idea of sending this functionary for the notary, and then suddenly change his mind and give the butler something else to do?
“Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon,” screeched the parrot.