Charles van Nerekool hesitated no longer. He felt indeed in great need of sympathy; and wanted, above all things, to pour out his heart to his friend. He began his story therefore, by telling him how, on the occasion of the State-ball, he had declared his love to Anna.
In the most vivid colours he described to his friend that happy moment in which, carried away by the excitement of the dance and the glorious tones of Weber’s waltz, he had allowed the long-treasured secret of his heart to escape from him; and his rapture when the girl, whom he so dearly loved, had uttered the one little word which assured him that she returned his affection. He told him of that sacred moment when their lips first met in the garden.
“Oscula qui sumpsit, si non et caetera sumpsit
Haec quoque quae data sunt, perdere dignus erat.”
muttered Verstork to himself. He, in his youth, had studied the classics, and now he could not help smiling as he recalled the two well-known lines from Ovid’s Ars Amandi. But when he saw with what a sorrowful shake of the head his friend answered the half audible quotation, he at once discovered how deep a wound had been struck into that poor heart. The story of that blissful love-scene and of those happy moments spent in the garden of the Residence in the shade of the Padan arbour, was followed by an equally graphic description of the rude awakening out of that dream of love and felicity. Charles van Nerekool went on telling his friend how Mrs. van Gulpendam had broken in upon the interview—he told him all about the conversation which he afterwards had held with fair Laurentia.
A very very bitter smile passed over the Controller’s lips when he heard what means of seduction the Resident’s wife had deigned to employ.
“My poor friend, my poor friend,” he muttered almost inaudibly; “but is this all?”
“Oh, no!” cried van Nerekool.
“Well, go on, I am all ears.”
“The next day,” continued van Nerekool, “I paid a visit to the Residence, as I had promised Anna I would do; in order to lay before her father my formal request for her hand. I had great difficulty in obtaining an audience at all; and it was not until after I had waited for a considerable time that I got to be admitted into the presence of the Resident.