Early on the morning following their nocturnal encounter, Felix sought
out the lieutenant; he could not rest without trying to find out
whether it was not an illusion of his senses which made him think he
saw Irene's uncle riding at his friend's side. Schnetz lived in the top
story of a dismal old house whose winding stairway was but dimly
illuminated by a faint stream of light proceeding from a dingy skylight
covered with dust and cobwebs. A woman, too refined-looking to be a
servant, and, on the other hand, too modest in her behavior to be a
housekeeper, opened the door for the strange visitor, looked at him in
a frightened and confused way, and informed him in a soft, subdued
voice that the lieutenant had gone out very early in the morning; when
he would be back she did not know. He sometimes staid away whole days
at a time; this time, besides, he had said something to her about
taking a ride into the mountains. So Felix was forced to restrain his
impatience. But he felt quite incapable of going to his work as usual.
He lounged about the streets for hours, regardless of the heat and
dust. He carefully scanned every horseman whom he met, and every
carriage from which he saw a veil waving; and a girl's head, turning
about with restless curiosity to see all that was going on, caused his
heart to beat until he had convinced himself it was not the dreaded,
and yet secretly so longed-for, face--for which he sought thus
earnestly only that it might not take him too much by surprise.
On the following day he continued his aimless wanderings, at first on
foot, through all the picture galleries, and in the afternoon in a
drosky, in which he rattled through the Au suburb, the English Garden,
and, finally, the Nymphenburg and the deer park, until his panting
horse landed him, toward evening, at one of the suburban theatres; for
there was still a bare possibility that the travelers would feel a
desire to see the "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld," which happened to be the
sensation of the hour.
All these hopes were doomed to disappointment. Half tired out and half
angry with himself, he left the theatre at the close of the first act,
and strolled back to his lodgings by the most unfrequented streets he
could find. There he found a line from Jansen, who had been alarmed at
his long absence.
"It is true," he laughed bitterly to himself, "such an old apprentice
as I am ought to know the value of his time better than to cut school
for two days. What is the good of it all, except to give one tired legs
and a heavy head? And, if I really had found her, what then? We should
have stared at one another like total strangers, and hurried out of one
another's sight."
He threw himself on the sofa, and mechanically reached out his hand for
one of the books that lay upon the table. As he did so he noticed that
he had taken up with it a fine red hair, and this recalled his thoughts
to the night when he had given up this room to Zenz.
"What a fool I was!" he muttered between his teeth. "If I had not
driven the good creature away from me, perhaps I should be in better
humor now, and would not have wasted these two days in such a senseless
way."
Then he tried very hard to recall the figure of the poor child. But she
exercised no more power over him now than she had when she was present
in the body. At last sleep took compassion on his troubled soul.
The next morning he resigned himself with no little bitterness to his
fate, and betook himself to Jansen's workshop. He hoped that he should
be in better mood when once he had a piece of clay between his fingers.
He started back in positive alarm, therefore, when, while crossing one
of the large, deserted squares, he saw the very person whom he had
yesterday sought so diligently, coming out of a hotel door and
advancing straight upon him. The lieutenant wore his usual suit--a
close-buttoned green riding-jacket, high top-boots, and a gray hat,
with a little feather, slightly tipped toward the left ear. His dry,
yellow face, with its black imperial, had a most grim and defiant look,
but it was instantly lighted up by a polite smile when he caught sight
of his young friend of the "Paradise."
"I missed your visit day before yesterday, and have not been able to
return it yet because I have been in service again. An old acquaintance
has fallen upon me from the skies, a Baron N----" (he gave the name of
Irene's uncle). "I got acquainted with this jolly crony some years ago
in Algiers, when, just to get a smell of powder, I was fool enough to
take the field against _Messieurs les Arabes_, although they had never
done me the slightest harm in the world. The baron was trying at the
time to become a lion-hunter; but he afterward preferred to offer his
homage to the king of the desert from a respectful distance, and to
travel back to his peaceful home with a skin bought at a bazaar, and a
good store of burnooses and shawls. He was the sensible man of the two.
For my part, it was a long time before I could get rid of the ugly
remembrance that I had really done my hunting in earnest, and had
probably deprived several of those poor devils of the pleasure of
protecting their native soil against the French invaders. And now my
old tent-fellow comes upon me here like a ghost--though a very portly
and jolly one--and drags me about with him for days; in fact, I am
coming from his hotel at this very moment."
Felix involuntarily gave a glance toward the windows of the hotel. It
cost him a hard struggle to suppress all signs of his emotion.
"Does your guest live here?" he asked. "You have been visiting him so
early?"
"We were going to take a ride. But I found a note from him, in which he
informed me that I might take a holiday. His party has been invited by
one of its noble relatives to take an excursion of several days, at
which I, thank Heaven, should be quite superfluous."
"His party? Then the baron is--"
"Married? No; but almost worse than that. He has a young niece with him
who is really the cause of his having come here at all. A bad story--a
broken engagement, great surmising and gossiping about it in the little
capital--in short, the health of the Fraeulein demanded a change of air,
and she insisted upon going off to Italy for a year. My old comrade,
who remained a bachelor because he feared the claws of a lioness less
than the slipper of a pretty wife--well, he simply jumped from the
frying-pan into the fire. This young niece of his rules him with her
little finger. The consequence was that the trunks immediately had to
be packed for Italy. But, while here, their noble relatives succeeded
in frightening them so about the Italian summers and the cholera, that
they have decided to wait until the worst of the season is over,
spending part of the time here in the city and part in the mountains.
