"Pity, pity! Would have been so glad to prove my grat.i.tude to you. You have really done me a great service. The man would have given me much trouble. Would a little money be of service to you? Speak freely. I am a man of business, and a hundred _thalers_ or so are a trifle to me."

"If we are to part as friends, not another word of that," I said, with decision.

The commerzienrath hastily thrust back the thick pocketbook which he had half drawn out of his pocket, and for the greater security b.u.t.toned over it one b.u.t.ton of his blue frockcoat.

"A man's free-will is his heaven. Come anyhow and bid my Hermine good-by. I believe the girl would refuse to start if you do not come to the carriage. Perhaps you will not do this either."

"a.s.suredly I will," I answered, and followed the commerzienrath to the s.p.a.ce in front of the house, where already the whole family was a.s.sembled around the great travelling-carriage of the millionaire.

While in his ostentatious way he was boasting of the convenience of the carriage and the beauty of the two powerful brown horses, who were lazily switching their long tails about, and at intervals bidding farewell to the company with clumsy bows and awkward phrases, Hermine was flitting from one to another, laughing, teasing, romping in rivalry with her Zerlina, that seemed to be continually in the air, and kept up the most outrageous barking. In this way she pa.s.sed me two or three times, without taking the least notice of me. Suddenly some one touched my arm from behind. It was Fraulein Duff. She beckoned me, by a look, a little to one side, and said hurriedly and mysteriously:

"She loves you!"

Fraulein Duff seemed so agitated; her locks, usually so artistically arranged, fluttered to-day in such disorder about her narrow face; her water-blue eyes rolled so strangely in their large sockets--I really believed for a moment that "the good lady had quite lost her modic.u.m of wits.

"Don't put on such a desperate look, Richard," she said.

"'From the clouds must fortune fall, From the lap of the Immortals.'

"That is an eternal truth, which here once more is proven. She confessed it to me this morning with such pa.s.sionate tears; it rent my heart; I wept with her; I might well do it, for I felt with her.

"'And I, I too was born in Arcady, But the short spring-time brought me only tears.'"

Fraulein Duff wiped her water-blue eyes, and cast a languishing look at Doctor Snellius, who with a very mixed expression of countenance was receiving the thanks of the commerzienrath.

"Both youth and man!" she whispered:

"'The rind may have a bitter taste, But surely not the fruit.'

"Good heavens! what have I said! You are in possession of the secret of a virgin heart. You will not profane it. And now, let us now part, Richard. One last word: Seek truly and thou shalt find! I come, I come!"

She turned away, and waving the company a farewell with her parasol, hurried to the carriage, in which the commerzienrath had already fixed himself comfortably, while Hermine held her spaniel out at the door and let it bark. Startled at Fraulein Duffs extraordinary communication, I had kept in the background; the wild little creature had not a single look for him whom, according to Fraulein Duff's report, she loved. She laughed and jested, but at the moment when the horses started, a painful spasm contracted her charming face, and she threw herself pa.s.sionately into her governess's arms to hide the tears that burst from her eyes.

"Rid of these," said Doctor Snellius; "hope to-morrow we shall send the others after them."

But the doctor's hope was not fulfilled on the morrow, nor yet on the next day. Fourteen days pa.s.sed, and the steuerrath and the born Baroness Kippenreiter were still the guests of the superintendent.

"I shall poison them if they don't leave soon," crowed the doctor.

"One could turn to a bear with seven senses on the spot," growled the sergeant.

It was in truth a genuine calamity that had befallen the house of the excellent man; and we three allies bemoaned it, each in his own way, but none louder and more pa.s.sionately than the doctor.

"You will see," he said, "these people will take up their winter-quarters here. The house is not large, but the hedgehog knows how to make himself comfortable with the marmot; they are well cared for, and as for the friendliness of intercourse--though they care less for that--there is no lack of it. How can _Huma.n.u.s_ have the patience?

He must have a Potosi at his disposal. For he suffers, very seriously suffers, under the hypocritical spaniel-like humility of this brotherly parasite, as does his angelic wife under the sharp claws and yellow teeth of the born Kippenreiter. Good heavens! that we should breathe the same air with such creatures--that we must eat from the same dish with them! What crime have we committed?"

"The born Kippenreiters would say the same thing of us."

"You want to provoke me, but you are right. Doubly right; for the born Kippenreiters not only say it but act accordingly, and forbid us, whenever they can, the air that they breathe and the dishes out of which they eat, without in the least caring whether we suffocate or starve; indeed most likely with the wish that these events may come to pa.s.s."

"A contribution to the superintendent's hammer and anvil theory," I said.

The doctor's bald crown glowed a lively red.

"Don't talk to me of this good-natured folly," he cried, in his shrillest tones. "Whoever is weak or good-natured, or both--and he most likely will be both--has been hammered by the strong and evil-disposed, as long as the world stands; and he will continue to be hammered until water runs up-hill and the lamb eats the wolf. Hammer and anvil! Old Goethe knew the world, and knew better."

