In this declaration there was a sort of tranquillizing influence which Sonnenkamp himself felt. It is better that the whole world should stand up in arms against him, than to be forever and forever under the dominion of this crafty, threatening, and annoying woman. Now her weapon was gone, and the dagger which she had always kept hidden was now unsheathed in the eyes of all the world, and was in every hand.
Pranken went to Frau Ceres; he had to wait a long time in the ante-room, but at last Fräulein Perini came out.
Pranken briefly told her that the secret she had confided to him, and which he had kept so faithfully, was now made public.
"So soon?" said Fräulein Perini; and when Pranken inquired how Frau Ceres would be likely to receive the annihilation of her hopes of being ennobled, and the whole detestable uproar in the world, she replied, smiling, that she could not tell, for Frau Ceres was now suffering under a terrible trial of a wholly different kind.
She could hardly go on, she was so choked with laughter, but finally it came out.
Yesterday morning, Frau Ceres in some incomprehensible way had broken off her most beautiful nail, a real prodigy of most careful cherishing, and she was utterly inconsolable.
Pranken could not help joining in the laugh. He accompanied Fräulein Perini into the room.
Frau Ceres gave him her left hand to kiss, holding the right carefully concealed. She asked whether Pranken had brought with him the armorial device, and pointed to an embroidery frame on which she wanted at once to work the coat-of-arms, and also to an altar-cloth, whose border was already completed.
Pranken now broke the news to her in a very careful manner.
"And he always said I was stupid! I am cleverer than he," Frau Ceres burst out; "I always told him that Europe was no place for us, and that we ought to have remained where we were. Hasn't he caught it now? He's ashamed to come himself, and so he has sent you. He's ashamed, because I, the simpleton, who had never learned anything, knew the affair so much better than he did."