About the same hour--perhaps a little earlier two gentlemen displayed
at the billiard-table, in the restaurant near the main guard-house on
the square, that industry which is so becoming to busy idlers. The two
gentlemen who met at this favorite lounging place of the _jeunesse
doree_ of Grunwald, were Cloten and Barnewitz. The former, who excelled
in all the arts which required a sure eye and a steady hand, and no
head work, had beaten his adversary in every game, and hence the young
man was in excellent humor, while the other was nearly angry.
"Another game, Barnewitz?" asked Cloten, triumphantly, after having
finished the twelfth with a brilliant carom.
"Thank you; no!" said Barnewitz, throwing his cue on the
billiard-table; "am not in the right humor for it to-day. I cannot play
well anyhow in this miserable twilight!"
"We can have the lamps lit."
"No, thank you! Another day! We can play quits to-morrow."
Cloten now laid down his cue also, stepped before the looking-glass and
twisted his blonde moustache, while Barnewitz threw himself upon the
sofa and yawned.
"It is wretchedly tedious here," he said; "don't know how on earth to
kill the whole afternoon!"
"Let us take a walk."
"It is too abominably cold."
"A game at piquet?"
"Too tiresome."
"A bottle of claret?"
"Well, that's better."
"Waiter! a bottle of Pichon and a light."
The waiter brought what was ordered. Cloten threw himself into an
arm-chair opposite to Barnewitz, and stretched out his legs.
"Well?"
"Well!"
"Don't you know anything?"
"No! Do you?"
"No!"
After this exchange of bright thoughts there followed, as a matter of
course, a pause of exhaustion, and the ship of conversation remained
for a quarter of an hour stranded on a sandbank, while the two men
smoked their cigars and sipped their wine.
Cloten and Barnewitz had been apparently excellent friends ever since
their terrible collision in summer, but in reality they had watched
each other with unbroken distrust. It is true, the distrust was but too
well founded in this case. Hortense Bamewitz had no sooner come to
Grunwald than she cast out her net--experienced fisher of men as she
was--after her old lover, and Cloten had at that time already
discovered that happiness in the arms of his former lady-love was far
more attractive than the honor of being the husband of the most
fashionable lady in town. Barnewitz, on the other hand, gave the noble
couple ample opportunity for meeting; for he threw himself, at
Grunwald, head foremost into a vortex of amusements, of which there was
no lack there for a rich nobleman who cared more for quantity than for
quality. Nevertheless, he was as much the victim of jealousy now as
before, and he was therefore highly pleased to see, what all others saw
as well, that Emily treated her husband like a school-boy, and had
evidently found a worthier object for her loving heart.
Barnewitz had long wished for an hour when he might inform Cloten under
the mask of friendship of the reports which filled the town about him
and his wife. The day before he had accidentally heard of some new
scandal, and to-day Cloten's superiority at billiards had greatly
annoyed him. After thinking the matter over for some time, therefore,
he exploded:
"How is your wife, Cloten?"
"Thanks! Pretty well; why?" replied Cloten, not a little astonished at
the brusque question.
"Well, I suppose it is permitted to inquire after your wife! Or do you
allow no questions to be asked?"
"Certainly; but what do you mean?"
"Because she has been so very charming for a little while past."
"Is that so very uncommon?" asked Cloten, slightly embarrassed, and
torturing his moustache.
"Yes; for she had just before treated everybody, yourself included, so
very badly, that one could not help wondering at the sudden change. At
all events, I was not the only one to notice it; the whole world is
full of it."
"The whole world ought to pull its own nose," said Cloten; and his hand
trembled with annoyance as he filled his glass.
"Certainly; but they don't do it."
"---- the whole world!"
"Certainly; if you wish it. But if you would rather talk about
something else;--I only thought that, as your oldest friend, it was my
duty to call your attention to certain things."
"Well, then, come; out with your story," said Cloten, with nervous
vehemence. "What is it? Out with it!"
"I shall take good care not to say anything more, if the first word
puts you into such a state."
"I am not in any state," said Cloten; and to prove it, he dashed his
glass upon the table, so that the foot broke to pieces and the wine
flooded the marble top.
"You are a queer fellow," said Barnewitz. "Wait till you have cause to
get angry. What does it amount to? They say that you are not exactly
Darby and Joan; that your wife has her own way; that you quarrel
occasionally so that the servants hear it in the kitchen, and the
like."
