Otto smiled, but with such a strangely melancholy air, and spoke not a word.
“He’s thinking about the old grandfather,” thought Wilhelm, and laid his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “The Kammerjunker and his ladies greet thee!” said he. “I believe the Mamsell would willingly lay thee in her own work-box, were that to be done.”
Otto remained quiet, but in his soul there was a strange commotion. It would be a difficult thing to explain this motive, which belonged to his peculiarity of mind; it entered among the mysteries of the soul. The multitude call it in individuals singularity, the psychologist finds a deeper meaning in it, which the understanding is unable to fathom. We have examples of men, whose strength of mind and body were well known, feeling faint at the scent of a rose; others have been thrown into a convulsive state by touching gray paper. This cannot be explained; it is one of the riddles of Nature. A similar relaxing sensation Otto experienced when he, for the first time, heard himself addressed as “thou” by Wilhelm. It seemed to him as though the spiritual band which encircled them loosened itself, and Wilhelm became a stranger. It was impossible for Otto to return the “thou,” yet, at the same time, he felt the injustice of his behavior and the singularity, and wished to struggle against it; he mastered himself, attained a kind of eloquence, but no “thou” would pass his lips.
“To thy health, Otto,” said Wilhelm, and pushed his cup against Otto’s.
“Health!” said Otto, with a smile.
“It is true,” began the cousin, “I promised you the other day to bring my advertisements with me; the first volume is closed.” And he drew from his pocket a book in which a collection of the most original Address-Gazette advertisements, such as one sees daily, was pasted.
“I have one for you,” said the lady; “I found it a little time since. ‘A woman wishes for a little child to bottle.’ Is not that capital?”
“Here is also a good one,” said Wilhelm, who had turned over the leaves of the book: “‘A boy of the Mosaic belief may be apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, but he need not apply unless he will eat everything that happens to be in the house.’ That is truly a hard condition for the poor lad.”
“Almost every day,” said the cousin, “one may read, ‘For the play of to-day or to-morrow is a good place to be had in the third story in the Christenbernikov Street.’ The place is a considerable distance from the theatre.”
“Theatre!” exclaimed the master of the house, who now entered to take his place at the tea-table, “one can soon hear who has that word in his mouth; now is he again at the theatre! The man can speak of nothing else. There ought, ready, to be a fine imposed, which he should pay each time he pronounces the word theatre. I would only make it a fine of two skillings, and yet I dare promise that before a month was over he would be found to pay in fines his whole pocket-money, and his coat and boots besides. It is a real mania with the man! I know no one among my young friends,” added he, with an ironical smile at Wilhelm,—“no, not one, who has such a hobby-horse as our good cousin.”