It was no wonder that Tussmann complained most bitterly, for the colour of his countenance was a very great annoyance to him. It was not like any ordinary oil-colour, but as if it were some cleverly compounded tincture or dye, sunk into his skin, and not to be obliterated by any human means. In the day-time the poor wretch dared not go about except with his hat down over his eyes, and a pocket-handkerchief before his face. And even when night came on he could only venture to go flitting through the more out-of-the-way streets at a gallop. He dreaded the street-boys, and he also was afraid that he might come across somebody belonging to his office, as he had reported himself sick.
We often feel any trouble that has befallen us more keenly in the silent hours of night than during the more stirring daylight. And so--as the clouds rolled blacker and blacker over the sky, as the shadows of the trees fell deeper, and the autumn wind soughed louder and louder through the branches--Tussmann, as he pondered over all his wretchedness, got into a state of the profoundest despair.
The terrible idea of jumping into the green frog-pond, and so terminating a baffled career, assailed his mind so irresistibly that he looked on it as an unmistakable hint of destiny, which he was bound to obey.
"Yes!" he cried, getting up from the grass, where he had been lying; "yes!" he shouted; "it's all over with you, Clerk of the Privy Chancery! Despair and die, good Tussmann; Thomasius can't help you! On, to a green death! Farewell, terrible Miss Albertine Bosswinkel! Your husband, that was to have been--whom you despised so cruelly--you will never see again! Here he goes, into the frog-pond!"
Like a mad creature he rushed to the edge of the basin (in the darkness it looked like a fine, smooth, broad road, with trees on each side of it), and there he remained standing for a time.
Doubtless the notion of the nearness of death affected his mind; for he sang, in a high-pitched, penetrating voice, that Scotch song, which has the refrain--
"Green grow the rashes, oh!
Green grow the rashes!"
And he shied the 'Diplomatic Acumen,' and the 'Handbook for Court and City,' and also 'Hufeland, on the Art of Prolonging Life,' into the water, and was in the very act of jumping after them, when he felt himself seized from behind by a pair of powerful arms.
He at once recognized the well-known voice of the necromantic Goldsmith. It said--"Tussmann, what are you after? I beg you not to make an ass of yourself; don't go playing idiotic tricks of this sort."