Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

My merriment was at an end, and I was serious enough now. A comedy which she had played for me? "What can you mean?" I asked again more urgently than before.

Herr von Granow, who had been walking at a little distance from me, trotted up close to my side, and said in a confidential tone:

"After all, I cannot think hard of you about it. You are still so young; and I often do not know myself on what footing I am standing with the girl. But this much is clear: out of pure obstinacy against her father, and perhaps a little calculation to raise her own value, and perhaps, too, because she thinks it will make no difference anyhow, but mainly out of mere stubbornness and self-will, has she put on these airs of a princess, and behaves as if for her I and the rest had no existence. If she suddenly began to coquet with you in my--I should say in our presence, that really signifies nothing; it is but a little pleasantry that she allows herself with you, and which has no further consequences; but it must provoke the old man, and it did provoke him. You did not observe it, you say, but I can assure you he bit his lip and stroked his beard as he always does when anything vexes him."

The little man had no notion what a tumult he was stirring up in my breast; he took my silence for acquiescence and for acknowledgement of his superior wisdom, and so proceeded, in delight at being able to speak of such interesting topics and to have secured such an attentive listener.

"I fancy that the whole conduct of the young lady puts a spoke in his wheel. Do you know how much I have lost to him during the six months that I have been here? Over eight hundred thalers. And Trantow nearly twice as much; and all the rest are cursing their ill-fortune. He has had a wonderful run of luck, it is true; it is not always so; but then when he loses one must take it out in his wine and his cognac, and you can imagine the prices he rates them at. Well, one wants something at least for one's money; for the sake of such a pretty girl one lets a couple of hundreds go, and does not watch the old man's hands too closely. But it used to be all quite different; she used to join in the play, and smoke cigars with the gentlemen, and go out shooting and riding--the wilder the horses the better she liked it. It used to be a heathenish life, Sylow says, and he ought to know. But since last summer, and that affair with the prince----"

"What affair was that?" I asked. I was consumed with the desire to hear everything that Herr von Granow had to tell. I no longer felt the contumely which this man was heaping upon my kind host and upon the maiden I adored; or if I did, I thought that the reckoning should come afterwards, but first I must hear all.

"You don't know that?" he inquired, eagerly. "But, to be sure, who could have told you? Trantow is mute as a fish, and the others don't know what to think of you. I hold you for an honest fellow, and do not believe that you are a spy, or leagued with the old man; his looks at dinner were too queer for that. You won't tell him what I have been saying to you, will you?"

"Not a word," I said.

"Well then, this is the story. Last summer the old man was at D----, and she was with him. At a watering-place people are not so particular; any one who chose might go about with him. The young Prince Prora was there too; he had persuaded his physicians that he was unwell and needed sea-bathing, so he was sent there with his tutor. The old prince was at the Residence, just as he is now, and the young one made good use of his liberty. I had just bought my place here, was no sooner on it than I caught a devilish rheumatism on these infernal moors; and so I went there for a week or so and saw something of it, but the most was told me by others. Naturally enough there was high play; but the highest was in private circles, for at the Spielsaal they only allow moderate stakes. The prince kept constantly in the old man's company, some said for the sake of the play, others, to pay his court to the young lady; and probably both were right. I have often enough seen them sitting and walking together in the park of an evening; and they were gay enough, I can testify. Now they say that the old man had bad luck, and lost twenty thousand thalers to the prince, which he had to pay in two days. Where was he to get the money? So, as they say, he offered the prince his daughter instead. Others say he asked fifty thousand, and others again a hundred thousand for the bargain. Well, for any one who had the money, it may be that was not too much; but unluckily the young prince did not have the money. It will be two years before he is of age, and then, if the old prince is still alive, he will only get the property of his deceased mother, of which not much is ready cash, I take it. In a word, the affair hung fire; and one fine day here comes the old prince, who had got some wind of the matter, tearing over from the Residence, read the youngster a terrible lecture, and offered Zehren a handsome sum to go out of the country with Constance until the young prince was married. Now the thing might have been all arranged, for all that Zehren wanted was to make a good hit of it, if he and the prince could have kept from personally appearing in the business. But Zehren, who, when he takes the notion, can be as proud as Lucifer, insisted upon arranging the affair with the prince in person, and so the scandal broke out. There was a terrible scene, they say, and the prince was carried for dead to his hotel. What happened, nobody exactly knows. But this much is certain: the late princess, who was born Countess Sylow--I have the facts from young Sylow, who is related to the count--fell in love with Zehren when he was a young man staying with the prince at the Residence and attending the court balls, and only married the prince because she was compelled to it. The prince either knew it then, or found it out soon afterwards, and they led a miserable life together. It is probable that Zehren and he, in their dispute, raked up some of these old stories; one word led to another, as always happens. Zehren is like a madman when he gets into a rage, and the prince has none of the coolest of tempers--in a word, the thing came to an explosion. Zehren left the place; and the prince a day or two later, with a pair of blue marks on his throat left there by Zehren's fingers, they said."

"And the young prince?"