"Good evening, Bemperlein," replied Sophie, loosening Franz's hold and cordially offering her hand to the little man, who came with careful steps to her side; "you are just in time to protect me against this arch-scorner."
"Good evening, Bemperlein," said Franz; "you are just in time to help me in my efforts to convince this obstinate sinner."
"Before I can do the one, and not the other," replied Mr. Bemperlein, drawing off his gloves and folding them up carefully, "I beg leave to inquire, as in duty bound, after the privy councillor's health."
"He is much better," replied Franz.
"I hoped so from your joyous disposition," said Bemperlein; "well, I am delighted. Then we can at least take our supper to-night without feeling as if every morsel would stick in our throats from sheer melancholy and mourning, as has been the case for the last fortnight. Ad vocem supper; is it ready. Miss Sophie? I--who am not lucky enough to be able to satisfy my hunger with the ambrosia of confidential talk, and to quench my thirst with the nectar of love--I feel an unmistakable longing after earthly food and drink."
"I believe supper has been on the table for half an hour," said Sophie; "I had forgotten all about it."
"Then let us lose no more time," said Bemperlein, offering Sophie his arm, and leading her the familiar way into the adjoining room, where supper was regularly laid out.
Miss Sophie and Mr. Bemperlein were great friends. The excellent man had at every epoch of his life found somebody to whom he could offer his devotion and his love. When he had come over to settle in Grunwald, he had felt for a few days unspeakably lonely and wretched. Unable to live in solitude, and full of childlike trust, he had no sooner been introduced into the house of Privy Councillor Roban than he had poured out his complaints into the willing ear of Miss Sophie; whose large blue eyes encouraged him wonderfully. Sophie had not only listened to the little, lively man, who opened his whole heart to her with Homeric naïveté, as if he could not help doing so; but after following him with great attention to his last words; "that is all over now! over, and forever!" she had given him her hand with most cordial kindness, saying: "You must come and see us very often, Mr. Bemperlein. Papa is very fond of you and so am I. We'll try if we cannot make some amends to you for the loss of Berkow."
It was a strange friendship that bound the two to each other. Sophie, although twelve years younger than Bemperlein, was the admonishing, reproving, directing Mentor, and he the obedient, attentive, and docile Telemachus. She had aided him in arranging the modest lodgings which he had rented at some little distance from the privy councillor's house, and she made with him, and sometimes without him, the necessary purchases. Her attention went even beyond that. She trained him, after a fashion, for his entrance into society, for there was much to be done. She made him aware that it was not exactly the thing to hold gentlemen with whom he conversed continually by a coat-button, or to turn his back persistently upon ladies by whose side he had found his seat at table, however tedious they might appear in his eyes. "You must not do this, Bemperlein! You must stop doing that, Bemperlein!" the young lady continually said to him, and the good-natured man obeyed her implicitly, and was but too happy and proud if she said another time, "Bemperlein, that was well done! You played quite the cavalier to-night, Bemperlein!"
Bemperlein was soon even fonder of Miss Roban than he had been of Frau von Berkow. The latter remained, with all her kindness and goodness, after all, the great lady, the benefactress, the mistress; and the impression she had made upon him when he, a poor, bashful, awkward candidate for the ministry, had arrived one summer afternoon at Berkow, and been presented by old Baumann to the great lady, had never been wholly effaced in the seven long years which he had spent at her house. But Sophie was not grand; she laughed as heartily as any one of them; she looked at him so trustingly with her big, blue eyes; she made no pretensions; you could speak to her as to an equal, you could love her like a brother, without being all the time filled with awe and reverence.