Through Night to Light: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"Now, come, don't fly off at such a pace!" cried Mr. Schmenckel, anxiously. "I don't dream of taking anything amiss, especially if you want to make me the father of a live prince. But that I should have such a grand son, and that I should have whipped him so unmercifully the very first time I ever set eyes on him, that is surely amazing enough. If Caspar Schmenckel were to tell anybody else so he would not be believed."

"I do not see," said Timm, "why that is any more amazing than that I must be the only one of the thousands in the park to run right into the arms of the prince; that I alone happen to know him from former times; that I remember his name, mention it to you, and thus call up in your mind a remembrance which helps us to make this important discovery. I can assure you I was at first quite as much amazed as you are; but such things, thank God, do not last long with me."

Mr. Timm threw himself back in his chair and picked his teeth. Mr. Schmenckel looked with infinite astonishment, not unmixed with fear, at the man whom even such an extraordinary event could not move from habitual coolness. Mr. Schmenckel was not the man to reflect deeply on the relations in which he stood to this man; but still, he had an indistinct feeling about it. As he was looking at him thus, he felt a decided inclination to give the young man a hearty drubbing, or to punish him in some other way for his superiority, as an elephant sometimes may dream of the pleasure he would enjoy if he could hurl his Carnac on the ground and trample upon him with his feet for a few minutes.

It was a few hours later. Only a few guests had remained in the "Dismal Hole," where they had had very lively times--the excitement was intense everywhere; beer was drunk by the cask, and speeches were made without number and without end. They sat scattered about, in groups of three and four persons, mostly people of rather peculiar appearance, such as are only seen in large cities, and there also rarely or never in the day-time and on the streets. Men in shabby, often fantastic costumes, with dissipated and yet attractive features, and with eyes which now blazed up in wild passion, and now gloated stolidly on vacancy--strange figures, who tell the knowing eye without opening their lips long stories of proud plans and childish deeds, of great talents and still greater recklessness, of lofty pride and low disgrace, of senseless dissipation and gnawing hunger, of incredible efforts condemned to end like the labors of Sisyphus, and of an ambition leading only to the sufferings of Tantalus, until efforts and ambition and every virtue, nay, every good instinct, is drowned in the morass of apathetic indifference.

But these groups also gradually disappeared; one light after another was put out by the poor girls, who had for the last hour been nodding here and there in the corners, their pretty faces buried in their round arms; and at last there was nobody left but Mr. Schmenckel, who was asleep, drunk, on one of the sofas, and two other gentlemen who were sitting with the landlady around one of the small tables over a bottle of champagne. One of these men was Albert Timm, from Grunwald; the other was a man of middle age, who had only come about an hour ago, and whom Mrs. Rose had introduced to Mr. Timm as the brother of his landlord in Grunwald, Mr. Jeremiah Goodheart. From his clothes and his whole general appearance he might have been taken for a modest citizen in tolerably good circumstances; a grocer, perhaps, or a tobacco dealer; but in his small eyes, overshadowed by heavy eyebrows, there was something that seemed to indicate that the occupation of the man was not quite so harmless, or at least had not always been quite so harmless.

The three persons had been conversing very eagerly, and Mr. Timm now summed up what had been said.

"Then there are two questions," he said. "First we must get a peep at the baptismal register at St. Mary's; or, better still, obtain a certified copy of the entry; and, secondly, we must find the principal personage in this comedy--I mean Mr. Oswald Stein."

"But how do you know he is to be here?" asked the man with the odd eyes.

"I do not know it; I only presume so. He wrote me a week ago from Paris that he could not support himself any longer there, and that he must try to reach home before his money was at an end. It seems to me, beyond all doubt, that he must have come here, where he had had literary engagements when he was a student here, and where he has therefore the best prospect of finding some means of support for himself and his sweet one. Only I think he will not appear under his true name, so as not to expose himself to disagreeable encounters with the relations of the Baroness Cloten, who, I know, are still after him, and would very soon find him out here. This might therefore be the more difficult task of the two, unless accident, my faithful old ally, should again come to my assistance."

"That item you may quietly leave in the hands of my friend here," said Mrs. Rosalie, familiarly placing her hand on the head of the man with the odd eyes; "and now, gentlemen, I believe it is time we should part. Tomorrow is another day. Yes; but what shall we do with the big fellow there on the sofa, who has been drinking for twelve to-day?"