For the Heimlicher came on the stage again, with his plea of demurrer to Siebenkæs’s suit, in which all he demanded was justice and equity—in other words, the money which was in question, unless Siebenkæs could prove himself to be himself, that is to say, the ward, whose patrimony the Heimlicher had hitherto kept in his paternal hands and purse. This juridical Hell-river took Firmian’s breath away and struck ice-cold to his heart, though he had jumped over the three previous petitions for postponement as easily as the crowned lion over the three rivers in the Gotha coat-of-arms. The wounds which we receive from Fate soon heal, but those inflicted by the blunt and rusty torture-implement of an unjust man suppurate and take long to close. This cut, made into nerves already laid bare by so many a rude clutch and sharp tongue, caused our dear friend some severe pain; yet he had seen that the cut was coming long before it came, and had cried to his spirit, “Look out—mind your head!” Alas! there is something new in every pain. He had even taken legal steps in anticipation of it. A few weeks before he had had evidence sent from Leipsic, where he had studied, to prove that he had formerly been known by the name of Leibgeber, and was, consequently, Blaise’s ward. A young notary there, of the name of Giegold, an old college friend and literary brother in arms, had done him the service of seeing all the people who had known of his Leibgeberhood—particularly a rusty, musty old tutor, who had often been present when the guardian’s register-ships came in—and a postman, who had piloted them into port, and his landlord and other well-informed persons, who all took the Jus credulitalis (or oath of conviction), and whose evidence the young lawyer forwarded to Siebenkæs (like a mountain full of precious ore); he had no great difficulty, to speak of, in paying the postage of it, as he was king of the marksmen.
With this stout club of evidence he resisted and withstood his guardian and robber.
When Blaise’s denial was lodged, the timid Lenette gave herself and the suit up for lost; poverty, lean and bare, seemed in her eyes now to enmesh them in a network of parasite ivy, and there was no other prospect for them but to perish and fall to the ground. Her first proceeding was to burst into loud abuse of Von Meyern; for as he had himself told her that his father-in-law’s three applications for delay had been the result of his intercession, which he had made for her sake alone, she looked upon Blaise’s plea of demurrer as being the first thorn-sucker sent forth by Rosa’s revengeful soul in return for the imprisonment and the sacking he had undergone in Firmian’s house (and half ascribed to her), and for what he had lost.
Up to the day of the shooting-match he had supposed that the husband was his enemy, but not the wife; then, however, his pleasant conceit had been embittered and proved to be groundless. But the Venner not being present to hear her reproaches, she was obliged to turn the full stream of her anger on to her husband, to whom she attributed all the blame, because of his having so wickedly and sinfully changed names with Leibgeber. He who has married a wife will be prepared to relieve me of the trouble of mentioning that it made not the slightest difference what Siebenkæs said in reply or adduced concerning Blaise’s wickedness (who, being the greatest Judas Iscariot and corn-Jew the world contained, would have robbed him just the same if his name had been Leibgeber still, and would have found out a thousand legal byepaths by which to proceed to the plundering of his ward). It had no effect. At last the following words were forced out of him: “You are quite as unjust as I should be were I to attribute this document of Blaise’s to your behaviour to the Venner.” Nothing irritates women so much as derogatory comparisons; they apply them indiscriminately, without distinction. Lenette’s ears lengthened to tongues, like those of Rumour; her husband was immediately out-bawled and unlistened to.
He was obliged to send privately to Peltzstiefel to ask where he had been so long, and why he had utterly forgotten their house; Stiefel was not even in his own house, however, but out walking, for it was a beautiful day.
“Lenette,” said Siebenkæs suddenly—he often preferred vaulting over a marsh on the leaping-pole of an idea to wading painfully across it on the long stilts of syllogism, and was anxious to banish from her memory the innocent remark which he had let slip about Rosa, and which she had so utterly misunderstood—“Lenette, I’ll tell you what we’ll do this afternoon; we’ll take a strong cup of coffee, and go and take a walk and enjoy ourselves: it is not a Sunday, but it is the day which all the Catholics in the town keep holiday on as the feast of the Annunciation, and the weather is really too magnificent. We’ll go and sit in the big upstairs room at the Rifle Club-house, as it would be a little too warm outside perhaps, and we can look down from the windows and see all the heterodox people promenading in their best clothes—and our Lutheran Stiefel among them, who knows?”
Either I am more in error than I often am, or this was a most agreeable surprise to Lenette. Coffee, in the morning the water-of-baptism and altar-wine of the fair sex, is their love-philter and their waters-of-strife in the afternoon (the latter, however, only as regards the absent); but what a wondrous mill-stream for the setting in motion of the machinery of the ideas must an afternoon cup of coffee on a common working-day be for a woman such as Lenette, who rarely had any on other than Sunday afternoons; for before the days of the blockade of the continent it cost too much money.
A woman who is really very much delighted needs but a very short time to put on her black silk bonnet and take her big church-fan, and (contrary to all her ordinary manners and customs) be quite ready and dressed for a walk to the Rifle Club-house, even going the length of making the coffee during the process of dressing, so as to be able to take it, and the milk, with her in her hand.
Our couple set forth at two o’clock in the happiest possible frame of mind, carrying with them warm in their pockets what was to be warmed up later on in the afternoon.
Even at two o’clock, early as it was, the western and southern hills lay all beflooded with the warm evening glow with which the low December sun was bathing them, while great glaciers of cloud, ranged about the sky, cast their cheerful lights over the landscape. All about this world there beamed a beautiful brightness, which cheered and lighted up many a dark and narrow life.