In the meanwhile the maid had come up with the loaf of bread; she looked with astonishment at the two as they stood there gossiping, and immediately took the child into her charge, conscious as she was of her own dilatoriness. With a few piercing shrieks she drove Cæsar back from the gate, and as he ran across the street Dorothea cast one triumphant glance back at Daniel, feeling that she had proved to him that she was not the least afraid of the dog.
II
Frau Benda opened the door, closed it without saying a word, and went into her room. She had had a violent quarrel with her son, who had just informed her that he had accepted the invitation of a learned society to come to England and settle down. He was to start at the end of spring. Frau Benda was tired of travelling; she shuddered at the thought of moving. The separation from Friedrich seemed intolerable to her; and in his flight from the Fatherland she saw a final and premature renunciation of all the opportunities that might in the end present themselves to him at home.
She was convinced that the men who had done him injustice would in time come to see the error of their ways and make amends for their miscalculations. She was particularly anxious that he be patient until satisfaction had been done him. Moreover, she knew his plans, and trembled at the risks to which he was voluntarily exposing himself: she felt that he was undertaking a task for which he had not had the practical experience.
But his decision was irrevocable. That he had never said a word about it to Daniel, had not even insinuated that he was thinking of making a change, was due to the peculiar onesideness of their present relation to each other.
Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. “She looks to me as though she will give old Döderlein a good deal to think about in the days to come,” said Daniel.
“You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Döderlein,” replied Benda. “The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and down for hours right under my bedroom.”
“You feel sorry for him, do you?”
“If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon.”
“Do you really mean it?” exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel continued: “To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I’ll get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime gulped down the whole earth.”