“As you think best,” said Frau von Rinnlingen and looked straight past him.
Two minutes later Herr Friedemann bade them goodbye. As he bowed once more at the threshold, he met their eyes, which rested upon him without any expression.
He went away, but not back to town; involuntarily he chose a way which branched off from the avenue and led to the former ramparts along the river. There were well-tended lawns there, shady paths, and benches.
He walked quickly and unconsciously, without looking up. He was unbearably hot, and he felt the fires within him rise and fall, and a merciless throbbing in his weary head.
Were not her eyes still resting upon him? Not as when he left, however, empty and void of expression, but as before, with that trembling cruelty, as when she had spoken to him in that strange, quiet manner? Oh, did it delight her to render him helpless and to put him beside himself? Even though she saw through him, might she not have a bit of pity for him?
He had walked below, along the river, close to the green grass-covered bastions, and he sat down on a bench which was surrounded by jasmine-bushes in a half-circle. Everything about him was full of a sweet, sultry fragrance. In front of him the sun brooded upon the trembling water.
How tired and exhausted he felt, and yet how all things were in tortured revolt within him! Would it not be best to look about him once more and then go down into the still water, after a brief pang to be freed, rescued unto a deep rest? Ah, rest, rest it was that he yearned for! Not rest within a void and unhearing nothingness, however, but a peace lighted by a soft and gentle sun, filled by sweet, quiet thoughts.
His entire tender love of life thrilled through him at this moment, and a deep longing for his lost happiness. But then he looked about him into the silent, eternal, indifferent peace of nature, saw how the river pursued its course in the sun, how the grass moved tremblingly and the flowers stood where they had blossomed, in order then to wither and decay, saw how all things, all things, were bound to destiny with this dumb surrender—and then suddenly he was overcome by a feeling of friendliness and acquiescence in the necessity which was able to give man a kind of superiority over all fate.
He thought of that afternoon on his thirtieth birthday, when, happy in the possession of content, he had believed he was able to survey the rest of his life without fear or hope. He had seen neither light nor shadow then, but everything had lain before him in a mild twilight, until far below him it merged, almost imperceptibly, into the dark, and he had contemplated the years that were still to come with a quiet and superior smile—how long ago was that?
And then this woman had come, she was bound to come, it was his fate, she herself was his fate, she alone! Had he not felt this from the very first moment? She had come, and though he had striven to defend his peace—all the forces within him were bound to rise in revolt for her, all that from youth onward he had suppressed in himself because he felt that it would mean ruin and torment to him—this had seized him with a terrible, irresistible power and was bringing him to ruin!
It was bringing him to ruin—he felt that. But why struggle and torture himself? Let everything take its course! He would go his way and close his eyes to the yawning abyss behind there, obedient to fate, obedient to the puissant, poignant, sweet power that no one could elude.
The water glistened, the jasmine breathed forth its keen, sultry fragrance, the birds twittered everywhere about him in the trees, between which shone a heavy, velvety blue sky. But little hunchbacked Herr Friedemann continued to sit for a long time upon his bench. He sat bending forward, his forehead propped in both hands.
All were agreed that this affair at Rinnlingen’s was most enjoyable. Some thirty persons sat at the long, tastefully decorated table which extended through the wide dining-room; the footman and two servants were already hurrying about with the ices; there was a clinking, a clattering, and a warm odour of food and perfume. Affable wholesale merchants with their wives and daughters were assembled here; in addition almost all the officers of the garrison, an old, beloved physician, a few lawyers, and such others as belonged to the best circles. A student of mathematics was also present, a nephew of the Lieutenant-Colonel, who was on a visit to his relations; he carried on the most abstruse conversations with Fräulein Hagenström, who sat opposite Herr Friedemann.
He himself sat on a beautiful velvet cushion at the lower end of the table, next to the unbeautiful wife of the headmaster of the school, not far from Frau von Rinnlingen, who had been escorted to the table by Consul Stephens. It was surprising what a change had taken place in little Herr Friedemann during the last week. It was, perhaps, the fault of the whitish incandescent gaslight which flooded the room that his face appeared so terribly pale; but his cheeks had sunken in, his eyes, reddened and surrounded by dark shadows, revealed an unutterably sad glimmer, and it seemed as though his figure was more deformed than ever.—He drank a good deal of wine and now and then spoke a few words to his table-companion.
Frau von Rinnlingen had as yet exchanged not a single word with Herr Friedemann at table; now she bent forward a little and called to him: “I waited for you in vain these days, for you and your fiddle.”
He
