Felix left the shop angrily, and now sought his old acquaintance, Ephraim Staub. But the latter shrugged his shoulders, said that he had already done a great deal for the Baron for the sake of his respectful devotion to him; he relied upon his honor, but still the notes of a minor were not legal, and all men were mortal, and if anything should happen to the young Baron who would answer to him, Ephraim Staub, that the young gentleman's papa would not throw him together with his notes, which in the eyes of the law were not legal, out of the door?
Felix chewed the knob of his riding-whip angrily. Then carefully feeling his way, the usurer ventured an infamous proposition.
"Certainly a note with your father's acceptance--that would be safe--the old gentleman would certainly redeem that--one could always apply the thumbscrews to one's papa." Ephraim could assure the Baron that young people of the best families--he must, alas, conceal the names--had given him this kind of guarantee.
For a long time the true signification of this speech was wholly dark to Felix, but at length he understood, then he did not even take the trouble to fall into a rage, only threw back his head arrogantly and raised his riding-whip to the usurer as one strikes a cur who has ventured too near.
How did it happen that three days later he returned to Ephraim Staub and made out the note in the shameful manner which the latter had desired of him? Yes; how did it happen? Felix no longer knows. If he knew, he could perhaps understand his crime to-day, but he does not understand it.
His memory is a blank concerning the three days in which he had slowly sunk to forgery; there is a dark spot, a chasm in his recollection; he can only take it up again in the moment when, exhausted as if after weeks of fever, bathed in cold sweat, and groping along the walls, he crept from Ephraim's shop to the jeweller's; how suddenly he was frightened at the gargoyle on the cornice of a house, frightened because the head laughed.
From this moment he was not happy for a second, not even with Juanita. Strangely enough, his passion for her now was completely in the background; it fled.
It seemed to him that a monster sat upon his back and buried two iron claws in his shoulders, and blew in his ears with his hot, terrible breath.
The evening on which Juanita was to show her splendid beauty and her empirical dancing to the audience of the opera house arrived.
A warm, September evening. There had been a hard shower; there was an odor of wet stone and marble as Felix went to the theatre. By turns he shook with cold and grew feverish, he suffered with a severe cold. The theatre was still only sparsely filled. When he took his seat in one of the front rows he noticed that people pointed him out to each other and whispered his name. He was a celebrity--Juanita's lover!