[Old Grollmann, the servant, finds a similar letter directed to Uncle Ernst, and delivers it. Uncle Ernst reads it, drinks a bottle of wine, and falls asleep, after having rung for his afternoon coffee. He is found in this condition by Grollmann. Reinhold has been casting longing glances toward the Werben house over the wall. The General calls to speak with Uncle Ernst about the letter.
The General gives Uncle Ernst a brief story of his life and his social point of view, so far as they touch the family of von Werben, disclosing his aristocratic attitude. Uncle Ernst replies that he has no family history to relate, but gives a brief sketch of his own life, recalling vividly the incident in which he spared the General before the barricade, and was taken captive by him in return, and shut up in Spandau. It is a struggle between the aristocrat and the democrat of '48; a sullen silence prevails between the two men. The General finally asks, in the name of Ottomar, for the hand of Ferdinande. Uncle Ernst starts back in amazement.]
The night had had no terrors and the morning no gloom for Ferdinande. In her soul it was bright daylight for the first time in many months—yes, as she thought, for the first time since she knew what a passionate, proud, imperious heart throbbed in her bosom. They had told her so, so often—in earlier years her mother, later her aunt, her girl friends, all—that it would some time be her undoing, and that pride goes before a fall; and she had always answered with resentment: "Then I will be undone, I will fall, if happiness is to be had only as the niggardly reward of humility, which always writhes in the dust before Fate, and sings hymns of thanks because the wheels of grim Envy only passed over it but did not crush it! I am not a Justus, I am not a Cilli!"
And she had been unhappy even in the hours when enthusiastic artists, Justus' friends, had worshipped, in extravagant words, the splendid blooming beauty of the young girl; when these men praised and aided her talents, and told her that she was on the right path to becoming an artist at last—that she was an artist, a true artist. She did not believe them; and, if she were a real artist—there were much greater ones! Even Justus' hand could reach so much higher and farther than hers; he plucked fruits with a smile and apparently without effort for which she had to strive with unprecedented efforts and which would ever remain unattainable to her, as she had secretly confessed to herself.
She had expressed her misgivings to that great French painter upon whom her beauty had made such an overwhelming impression. He had evaded her with polite smiles and words; then he finally told her seriously: "Mademoiselle, there is only one supreme happiness for woman—that is love; and she has only one gift of genius in which no man can equal her—that again is love."—The word had crushed her; her art life was thus a childish dream, and love!—Yes, she knew that she could love, and boundlessly! But her eye was yet to see the man who could kindle this love to the heavenly flame, and woe to her if she found him! He would not understand her love, not comprehend, and most certainly not be able to return it; would shrink back, perhaps, from its glow, and she would be more unhappy than before.
TWO FAMILIES
Permission Ch. Sedelmeyer, Paris
Michael von Munkacsy