The Breaking of the Storm

rest herself there, for she was leaning against it as if she could not stand alone. Then she raised her hands and stroked the face⁠—her hands were as white as the marble⁠—and nodded to it just as if she were talking to the bust, and kissed it as if it had been a living creature, and sat down upon the stool which stood near, and on which Herr Anders used to stand when he could not reach up to his figures, and leant her head upon the pedestal, and did not move again.

“Poor child,” said Grollmann, “she will fall asleep there and catch her death of cold; it is quite cold now, and there will be no more fire made up till the gentlemen come back at two o’clock. I must take her upstairs.”

So he came into the studio, and went up to her very gently⁠—not that that was necessary, for he was quite determined to wake her if she had fallen asleep, but the nearer he came the more gently he moved.

And now he was standing by her.

“Poor thing,” he thought to himself, “she really is asleep already, with half-shut eyes, and how sweetly she is smiling! It really would be a pity to wake her. If I had a cloak or⁠—there is a rug lying there!”

Grollmann moved a step forward, and struck against a board, which made a sudden noise. The old man turned round much annoyed⁠—he had certainly awoke her. But her eyes were still half shut, and she was smiling as before.

“It is very odd,” thought Grollmann, and stooped nearer to the sleeper, and then raised himself, trembling in every limb, and ran as fast as his old legs would carry him out of the studio into the house after Aunt Rikchen, whom he had just seen going in, crying in wild terror, “Fräulein Rikchen, Fräulein Rikchen! help, help!” while yet he was saying to himself that no help could avail now.

But before he could get up to the good lady and communicate his terrible news, Justus and Meta had entered the studio from the other side.

IV

They were returning from a long expedition into the very heart of the town, where they had been wandering about since the morning, looking for a wonderfully-carved oak wardrobe which Justus had heard yesterday from his friend Bunzel, was to be found there in the possession of a broker. Meta, indeed, had humbly suggested that it might be wiser to go first to some large shop, there to choose and order their necessary furniture, and then to look for the fanciful part; but Justus had proved to her that the whole matter had begun with fancy, and that they could not be wrong in pursuing the same road a little further⁠—firstly, because the road, on the whole, was particularly pleasant; and secondly, because the temptation of getting, probably for a mere song, a genuine Nuremberg wardrobe of the beginning of the sixteenth century, was not to be resisted by a true artist mind. Meta’s great good sense had, happily, seen the force of his reasoning, and so they had gone joyfully on their way.

But unfortunately this immensely-important conversation about the unique and priceless wardrobe had taken place yesterday evening at a period of the supper when friend Bunzel’s communications had begun to be somewhat wanting in lucidity, and the broker’s direction had consequently remained in an obscurity which Justus considered to be highly appropriate to the whole affair, and which gave it quite a local colour, but which still, in the interests of art, must be cleared up, and, if they put their wits and their understandings together, certainly soon would be cleared up.

So they drove on, at first through broad, straight streets, then through narrower and more twisted ones, till their driver, whom they had hired by the hour, declared that he had come as far as he could with his horse and carriage, and that if his fare took the matter as a joke, as they seemed to be doing, he did not see the fun of it; and that as for the “old wardrobe” of which they were always talking as they got in and out, he believed it to be nothing but a hoax.

“Heartless barbarian!” said Justus, as the cab rumbled on over the antediluvian pavement. “No ray of light has illuminated his benighted soul; he has no faith in the woodcarving of the sixteenth century⁠—perhaps not even in Isaac Lobstein! How do matters stand with your heart, Meta?”

Meta replied that her heart was all right, but that she was beginning to feel very hungry. They had better try this one street more, and if Herr Isaac Lobstein did not live here, then she should certainly propose to beat a retreat.

And behold! their heroic perseverance was crowned by success; Herr Isaac Lobstein did live in the street, and was in possession of a wardrobe for sale, indeed a whole row of wardrobes, which all had the immense advantage over the cabinet that the young couple were looking for, of being brand-new; while as for oak, that was quite out of fashion, and not the right sort of wood either, as it made the furniture much too heavy, which in the changes of residence that “young couples” so often found necessary, according to all experience, was a very important matter.

And Herr Isaac Lobstein smiled so benevolently as he said all this in a tone of paternal remonstrance, that the “young couple,” feeling quite crushed, bought the first wardrobe that came to hand for a very considerable sum, and when they found themselves in the street again, looked at each other with very long faces.

“I think, Meta,” said Justus, “our driver was not far wrong. Hang that fellow Bunzel! but he shall pay me for this!”

And therewith he made so fearful and comically-furious a grimace, that Meta burst into a fit of laughter, in which Justus, after a moment’s consideration, joined her.

And during