“Amra,” he would whisper, “my dear Amra! I am not disturbing you? You were not sleeping yet? Great God, I have thought the whole day long how beautiful you are and how I love you!—Listen to what I want to tell you; it is so difficult to express it—I love you so much that my heart sometimes contracts with pain and I don’t know where to go; I love you beyond my powers! No doubt you don’t understand this, but you must believe me, and you must tell me just once that you will be a bit thankful to me for that; for, you see, such a love as mine for you is something worth while in this life—and that you will never betray or deceive me, even though you can’t love me, but out of gratitude, out of sheer gratitude—I come to you to beg this of you with all my heart and soul.”
And such confessions would usually end by the counsellor-at-law’s beginning to weep softly and bitterly, without altering his position. In this instance, however, Amra was moved, passed her hand across the bristles of her husband’s hand, and said several times in that long-drawn, comforting, and mocking tone in which one speaks to a dog that comes to lick one’s feet: “There! There! Good old fellow!”
This behaviour of Amra’s was certainly not that of a moral woman. And it is now high time that I should release the truth that I have kept back up to the present; the fact, namely, that she was, after all, false to her husband; that she deceived him, I say, with a gentleman named Alfred Läutner. This was a young and gifted musician, who had already at twenty-seven years of age achieved a pretty reputation by means of amusing little compositions; a slender fellow with an impertinent face, a mop of blond hair, and in his eyes a sunny smile, which was very self-conscious. He belonged to that class of small artists of today who do not demand too much of themselves, who wish in the first instance to be happy and charming persons, who make use of their agreeable little talents to augment their personal popularity, and who love to play the naive genius in society. Consciously childish, immoral, unscrupulous, merry, self-satisfied as they are, and healthy enough to find themselves interesting even in their illnesses, their vanity becomes, in fact, charming so long as it has never been wounded. But woe to these petty mimes and happy ones when they are overtaken by a serious misfortune, a sorrow which does not permit itself to be coquetted with, in which they can no longer be amused! They will not understand how to be unhappy in a respectable manner, they will not know what to “set about” with their sorrow, they will go to ruin—but that is a story by itself.—Herr Läutner composed pretty things: waltzes and mazurkas mostly, the gaiety of which was a bit too popular (so far as I understand these things) for them to be accounted as real music, had it not been that each of these compositions contained some small original bit, a modulation, an interlude, a harmonious turn, some tiny effect that operated upon the nerves, that betrayed cleverness and invention. They appeared to be composed for this end, and this also made them interesting for serious connoisseurs. Often these two solitary measures had something wonderfully pathetic and melancholy about them, something that suddenly rang forth and quickly ebbed away in the dance-hall gaiety of these little compositions.
It was for this young man that Amra Jacoby burned with an illicit passion, and he on his part had not possessed enough moral strength to resist her lures. They met here, they met there, and an unchaste relationship had bound the two together for over a year, a relationship known to the whole town and about which the entire town gossiped behind the back of the counsellor-at-law. And as for himself? Amra was too stupid to suffer from an evil conscience and to betray herself through this. It must be accepted as a matter of fact that the counsellor-at-law, however much his heart may always have been oppressed by care and fear, could not cherish any definite suspicion of his wife.
Spring had come to rejoice every heart, and Amra had had a most agreeable idea.
“Christian,” said she—the counsellor-at-law was named Christian—“let us give a party, a big party, in honour of the newly-brewed spring beer—of course, a very simple affair, just cold roast veal, but with a lot of people.”
“Certainly,” answered the counsellor-at-law. “But couldn’t we perhaps postpone it for a bit?”
Amra did not reply to this, but at once went into details. “There will be so many people, you know, that our rooms here will be too small. We must rent some establishment or garden or hall outside the city, so as to have sufficient room and fresh air. You will realize that. I am thinking, first of all, of that large hall of Herr Wendelin’s, at the foot of the Lerchenberg. This hall stands free and is connected only by a passage with the actual restaurant and the brewery. It could be decorated in a festal way; long tables could be set up there and spring beer drunk. One could dance there and make music, perhaps also do some light theatricals, for I know there is a small stage there—I am particularly keen on that.—Well, in one word, it must be a most original party, and we shall have a wonderful good time.”
The face of the counsellor-at-law had grown a pale yellow during this recital, and
