Berger was helpless; he knew what Victorine would say to her father if she suddenly encountered him.
"Give her a little more time!" he begged, "Out of pity for her shattered nerves and agitated mind, which will not bear any immediate shock."
This was a request that Sendlingen could not refuse.
"Very well, I will wait," he promised. "But you will not wish to prevent me from seeing her to-morrow. I have in any case to inspect the prison. But I promise you: I will not betray myself and the governor of the jail shall accompany me."
CHAPTER VI.
Weighed down by sorrow, Berger proceeded homewards. To the solitary bachelor Sendlingen was more than a friend, he was a dearly loved brother. He was struck to the heart, as by a personal affliction, with compassion for this fate, this terrible fate, so suddenly and destructively breaking in upon a beneficent life, like a desolating flood.
Would this flood ever subside again and the soil bring forth flowers and fruit? The strong man's looks darkened as he thought of the future: worse than the evil itself seemed to him the manner in which it affected his friend. Alas! how changed and desolated was this splendid soul, how hopeless and helpless this brave heart! And it was just their last interview, that sudden flight from the most melancholy helplessness to the heights of an almost heroic resolve, that gave Berger the greatest uneasiness.
"And it will not last!" he reflected with much concern. "Most certainly it will not! Perhaps even now, five minutes after, he is again lying back in his arm chair, broken down, without another thought, another feeling, save that of his misery! And could anything else be expected? That was not the energetic resolve of a clear, courageous soul, but the diseased, visionary effort of feverishly excited nerves! Again he does not know whether he will see her or what he ought to do.... And do I know, would any one know in the presence of such a fate?"
Had he deserved this fate?
"No!" cried Berger to himself. "No!" he passionately repeated as he paced up and down his study, trying to frame the wording of the appeal. Clumsy and uncouth, blind and cruel, seemed to him the power that had ordered things as they had come about. It seemed no better than some rude elemental force. "He can no more help it," he muttered, "than the fields can help a flood breaking in upon them."