"And what would you do, doctor, if some poor relations took up quarters with you, and became burdensome to you in time?"

"I? I would--that is a stupid question. I don't know what I would do.

But that proves nothing--nothing at all; or at the most only that I, spite of all my rhodomontades, am only a wretched piece of anvil. And finally--yes, now I have it! We are neither relations nor connections of theirs; we have no consideration to observe, and we must drive them off."

"A happy thought, doctor!"

"That is it!" said the doctor, and hopped from one leg to other. "I am ready for anything--for anything! We must spoil their life here, embitter it, drench it with gall: in a word, make it impossible."

"But how?"

"How? You lazy mammoth! Devise your own scheme. The born Kippenreiter I take upon myself. She thinks that she has a diseased heart, because she has a bad one. She is as afraid of death as if she had tried a week's experiment in the lower regions. She shall believe me."

On the very same day, Doctor Willibrod Snellius commenced his diabolical plan. Whenever he was within hearing of the born Kippenreiter he began talking of the circulation of the blood, of veins, of arteries, of valvular defects, inflammation of the pericardium, spasm of the heart. He knew, he said, that such conversation must be wearisome to her ladyship, but he was writing a monograph on the subject, and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. Indeed he could not deny that it was not entirely without a motive that he had drawn her attention precisely to this point. He could not and would not positively a.s.sert, without a previous and thorough examination, that the valves of her ladyship's heart were not performing their functions regularly; but there were certain symptoms of which probably she might have experienced one or another, and prudence was not merely the mother of wisdom, but often the bestower of, if not a long life, at least one lengthened by several years.

The _gnadige_ was by no means a person to whom I felt an especial inclination, and yet I sometimes felt a kind of pity when I saw how the unhappy victim twisted and writhed under the knife of her tormentor.

How could she escape him? As a lady who piqued herself upon her culture, she could not well avoid a scientific conversation; as a guest of the house she owed consideration to a friend of the family; and in reality this topic, which she dreaded as a child dreads goblins, had for her a frightful fascination. She turned pale as often as Doctor Willibrod entered the room, and yet fixed her small round eyes upon him with the agonizing look of the bird that sees a serpent gazing into its nest; she could not resist the attraction, and in a minute she had beckoned the fearful man to her and asked him how far he had progressed with his essay.

"It is enough to drive one mad," said Doctor Willibrod; "soon she will not be able to live without me and my tales of horror. I told her to-day of the case of a lady, exactly of her age, her mode of life, habit of body, and so forth, who, while conversing with her physician about congestions of the heart, was struck with one; she smiles upon me with pale lips, and is on the verge of fainting--I suppose she is going to ring for her carriage--and what is the result? 'You must tell me more about it to-morrow,' she says, and dismisses me with a gracious wave of her hand."

"She is sword-and-bullet-proof, doctor," I said. "You will not be rid of her so easily."

"But we _must_ be rid of her, rid of the whole pack," cried the doctor.

"I am resolved upon it as man, as friend, as physician."

I laughed, but in my heart I was entirely of the doctor's opinion. The presence of these people was a too intolerable burden for the family of the superintendent. How could I avoid seeing it, when I had so attached myself to these n.o.ble and good souls, that I had for everything that concerned them the piercing eyes of the deepest and most reverent affection? I saw how the superintendent's face wore every day a graver look; how he forced himself to answer the everlasting "Is it not so, dear brother?" or, "Is not that your opinion, dear brother?" I saw the painful contraction which pa.s.sed over the beautiful pale face of the blind lady, when the harsh voice of her talkative sister-in-law smote upon her sensitive ear; I saw how Paula bore these, in addition to her other burdens, with silence and patience; but I also saw how heavy a task it was.

I was sitting one day in the office, pondering all this in my indignant heart, as I cut up a quill under pretence of making a pen, when through the window which I had left half open to admit one of the rare sunbeams, my ear caught the hateful metallic voice of the born Kippenreiter.

"I am sure you will do me this kindness, dear Paula; I certainly would not ask you, for I know how young girls are attached to their own rooms, but mine is really too _triste_ with its perpetual outlook upon the prison-walls; and then I am afraid it is damp, especially at the present season of the year, and with my heart-complaint the least rheumatism would be the death of me. I can count upon it, dear Paula, can I not? Perhaps even to-day? That would be delightful!"

"I can hardly arrange it to-day, dear aunt; I have to-day to----"

"Well, then, dear child, to-morrow. You see I am content with anything.

And then there is another thing I want to mention, and that is the wine we have at dinner. Between ourselves, it is not particularly good, and does not agree with my husband at all. He is a little spoiled in this.

I know you have better in the cellar; we had some of it when we first came; did we not now?"

"Yes, aunt; but unfortunately there are only two or three bottles left, which I am keeping for my father----"