"What!" said Sophie, "has my old admirer really come to that at last?"
"Your old admirer?"
"Yes; don't you know it? I went to the same dancing master as Timm; and I can well say that I liked him best of all with whom I talked or danced. He is an extremely clever man, and can be most agreeable when he chooses to be so. I am sincerely sorry that he should manage his great talents so very badly. He resembles in that respect----"
"Oswald Stein, you mean. Well, say on. I have fortunately mastered the feeling of bitterness which used to overcome me in Grunwald every time I heard the name mentioned. He does not exist any longer, as far as I am concerned, especially after his last adventures."
"That is hardly right, Bemperly. You know I never liked Stein particularly; but since you all rise in arms against him, and since even Franz, who used to excuse him so long, begins to chime in, I have a great inclination to take his part."
"Of course," said Bemperlein, with a slight touch of bitterness; "that is the old story. Women like a man the better, the worse he is. Even my Marguerite, who generally cannot bear him, breathed the other day a pauvre homme in her softest notes! Pauvre homme! I should like to know what sensible man would think so of him. If a man rushes madly through life, acting not upon principle but upon impulse; if he must needs gratify all his caprices, and if he meets with difficulties breaks out in furious anger; if, instead of loving his neighbor like himself, he runs away by night with his neighbor's wife--they say of him, with tears of sympathy in their fair eyes: Pauvre homme!"
"Bravo, Bemperly," cried Sophie, almost with her old cheerfulness; "bravo! You could not preach better if you were yourself the happy neighbor! But tell me, has no one heard anything yet of the reckless couple?"
"As far as I know, no one? The earth seems to have swallowed them up."
"But how does the unlucky husband bear his misfortune?"
"Ah," said Bemperlein, almost angrily, "it is not worth while to sympathize with that class of people. They deserve nothing better, and reap what they sow. Just think, Miss Sophie--I meant to say Mrs. Sophie--this man, this Cloten, who, when Stein had run away with his wife, behaved himself as if he never cared to see the sun shine any more, not only found comfort in a very short time, but has inflicted the same injury on his neighbor's house that he himself suffered. Baron Barnewitz, Frau von Berkow's cousin--the one with the red beard, you know, and the broad shoulders. Oh, you must have seen him. No? Well, it does not matter--Eh bien! Baron Barnewitz comes home the other day at an unseasonable hour and finds--so gossip has it--the door to his wife's room locked, suspects mischief, breaks a window, pulls out the whole sash, rushes into the room and catches Baron Cloten, whom his wife is just pushing out at another door! Then follows an explanation; and the result is that Hortense has gone to Italy, and Baron Cloten, after keeping his bed for a week, has retired to his estates without taking leave of anybody."