Augusti had, however, received the letter even before the night of the illumination, only he had not found good reasons for delivering it. Here it is:—
"I must needs value your anxiety very much, without, however, adopting it. Albano's love for Mademoiselle von Fr., in whom I have already formerly remarked, with great pleasure, a certain virtuosity[[17]] in virtue, so to speak, secures us and him against the influence of the ghostly machinery, and against connections of other kinds which might well be more dangerous for his studies and his warm blood. Only one must leave this kind of youthful plays to their own course. If he becomes too closely attached to her, then he may see to the dénouement of the affair. Why shall we cut this pleasure still shorter for him, when you, too, already complain to me of the sickliness of the fair one? In the latter part of autumn I shall see him. His brave, vigorous nature will know well how to bear privation. Assure the Froulay house of my best sentiments.
G. d. C."
The Lector would gladly have thrown this letter into the paper-mill, so little was there in it that was "ostensible." To be sure, Gaspard's murderously polished and pointed irony about Liana's sickliness, if he showed her the letter, would still remain, to this innocent, unsuspecting peace-princess, a sheathed blade. The north-wind of egotism, too, which ran through the communication would not, as it was, after all, a favorable side-wind for Albano's prosperous passage through life, be felt or heeded by the lovers; but that was the very rub; for she might look upon Gaspard's disguised "No" as a "Yes," and just fatally entangle herself in the thread whereby a friend would draw her up over her steep precipice.
Meanwhile the letter must be delivered; but he did it with long, hesitating evasions, which were intended apparently to withdraw the veil for her from the covered "No." She read it with fear, smiled, weeping, at the murderous irony, and said, softly, "Yes indeed!" The Lector had already half a hope in his eye. "If the knight," said she, "thinks so, can I do less? No, good Albano; now I remain true to thee. My life is so short, therefore let it be cheering and devoted to him as long as is in my power."
She thanked the Lector so warmly and pleasantly for the arrow from Spain, that he had not the capacity of being hard enough to thrust home its darkly poisoned end into the fair heart. She begged him, for the sake of sparing him, not to be present at her firm explanation with her father, but rather, at most, out of indulgence to her own and her mother's feelings, to take upon himself the task of making her explanation to her mother. He consented simply to—both, instead of one, of these things.
The gentle form stepped quietly into her father's presence, and there, shrinking not before thunder and lightning, carried her explanation through to a close, saying that she severely rued her disapproved love, that she would bear all penalties, and do and suffer all, both here and with the Princess, as "cher père" should demand, but that she dared not longer offend the innocent Count of Zesara by the show of a most undutiful desertion. At this address the Minister, who had suffered himself, in consequence of her recent submissive self-denial, to be lifted up by refreshing expectations, now stretched prostrate on the ground, dashed down from his Tarpeian rock, could not utter a single sound but this: "Imbécille! thou marriest Herr von Bouverot; he takes thy picture tomorrow; thou sittest to him." He took her, with stern hand and three terribly long strides, to his lady. "She will remain," said he, "under guard in her chamber; no one may visit her except my son-in-law; he will paint the Imbécille en miniature." "Go, Imbécille!" said he, beside himself. Her entire want of womanly cunning had actually, to the statesman, drawn a curtain over her deep, sharp eye. A straightforward man and mind resembles a straight alley, which appears only half as long as one which runs by crooks and turns.
The Lector, who never meant to be regarded as a special amateur of connubial sham-fights, had already taken himself off. The thirty years' war of the spouses—for it only wanted a few years of that—gained life and reinforcement. The old bridegroom diffused over his face that convulsive smile which, with some men, resembles the convulsive quiver of the cork when it announces the bite of the fish. He asked whether he were now wrong in trusting neither daughter nor mother, both of whom he charged with a partisan understanding against him, and insisted that now, after such proofs, he ought not to be blamed either for stricter measures or for a straightforward march to his object; and with the sitting, for which the German gentleman had twice begged him, he commenced the campaign. The Minister's lady, as a punishment for Liana, remained silent on the subject of so excessively great a present to Bouverot as a miniature likeness would be.
The tender daughter, jammed and crushed in the meeting between two stone statues, represented to her mother, that she could not possibly hold out under so long inspection of a man's eye, and least of all Herr von Bouverot's, whose looks often went like thorns into her soul. Hereupon the father replied and retorted in the mother's name, by drawing a chair up to the desk, and inviting, on the spot, the German gentleman to come to-morrow and paint. Then Liana was sent away with a word which drew even from this delicate flower the lightning-spark of a momentary hatred.
The Imperial peace-protocol lay open now before the two spouses, and there merely wanted some one to dictate, when the Minister's lady rose up, and said, "You must learn to respect me more."