"So you are surprised that she should accept me! I know I am not worthy of her, but I will try to deserve her. G.o.d is my witness that I will do my best; I will lay my head under her feet, and----" Lenz looking up at his mother's picture, said, "Good mother! dear loving mother! rejoice in the seventh heavens, for your son is happy."

He could not say another word, for tears choked his voice, and he knelt before the picture. Pilgrim went up to him, and placed his hand on his shoulder.

"Forgive me, dear Pilgrim," said Lenz. "I had resolved to be such a strong iron man! I am to have a wife who well deserves a strong-minded husband; but on this day I feel quite overcome--but for this day only.

On the way here I thought to myself, I wish some one would come and impose on me a severe task--I don't know what--but something--something that I might put my whole heart in, and, however difficult, I would accomplish it. I will show that I deserve the happiness G.o.d has sent me.

"Be quiet, do be quiet; other men besides you have got wives, and there is no occasion to turn the world upside down on that account."

"Oh! if my mother had only lived to see this day!"

"If your mother had lived, Annele would not have accepted you. You did not please her till you were quite alone, and without any mother."

"Don't say that; how highly she honoured my mother!"

"She finds it easy enough to do that, as she is no longer in the world, and I tell you that you are only in the world for Annele, since you have no mother."

"You have not once even wished me joy yet."

"I wish you joy--I wish you much joy."

"Why do you say that twice over--why twice?"

"Oh! it only chanced so."

"No! you meant something by it"

"It is true, I did. I will tell you what it was tomorrow, but not today."

"Why tomorrow? I must hear it now, you must tell me now."

"Remember you are now in a state of intoxication; how can I speak soberly to you?"

"I am not intoxicated, I am perfectly sober."

"Very well, then tell me how has this been so quickly brought about?"

"I don't myself very well know; it came on me like an inspiration from heaven, and now it is plain enough to me, that for a long time past I have thought of nothing else."

"I suspected as much, but I did think you would do nothing without me."

"Nor will I; you must go with me tomorrow, to propose in due form on my behalf to her father."

"So! I am glad of that, for then I hope the affair will soon be at an end."

"What! do you wish to drive me crazy?"

"No need for that; as yet she is neither your betrothed, nor your wife, So I may speak freely. Lenz, it would be an indiscretion were you now to draw back, but only an indiscretion; but if you marry Annele, you will do wrong during your whole life. Lenz, she is no wife for you."

"You do not know her. You always teaze each other; but I know her inmost heart, and I know her to be thoroughly good and amiable."

"I don't know her, do you say? and yet I have eaten at least a bushel of salt with these people. I will tell you exactly how it is. Annele and her mother are very much alike, and for this very reason they can't bear each other, however loving they may appear before the world. All their talk is nothing but flimsy music. People eat and drink better when they have music; not a note proceeds from their hearts,--they have no hearts. I never could have believed that there were such people in the world, but it is so; they can talk away glibly about kindness, love, and pity, and even sometimes of religion, and of their Fatherland,--but all these are mere words; they have no serious thoughts, they don't care for these things, and firmly believe that all men are accustomed to converse in that manner; but the facts themselves never trouble them in the slightest degree. Annele herself has not a spark of real feeling, and I maintain that a person who has no heart can have no understanding, nor be capable of entering into the feelings of another, of sharing their joys and their sorrows, or yielding to their wishes. Annele, like her mother, has the knack of listening to others, and then cleverly repeating their words; and she has also a peculiar talent for depreciating and harshly censuring her neighbour, but in such a way that it is difficult to discern whether she is praising or blaming. Father, mother, and daughter, make a fine trio of frivolous music; Annele plays the first violin, the old woman the second, and the pompous old Landlord, the great ba.s.s; still I must say he is the best of the family. It is a well known fact, that it is only female bees that can sting--and how they can sting to be sure! The Landlord talks well of everyone, and can't bear to hear his wife and daughter abuse people--for no occupation is more grateful to them, than blighting the good name of any girl or married woman. The mother does so with a kind of hypocritical compa.s.sion, but Annele likes to sport with slander, as a cat does with a mouse. The burden of their song is always to show that they are best and cleverest, and they think this redounds to their credit.

"I have often reflected in what the most cruel barbarity in this world consists, and I feel convinced it is in malignity towards others, and yet it often a.s.sumes a very polite mask. Oh, Lenz! you don't know the key in which that house is set, and no knowledge of music will help you to know it. There is nothing there but scoffing and lies."

"Pilgrim, what a man must you be yourself! For the last eight years, you have daily frequented the house of the very people of whom you are speaking so harshly; you have eaten with them at the same table, and have been the best friends with them. What can I think of you?"

