"In fact, Coralie," said I, "there are only two really satisfactory things to be in this life; all else is miserable compromise."
"Tell them to me."
"A Sultan or a monk. And—pardon me—give me the latter."
"Well, I once knew a monk very well, and——" began Coralie in a tone of meditative reminiscence. But, rather to my vexation, Wetter spoiled the story by asking what we were talking about with our heads so close together.
"We were correcting Fate and re-arranging Destiny," I explained.
"Pooh, pooh!" he cried. "You'd not get rid of the tragedy, and only spoil the comedy. Let it alone, my children."
We let it alone, and began to chatter honest nonsense. This had been going on for a few minutes, when I became aware suddenly that Struboff had ceased playing my wedding-song. I looked round; he sat on the piano-stool, his broad back like a tree-trunk bent to a bow, and his head settled on his shoulders till a red bulge over his collar was all that survived of his neck. I rose softly, signing to the others not to interrupt their conversation, and stole up to him. He did not move; his hands were clasped on his stomach. I peered round into his face; its lines were set in a grotesque heavy melancholy. At first I felt very sorry for him; but as I went on looking at him something of Coralie's feeling came over me, and I grew angry. That he was doubtless very miserable ceased to plead for him, nay, it aggravated his offence. What the deuce right had this fellow to make misery repulsive? And it was over my wedding song that he had tortured himself into this ludicrous condition! Yet again it was a pleasant paradox of Nature's to dower this carcass with the sensibility which might have given a crowning charm to the beauty of Coralie. In him it could attract no love, to him it could bring no happiness. Probably it caused him to play the piano better; if this justifies Nature, she is welcome to the plea. For my part, I felt that it was monstrously bad taste in him to come and be miserable here and now in Forstadt. But he overshot his mark.
"Good God, my dear Struboff!" I cried in extreme annoyance, "think how little it matters, how little any of us care, even, if you like, how little you ought to care yourself! You've tumbled down on the gravel; very well! Stop crying, and don't, for Heaven's sake, keep showing me the graze on your knee. We all, I suppose, have grazes on our knees. Get your mother to put you into stockings, and nobody will see it. I've been in stockings for years." I burst into a laugh.
He did not understand what I would be at; that, perhaps, was hardly wonderful.
"The music has affected me," he mumbled.