"I do not know. She often torments me terribly with her varying moods, her jealousy, and then--I have to hear often enough, whom I have to thank for all, what she has sacrificed for my sake."
An expression of inexpressible scorn curled Hermann's lips.
"Ah! so it has got as far as that! She throws that in your face, and you endure it?"
"Have I a weapon against it?"
"It lay with you to make yourself independent. I imagined that just your wife's rank and riches would be a spur to urge you to rise to an equal height through your own powers."
Eugen heaved a sigh of resignation.
"Confound it, Hermann, you take it for granted that I have an iron nature like yours, which never needs rest nor refreshment, which pushes forward unceasingly and takes everything by storm. I have a different constitution."
"I know that!" said Hermann, with calm bitterness, "and believe me, Eugen, I have repented often enough, that I had any part in causing your life to take the direction it has. You ought to be free from the cares and limitations of ordinary life, ought to find the road to your future an open one, and it was with that view that I favoured your marriage. You are right, it was a fatal error to judge you by myself. You are one of those natures which need continual spurring forward; when the necessity for work was removed, the food for your talent was gone; had I left you to yourself, and you had had to work to live, it had been better!"
"You speak," said Eugen, pettishly, "as if I had done nothing since I saw you last, and yet my portraits are valued and admired--"
"Because you are the husband of Gräfin Antonie. Since that great picture of Antonie, in which you seem to have exhausted your genius, no work of yours has risen above mediocrity."