The Frau President started up. "Are you mad, Flora? Weak as I am, I would run for hours, and fast for weeks, if I might thereby win the right to claim this inheritance. It is incredible that fate should be so cruel! I, I, in my position, to be thrust forth from the house that owes its splendour, its aristocratic prestige, to me alone, and an obscure old woman, who has spent her life in darning linen, to be installed here in my place!"
"That need not vex you, grandmamma; his old aunt upon the Rhine will no more inherit than you will."
"Ah! Other heirs have appeared, then?"
"Yes,—his creditors."
The Frau President staggered back to her arm-chair, with a low cry.
"Hush! Pray do not make a scene," Flora said, almost in a whisper. "The people below-stairs know it much better than I; they are all ready to flee from the house like rats from a sinking ship. I cannot and must not leave you any longer in ignorance of the state of affairs. We must be au fait if we would not be laughed at as dupes." She drew the cloud of black tulle closer about her grandmother's chin and neck and rearranged her disordered hair. "No one must see you thus, grandmamma," she said, sternly. "We must retire as gracefully as possible: the affair is too dishonourable and disgraceful; there is no longer any doubt that the explosion was the work of despair—to give it its right name, a piece of villainy—on Römer's part."
"The wretch! The infamous scoundrel!" shrieked the Frau President, rising, and fairly running to and fro in the apartment, rage lending strength to her feeble limbs.
Flora pointed to a window before which there hung no protecting shade. "Remember, every one outside can hear you!" she said. "Since early dawn tradesmen have been hovering near the house, the excitement in the capital is tremendous; some people have almost lost their senses with anxiety. Everything consumed by this large household for the last six months is unpaid for. The butcher has even dared to invade the house and demand that you should be called to speak with him. He wishes, of course, before the officers of the law appear, to extort from you, as the head of the household, the six hundred thalers owing him. He was insolent enough to tell my maid that the ladies of the house, as well as the councillor, had eaten his meat."
"Ugh! what a slough that miserable fellow has thrust us into, while he has made his own cowardly escape!" the Frau President exclaimed, half choked with rage, and yet instinctively withdrawing from the open window. She wrung her hands. "Gracious heaven! what a fearful situation! What is to be done?"
"First of all, we must pack up everything that is our own and leave the house, if we would not have the officers seal up our effects also; we might wait long before they would be returned to us. I am just going up-stairs to put away my"—she interrupted herself with a laugh—"my trousseau in chests and trunks. Then I am going to make an inventory of the household articles, and if you yourself will not take charge of handing them over——"