He looked through the coach-door every now and then, and put out his hand, as if he were going to lay hold of the handle, spring out and flee. What a bold game it was he was trying his hand at! He was angry with himself that, close upon the last critical moment, he allowed a feeling of apprehension to come over him. He could not help declaring to Pranken that he felt very much excited. Pranken thought this quite natural, for elevation to the nobility is no small affair. And now, in the conversation that took place, Sonnenkamp discovered the cause of his timidity. Those Huguenots, mother, aunt, and son, with their double-distilled transcendental notions, had brought around him an element of weakness; it would be as well to throw them aside, politely, of course, but they must go their way, like instruments that have done their work, like paid-off workmen.
In this thought of casting something from him, there was a sense of power which restored him to himself once more.
It was not merely allowing others to act for him, he was an active agent himself; he let the puppets dance, for all men are puppets to him who knows how to govern them. He looked smilingly over at Pranken; this man, too, was his puppet now. He began to whistle merrily but inaudibly.
It was late in the evening when they reached the capital. Roland went to bed directly. Pranken took his leave, saying that he had to make a necessary call.
"Don't forget that you are a bridegroom," Sonnenkamp cried out after him with a laugh.
For the first time in his life was Pranken troubled by such a jest; it hurt him because it came from Manna's father, and because he was really going on an errand very serious and moral in its nature and object; he was going to the house of the Dean of the cathedral.
The house was in the garden behind the cathedral, hidden from the whole world, and amidst a quiet that was never broken by the bustle of the capital.
Pranken rang, a servant opened the door, and Pranken was not a little astonished at hearing himself instantly called by name. The servant was the soldier whom he had employed for some little time as an attendant. He received Pranken's commission to inform him personally the next morning, at the Victoria Hotel, whether the Dean could receive him alone at eleven o'clock.
Pranken turned away, and he smiled, when, still thinking of his father-in-law's admonition, he stopped before a certain house. He knew it well, the pretty, quiet house that he himself had once furnished, the carpeted stairs, the banisters with their stuffed velvet, and everything so cosy, the bell up-stairs with its single note, the cool ante-chamber full of green plants, the parlor so cheerful, the carpets, and the furniture of the same pattern of silk throughout, a green ground and yellow garland. Pranken liked the national colors even here. In the corner stands an alabaster angel holding in its hand a fresh bunch of flowers every day. Many a time too, the angel has to bear a woman's jaunty hat, and many a time too a man's hat. And then the door-curtains. Who is laughing behind them? No, he passes on.
He stopped at a shop window with large panes of glass; when going to that cosy little house, he had always brought with him from this shop some trifle, some comical little thing—there are many new things of that kind in it now; he enters and purchases the very latest.