CHAPTER V.
Early on the morning following their nocturnal encounter, Felix sought out the lieutenant; he could not rest without trying to find out whether it was not an illusion of his senses which made him think he saw Irene's uncle riding at his friend's side. Schnetz lived in the top story of a dismal old house whose winding stairway was but dimly illuminated by a faint stream of light proceeding from a dingy skylight covered with dust and cobwebs. A woman, too refined-looking to be a servant, and, on the other hand, too modest in her behavior to be a housekeeper, opened the door for the strange visitor, looked at him in a frightened and confused way, and informed him in a soft, subdued voice that the lieutenant had gone out very early in the morning; when he would be back she did not know. He sometimes staid away whole days at a time; this time, besides, he had said something to her about taking a ride into the mountains. So Felix was forced to restrain his impatience. But he felt quite incapable of going to his work as usual. He lounged about the streets for hours, regardless of the heat and dust. He carefully scanned every horseman whom he met, and every carriage from which he saw a veil waving; and a girl's head, turning about with restless curiosity to see all that was going on, caused his heart to beat until he had convinced himself it was not the dreaded, and yet secretly so longed-for, face--for which he sought thus earnestly only that it might not take him too much by surprise.
On the following day he continued his aimless wanderings, at first on foot, through all the picture galleries, and in the afternoon in a drosky, in which he rattled through the Au suburb, the English Garden, and, finally, the Nymphenburg and the deer park, until his panting horse landed him, toward evening, at one of the suburban theatres; for there was still a bare possibility that the travelers would feel a desire to see the "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld," which happened to be the sensation of the hour.
All these hopes were doomed to disappointment. Half tired out and half angry with himself, he left the theatre at the close of the first act, and strolled back to his lodgings by the most unfrequented streets he could find. There he found a line from Jansen, who had been alarmed at his long absence.
"It is true," he laughed bitterly to himself, "such an old apprentice as I am ought to know the value of his time better than to cut school for two days. What is the good of it all, except to give one tired legs and a heavy head? And, if I really had found her, what then? We should have stared at one another like total strangers, and hurried out of one another's sight."
He threw himself on the sofa, and mechanically reached out his hand for one of the books that lay upon the table. As he did so he noticed that he had taken up with it a fine red hair, and this recalled his thoughts to the night when he had given up this room to Zenz.
"What a fool I was!" he muttered between his teeth. "If I had not driven the good creature away from me, perhaps I should be in better humor now, and would not have wasted these two days in such a senseless way."
Then he tried very hard to recall the figure of the poor child. But she exercised no more power over him now than she had when she was present in the body. At last sleep took compassion on his troubled soul.
The next morning he resigned himself with no little bitterness to his fate, and betook himself to Jansen's workshop. He hoped that he should be in better mood when once he had a piece of clay between his fingers.
He started back in positive alarm, therefore, when, while crossing one of the large, deserted squares, he saw the very person whom he had yesterday sought so diligently, coming out of a hotel door and advancing straight upon him. The lieutenant wore his usual suit--a close-buttoned green riding-jacket, high top-boots, and a gray hat, with a little feather, slightly tipped toward the left ear. His dry, yellow face, with its black imperial, had a most grim and defiant look, but it was instantly lighted up by a polite smile when he caught sight of his young friend of the "Paradise."
"I missed your visit day before yesterday, and have not been able to return it yet because I have been in service again. An old acquaintance has fallen upon me from the skies, a Baron N----" (he gave the name of Irene's uncle). "I got acquainted with this jolly crony some years ago in Algiers, when, just to get a smell of powder, I was fool enough to take the field against Messieurs les Arabes, although they had never done me the slightest harm in the world. The baron was trying at the time to become a lion-hunter; but he afterward preferred to offer his homage to the king of the desert from a respectful distance, and to travel back to his peaceful home with a skin bought at a bazaar, and a good store of burnooses and shawls. He was the sensible man of the two. For my part, it was a long time before I could get rid of the ugly remembrance that I had really done my hunting in earnest, and had probably deprived several of those poor devils of the pleasure of protecting their native soil against the French invaders. And now my old tent-fellow comes upon me here like a ghost--though a very portly and jolly one--and drags me about with him for days; in fact, I am coming from his hotel at this very moment."
Felix involuntarily gave a glance toward the windows of the hotel. It cost him a hard struggle to suppress all signs of his emotion.
"Does your guest live here?" he asked. "You have been visiting him so early?"
"We were going to take a ride. But I found a note from him, in which he informed me that I might take a holiday. His party has been invited by one of its noble relatives to take an excursion of several days, at which I, thank Heaven, should be quite superfluous."
"His party? Then the baron is--"
"Married? No; but almost worse than that. He has a young niece with him who is really the cause of his having come here at all. A bad story--a broken engagement, great surmising and gossiping about it in the little capital--in short, the health of the Fräulein demanded a change of air, and she insisted upon going off to Italy for a year. My old comrade, who remained a bachelor because he feared the claws of a lioness less than the slipper of a pretty wife--well, he simply jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. This young niece of his rules him with her little finger. The consequence was that the trunks immediately had to be packed for Italy. But, while here, their noble relatives succeeded in frightening them so about the Italian summers and the cholera, that they have decided to wait until the worst of the season is over, spending part of the time here in the city and part in the mountains. You will perceive, my dear friend, what a charming prospect this is for me."
