"Can you ask?" questioned Hohenheim with a significant smile.
"Then early to-morrow morning at the Play, and at night the Casino, don't forget!" Cossigny called back.
The gentlemen, laughing and chatting, strolled down the street to their lodgings. The prince watched them a moment, turned, and went back to the countess.
"I cannot really be vexed with her, if these associates do not satisfy her," he thought.
"Should I desire her to become my wife, if they did? Certainly not. Yet if women only would not rush from one extreme to another? Hohenheim is perfectly right, she ought not to stay here too long, she must go to-morrow."
He had reached the house and entered the neglected old garden where huge gnarled fruit trees, bearing small, stunted fruit, interlaced their branches above a crooked bench. There, in the midst of the rank grass and weeds, sat the countess, her beautiful head resting against the mouldy bark of the old trunk, gazing thoughtfully at the luminous mountains gleaming in the distance through the tangled boughs and shrubbery.
From the adjoining garden of the sculptor Zwink, whose site was somewhat higher, a Diana carved in white stone gazed curiously across, seeming as if she wished to say to the pensive lady who at that moment herself resembled a statue: "Art will create gods for you everywhere!" But the temptation had no effect, the countess seemed to have had no luck with these gods, she no longer believed in them!
"Well, Countess Madeleine, did the light and air lure you out of doors?" asked the prince, joyfully approaching her.
"Oh, I could not bear to stay there any longer. Herr Gross' daughters are finishing the dress. We will dine here, Prince; the meal can be served on a table near the house, under a wild-grape vine arbor. We can wait on ourselves for one day."
"For one day!" repeated the prince with great relief; "oh yes, it can be managed for one day." Thank Heaven, she had no intention of staying here.