And how attractive even his weariness of the world was, and his air of suffering! One would imagine, hearing him complain as he did, that he was on the point of going into the desert, to live there on locusts. Now he will probably take the gypsy to his solitude, to while away the hours till Melitta returns....
Oswald increased thus wilfully his own troubles of mind. The new passion which inflamed his imagination made him deaf to the voice of his conscience, blind to the evident proofs of the utter groundlessness of his assertions. He had an indistinct consciousness of his own weariness and exhaustion; he felt sick at heart, and perfectly unable to come to any clear conclusions about himself. He pressed his face into his hands, to see nothing, to hear nothing....
A hand, which touched his shoulder, aroused him from his revery. It was Oldenburg. The baron was alone. The fire of the piled-up wood blazed up fitfully, and was on the point of expiring. The moon, half covered by drifting gray clouds, twinkled ghastly in the dark water of the pool. The wind was whispering and wailing through the long reeds near the shore.
"Where is Czika?" asked Oswald.
"Gone," replied the baron. "Let us go. It is late."
"Is she not coming back?"
"I do not know."
"And you have allowed this child, your child, to follow the wild gypsy woman into the wide world?"
"What could I do? Is she not her child a thousand times more than mine? Has she not borne it amid pains, fed it, sheltered it many, many years, in rain and in sunshine, in need and in poverty, in the dark woods and on the open highway? Has she not begged and robbed and done worse things than that perhaps for her child? What have I done for my child? Nothing! Nothing but to stamp the mother as a thief before the eyes of a mob of nobles, nothing but to drive her from me like a lost dog, for the sake of a wretched coquette! No! No! I have no right to the child!"
While the baron was speaking he pushed with his foot the half-consumed, glowing firebrands into the pool, so that they turned black one by one.