Martha (still a cripple).”
“The finder of this note did not understand the meaning of the parenthesis. This is really a funny confusion. Thank God that this grand proof was not burned; now my innocence is plain. Or have you still any suspicion?”
“No; after you had looked in my face I had no more. Do you know, Frederick, I should have been very unhappy, but I should have forgiven you? Lori is coquettish, very pretty. Tell me, has not she made advances to you? You shake your head. Well, truly, in this matter you have not only the right but almost the duty of deceiving even me; a man cannot betray a lady’s favour whether he accepts or rejects it.”
“And so you would have forgiven me a false step? Are you not jealous?”
“Yes; in a way that tears my heart. If I think of you at another’s feet; sipping joy from another’s lips; grown cold to me; all desire dead—it is horrible to me. Yet, it was not the death of your love that I feared. Your heart would under no circumstances turn cold to me, that I am sure of; our souls are surely so interwoven with each other. But——”
“I understand. But you need by no means think of me that my feeling for you is like that of a husband after the silver wedding. We have been married too short a time for that; so long as the fire of youth glows in me (for indeed I am forty years old already), it burns for you. You are the only woman on earth to me. And should some other temptation in reality again assail me, my will is quite strong enough to keep it away from me. The happiness which is contained in the consciousness of having kept one’s plighted troth, the proud repose of conscience with which a man can say of himself that he has kept the firmly-tied bond of his life in every respect sacred—all this is to me too noble to allow it to be destroyed by a passing intoxication of the senses. You have besides made so perfectly happy a man of me, my Martha, that I am raised as far above everything—above all intoxication, all amusement, all pleasure—as the possessor of ingots of gold above the gain of copper pieces.”
With what delight did such words as these sink into my heart! I was expressly thankful to the anonymous letter-writer, for helping me to this delightful scene. And I transferred every word into my red book. I can still reproduce the entry here, under date 1/4/1865. Ah, how far, how far back is all that!
Frederick, on the contrary, was highly incensed against the slanderer. He swore that he would find out who had been guilty of the composition, so as to punish the actor as he deserved. I found out the same day what the origin and aim of the writing was. Its result, which was that Frederick and I were thenceforth drawn a little closer together, its originator could hardly have foreseen.
In the afternoon I went to my friend Lori to show her the letter. I wanted to let her know that she had an enemy by whom she was falsely exposed to suspicion, and I wanted to laugh with her over the chance that my dictated note had been so misconstrued.
She laughed more than I expected.