Let us become poor people!
Timar began to hate his riches, and tried to get rid of them. If he was unfortunate and became poor, he would get nearer to his wife, he thought.
He could not succeed in impoverishing himself. Fortune pursues those who despise it. Everything he touched, which with another would certainly have failed, became a brilliant success. In his hands the impossible turned to reality—the die always threw six; if he tried to lose his money by gambling, he broke the bank—gold streamed in upon him; if he ran away or hid, it rolled after him and found him out.
And all this he would have joyfully given for a kiss from his wife's sweet lips.
And yet they say money is almighty. Everything is to be had for money. Yes—false; lying love, bright smiles on the charming lips of such as feel it not—forbidden, sinful love, which must be concealed—but not the love of one who can love truly and faithfully.
Timar almost wished he could hate his wife. He would have liked to believe that she loved another, that she was faithless and forgot her wifely duty; but he could not find any cause for hatred. No one saw his wife anywhere but on her husband's arm. In society she knew how to preserve a bearing which compelled respect, and kept bold advances at a distance. She did not dance at balls, and gave as a reason that when a girl she had not been taught to dance, and as a woman she no longer wished to learn. She sought the company of older women. If her husband went on a journey, she never left the house. But what did she at home? For reception-rooms in society are transparent, but not the walls of one's house. To this question Michael had a most convincing reply.
In this house Athalie lived with Timéa.
Athalie was—not the guardian angel but the guardian devil of Timéa's honor. Every step, every word, every thought of his wife, every sigh she uttered, every tear she shed, even the unconscious mutterings of her dreams, were spied upon by another woman, who hated him as well as his wife, and certainly would hasten to make both miserable, if a shadow of guilt could be found on the walls of the house.
If Timéa, at the moment when she begged Michael to allow Athalie and Frau Sophie to continue living in the same house, had listened to anything but the voice of her kind and feeling heart, she could not have invented a better protection for herself than keeping with her the girl who had once been the bride of the man she ought never to meet again.
These pitiless and malicious eyes follow her everywhere; as long as the guardian devil is silent, Timéa is not condemned even by God. Athalie is silent.