Rieka put away the mirror. "Oh, your tongue is always heavy when you have been drinking. Don't be worried about that."
"I have not drank a drop to-day, you insolent girl!" stammered Hartwich irritated. "Go back instantly, and take good care of the child, or----"
"Yes, sir, I shall do my duty without threats, but I can't mend the mischief that you have done!" And she slammed the door behind her.
"And I must bear this from an ignorant peasant!" wailed Hartwich. "How they will abuse me to my child, if she recovers! Oh, oh, I deserve it all; 'tis wretched,--wretched! But I must be calm. I must not be excited." Thus he murmured, with trembling lips, exerting all his energy to repress his excitement, and to force the breath regularly from his laboring breast.
Again the clock struck--ten this time.
"They must soon be here now!" thought Hartwich. "If I can only keep my head clear!"
The wretched man in his anguish now exercised his mental faculties in every way that he could devise, repeating the formula which he had composed for his will a hundred times, that it might be so stamped upon his mind as to be forthcoming even in his last moments.
At last steps were heard in the hall.
"It is Lederer with the bandages," he thought, suddenly remembering his desire to be bled. But there were several people there. It must be the lawyers. The door opened. "Ah, thank God! thank God!" Hartwich stammered, and fainted.
"I thought so!" cried the Geheimrath. "If you had only bled him, or at least remained with him!" he continued to the terrified barber, who entered at the same time. "Be quick now; give me that case; bring me some ice from the child's room," he ordered; and, while he spoke the lancet had done its work, and the dark blood was flowing from the arm.