"Who says so?"
"The whole world!"
"And you believe it?"
Barnewitz shrugged his shoulders.
"I shouldn't like to hurt your feelings, Arthur; but I cannot deny it
that the way your wife acts looks very suspicious to me. I should not
wonder, and no one in our circle would wonder, if she had some little
_liaison_, and I rather think I know the person."
"I insist upon it that you tell me all you know," said Cloten, with
great pathos.
"Do you recollect the party at my house last summer? But of course you
do, for we came near killing each other on that occasion. Ha, ha, ha!
Well, on that evening already your wife began to flirt with that
confounded fool--that Doctor Stein--in a way which struck everybody,
and me too. But I had totally forgotten the whole affair till I was
reminded of it yesterday. You recollect I had left Stilow's because, to
tell the truth, the wine was too bad, and I was very thirsty. I found
in my way to the city cellars, where the company is low enough but the
wine excellent. There were a dozen people--authors, actors, and such
stuff--sitting round a table and drinking; among them our old friend
Timm the surveyor, who talked very big. I sat down at some distance,
ordered a few dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne, and listened,
because I could not help listening. They talked, heaven knows what
stuff. I did not understand a word, and was just thinking what a lot of
sheep they all were, and my eyes were beginning to be heavy, when I
suddenly heard somebody mention your name, or rather your wife's name.
Of course, I was wide awake in a moment. 'Who is she?' asked somebody.
'A wonderful creature,' said Timm. 'Well, and friend Stein is in love
with her.' 'That's it!' 'What a fellow--that man Stein!' 'How did he
get hold of her?' 'Oh, that is a long story!' said Timm; and then they
put their heads together and talked so low that I could not hear the
rest. At all events they laughed like madmen, and I had a great mind to
pitch a few bottles at their heads."
"Why didn't you do it?" asked Cloten, angrily.
"I do not like to get into trouble in a strange establishment; I have
had to pay for it often enough," replied the philosophic nobleman,
pouring the rest of the bottle into his glass.
Then followed a pause, after which Cloten cried out with much
vehemence: "I don't believe a word of it."
Barnewitz shrugged his shoulders.
"That's the best for you to do."
"Don't say so! I won't have it!" exclaimed Cloten, furiously.
"I only say what the world says," replied Barnewitz, sipping his wine
leisurely.
"And you think the world says nothing about you?" asked Cloten,
ironically.
"What do they say about me?" cried Barnewitz, starting up. "---- the
fellow who dares say a word; and I think you, of all men, ought to be
most careful not to open your mouth."
"Careful or not, I don't see why I should not talk as well as you."
"What! a fellow like you?" said Barnewitz, thrusting his hands into his
pockets with an air of contempt "I suppose you think you are
wonderfully successful with the sex?"
Who knows what serious consequences might have arisen from this
word-combat if the door of the billiard-room had not opened just then
to admit Professor Jager, who crept in cautiously, after having first
reconnoitred the room through his round glasses.
Professor Jager's appearance was never specially inviting, but on this
evening there was something peculiarly unpleasant about the man's pale
face. His stereotyped smile, and the drooping corners of the mouth,
contrasted with his effort to give an air of solemnity to his forehead,
and to look as melancholy as possible through his spectacles, so that
he appeared on the whole not unlike a black tom cat who glides purring
and with raised back around a person's leg, preparing to scratch his
hands the next moment furiously.
Thus he drew near to the two noblemen, made a very low bow, and said:
"I beg ten thousand pardons if I am disturbing the _entente cordiale_
of two bosom friends, but----"
"Come here, professor," said Barnewitz, who welcomed the interruption;
"join us in a glass of Pichon. Waiter! another----"
"Pray, don't; many thanks. Regret infinitely that I should have
interrupted you in your cozy talk; but I heard at your house, Baron
Cloten, that I should find you here, and a matter of importance which I
had to communicate----"
"Don't mind me, gentlemen," said Barnewitz. "I'll go into the
reading-room till you have done."
"Pray, pray; I have only two words----"
"Well, all right. Call me when you have done!"
With these words Barnewitz went into the adjoining room, where he
rested his elbows on the table and his head on his hands, and then
plunged into the mysteries of the Grunwald official journal.
