“How could I fail to regard myself as happy? It would be sheer ingratitude toward fate!”
“Well, yes, ‘to regard yourself as happy,’ but ‘to feel happy’? Life cannot be very gay among all these wigs.... I do not often come here—only when I am visiting their neighbors at the castle of Dornhof, where I generally spend a week almost every year. Then I make my respects here and I have always found the house tedious to the last degree, except when the old count used to enliven it with his presence; but for the most part during the last few years he has been away traveling. Of course, I had heard about the family romance,—the daughter who ran off with the tutor,—but that you were the result of that elopement, I never suspected until I made a fool of myself about you.... Do not look so angry; that folly is past and gone.... I have taken my place toward you—especially since I have confessed to your grandfather—as a kind of honorary uncle.”
On this episode Franka looked back with satisfaction.
On the other hand, she remembered something very unpleasant that had happened to her during the early days of her new life. She had been summoned at a quite unusual hour to her great-aunt’s chamber. She had scarcely crossed the threshold when she realized that she had been invited to appear as a defendant before a criminal court. Behind the table sat the old Countess Schollendorf in her sternest aspect, with her headdress askew, betokening inward excitement; next her, in the capacity of an assistant, Aunt Albertine, and on the table as corpus delicti two books which Franka instantly recognized as her property.
“Come in; sit down and explain yourself: How came you by these books?” This was spoken in a harsh, inquisitorial tone.
The books were Prince Kropotkin’s “Memoirs of a Revolutionist” and Bölsche’s “Liebesleben in der Natur.”
Franka had calmly taken a seat.
“I might rather ask,” she replied, “how come these books here, when they were locked up in my bookcase?”
Miss Albertine, with a honeyed expression, put in her word:—
“My dear girl, this matter concerns your own good: I myself brought the books down. The bookcase was not locked; the key was in the door; I did not break it open. It is perfectly natural that we should be interested in what is read by a young person over whose well-being we have to watch. The other books there I do not know.... I should have to read them first; but the titles of these two are sufficient to condemn them. So I brought them down to Aunt Adele. We have glanced through them and....”