With these words, the merchant Almbach opened a family council, which took place in the parlour, in his wife's and daughter's presence, and at which, fortunately, the special object of the same did not assist.
Herr Almbach, a man about fifty, whose quiet, measured, almost pedantic manner, generally served as a pattern for all the office people, appeared to have quite lost his equilibrium to-day, by the above-named mania, as he continued, in great excitement--
"The bookkeeper came home this morning about four o'clock from the jubilee, which I had left directly after midnight. From the bridge he sees the garden house lighted up, and hears Reinhold raving over the notes, and lost to all sense of sight and hearing. Of course he could not accompany me to the feast! he declared himself to be ill; but his 'unbearable headache' did not hinder him from maltreating the piano in the icy-cold garden-room until morning's dawn. I shall be hearing again from my partners that my son-in-law has been doing his utmost in uselessness as well as in carelessness. It is hardly credible! The youngest clerk understands the books better, and has more interest in the business, than the partner and future head of the house of 'Almbach & Co.' My whole life long have I worked and toiled to make my firm secure and respected, and now I have the prospect of leaving it, at last, in such hands."
"I always told you that you should have forbidden his associating with the Music-Director, Wilkins," interrupted Frau Almbach, "he is to blame for it all; no one could get on with that misanthropical, musical fool. Everyone hated and avoided him, but with Reinhold that was all the more reason to form the most intimate friendship with him. Day after day he was there, and there alone was laid the foundation of all this musical nonsense, which his master seems to have bequeathed to him at his death. It is hardly bearable since he had the old man's legacy--the piano--in the house. Ella, what do you say, then, to this behaviour of your husband?"
The young wife, to whom the last words were addressed, had so far not spoken a syllable. She sat in the window, her head bent over her sewing, and only looked up as this direct question was addressed to her.
"I, dear mother?"
"Yes, you, my child, as the affair affects you most. Or do you really not feel the irresponsible manner in which Reinhold neglects you and your child?"
"He is so fond of music," said Ella, softly.
"Do you excuse him also?" said her mother, excitedly. "That is just the misfortune, he cares for it more than for wife or child; he never asks for either of you if he can only sit at his piano and improvise. Have you no idea of what a wife can and must demand from her husband, and that, above all, it is her duty to bring him to reason? But to be sure, nothing is ever to be expected of you."
The young wife certainly did not look as if much were to be expected of her. She had little that was attractive in her appearance, and the one thing about her that could perhaps be called pretty, the delicate, still girlishly slender figure, was entirely hidden under a most unbecoming house dress, which in its boundless plainness was more suggestive of a servant than of the daughter of the house, and was made so as to disguise any possible advantages which there might be. Only a narrow strip of the fair hair, which lay smoothly parted on her brow, was visible, the rest disappeared entirely under a cap more suited to her mother's years, and offering a peculiar contrast to the face of the barely twenty-years-old wife. This pale face with its downcast eyes, was not adapted to arouse any interest; it had no expression, there lay in it something stolid, vacant, that nearly approached to stupidity, and at this moment, when she let her sewing drop and looked at her mother, it betrayed such helpless nervousness and senselessness, that Almbach felt obliged to come to his daughter's assistance.