understand," replied Edwin, as he quietly continued to cut the leaves of a book, "why I should take the trouble to lie to such an infallible diagnostician! In all seriousness, I've not seen the fair mystery in Jägerstrasse for a fortnight or more."
"For a very natural reason," retorted Marquard laughing: "because for a fortnight or more the beauty has lived in Rosenstrasse. Oh! you sophist! You strangle the truth and salve your conscience with the snares of your formal logic."
Balder looked at Edwin, who had turned deadly pale. The book fell from his hand, his lips moved but no sound came from them.
"There sits the detected sinner," cried the doctor in a jeering tone. "Ah, my son, lying and deceit are all very well if one is careful not to be caught in them. Besides, I am the last person to attempt to force a confidence, which is not voluntarily bestowed. Good morning!" Nodding to Balder, he left the room and stumbled grumbling down the steep dark staircase. When he had almost reached the bottom, he heard some one call him and Edwin came leaping down.
"Marquard, one word more!"
"What is it?"
"I only wanted to tell you—you may think what you please, but it's the plain truth—I thought she had left the city. What do you know about her? Is it anything more than a freak of the imagination, that she is living in Rosenstrasse—"
"In the third house from the corner, on the right hand side as you come from the long bridge. Of course on the second story. I was driving past the house yesterday afternoon, when it was still quite light, and instantly recognized her, as in spite of the infernal weather, she was standing at an open window. There are not two such faces. So, with a half sad, half wearied expression—thinking partly of Edwin, and partly of a velvet cloak—she leaned against the casement, and absently scattered bread-crumbs to the sparrows in the street. Suddenly she started back and shut the window. She might have seen me looking up, perhaps she even recognized me. However, as I had resigned her to you once for all—"
"Thank you, Marquard. Adieu!"
So saying, Edwin left the doctor standing on the dark stairs and hastily ran up again, without hearing the expression of astonishment which the latter sent after him.
When he returned to the tun, he endeavored to assume a cheerful expression, and even laughed heartily, as if Marquard had told him some comical story.
"It's all right," he said to Balder. "The tragi-comedy is to have an after piece. What do you say to that, child? We'll recommend the subject to Mohr for a fantastic story, the title will be promising: 'The Ghost in Rosenstrasse.'"
"All will yet be well," replied Balder gently, repressing a sigh. "Such a parting was unnatural, and who knows whether you both would not have suffered too severely in the trial. Now no harm is done except that she too must have suffered in having been deprived of you a week."
"Oh! you flatterer!" exclaimed Edwin, who was pacing up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. "Deprived of me? And what compelled hex to be deprived of me, except her own free ducal will? Oh! child, child, don't let us call X, U to each other! The matter stands simply thus: I knew nothing of her, and she neither wished nor wishes to know anything of me. And now see, my dear child, what a pitiful weakling man, and especially your wise brother is! Instead of being satisfied that this fortnight's silence is meant as a discharge, he will not be content to rest until he has received his dismissal in due form, if in any way he can obtain another audience.
"You see," he continued, while Balder was silently trying to calm his fears at this new turn in the state of affairs, "we have our boasted free will and the admirable categorical imperative mood, the standard specifics for all attacks of moral fevers. I can solemnly assure you, Balder, I'm no coward, no such pitiful weakling, that I would not swallow the bitterest medicine, if I knew it would cure me. 'You can, because you ought!' Certainly, I can force myself not to steal, murder, commit adultery, or break any other of the ten commandments, because I know they are in themselves half holy, half salutary, and the world would be out of joint if we did not hold in check certain desires for our neighbor's purse, life, wife, or anything else that is his. But here, in my case—what do you command, Herr Imperative Mood? What do you desire, Herr Free Will? That it looks ill for meum esse conservare, if I simply baffle this longing and stay away, I have sufficiently experienced during the last fortnight. Whether matters will be worse if I see her again, who can tell? So I think I'll go there and ask her whether she thinks me a fool or a man over wise, for again playing with heat and cold which have given me chilblains already?"
"Fortunately we're rich young men again," he added smiling. "For although she esteems me very highly because I visit her without gloves, it might seem quite too magnificent if I should call in a straw hat at the end of October. I will spend something on myself, child, and even look around for a respectable winter overcoat. My old one has gone Heaven knows where with Franzelius, who wore it for a Sunday coat."
He could devote no more attention to his books, but while talking to Balder in a half earnest, half satirical tone, made as careful a toilette as is possible when a man possesses but one suit of clothes, and finally, with his huge paper shears clipped his beard before the tiny mirror. "I should really like to know," he said, while engaged in this operation, without looking at Balder, "whether I should be less indifferent to her, if I were a handsome young fellow like you, so that she could be vain of me, or rather see her natural love of beauty satisfied by my insignificant self. That I shall ever be necessary to her, is not to be hoped. But to be an elegant superfluity, like a parrot, or a piano on which she doesn't even know how to play—the prospect wouldn't be very glorious, but for lack of a better. There, the bushes have been pruned till they're fit to appear at court. I look quite ghostly; this fortnight has been hard upon me. But perhaps it will touch her: 'heart-sick, pallid, and true.' Good bye, my boy. I'll bring back all sorts of things for dinner."
He was so strangely agitated that he embraced Balder, kissed him on the forehead, and then rushed out of the room, humming in his powerful "transcendental" voice—as Mohr called it—"la donna è mobile."
CHAPTER II.
––––––––
His first errand was to a hatter, his second to a ready made clothing store. When, though the October sun was shining warmly, he took his way toward the Rurfürsten Bridge in his new winter overcoat, he could not help laughing at his shadow, which he could scarcely recognize in its present stately contour. He crammed the large pockets with oranges, of which Balder was very fond, bought all sorts of trifles for him, and seemed to himself very brave and resolute, in using so much self constraint as to lengthen the long distance to Rosenstrasse by his numerous delays. He even felt capable of maintaining perfectly his self control, if it should chance that he never saw her again. When he at last knocked at her door, he considered it a great proof of his courage, that he went to meet danger so boldly.
The third house from the corner on the right hand side—now he was standing before it. The early hour, which was by no means suitable for visiting, did not trouble him in the least. Yet he willingly allowed Mohr, who happened to meet him just in front of the house, to drag him away for some distance, and listened patiently to his contemptuous criticism of a new tragedy which had created a great furore the evening before, and which was a wretched abortion, badly pieced out with stolen fragments. What was at this moment, the "degeneration of the German stage" to him! what even his friend's hopes that his "sinfonia ironica" would at last obtain recognition, since a very able musician—he did not say it was no other than Christiane—was sincerely interested in it. They saw Franzelius on the other side of the street, engaged in an eager
