This fair woman was blindly in love with her husband. She almost worshipped him, but he did not trouble himself much about her. He regarded himself as a great artist, because in the choir concerts he played the cornet solos, and always received much applause from the female part of the audience, and he considered that his marriage alone had prevented him from becoming a "celebrity." Once he had received a passionate love letter, signed by "a lady of high degree, who deplored with tears of blood" the dividing difference of rank between them. It was transparently the coarse work of a practical joker; but Henke in his conceit believed in the high-born heiress, and this dream quite turned his head. He ever afterwards posed as a fine gentleman, ogled all the elegant women of the town, and had hardly a glance left for his wife. She worked and pinched for him in order that he might be able to enjoy his aristocratic tastes, and thought herself happy because he bore with her. And he was always urging her to work and earn money, as he longed to become rich and be the equal of really fashionable people.
Gambling was to help him to this; besides, in itself it gave him intense pleasure.
He was ready dressed to go out, and was only lingering before the looking-glass, when he heard outside the signal-whistle with which Heppner, his boon-companion, was accustomed to call him. He soon joined the deputy sergeant-major in the street, and after a brief greeting the two walked rapidly towards the town.
A few steps from the White Horse the trumpeter suddenly stopped, felt in his pocket, and exclaimed, "Damnation! I've left my money behind at home!"
"Never mind!" said Heppner, in his genial mood. "You shall eat and drink free to-day, and I'll lend you a thaler into the bargain. There, catch hold!"
He gave him the piece of money before they reached the door, and the trumpeter rejoiced: borrowed money brought luck.
The landlord of the Horse had laid the table neatly in the little parlour. The leavings of the previous evening had been freshly dished up, and the barrel, which must still contain nearly forty litres of beer, had been cooled with ice.
But only one of the five banqueters was in the vein--Blechschmidt, sergeant-major of the fifth battery. He was still eating and drinking when the four others were already sitting at the half-cleared table playing cards.
"Something moderate to begin with!" the master baker Kühn had suggested; so each one put down three marks.
It was a long time before the last fifty-pfennig piece was played out of the pool; but Heppner triumphed. He had been right in his premonition; when he counted his money he had won nearly two marks.