"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!