He did not answer. She could not quite see his face; he stood there without moving.
She took hold of his hand: "Good gracious, what's the matter with you?"
He did not move.
"Wolfgang! Wolfgang!" She shook him in the greatest terror. Then he fell against her so heavily that he almost knocked her down, and faltered, lisped like an idiot whose heavy tongue has been taught to say a few words: "Beg--par--don."
She had to lead him. His breath, which smelt strongly of spirits, blew across her face. A great disgust, more terrible than the fear she had had before, took possession of her. This was the awful thing she had been expecting no, this was still more awful, more intolerable. He was drunk, drunk! This was what a drunken man must look like.
A drunken man had never been near her before; now she had one close to her. The horror she felt shook her so that her teeth chattered. Oh for shame, for shame, how disgusting, how vulgar! How degraded he seemed to her, and she felt degraded, too, through him. This was not her Wolfgang any more, the child whom she had adopted as her son. This was quite an ordinary, quite a common man from the street, with whom she had nothing, nothing whatever to do any more.
She wanted to push him away from her quickly, to hurry into the house and close the door behind her--let him find out for himself what to do. But he held her fast. He had laid his arm heavily round her neck, he almost weighed her down; thus he forced her to lead him.
And she led him reluctantly, revolting desperately in her heart, but still conquered. She could not leave him, exposed to the servants' scorn, the laughter of the street. If anybody should see him in that condition? It would not be long before the first people came past, the milk-boys, the girls with the bread, the men working in the street, those who drank Carlsbad water early in the morning. Oh, how terrible if anybody should guess how deeply he had sunk.
"Lean on me, lean heavily," she said in a trembling voice. "Pull yourself together--that's right." She almost broke down under his weight but she kept him on his feet. He was so drunk that he did not know what he was doing, he actually wanted to lie down in front of the door, at full length on the stone steps. But she snatched him up.
"You must--you must," she said, and he followed her like a child. Like a dog, she thought.