“You will learn to do so.”
“I cannot believe it. You are the only actor in Germany who thinks so. Besides, I have, as it seems to me, a real vocation.—You may sneer, but a vocation is necessary in this as in all other professions. It is quite clear that I have none for theology. I must get my bread somehow.”
“Your bread? Franz, listen to me. So fixed is my opinion, that if you will obey me, from this time forward you shall have the whole of my earnings. I have already saved enough to satisfy my own humble wants. I will devote every shilling to furthering and maintaining you in any profession you choose to select. You shall not say that necessity made you—as it has made me—an actor.”
“I cannot accept such a sacrifice.”
“It is none. I would sacrifice every thing rather than see you on the stage! Besides, in another year or two you may make a rich marriage. I have already agreed with our old friend Schmidt, that you should be united to his daughter Bertha, and her dowry will be very large.”
A deep, deep blush overspread Franz’s face, which was succeeded by a deathlike paleness, as his father mentioned marriage.
“How can I ever break my marriage to him!” was his mental exclamation.
“Will you promise me?”
“I cannot. Believe me, it distresses me thus to disobey you, but I cannot quit the stage.”
“I have failed to convince you then? You misapprehend my motives. You think, perhaps”—and here an affected laugh of irony gave tenfold force to the words—“that I am jealous of you?”