From that hour we had never exchanged a single word. He prospered, and was feared and hated, and well did I know that if the opportunity ever offered itself he would deal me a deadly blow.
And this was the man with whom Gideon Wolf was consorting. Nothing but evil could come of such a friendship. But it was of no use my interfering between those two rascals; I should have been laughed to scorn by the pair of them.
It was otherwise with Katrine Loebeg. I had been kind to her; when she was a little one I had walked in the fields with her, and we had been merry together. I could speak to her as a father would to his child; I could warn her; I could enlighten her as to Gideon Wolf's time character. Ah! I did not think of the glamour which love sheds over the eyes of the young--not only over the eyes, over the reason, over the judgment. Had I reflected a little, had I recalled the memory of the past, when I myself was in love, I might have taken a different view.
I met Katrine the very next evening in the public street. I spoke to her, cautiously and tenderly. She was a timid, confiding girl, with a gentle voice, but the moment I ventured to say one word against Gideon Wolf she turned upon me like a fury. I never supposed her capable of such spirit. It was the passion of a mother defending her young. Ah, woman, woman! So weak, so strong, so fierce, so tender! It puts me out of patience to think of it. A bundle of sticks, some inflexible as steel bars, some supple as blades of grass--that well represents the qualities of her nature. What can be said of a man who, with some knowledge of the world, deliberately uses these astonishing, these beautiful contrasts to his own base ends? I have my own opinion on such matters. Perhaps I am old-fashioned. If so, thank God for old fashions! May they never entirely die out!
"What do you mean," cried Katrine, "first Anna, then you, by coming to me, and speaking against Gideon?"
"Anna has spoken to you, then," I said.
"Yes, she has," said Katrine, "and said such things of Gideon as she ought to be ashamed of. She deserves to be punished for it, and so I told her. I am not good enough for him, not half good enough. Is he not already sufficiently persecuted, sufficiently unfortunate? But if all the world rose against him, I would stand by his side, if he would let me, and die for him! Yes, gladly would I die for him!"
Fool that I was! Not to know that if you want to increase a woman's love for a man, all you have to do is to speak to her against him! I soon discovered my error, and was compelled to confess to myself that I had done Gideon Wolf a good turn in his suit with Katrine Loebeg. So may a man himself, by an act which he has not well considered, frustrate his own good intentions.
What thrilled me through and through was to see Pretzel the Miser, who had been secretly watching us, go to Katrine when I left her, and walk side by side with her in confidential converse. There came to my mind the picture of Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Well, the best service we could now render to Katrine was to hold our peace. Heaven knows, things were bad enough; to have set the whole town talking would have made them worse.