She seemed constantly tired. She rarely went out--hardly ever as far as the garden, where she would walk but a short distance before sitting down on a bench. She would often sit in an absent manner, gazing into vacancy, and when addressed would seem as if hurriedly collecting her thoughts.
Martella had also received a letter. It contained a ring; but she would not show any one, not even my wife, what Ernst had written. Edward Levi, the iron merchant, acted with great good sense and delicacy. He attempted neither to explain things nor to console us; but gave us the simple account of how the affair had happened. If it had not related to my own son, and had not been so full of sadness, Ernst's ingenuity in the matter would even have afforded us amusement.
It was late in the evening when he arrived at the town in which Levi resided. He went to the police-office at once, and ordered a forester whom he found there to produce Edward Levi, who arrived shortly afterward, and to whom Ernst used these words:
"You have been a soldier and can be trusted. I shall confide my secret to you."
He then informed him, with an air of great secrecy, that he had been ordered to enter the Prussian lines as a spy, and requested him to provide him at once with some French money and the dress of a Jewish cattle-dealer; and also to bring to him a cattle-dealer provided with a correct passport.
After all this had been successfully accomplished, Ernst wrote the two letters and handed them to Levi, with instructions not to deliver them until three days had elapsed.
He started off with his companion. On the way, he asked him to show him his passport: it was handed to him but not returned. He carefully instructed the cattle-dealer to address him by the name of Rothfuss.
"Why, that is the name of the old servant that your father thinks so much of!"
"That is the very reason I have chosen it; you will have no difficulty in remembering it. What is my name?
"The same as the servant's."