“There it is for you.” I gave him the letter I had just read—the enclosure I kept back. He glanced over the informer’s writing. With an angry curse, he crumpled up the paper, and sprang from his seat.
“Infamous!” he cried, “and where is the proof he speaks of?”
“Here, not opened. Frederick, say one word only, and I throw the thing into the fire. I do not want to see any proofs that you have betrayed me.”
“Oh, my own one!” He was now by my side, and embraced me closely. “My treasure! Look into my eyes. Do you doubt me? Proof or no proof—is my word enough for you?”
“Yes,” I said, and threw the paper into the fire.
But it did not fall into the flames, but remained close to the bars. Frederick jumped up to get it, and picked it out.
“No, no! we must not destroy that. I am too curious. We will look at it together. I do not recollect ever writing anything to your friend which could lead to the inference of a relation which does not exist.”
“But you have smitten her, Frederick. You have only to throw your handkerchief to her.”
“Do you think so? Come, let us look at this document. Right, my own hand. Oh, look here! It is surely the two lines which you dictated to me some weeks back, when you had hurt your right hand.”
“My Lori! come. I am anxiously expecting you today at five p.m.
“The finder of this note did not understand the meaning of the parenthesis. This is really a funny confusion. Thank God that this grand proof was not burned; now my innocence is plain. Or have you still any suspicion?”
“No; after you had looked in my face I had no more. Do you know, Frederick, I should have been very unhappy, but I should have forgiven you? Lori is coquettish, very pretty. Tell me, has not she made advances to you? You shake your head. Well, truly, in this matter you have not only the right but almost the duty of deceiving even me; a man cannot betray a lady’s favour whether he accepts or rejects it.”
“And so you would have forgiven me a false step? Are you not jealous?”
“Yes; in a way that tears my heart. If I think of you at another’s feet; sipping joy from another’s lips; grown cold to me; all desire dead—it is horrible to me. Yet, it was not the death of your love that I feared. Your heart would under no circumstances turn cold to me, that I am sure of; our souls are surely so interwoven with each other. But—”
“I understand. But you need by no means think of me that my feeling for you is like that of a husband after the silver wedding. We have been married too short a time for that; so long as the fire of youth glows in me (for indeed I am forty years old already), it burns for you. You are the only woman on earth to me. And should some other temptation in reality again assail me, my will is quite strong enough to keep it away from me. The happiness which is contained in the consciousness of having kept one’s plighted troth, the proud repose of conscience with which a man can say of himself that he has kept the firmly-tied bond of his life in every respect sacred—all this is to me too noble to allow it to be destroyed by a passing intoxication of the senses. You have besides made so perfectly happy a man of me, my Martha, that I am raised as far above everything—above all intoxication, all amusement, all pleasure—as the possessor of ingots of gold above the gain of copper pieces.”
With what delight did such words as these sink into my heart! I was expressly thankful to the anonymous letter-writer, for helping me to this delightful scene. And I transferred every word into my red book. I can still reproduce the entry here, under date 1/4/1865. Ah, how far, how far back is all that!
Frederick, on the contrary, was highly incensed against the slanderer. He swore that he would find out who had been guilty of the composition, so as to punish the actor as he deserved. I found out the same day what the origin and aim of the writing was. Its result, which was that Frederick and I were thenceforth drawn a little closer together, its originator could hardly have foreseen.
In the afternoon I went to my friend Lori to show her the letter. I wanted to let her know that she had an enemy by whom she was falsely exposed to suspicion, and I wanted to laugh with her over the chance that my dictated note had been so misconstrued.
She laughed more than I expected.
“So you were shocked at the letter?”
“Yes, mortally; and yet I had nearly burned the enclosed note.”
“Oh! then the whole joke would have missed fire.”
“What joke?”
“You would have believed to the end that I had really betrayed you. Let me take this opportunity to make you a confession, that I did in an hour of delirium—it was after the dinner at your father’s at which I sat next to Tilling, and it was because I had drunk too much champagne—that I did then, so to say, offer him my heart on a salver.”
“And he?”
“And he answered me very much to the purpose, that he loved you above all other things and was firmly resolved to remain true to you to death. The whole joke was contrived to teach you to prize this phenomenon better.”
“What is this joke that you keep talking of?”
“Why, you must know, inasmuch as the letter and the envelope come from me.”
“From you? I know nothing about it.”
“Have you then not turned the enclosure round? See here—on the back of it is written my
