Susanna Blecheisen, now Mrs. Harfink, usually called Madame von
Harfink, was a famous blue-stocking. As a young girl she was interested
in natural sciences, studied medicine, complained of the oppression of
the female sex, and wrote articles on the emancipation of woman, in
which with great boldness she described marriage as an antiquated and
immoral institution.
In spite of the energetic independence of her character, in her
twenty-eighth year she succumbed to the magnetic attraction of a
red-cheeked clerk in her father's office, and generously sacrificed for
him her scorn of manly prejudice and ecclesiastical sacraments--she
married him.
Hereupon she moved with her husband to Vienna, and soon enjoyed a
certain fame there on account of her fine German, and because she
subscribed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and had once sat beside
Humboldt at a dinner, perhaps also because her husband was a very
wealthy manufacturer.
Soon convinced of the inferior intellect of this man, she did not give
herself up to cowardly despair at this discovery, but did her best to
educate him. She patiently read to him works on capital, during which
he incessantly rattled the money in his pockets, as if he would say,
How does the theoretical analysis of capital concern a practical man,
as long as he relies solely upon the actual substance? This rubbish
furnished occupation for poor wretches, he thought to himself, which
opinion he finally announced to his wife. But when she told him that
Carl Marx and Lassalle were both very wealthy men, he listened to her
dissertations with considerably heightened respect. From political
economy, which she treated as a light recreation, fitted to his case,
she led him into the gloomy regions of German metaphysics, and plunged
him confusedly into the most dangerous abysses of misused logic.
He listened calmly, without astonishment, without complaining, with the
lofty conviction that to cultivate one's self, as every kind of tasty
idleness, was a very noble occupation, and, like many more clever
people, he made a rule of despising everything which he did not
understand. Instead of any other comment, during his wife's readings he
merely rubbed his hands pleasantly, and murmured as long as he was not
asleep, titteringly, "This confusion, this confusion."
Yet, however Mrs. Susanna strove, his mental wings did not strengthen,
and his digestion remained the most absorbing interest of his life.
He always fell back again into his insignificant commonness, like
a dog whom one wishes to train to walk upon two legs, but who
always falls back upon four again. At an aesthetic tea, for which
his wife had most conscientiously prepared him, most generously lent
him her intelligence, she heard him, in the midst of a conversation
upon Schopenhauer and Leopardi, say to his neighbor: "Have you
a weakness for pickles, ma'am? I have a great weakness for pickles,
but--he-he-he!--I--it is really very unusual--I always feel such a
disagreeable prickling in my nose when I eat anything sour."
With years, Susanna somewhat neglected the difficult education of this
hopeless specimen, and transferred her pedagogic capabilities to the
bringing up of her son, of whom she tried to make a genius.
She designed him for jurisprudence. He, however, devoted himself to
song. Instead of poring over law books in consideration of his
examination, he passed two-thirds of his time at the piano, diligently
trying to attain the summit of his ambition, high C, while he did not
fail to twist himself into the original contortions which on such
occasions all particularly ambitious but faulty voices find so
effectual.
With Linda, mamma Harfink from the first could do nothing, and in
consequence she sent her to a Swiss pension. There she learned, besides
a little French and piano thumping, to carry her head very high,
learned to go into nervous spasms over creaking boots--in a word, she
acquired the refined delicacy of feeling of the "princess with the
pea."
What torture when upon her return home she lay upon not a single pea,
alleviated by comfortable mattresses, but upon a whole sack of
undisguised peas! Her home was frightful to her. The unrestrained,
coarse admiration which the young men of her circle offered her seemed
unbearable to her. Discontented, weary of life, without an aim that was
not bound up in vanity, she vegetated from one day to another; in
desperate moments thought of going on the stage, or perpetrating some
outrageous act to make herself notorious.
The only consolation of this desolate time was the intercourse with her
cousin, Eugene von Rhoeden, who had been educated in the Theresanium,
had learned to turn up his nose more frequently and with more fine
distinction than she herself, but to her misery, had his brand new
title of Freiherr, and a couple of intimate friends of very old family
beside. A passionate enemy of his relatives, he had greeted her
enthusiastically with the words, "_Sapperment_, you are wholly
different from your family, Linda!"
"Do not call me Linda, that sounds so operatic," she had answered him.
"My friends always called me Linn!"
Eugene Rhoeden immediately perceived that Linda had a knowledge of _bon
ton_--evidently knew that all Austrian countesses are called Piffi,
Pantschi, Nina, like _grisettes_ or little dogs. Her romantic name was
odious to her, but in a circle where the women called each other
Theresa and Rosalie, she must rejoice at being named Linda and not
Rosalinda.
A superficial confidence arose between her and her noble cousin.
So stood matters when Felix "accidentally" made the acquaintance of the
Harfinks while walking. This was the family into which fate and his
weakness had thrown him.