“I wish I could produce a substance or a machine,” he said to me, “of such frightful efficacy for wholesale devastation that wars should thereby become altogether impossible.”
About a week after my arrival Mr. Nobel was obliged to go for a short time to Sweden, where a dynamite factory was being established; the king himself had summoned him.
I was now quite alone. The yearning for the man of my heart grew beyond endurance. Then I received two dispatches. One was from Stockholm,—“Arrived safely, shall be back in Paris in a week”; and the other from Vienna,—“I cannot live without thee.”
And my soul gave a cry, “Nor I without thee!” and I had to act accordingly. Another sleepless night, during which a plan of action was matured, and on the next day I wrote to Stockholm that it was impossible under the circumstances for me to take the position in the Rue Malakoff. I thanked him for all the confidence and friendliness which had been shown me, but I must return to Vienna.
I owned a valuable diamond cross, an inheritance from my guardian Fürstenberg; I went out to dispose of this, and the price which I received for it was sufficient to cover the hotel charges, to buy a ticket for the next express train for Vienna, and to leave me some ready money. I acted as if I were in a dream, as if under irresistible compulsion. I did have flashes of consciousness that this was folly, that perhaps I was running away from a good fortune and into the arms of a misfortune; but I could not, could not do otherwise, and the bliss which I expected to feel in the instant of meeting again outweighed everything else that might come, even were it death.
I had not announced my coming—I wanted to take him by surprise. I drove from the station to a hotel, and sent to the Canovagasse a note in a disguised hand, begging Herr Baron Artur to come to the Hotel Metropole, Room No. 20, where a lady from Paris had a message from Countess Bertha to give him.
He could be there in half an hour. With throbbing heart I listened to every step in the corridor. I had not long to listen till I recognized the beloved footfall; there was a knock at the door; I tried to say “Come in,” but my voice failed me. Nevertheless the door opened and—it was he!
I flew to him with a cry of joy.
Du, du selber!—“It is your own self!” he cried, and we were once again sobbing in each other’s arms, just as on that evening when we parted, only this time not with feelings of pain but rather of unbounded happiness.
“I have thee, I have thee again—I will never let thee go.”