He had no sooner left them than Professor Jager turned to Cloten and
said, whispering mysteriously:
"Baron Cloten, I have to tell you something that will frighten you."
Cloten turned pale and stepped back. His first thought was that his
stables had been burnt, and Arabella and Macdonald, his two
thoroughbreds, had perished in the flames. The professor did not leave
him long in this terrible uncertainty; but with a low, spectral voice,
and drawing the corners of his mouth so low down that they seemed to
meet under the chin, he said: "Your wife----"
"Ha!" cried Cloten. "What is it? What has happened?"
"I don't know," replied Jager, "but I fear for the worst. Look at this
paper [he searched his pockets and produced a folded-up piece of
paper]. I found it just now on my wife's writing-table. But before I
read to you what is on the paper you must swear you will never tell
from whom you have heard it."
"I'll swear anything you want," said Cloten, with nervous excitement.
"What is the matter with the paper?"
"Directly, directly! First, let me tell you that for some weeks now
your wife and mine have become great friends, an intimacy which from
the beginning has puzzled me sorely. Their meetings, I was told, had a
purely poetical purpose--you know my wife is president of the Lyric
Club--but I was struck by the fact that a third person appeared there
always, or at least very frequently, a person against whom I have ever
felt an unconquerable aversion. This person is----"
"Doctor Stein! I know! Go on," said Cloten, breathlessly.
"You know!--ah, indeed!" replied the professor, with a Mephistophelian
smile, which gleamed unpleasantly behind his glasses. "Oh, well; then
the hardest part of my task has been performed by others. Well, sir, if
you know it already I will not detain you by telling you how the first
spark of suspicion fell into my simple soul; how subsequent
observations fanned this into a bright flame, which threatened to
consume this heart of mine, that only beats for the welfare of my
brethren [here the professor laid his hand with its black glove on the
left side]. I dared not forbid my wife all intercourse with the person
in question. You know, sir, poetic minds are apt to be eccentric, and
the aesthetic standpoint from which----"
"But I pray you, professor, come to the point," said Cloten, who was
standing upon coals. "What was on the paper?"
"Why, you see," said Jager, opening the paper, "it is the rough sketch
of a poem, which I found quite wet yet on my wife's bureau; the servant
told me she had just left the house to pay a visit. Shall I read it to
you?"
"Yes; in the devil's name!" cried Cloten, who hardly knew what he was
saying.
Professor Jager arranged his spectacles carefully on his nose, drew the
light somewhat nearer, and read, in a half-loud, rattling voice, while
the young nobleman was looking over his shoulder: "'Grunwald, December
10, 1847.' You see the date corresponds exactly.
'FOR THE ALBUM OF AN ESCAPING PRISONER.
'You flee!--by the light of the twinkling stars,
In rapturous flight through Cimmerian night;
You flee! and alas I would break all the bars,
I, who have watched over you day and night!
But terrible bonds have forged me a chain,
Which ever in bondage will here me retain.
You flee!--and I stay in Cimmerian night.'
"You see this poetical eccentricity of a soul generally chaste and full
of affection," said the professor, who had read the last lines with a
somewhat unsteady voice.
"Go on! go on!" urged Cloten, whose sufferings made him indifferent to
the sufferings of others.
The professor continued:
"'You flee! and the icicles glitter so bright,
The hoofs now thunder on quivering ice,
You are not frightened by terrible night,
You follow the lurings of glorious price.
You flee! and you do what is proper and right!
Why should you remain with a wretched wight
A puppet of wood on a couch of ice?'"
"That is meant for me!" said Cloten, furiously, grinding his teeth.
"Certainly, certainly!" said the professor; "but listen:
"'You flee! and yonder on rockiest strand,
In nurse's familiar house by the sea,
There falls in a moment the hampering band
That bound you before, and there is he!
There love in a thousand fiery brooks,
Breaks forth in caresses and tenderest looks
In Nurse's familiar house by the sea.
"'You flee! and alas 'tis not to the port,
Where spies are no more nor watching eyes!
Oh flee to the safe, to the only resort,
Where wait for you milder and happier skies!
Oh flee to the banks of the beautiful Seine,
Where love is at freedom, amain! amain!
And free from society's hateful lies!'"