You will perceive, my dear friend, what a charming prospect this is for
me."
"Is the young Fraeulein so unamiable that your 'service' is such a hard
task?" Felix remarked, with an attempt at lightness. At the same time
he looked abstractedly away from the lieutenant, as if he merely
continued the topic from politeness.
"Look here!" continued Schnetz, with his peculiar, dry chuckle. "If you
like, I'll introduce you to the young lady, and resign all my rights.
You will then have an opportunity to become acquainted with the
sweetness of such service, and will perhaps make out better than I, who
certainly have not succeeded in winning my way to favor. This proud
little person--provided, by-the-way, with a pair of eyes that are
equally well fitted to rule, to be gracious, and to condemn one
forever--has unfortunately never felt a strong hand over her. The
consequence is, she has a way of always setting up her own wishes on
every subject, among others in regard to this unfortunate engagement.
She appears to have made it so hot for the good youth who had the
courage to take up with her, that at last he couldn't stand it any
longer. It is very probable that she was sorry for this at heart, and
so at the present moment she is in a decidedly irritable and
discontented mood, and it is dangerous to touch her without gloves.
Unfortunately I neglected to use this consideration; and, as a
consequence, we stand on a most charming war-footing toward one
another."
He struck his boot impatiently with his riding-whip, put his left arm
through his young companion's right, and, striding rapidly forward with
his long legs, growled out:
"It's enough to drive a man wild when he sees how God's images are
disfigured--whether by saints or devils, it's all the same. Either
confined by strait-lacing or by nuns' robes, or else _decolletees_ to
the very waist. Believe me, my dear fellow, as far as the education of
the women of the upper classes is concerned, we are not much farther
advanced to-day than we were in the darkest middle ages, when a brothel
stood next door to a church. At least, we, down here in our envied
South, are not; though, to be sure, this Northern blood--"
"A North German?"
"Hum! North or middle German!--upon that point she is positively
fiendish! In the very first hour of our meeting, this Fraeulein asked me
what sort of society we had here--of course, the aristocratic society,
as it loves to call itself; for a mere crowd of human beings, without
the forms of etiquette, can never be regarded as human society. I
replied quietly that the so-called _good_ society here was the worst
one could possibly wish for, and that it was only in the so-called
_bad_ society that I had come across a few good comrades here and
there, with whom there was such a thing as living. Whereupon the
little princess looked at me as much as to say that she should never
have supposed, from my dress--which was anything but suited to the
_salon_--that my exclusion from polite society was otherwise than
involuntary. But I, pretending not to notice this, proceeded to explain
to her at length the reasons which caused me to be disgusted with the
_creme_ of our city; the strange odor of their _salons_--a mixture of
patchouli, incense, and the stable--their very doubtful French, and
their undoubtedly worse German; their almost sublime ignorance of all
that is generally considered to belong to education; and that _naive_
lack of knowledge in moral matters, which is generally to be found only
in convents, and which can only be properly fostered by an
ecclesiastical society and sanctioned by sly father confessors. Your
nobles in the North, so far as I have known them--well, I needn't tell
you about the clay of which they are made. No matter what hard-mouthed
hobbies they ride in regard to affairs of church and state, they
nevertheless hold fast to _noblesse oblige_; and then, too, you are
very likely to find, in the castles of Pomerania and the Mark, the
Bible and the hymn-book side by side with Ranke's 'History of the
Popes' and Macaulay's 'History of England.' With us, on the other
hand--to be sure, though, Paul de Kock and the 'Seeress of Prevorst'
are also classics, and do not stand on the 'Index Expurgatorius.' I
notice that you are thinking to yourself how much less jolly, and more
discontented and bristling, I am to-day than I was that night in
'Paradise.' You see, my good fellow, you got acquainted with me then in
one of my holiday humors, that come over me only once a month; and,
to-day, you see my old Adam with his every-day face. If no one else has
told you this, to give you due warning about me, I must confess it
myself--since I left the service I have really had no occupation but to
scoff and grumble. It is true, we live at a time when every honest
fellow will have his hands full if he only conscientiously improves
every opportunity to do this. But you know this goes very badly with
our celebrated South German good-nature; all the worse if the one who
scolds happens to be in the right. It is because of this that I have
grown old in my lieutenancy; for I could not keep my mouth shut even
about our military shortcomings, and at last succeeded in bolting every
door to advancement so tightly against me, that I preferred to leave
the beaten track of a military career altogether. Wouldn't even the
blessed Thersites have been forced to resign if he had served as first
lieutenant under the generals Achilles or Diomedes? And yet, those
times were far simpler than ours! So, now, I go on grumbling without
hinderance, and without caring whether any notice is taken of it or
not. The wheat of the Philistines is sown too thick, and thrives too
well, for it to be hurt by the few tares that grow among it. Still, it
does me some good; in the first place, because it purges me of my gall
before it mixes with my blood and attacks my vitals; and then because
it makes me more and more hated by good society, and avoided by persons
of my own rank. You don't know what a Robinson-Crusoe-like existence I
lead; in the midst of the city I am as solitary as Saint Anthony in his
cave; yes, even more lonely, for I suffer no temptations. Won't you
take a look at my hermitage? Here we are at the door."
They had arrived at the old house with which Felix had already made
acquaintance. He felt very little disposition to mount the stairs
again. While his companion had been running on in this odd, bitter way,
his mind had been occupied by one single thought. "She is here! You
need only wish it, and you can see her to-morrow!" Nevertheless, he
could not well refuse Schnetz's polite invitation; and so he followed
him up into his fourth-story quarters.