"Well?"
"Well!"
"Don't you know anything?"
"No! Do you?"
"No!"
After this exchange of bright thoughts there followed, as a matter of course, a pause of exhaustion, and the ship of conversation remained for a quarter of an hour stranded on a sandbank, while the two men smoked their cigars and sipped their wine.
Cloten and Barnewitz had been apparently excellent friends ever since their terrible collision in summer, but in reality they had watched each other with unbroken distrust. It is true, the distrust was but too well founded in this case. Hortense Bamewitz had no sooner come to Grunwald than she cast out her net--experienced fisher of men as she was--after her old lover, and Cloten had at that time already discovered that happiness in the arms of his former lady-love was far more attractive than the honor of being the husband of the most fashionable lady in town. Barnewitz, on the other hand, gave the noble couple ample opportunity for meeting; for he threw himself, at Grunwald, head foremost into a vortex of amusements, of which there was no lack there for a rich nobleman who cared more for quantity than for quality. Nevertheless, he was as much the victim of jealousy now as before, and he was therefore highly pleased to see, what all others saw as well, that Emily treated her husband like a school-boy, and had evidently found a worthier object for her loving heart.
Barnewitz had long wished for an hour when he might inform Cloten under the mask of friendship of the reports which filled the town about him and his wife. The day before he had accidentally heard of some new scandal, and to-day Cloten's superiority at billiards had greatly annoyed him. After thinking the matter over for some time, therefore, he exploded:
"How is your wife, Cloten?"
"Thanks! Pretty well; why?" replied Cloten, not a little astonished at the brusque question.