"It gives me great pleasure," cried Mrs. Gunilla, speaking shrilly and staccato—"it gives me great pleasure to see my fellow-creatures, and it gives me great pleasure if they will see me. If they are not always agreeable, why I am not always agreeable myself! Heart's-dearest! in this world one must have patience one with another, and not be everlastingly requiring and demanding from others. Heaven help me! I am satisfied with the world, and with my own fellow-creatures, as our Lord has been pleased to make them. I cannot endure that people should be perpetually blaming, and criticising, and mocking, and making sour faces at everything, and saying 'I will not have this!' and 'I will not have that!' and 'I will not have it so! It is folly; it is unbearable; it is wearisome; it is stupid!' precisely as if they themselves only were endurable, agreeable, and clever! No, I have learned better manners than that. It is true that I have no genius, nor learning, nor talents, as so many people in our day lay claim to, but I have learned to govern myself!"
During this moral lecture, and endeavouring all the time to overpower it, the Assessor exclaimed, "And can you derive the least pleasure from your blessed social life? No, that you cannot! What is social life, but a strift to get into the world in order to discover that the world is unbearable? but a scheming and labouring to get invited, to be offended and put out of sorts if not invited; and if invited, then to complain of weariness and vexation, and thus utter their lamentations. Thus people bring a mass of folks together, and wish them—at Jericho! and all this strift only to get poorer, more out of humour, more out of health; in one word, to obtain the perfectly false position, vis-à-vis, of happiness! See there! Adieu, adieu! When the ladies take leave, they never have done."
"There is not one single word of truth in all that you have said," was the last but laughing salutation of Mrs. Gunilla to the Assessor, as, accompanied by the Candidate, she left the door. The Judge, too, was gone; and Elise, left alone, betook herself to the parlour.
Suddenly quick steps were heard behind her—she thought "Jacobi"—turned round, and saw her husband; but never before had she seen him looking as then; there was an excitement, an agitation, in his countenance that terrified her. He threw his arm violently round her waist, riveted his eyes upon her with a glance that seemed as if it would penetrate into her inmost soul.
"Ernst, Ernst, be calm!" whispered she, deeply moved by his state of mind, the cause of which she imagined. He seized her hand and pressed it to his forehead—it was damp and cold; the next moment he was gone.
We will now return to the Candidate.
Wine and love, and excited expectation, had so inflamed the imagination of the young man, that he hardly knew what he did—whether he walked, or whether he flew; and more than once, in descending the stairs, had he nearly precipitated Mrs. Gunilla, who exclaimed with kindness, but some little astonishment, "The Cross preserve me! I cannot imagine, heart's-dearest, how either you or I go to-night! I think we are all about to—see, now again, all's going mad.—No, I thank you, I'll take care of my nose, crooked as it is. I think I can go safer by myself. I can hold by——"
"A thousand thousand times pardon," interrupted the Candidate, whilst he pressed Mrs. Gunilla's arm tightly; "it is all my fault. But now we will go safely and magnificently; I was a little dizzy!"
"Dizzy!" repeated she. "Heart's-dearest, we should take care on that very account; one should take care of one's head as well as one's heart; one should take care of that, or it may go still more awry than it now is with us! He, he, he, he—but listen to me, my friend," said Mrs. Gunilla, suddenly becoming very grave: "I will tell you one thing, and that is——"
"Your most gracious Honour, pardon me," interrupted he, "but I think—I feel rather unwell—I—there, now we are at your door! Pardon me!" and the Candidate tumbled up-stairs again.