"You influence me for the best; you arouse and bring to the surface all that there is in me worth anything. With you I am cleverer, stronger, better than at any other time," he said, and he was really sincere so long as he could gaze into her eyes. But when she had left him he seemed to breathe more freely, and Magelone's graceful folly appeared to him more graceful than ever.
Thus the last half of August was reached, and his birthday drew near. The morning before, Aunt Thekla had summoned up all her courage and reminded her brother of it. "As to-morrow is Saturday, he will come to dinner as usual," she added, "and I wanted to ask you, dear Johann, if you would not like to have a few friends invited. No party, only from eight to ten people, perhaps——"
"What for?" the Freiherr burst out, and she lowered her eyes before his, which flashed angrily. "Not, I hope, to celebrate that fellow's birthday. He will be thirty years old, and he conducts himself like a boy of twenty."
Aunt Thekla took courage again. "Dear Johann, there is more joy over one sinner that repenteth——"
"Repenteth?" the Freiherr again interrupted her. "There's no question of that here. Monsieur accommodates himself to circumstances for the present, but he is ready for a fresh escapade at any moment. No, Thekla, there's no occasion for slaughtering the fatted calf. If you wish to bake the boy a cake, I've no objection; I'll put the customary bit of money underneath it and wish him joy decently; but no further festivities, I beg."
It was impossible to transgress these orders; and although Aunt Thekla took care that the cake and its customary wreath were provided, and even increased the Freiherr's 'bit of money' to the extent that her resources would permit, and although Magelone and Johanna presented their gifts duly, Otto felt the depression which weighed upon the family generally, and it did not need the Freiherr's homily, in which he was reminded that now he was thirty years of age and must put away boyish follies, to put him thoroughly out of humour.
The crosser he felt, however, the more he resolved not to show it. In defiance of the old Herr, who, he said to himself, was always doing his best to crush out all independent thought and action, he persisted, undeterred by Aunt Thekla's warning glances, in provoking conversation at the dinner-table, and, failing in this attempt, he proposed as soon as the meal was over, in direct opposition to the custom of the family, to take coffee under the three oaks in the forest,—a spot dedicated by all the gentry in the country round to parties of pleasure in the open air.
The Freiherr, who had just reached the door of the dining-hall, paused. "Well, child, you are not going to absent yourself from the party?" he said, looking over his shoulder at Johanna, who was following him. "I will do without you to-day."
She cast one longing glance towards the group at the window, and then looked into her grandfather's gloomy face. "Thank you," she made reply, stepping up to his side; "I would rather stay at home with you."
The next moment the door closed behind them. Otto bit his lip impatiently, Magelone laughed derisively. "Oh, this Johanna!" she exclaimed, irritated by Otto's evident vexation, "how clever she is! She has added in a twinkling another ray to the saintly halo around her brow."