But from that hour Eleanore was filled with sadness: her face might be compared to a beautiful landscape on which the first fog of autumn has settled. It is probable that the tearing of her veil had nothing to do with her depression: there was not a shimmer of superstition in her. Perhaps it was merely happiness and fulfilment: it may be that she felt the end had come, that happiness and fulfilment leave nothing more to be desired, that life from then on would be nothing but a hum-drum existence which does not give but only takes.
Perhaps her mind was darkened and weighed down with grief because of the life within her body; for that which is to come sends out its rays of melancholy just as well as that which has come and gone. What was there to hinder a pure soul from having an inner premonition of the fate that was in store for it? Why should this soul not learn in its dreams of the inevitable that was not so far ahead?
It was impossible to notice any change in Eleanore; her eyes were bright; she seemed peaceful. She would often sit before the mask of Zingarella; she hung it with fresh flowers every day: to her the mask was a mysterious picture of all that her own being, her own life, embraced.
Marian Nothafft came to the wedding alone. Just as in the case of Daniel’s wedding to Gertrude, she had left the child with a neighbour. She told Daniel and Eleanore that she could not think of taking the child out on such a journey in the dead of winter. She mentioned Eva’s name or talked about her only in a half audible, subdued voice, a tender smile playing gently about her lips.
Among those present at the wedding in the Ægydius Church were Judge and Frau Rübsam, Councillor Bock, Impresario Dörmaul, Philippina Schimmelweis, Marian Nothafft, and Inspector Jordan. On the very last bench sat Herr Carovius; underneath one of the pillars, unseen by most of the people in the church, stood Baron Eberhard von Auffenberg.
Philippina walked along in an ugly, crouched, cowering fashion by the side of Jordan; had it not been that she was constantly chewing her finger nails, one would have thought she was asleep.
As the bridal couple was marching up to the altar, the sun broke out, and shone through the windows of the old church. The effect was touching; for just then Eleanore raised her head, stroked her veil back from her forehead, and caught the full light of the sun in her radiant face.
Old Jordan had laid his forehead on the prayer-desk; his back was quivering.
XIV
Late at night and in senseless excitement—for he was thinking of a bridal bed that filled him with the most intense pangs of jealousy—Herr Carovius sat in his room playing Chopin’s étude of the revolution. He would begin it again and again; he struck the keys with ever-increasing violence; the time in which he played the étude became wilder and wilder; the swing of his gestures became more and more eloquent; and his face became more and more threatening.