Schnetz looked him coolly in the face, and once more began to rub his mutilated ear.
"Do you really think she understood me?"
"Understood you? Que diable! You certainly left nothing to be desired on the score of plainness. I must say though, my good friend, now that we are quite alone again, that, excellent as I find your plan of bringing the two offended lovers together under cover of the freedom of a masquerade, I really can't approve of the way in which you have gone to work. For no matter how much my niece may be shaken in her whim by the prospect of America, or how thankful she may be at heart for every chance that is given her to capture her roving bird again--still, just think how difficult you have made the matter for her, by bringing up this question of the ball before that old woman! I ought to have been kept out of the game too. Now, if she asks me on my conscience as uncle and guardian----."
"On your conscience? On which, if I may ask? On your conscience as a baron or as a man?"
"H'm! I should imagine that two old tent companions, such as we are, would agree pretty well as to the matter itself. But you must admit that much, which might seem quite innocent to me as a bachelor, could hardly meet my approval as a guardian, in my official capacity, so to speak. And more than this, it seems to me that there really are two different moral standpoints for men and women, and what is right for the one is not always proper for the other."
"There you hit it exactly!" cried Schnetz, flying into a rage, and throwing his whip down on the table. "That is why we never come across a single sprig of fresh verdure in our social relations! that is why we must eternally carry about lies, narrow-hearted makeshifts, and mean reservations, all because we adopt a double standard of weights and measures, and regard a damned shrug of the shoulders as an excellent preventive for all the cancers of society! Neither of the two sexes, when they are together, dares express itself openly, neither says all that it thinks, each thinks to fool the other with its tricks and quibbles, while both know very well what they are about, and ought by good rights to laugh in each other's faces over these miserable and perfectly fruitless sham fights. And because this whole farce is so cursedly insipid, and this high tone of high society makes the women gape as well as the men, therefore both sides struggle all the more eagerly to indemnify themselves for the boredom they have suffered, each in his own way, in clubs or worse places, or under four eyes, where one throws aside all masks and strait-lacing. Honest old Sir John was quite right--'A plague of all cowards, say I'--And this modern world of ours will never grow healthy again until the two sexes become tired of this childish mummery and meet each other half-way in an honest endeavor to give truth a trial, without prudery and without coarseness!"
He raved on in this fashion for some time longer, without giving the baron a chance to get in a syllable. Not until his breath had given out, and he had seized upon his hat, did the other venture to offer a meek reply.
"All very good and fine, my dear friend, all admitted in theory. But in praxi--since the world has not yet become entirely sensible--won't it be necessary to respect the prejudices of a stupid majority for a while longer? Can our young lady--now that this old chatterer knows about it--go, without any further consideration, to your paradisaical festival, where she is sure to meet dubious daughters of Eve? where it is possible that the girl who was running after our Felix, the little, red-haired waiter-girl, may, God knows in what costume, stir up another scene of murder and manslaughter?"
Schnetz had remained standing with his hand on the door. As the baron said these words he let it go again, and stared at the excited speaker for a while; then he laughed bitterly, and stepped back into the room once more.
"This waiter-girl?" said he, laying his hand on the baron's shoulder. "Well, of all the games the devil ever played! Old friend, do you know who this waiter-girl is, who nursed this youngster Felix so faithfully, while others looked on from a distance? This waiter-girl, this child of the people, who would not be fitting company for a young baroness? Well, then, she is your own daughter, baron, and first cousin of your high-born niece!"--