"That I go to an inn, and eat and drink and pay ready money. I pay my score every day, and then have no more to do with them."

"I cannot understand a person doing that."

"I believe you. I have paid dear enough for it, however; I would much rather be like you. It is no treat to know men as they really are.

There are some, however, who----"

"I suppose you consider yourself one of the good."

"Not altogether; but I expected that you would fly out at me. I must bear it. Abuse me, do with me what you will, hack off my hand; I will beg my bread, and at least know that I have saved a friend. Give up Annele! I implore you to do so! You have not yet made your proposals to the Landlord of the 'Lion;' you are not yet bound."

"These are your worldly subterfuges! I am not so clever as you, and I have never mixed with the world like you, but I know what is right. I betrothed myself to Annele in her mother's presence, and I will keep my word. G.o.d grant I may get her from her father! And, now I say to you for the last time, I did not ask your advice, and I know well what I am doing."

"Hear me, Lenz. I shall only be too glad if I have been in error: but, no! My dear Lenz, for G.o.d's sake listen to me; it is still time. You cannot say that I ever tried to dissuade you from marrying."

"No, you never did."

"You are just the man to be a good husband, but I was a fool not to say to you sooner, that you ought to marry one of the Doctor's daughters."

"Do you think I would have gone to them and said:--'My guardian, Pilgrim, desires his compliments, and bids me say that he thinks I ought to marry one of you: Amanda, if possible.' No, no; these young ladies are too high and refined for me."

"They are, indeed, refined; while Annele only pretends to be so. The fact is, you were shy with the Doctor's daughters, but not with Annele; you could go into the 'Lion,' without anyone asking you why you came there. Oh! I see it all! Annele talked to you about your sorrow, for she can talk on any subject, and that softened your heart. Annele wears a leather pocket in every one of her gowns, and her heart is nothing but leather, where she has always small coin ready to give every guest his change in full."

"You are committing a sin, a great sin!" said Lenz, his lip quivering from anger and grief; and to prove to Pilgrim how cruelly unjust he was towards Annele, he related to him how kindly and touchingly Annele had spoken to him, both about the death of his mother, and at the time when he sent away his clock; he had cherished every word like a revelation.

"My own money! my own coin!" cried Pilgrim. "She has plundered a beggar! What a confounded, stupid idiot I have been! Every syllable she said to you she picked up from my lips. I was such a fool as to say these very words before her, from time to time. I well deserve it all!

but how could I possibly guess that she was to entrap you with my words? Oh! my poor coins!"

The two friends remained silent for a time. Pilgrim bit his lips till they bled, and Lenz shook his head incredulously; at last Pilgrim resumed the discussion by saying:--"Do you know Annele's princ.i.p.al reason for accepting you? Not from your tall figure nor your good heart; not for your property either! No, these are all very secondary considerations. Her real motive is to prevent one of the Doctor's daughters getting you. 'Aha! you shan't get him, but I shall!' Believe me, Annele is a creature that you cannot judge of; you cannot believe that there are people who have no real delight or happiness, unless their enjoyment makes some one else miserable; or unless they can triumph in the thought that they are envied for their riches, their beauty, or their good fortune. I never knew there were such people in the world till I knew Annele. My Lenz, don't you try to know anything further of her, for she will make you miserable. Why do you look so strangely at me, and never say a word? Attack me, do what you will, say what you choose to me, only give up Annele, for she is poison! I implore of you to renounce her. One very important point, too, I quite forgot: think of it, and G.o.d grant that you may not think of it too late; I do not wish to be a prophet of evil, but Annele will never live to be old."

"Ha, ha! I suppose you intend now to make out that she has bad health: her face is like the rose and the lily blended."

"That is not what I meant; but something very different: remember your mother; was there ever any one who was so pleasant to look at? because her kind heart was seen in her face; kindness for everyone, and her love for you, and anxiety about you: that makes an old face charming, and it does one's heart good to look at it. As for Annele, when she can no longer plait her hair in a coronet, and has lost her fresh complexion, and cannot show her white teeth when she laughs, what will remain? She has nothing to grow old on; she has no soul, she has only plausible speeches; no good heart, no good sense; all she can do is to scoff at others; when she is an old woman, she will be nothing but the devil's grandmother!"

Lenz pressed his teeth violently against his lips, and at last said:--"You have said enough; far too much, indeed! Not another word!

But I must exact one thing from you, which is, that you are not to speak of her in such a way except to me, and even to me this day for the last time, and to no one else; no one! I love my Annele, and--and--you also; you may say what you will in your jealousy. I no longer wish that you should go with me when I make my offer.

Fortunately these four walls alone have heard what has pa.s.sed. Good night, Pilgrim!"

"Good night, Lenz!"