Rudolf was dumfounded.
"You see I am not so flighty as you fancied. I am not weak even where you are concerned; but I can love, and nobody shall forbid me to love whom I will." And with that she blew him a kiss from the threshold of her bedroom, and
Rudolf heard her double-lock the door behind her.
Now this of itself was more than enough to make any man angry.
Rudolf tore at least two buttons off his coat in the act of undressing, and in his wrath took down Hugo Grotius, read steadily away at it till midnight, and then dashed Hugo Grotius to the ground, for he did not understand a word that he had been reading. His thoughts were elsewhere.
And the following day passed away with the same peculiar variations.
His wife was captivatingly amiable. Like a seductive siren, she immeshed her husband in the magic charms of her caresses, was kindness, tenderness personified, loaded him with every little attention which one can look for from a gracious lady, right up to her bedroom door, which she again locked in his face.
Now this was the most exquisite torture conceivable to which a man can be submitted. Compared with this little fairy, a Nero, a Caligula was a veritable philanthropist.
"But how long is this obstinacy to last?" burst forth Rudolf one day, in spite of himself.
"Until you withdraw your disparaging opinion of women."