"Is the young Fräulein so unamiable that your 'service' is such a hard task?" Felix remarked, with an attempt at lightness. At the same time he looked abstractedly away from the lieutenant, as if he merely continued the topic from politeness.
"Look here!" continued Schnetz, with his peculiar, dry chuckle. "If you like, I'll introduce you to the young lady, and resign all my rights. You will then have an opportunity to become acquainted with the sweetness of such service, and will perhaps make out better than I, who certainly have not succeeded in winning my way to favor. This proud little person--provided, by-the-way, with a pair of eyes that are equally well fitted to rule, to be gracious, and to condemn one forever--has unfortunately never felt a strong hand over her. The consequence is, she has a way of always setting up her own wishes on every subject, among others in regard to this unfortunate engagement. She appears to have made it so hot for the good youth who had the courage to take up with her, that at last he couldn't stand it any longer. It is very probable that she was sorry for this at heart, and so at the present moment she is in a decidedly irritable and discontented mood, and it is dangerous to touch her without gloves. Unfortunately I neglected to use this consideration; and, as a consequence, we stand on a most charming war-footing toward one another."
He struck his boot impatiently with his riding-whip, put his left arm through his young companion's right, and, striding rapidly forward with his long legs, growled out:
"It's enough to drive a man wild when he sees how God's images are disfigured--whether by saints or devils, it's all the same. Either confined by strait-lacing or by nuns' robes, or else décolletées to the very waist. Believe me, my dear fellow, as far as the education of the women of the upper classes is concerned, we are not much farther advanced to-day than we were in the darkest middle ages, when a brothel stood next door to a church. At least, we, down here in our envied South, are not; though, to be sure, this Northern blood--"
"A North German?"
"Hum! North or middle German!--upon that point she is positively fiendish! In the very first hour of our meeting, this Fräulein asked me what sort of society we had here--of course, the aristocratic society, as it loves to call itself; for a mere crowd of human beings, without the forms of etiquette, can never be regarded as human society. I replied quietly that the so-called good society here was the worst one could possibly wish for, and that it was only in the so-called bad society that I had come across a few good comrades here and there, with whom there was such a thing as living. Whereupon the little princess looked at me as much as to say that she should never have supposed, from my dress--which was anything but suited to the salon--that my exclusion from polite society was otherwise than involuntary. But I, pretending not to notice this, proceeded to explain to her at length the reasons which caused me to be disgusted with the crême of our city; the strange odor of their salons--a mixture of patchouli, incense, and the stable--their very doubtful French, and their undoubtedly worse German; their almost sublime ignorance of all that is generally considered to belong to education; and that naïve lack of knowledge in moral matters, which is generally to be found only in convents, and which can only be properly fostered by an ecclesiastical society and sanctioned by sly father confessors. Your nobles in the North, so far as I have known them--well, I needn't tell you about the clay of which they are made. No matter what hard-mouthed hobbies they ride in regard to affairs of church and state, they nevertheless hold fast to noblesse oblige; and then, too, you are very likely to find, in the castles of Pomerania and the Mark, the Bible and the hymn-book side by side with Ranke's 'History of the Popes' and Macaulay's 'History of England.' With us, on the other hand--to be sure, though, Paul de Kock and the 'Seeress of Prevorst' are also classics, and do not stand on the 'Index Expurgatorius.' I notice that you are thinking to yourself how much less jolly, and more discontented and bristling, I am to-day than I was that night in 'Paradise.' You see, my good fellow, you got acquainted with me then in one of my holiday humors, that come over me only once a month; and, to-day, you see my old Adam with his every-day face. If no one else has told you this, to give you due warning about me, I must confess it myself--since I left the service I have really had no occupation but to scoff and grumble. It is true, we live at a time when every honest fellow will have his hands full if he only conscientiously improves every opportunity to do this. But you know this goes very badly with our celebrated South German good-nature; all the worse if the one who scolds happens to be in the right. It is because of this that I have grown old in my lieutenancy; for I could not keep my mouth shut even about our military shortcomings, and at last succeeded in bolting every door to advancement so tightly against me, that I preferred to leave the beaten track of a military career altogether. Wouldn't even the blessed Thersites have been forced to resign if he had served as first lieutenant under the generals Achilles or Diomedes? And yet, those times were far simpler than ours! So, now, I go on grumbling without hinderance, and without caring whether any notice is taken of it or not. The wheat of the Philistines is sown too thick, and thrives too well, for it to be hurt by the few tares that grow among it. Still, it does me some good; in the first place, because it purges me of my gall before it mixes with my blood and attacks my vitals; and then because it makes me more and more hated by good society, and avoided by persons of my own rank. You don't know what a Robinson-Crusoe-like existence I lead; in the midst of the city I am as solitary as Saint Anthony in his cave; yes, even more lonely, for I suffer no temptations. Won't you take a look at my hermitage? Here we are at the door."
They had arrived at the old house with which Felix had already made acquaintance. He felt very little disposition to mount the stairs again. While his companion had been running on in this odd, bitter way, his mind had been occupied by one single thought. "She is here! You need only wish it, and you can see her to-morrow!" Nevertheless, he could not well refuse Schnetz's polite invitation; and so he followed him up into his fourth-story quarters.