The professor folded up the paper again, pocketed it, and said:
"This poem troubled me sorely, for I know the way my wife makes her
poems. She takes the subject from actual life. But I was much more
startled yet, when I went on using a husband's right and examined the
papers that were scattered all over her table. I found this little note
[here the professor put his hand in his waistcoat pocket]. Do you know
the hand-writing, Baron Cloten?"
"That is my wife's hand," cried the young nobleman, casting a glance at
the paper. "What does she say? Let me see! 'All remains as agreed upon,
dear Primula. Everything is ready. We meet at Mrs. Lemberg's. Tomorrow
at this hour a world divides us. Shall I be able to embrace you once
more? I shall be at home at three. I should like to see you so much,
but--can you venture to come without rousing suspicion? I leave the
matter to you. Good-by, good-by, dearest! Free to-day! Oh, I can hardly
conceive such happiness! Good-by--a thousand farewells!' By the
Almighty!" cried the happy husband, crumpling up the paper and pushing
it into his pocket. "Now I see it all! I never could understand why she
was all the time going to see that old woman in Ferrytown! But I'll
spoil the fun; I'll----"
As the happy man did not exactly know what he was going to do, he broke
down, and walked up and down, like a man suffering with a furious
toothache.
Professor Jager looked at him, his head inclined on his right shoulder,
and folding his hands in sympathetic emotion; but he had the air of an
ear-owl, gazing with big, staring eyes at a poor foolish bird that has
been caught in a snare.
"You may believe me, my dear sir," he said; "I am heartily sorry for
the whole thing; and I assure you I would have kept it all to myself if
I did not think it was the good shepherd's duty to snatch the lamb from
the jaws of the wolf. For this man is a raving wolf. I found him out at
first sight, but they would not believe me. Now they see it clear
enough. Only this morning Doctor Black, one of the trustees of the
college, came to see me, and to tell me that Doctor Clemens had called
for an official inquiry into the conduct of the terrible man, which
could not fail to end in his dismissal--his dismissal in disgrace. And
while I was still considering how we could best make it known to all
the world that he was a wolf in sheep's clothes, chance came to my aid
and caused these papers to fall into my hands, which prove clearly that
the worst that was reported about this man was not as bad yet as the
truth. I knew at once what my duty was. Certain that my wife would
never hear of the exposure to which I had been morally forced, and
relying on the discretion of a nobleman, I hastened----"
"I must consult Barnewitz," said Cloten, suddenly; and he made a motion
as if he were going into the room where Barnewitz was waiting.
"For God's sake, my dear sir," cried the frightened professor, "are you
going to ruin me? Consider, I pray, you have solemnly promised not to
expose Mrs. Jager----"
"Nonsense!" said Cloten; "you surely would not have me go into such a
serious matter alone. Barnewitz!"
"What's the matter?" said the latter, looking up from his paper.
"Just come this way! I have something important to tell you."
Barnewitz came, and Cloten told him rapidly what the matter was, while
the professor stood by, rubbing his hands, in great embarrassment.
"It cannot be doubted," continued Cloten. "I must tell you frankly I
had my suspicions; but, to be sure, I did not guess that rascal--that
man Stein ... But I see it all now. I knew she was going over to Ferry
town again to-day; and now I remember she said, contrary to her
usual way, she would not be back before night. And then you saw last
night--oh, no doubt it is all so! What am I to do? What ought I to do?"
And the young man struck his forehead with his closed fist.
"What ought you to do?" said Barnewitz. "Let her run!"
"Pardon me," said the professor; "that would cause an unheard-of
scandal, which even now, I think, can only be prevented by very
energetic measures."
"The professor is right," said Cloten; "we must not let them get off;
but I cannot prevent it alone. Will you help me, Barnewitz?"
"_Avec plaisir_," replied Barnewitz. "I never could bear the fellow!"
"But _periculum in mora_, gentlemen. You must go to work at once!"
chimed in the professor.
"Well, we will," said Cloten. "Come, Barnewitz; I'll tell you on the
way what I think we had better do. The professor will accompany us part
of the way."
"With pleasure; with great pleasure!" replied the professor. "To be
sure, my time is very limited now; very limited. Ah--here is the door;
I pray, after you, gentlemen!"
And the three gentlemen hastily left the restaurant.