The Breaking of the Storm

more at ease; and here were now gathered together all his most intimate friends: a few of his favourite brother officers⁠—Wartenberg, Tettritz⁠—only Schönau was absent⁠—a few of Elsa’s particular friends, Elsa herself, even old Baroness Kniebreche had made her appearance, as she always did wherever she expected an interesting conversation, and, preventing Carla from rising off the small, blue silk sofa, had sunk into an armchair, in which, leaning forward, with her hand to her left ear, she listened eagerly to Carla’s words. The only one of the party who was a stranger, as Ottomar himself had said a few minutes before to Clemda, was Count Golm; and this stranger stood, with one hand on the back of the small sofa, close to Carla, where he himself ought to have been standing, instead of remaining in the doorway, without the possibility of advancing a step farther into the crowded room, and not daring either to withdraw, after Baroness Kniebreche, turning her pince-nez angrily on him, had exclaimed: “There you are at last, when our dear Carla has been enchanting us with her clever talk⁠—yes, yes, my dear Carla, positively enchanting us. Let your brother stand, Elsa; he has richly deserved it. For heaven’s sake go on, my dear Carla!”

Carla had hastily glanced towards the door through her eyeglass. “I cannot say any more without repeating what I have said already.”

“Then repeat it!” exclaimed the Baroness. “One cannot hear often enough that Wagner is the master of all masters who have ever lived or ever will live.”

“I did not say that, Baroness,” said Carla, laying her hand on the old lady’s; “only of those who have lived! It is not for nothing that the master calls his music that of the future; and the future is so called because it is yet to come. But who can venture to predict what will come?”

“Is it not magnificent?” exclaimed the old lady⁠—“positively magnificent?”

“For,” continued Carla, “deep as is my admiration for the master, I cannot conceal from myself, though with some trembling⁠—only too natural in face of such incomparable greatness⁠—that the mystical connection between word and sound⁠—the Eleusinian mystery⁠—proclaimed by the master, though only to the initiated, produces a deeper, more heartfelt satisfaction, in which the last remains of that barbarous separation which has hitherto existed between poetry and music entirely and forever disappear.”

“Positively stupendous!” exclaimed the Baroness.

“Magnificent!” growled Lieutenant von Tettritz.

“But Wagner himself allows that,” said Von Wartenberg.

“And that speaks in my favour,” answered Carla. “When we see how this splendid genius goes further and deeper with every work, how he advances with giant strides from Rienzi and the Fliegende Holländer to Tannhäuser and Lohengrin; from these to the Meistersinger; from the Meistersinger to Tristan and Isolde, which I have only glanced at as yet, and now to what the Ring des Nibelungen is to bring us⁠—can we, dare we say, in opposition to the most modest of men, who looks upon every height that he has reached as only the stepping stone to a greater one, that with the Ring the ring is closed? Impossible! ‘Art,’ says Goethe, who, if he understood nothing of music, always deserves to be listened to on the universal principles of aesthetics⁠—‘Art has never been possessed by one man alone;’ and, godlike though he is, we must still look upon the master as a man.”

“I must kiss you⁠—I positively must kiss you!” exclaimed the Baroness. “What do you say to it, Count Golm⁠—what do you say to it?”

“I bow my head in admiration and⁠—silence,” answered the Count, laying his hand on his heart.

“And you, Ottomar?” exclaimed the Baroness, turning in her chair with almost girlish activity, and fixing her pince-nez like a double-barrelled pistol on him.

“I consider Wagnerism, from beginning to end, to be an abominable humbug!” answered Ottomar defiantly.

The company were horror-struck. “Good heavens!” “Unheard of!” “Abominable!” “Positive blasphemy!” was heard on all sides.

“What did he say?” asked the old lady, her hand to her ear, bending towards Carla.

Carla shrugged her shoulders. “You really cannot expect me to repeat Herr von Werben’s words. Baroness?”

“Which Ottomar did not mean seriously,” said Elsa, with an imploring look at her brother, which Ottomar answered by a shrug of the shoulders.

“I thought myself bound,” he said, “as the Baroness did me the honour to appeal directly to me, to give my opinion, though it can be of no importance in this ‘noble circle.’ ” He emphasised scornfully the last words.

“Humbug!” exclaimed the old lady, who, while the others were all talking at once, had made Herr von Tettritz repeat the fearful word in her ear. “It is too bad! You must withdraw it!⁠—you must positively withdraw it! Do you hear, Ottomar?”

“Perfectly, Baroness,” answered Ottomar; “but I am unfortunately unable to comply with your command.”

“It is an insult⁠—a positive insult!” exclaimed the Baroness, waving her enormous fan violently up and down⁠—“to us all, to Carla in particular⁠—on my honour, my dear Carla!”

Carla appeared not to hear; she was leaning back on the sofa, and laughing with Count Golm, who, leaning on his elbow, bent low over her.

Elsa was greatly disturbed. She knew that her brother did not in the least care about music, and that under any other circumstances he would have put an end to the disagreeable scene with one of the light jests that came so easily to him; and that if he did not do so now⁠—if, as was evident from his gloomy countenance, he was determined to continue it, he could only have one reason for doing so⁠—the wish to bring about a crisis, to break with Carla irrevocably and forever, in the presence of their friends! She did not wish for the marriage; she had spoken eagerly against it that very day; had opened her anxious heart to her brother. But Carla had not deserved this; she was only behaving today as she always did, and her