"Well, let it be the previous day."
"Julia, you speak as securely as if you held the hand of fate within your own."
"Well, if you wish it, and I have no objection, should I speak otherwise than of a certainty?"
Kalman raised his finger, and with it his eyes, so that Julia began to think he had discovered a spider's web hanging from the ceiling, and was pointing it out to her. "Fate hangs over us," he exclaimed, "and fate is capricious, Julia; broken hearts and withered hopes are offerings in which she takes delight. Ah, Julia! you are happy if this feeling has never breathed across your soul; if within your bosom's world there are no magic chords on which the hand of prophecy strikes wildly; it would have banished the roses from your face, as it has done from mine."
Julia was getting tired of all these unpleasant visions and magnetic influences; and to give the conversation another turn, she seated herself at the piano, and began to play a gay fantasia.
Kalman leant his elbow on the back of her chair; his dark countenance seemed to pierce the future, while his eyes glared, and his hair stood erect—Julia could observe all this in the opposite mirror. Then, again, he folded his arms and drooped his head on his bosom, till, no longer able to bear the excess of his feelings, he started up, struck his forehead, and exclaimed, in a state of exultation, "Ah! one such moment were sufficient for life; to hear those sweet accents, and, hand in hand, heart to heart, expire together, breathing forth our souls in one long embrace. Julia, do you not desire to die with me?"
"Indeed it will be very nice, when we have both of us reached a good old age; meanwhile let us live a little while together."
Kalman gazed at Julia with an expression of pity: he felt with pain how far beneath his own must that mind be, which could not comprehend the fearful ecstasy of two persons dying together, who have nothing at all the matter with them. He rose and paced the room several times, like a wandering spirit who had no other calling than to terrify the living; then seizing his hat with suicidal determination, he stepped up to Julia, and exclaimed, in heart-rending accents: "Farewell, farewell! Heaven grant that my forebodings be not realized!" And then, tearing himself from her, he rushed out of the room as if in desperation.
Poor Julia was truly in despair, and fearing she knew not what, despatched her servant after Kalman, to see that he did not harm himself; and it was not until the man returned, and assured his mistress that he had seen the young gentleman in the casino eating roast-meat and green garlic, that she could at all compose herself.
Julia was occupied all that afternoon by visitors; and, much to her surprise, she received calls from various persons who had not crossed her threshold for several years before, who all endeavoured, by hints and delicate advice, to allude to the secret which she thought was already twenty miles off—in fact, the whole town seemed perfectly aware of her intended marriage.