"And naturally that increased our intimacy," said Carla. "Sorrow always brings people closer together," and she compressed still further the ample folds of her dress.
"True! true!" said the Count. "Sorrow--and happiness too."
"Ah, you are a philosopher! I love philosophy! Schopenhauer gave me the most intense pleasure. Are you not enchanted with Hartmann?"
"Who may that be?" thought the Count; and aloud he said, "Certainly--at least----"
"Then you do not know him, at least thoroughly; I know him by heart. There are only three men now to be studied, and studied again and again--Bismarck, Hartmann, and Wagner. The politics of the present, the music of the future, opened out to us by the philosophy of the unknown; in them you see the stamp of this century."
"I am quite anxious to make Herr von Werben's acquaintance," said the Count, by way of taking part in the conversation.
"Quand on parle du loup--mon Dieu! he really does look like a wolf," cried Carla, whose ever busy eye-glasses had perceived Ottomar the moment he appeared in the room, with the anger and displeasure at Ferdinanda's supposed flight still apparent in his troubled looks and gloomy eyes.
"He has been looking for you, Carla," said Frau von Wallbach, opening her lips for the first time.
"Pray do not call attention so openly to what is by no means settled yet," whispered Herr von Wallbach in her ear.
"What, not yet?" said Frau von Wallbach in an indifferent tone.