FRUITLESS PRETENSIONS.
"Your new dress-coat has come from the tailor's," was Frau Herbert's greeting to her husband, upon his entrance.
"Indeed! where is it?" he asked gruffly.
"In the next room, on the bed."
"On the bed!" her husband snapped out. "So that it may be covered with lint? How careless!"
Frau Herbert looked down, and was silent. Herbert hurried into the next room to rescue his slighted property.
Professor Herbert's dwelling-room was rather small and low, but there appeared, at a cursory glance, an air of elegance about it. The chairs and lounges were covered with fine woollen stuff, the curtains were richly embroidered, and an elegant cabinet, with mirrored doors, closely locked, apparently contained silver plate. Upon a closer inspection, however, the furniture was found to be stuffed with straw, the curtains were shabby, with the holes in them not even darned, and the cabinet contained only broken household-utensils, with the remains of the previous meal, locked up there to be safe from the hungry servant-maid. Even the arm-chair by the window, occupied by Frau Herbert, evidently an invalid, was as hard as a stone. The only thing in the room of real and decided value was a collection of old English copper-plates that decorated the walls of the apartment, representing scenes from Shakspeare's plays and Roman history. These old pictures were one of Professor Herbert's fancies; and he belonged to that class of men with whom the necessities of a wife and of the household are never considered in comparison with the gratification of their fancies.
Frau Herbert was one of those unfortunate women who, in the consciousness that they are burdens to their husbands, believe themselves called to endure everything, even the grossest injustice, with meekness, and who hold it their duty to entreat forgiveness of their lords and masters for continuing to exist at all. The sight of that quiet woman, with her sad face, upon which pain had ploughed deep furrows, sitting at the window mending the straw-coloured gloves in which her husband was, in the evening, to play the part of an æsthetic exquisite, while she lay suffering at home, would instantly suggest the complete picture of an unhappy wife tied to the side of a cold-blooded egotist.
"Poor Professor Herbert!" people were wont to say, "what a misfortune it is for a man to have such an invalid wife!"
But a closer observer of the pair would have said, "What a misfortune for an invalid wife to have such a husband!"