"Listen, Reitzei! Even my good friend Calabressa perceives. He, too, has encountered the Englishman. Oh yes, we must all give way to him, else he will stamp on our toes with his thick English boots. You, Reitzei: how long is he to allow you to retain your office?"
"Better for him if he does not interfere with me," said the younger man. "I was always against the English being allowed to become officers. They are too arrogant; they want everything under their direction. Take their money, but keep them outside: that would have been my rule."
"And this Englishman," said Beratinsky, with a smile, though there was the light of malice in his eye, "this Englishman is not content with wanting to have the mastery of poor devils like you and me; he also wishes to marry the beautiful Natalie—the beautiful Natalie, who has hitherto been as proud as the Princess Brunhilda. Now, now, friend Calabressa, do not protest. Every one has ears, has eyes. And when papa Lind comes home—when he finds that this Englishman has been making a fool of him, and professing great zeal when he was only trying to steal away the daughter—what then, friend Calabressa?"
"A girl must marry," said Calabressa.
"I thought she was too proud to think of such things," said the other, scornfully. "However, I entreat you to say no more. What concern have I with Natalie Lind? I tell you, let her make more new friends."
Calabressa sat silent, his heart as heavy as lead. He had come with some notion that he would secure one other—powerful, and in all of Lind's secrets—on whom Natalie could rely, should any emergency occur in which she needed help. But these jealous and envious taunts, these malignant prophecies, only too clearly showed him in what relation Vincent Beratinsky stood with regard to the daughter of Natalie Berezolyi and the Englishman, her lover.
Calabressa sat silent. When some one began to play the zither, he was thinking not of the Culturverein in London, but of the dark pine woods above the Erlau, and of the house there, and of Natalie Berezolyi as she played in the evening. He would ask Natalushka if she, too, played the zither.