So I returned without a sigh to our city-lodgings, and while we were at dinner we drew up, with much merriment, a list of the influential persons upon whom, as Hermine said, we would make our first social experiment.
I cannot say that this experiment was crowned with very brilliant success. True we were most kindly met, and I for my part took all possible pains--and as I flattered myself, not unsuccessfully--to play the agreeable host; and Hermine had really no need to take pains to be the most charming of the company. Upon this point there seemed, so far as a young husband can judge in such a matter, to be but one opinion. The gentlemen were full of sincere admiration of her beauty, her manners, and whatever else is attractive in a young and charming woman; and if the admiration of the other sex was not altogether so sincere, they knew how to give it so enthusiastic an expression that it needed a much readier wit than I could boast of to find always a fit answer to all the handsome things that were whispered to me about my wife.
"What makes you so charming?" I used to say to her sometimes, when we came home after one of these social experiments, and Hermine was walking up and down our sitting-room in her full evening dress, as she had a way of doing, stopping now and then to strike a few chords on the piano, while I leaned back in the rocking-chair smoking my beloved cigar.
Then she would suddenly stop, and begin to take off the company we had just left, in the most amusing and wittiest style of caricature. There was Privy-Councillor Zieler, our banker, who kept perpetually glancing down at three family-orders at his button-hole, which had been graciously bestowed on him by three small princely houses in return for his services in negotiating a loan for them; there came his lady rustling along in the heaviest of satins, her snub nose turned up to the chandeliers, in whose light the diamonds that decked her bosom glanced so splendidly; and behind the corpulent mamma floated the sylph-like daughter, all gauze and Ess. Bouquet and fond memories of the three court-balls at the three princely houses. Here was the Railroad Director Schwelle, who would not talk before supper, in order not to excite himself, had no time to talk during supper, and after supper was in no condition for talking. Here were the two Misses Bostelmann, the intellectual daughters of our host--a wealthy contractor for building-stone--between whom Hermine had sat awhile, during which time the one entertained her unremittingly with Heine, while the other, with equal persistence and enthusiasm discoursed of Lenau.
"Heine--Lenau; Lenau--Heine! It was enough to drive one wild!" cried Hermine. "And that they call pleasure! Would you venture to maintain that doctrine, Sir?"
"I made no assertion of the kind, Madam!"
"Indeed! And why then do you drag your poor little wife among these horrible people, and rob her of the happy hours that she might spend in a delightful tête-à-tête with her monster of a husband? Is that right? Is that the love that you vowed to me in the St. Nicholas church at Uselin before all the assembled population? Heine--Lenau; Lenau--Heine! Oh!"
I laughed, and then suddenly became grave, and the remark rose to my lips that it was perhaps not difficult to prove that we could find no pleasant people to live with, if we did not choose to live with those that we really liked.
And where were at this time the people who were really dear to me?
The good Fräulein Duff, Hermine's most faithful friend, was with her relations in Saxony. She had only gone on a short visit, for eight weeks at the furthest, and the eight weeks had lengthened to as many months. Where was Paula? Eight hundred miles away, under another sky, which I trusted shone as brightly on her as she deserved. It had been now five months since Paula, with her mother and her youngest brother, Oscar, and accompanied, as a matter of course, by old Süssmilch, had taken a journey to Italy.