brushing his thin locks with a small pocket brush and humming a tune, returned to his friends.
"Ladies," said he, as he entered the room where Mohr and the two girls sat at a neatly laid table, "I must beg your pardon for a somewhat arbitrary act. A friend of mine with a very charming and highly respectable cousin are close beside us, under the same roof. I asked him to join us, he's already acquainted with two of you, as he is no less a personage than our friend Edwin, the philosopher."
"Another admirer of our musician?" exclaimed Mohr. "I ought to protest against it; I had subscribed for all the musical enthusiasm that would be developed to-day, since Maquard adores in artists only the charms of women. But be it so! This Edwin is an old friend of mine, and moreover deeply in debt to Fräulein Christiane for her daily free concerts."
"Isn't he a tall man with light hair, not exactly handsome, but interesting when he doesn't wear his old straw hat?" asked the little singer in a gay, twittering voice, from whose speaking tones one would never suppose that it could compass two octaves. At the first glance she looked strikingly pretty, but on a closer inspection one perceived that the features of the round face were not really harmonious, the large eyes and turned up nose, the sentimental mouth and sensual chin formed a strange contrast, and even her toilette was a bold composition of all sorts of fantastic fragments. She wore a tolerably ancient black velvet dress, which had once belonged to a much more stately prima donna, a singular looking scarf of tulle and lace, a breast pin with a photograph of a little terrier, ear-rings of coarse Roman mosaic, and in her hair which was cut short and curled in little rings over her head, a gold circlet. Her movements were sometimes very quick, sometimes slow and languid. Only when she laughed, in doing which she was apt to open her mouth a little too far, did the expression appear to which her more intimate acquaintances alluded, when they called her a "good follow," with whom "no one could get angry."
Beside this wild singular creature, Christiane's dark face, framed in its thick black hair, looked more gloomy even than usual, but gained a certain characteristic nobility, especially as the extreme simplicity of her dress contrasted advantageously with the theatrical costume of the singer. She had been sitting in silence when Marquard entered. At Edwin's name she started, but even then said nothing, merely nodding when Mohr asked if he should place a chair for the new guest on her other side; mechanically she smoothed the folds of her dark red woolen dress and passed her hand over her eyes. Adèle had told her she sometimes wore an evil, malignant expression, when her thick eye brows were not perfectly smooth. This was generally a matter of indifference to her, but to-day she did not want to look still more frightful than she was by nature.
They listened to the sounds from the entry. At last the opposite door opened, and Mohr started up to meet the new couple. When Toinette entered, the singer also rose and approached her, more to show her dainty figure than from any special cordiality. She saw at the first glance that she was entirely thrown into the shade by the new face, and could only console herself with the recollection of her toilette, which she considered extremely comme il faut, while the cousin's looked very provincial. Christiane greeted Edwin's relative with a silent bow of the head. She had turned pale when she saw the charming girl. A sudden weight rested upon her soul and stifled the words in her throat, she would have liked to rise and turn her back upon these unsuspecting people. But she must endure it. When Edwin addressed a few friendly words to her, and without asking any questions, took the chair at her side, the color returned to her cheeks, and she could say in an indifferent tone that she was very glad to have the pleasure of meeting him at last. He reminded her of the night when he had found her absorbed in Schopenhauer's Parerga, and apologized for not having continued the moonlight conversation by sunlight, on the plea of having had a great deal of work to do. But it was one of the "sorrows of the world," that we can often make the least use of the blessings that lie so close at hand. Meantime the soup was brought, and Marquard did the honors. The meeting with Edwin and his beautiful companion had put him in the gayest spirits, and he treated Toinette with a humorous formality, the cause of which the others did not suspect. Not a word betrayed that he had made her acquaintance before. He inquired about the condition and events of her native city, and asked how she liked Berlin and its inhabitants. The little farce amused the young girl too, and she merrily entered into it. Moreover she had the delicate tact to make herself particularly agreeable to Adèle and Christiane, so that after the first glass of champagne the singer, like the "good fellow" she was, touched glasses with her, declared that she had taken a great fancy to her, would go to see her in the city and in return Toinette must go to the theatre every evening that she appeared.
Christian also could not deny the charm of the new acquaintance, though she certainly felt no pleasure in it. Never had she seemed to herself so destitute of every grace, as beside this bewitching vision, who appeared gradually to win even her old admirer, Mohr, though he had at first been embarrassed in the presence of his old friend's "relative," who had so suddenly appeared. He became more and more eloquent, and in his own original fashion poured forth a multitude of quaint sayings, which he at last addressed almost exclusively to Toinette, perceiving that his grave neighbor only absently shook her head at his most daring paradoxes. Marquard, after fulfilling all the duties of a host toward his guests, comfortably gave himself up, without making any special exertion to be witty, to a low toned conversation with his little flame, and only sometimes condescendingly laughed at Mohr's jests, as if amused by the singular folly of a man who is making an entirely useless display. For a time Mohr allowed him to laugh and only occasionally dealt him a satirical thrust. But as he did not spare the wine and moreover gradually became heated by his own words, his real feelings toward the comfortable, self-satisfied man of the world, whom as we know, he accredited with a tolerably shallow brain and cold heart, at last burst forth.
"My honored friends," said he, as he rose and lifted his full glass, "I will beg your permission to speak for five minutes on a subject that is of interest to all. We sit here so cozily either liking each other or wishing we did. At any rate this modest little orgie is calculated to excite the envy of the so-called gods, since six people are on a tolerably green bough of sustenance, washing from their souls all anxieties about the present and future life, in, I trust, unadulterated champagne, and thus losing fear as well as love for gods and devils. As for the envy of the former, I'm far from making it a reproach to them. On the contrary, as I have no special reason to feel any great esteem for them, since they've shown little friendship toward my insignificant self, it's this envy alone that partially reconciles me to them. These poor devils of gods, who, like us, can't always do as they please, thus show a truly human side; for, my friends, profound thought and mature experience have taught me, that what is truly human, full of genius, and so to say god-like in our race, as well as the human side of the gods, is envy. You stare at me, Fräulein Adèle, and seem to be asking your neighbor whether I'm always in the habit of expressing such crazy opinions, or only when I've been drinking sweet wine. But you're mistaken; I'm as sober as he is, innocent nightingale; for tell me yourself, would you be the charming creature you are, the spoiled child of the boards, the much photographed, much slandered, much adored Adèle, if you did not feel a deep envy of the happy mortal called Adelina, the divine Patti? Without this envy, which has accelerated your flight to higher and higher spheres, you would still be twittering imperfect couplets, as on your first debut. But for envy of the great champions of thought, our friend Edwin would now be a well paid professor of logic, reading stupid volumes year in and year out. But for this envy, our artist, Fräulein Christiane, would never have poured her whole soul into her finger tips, nor I, her unworthy neighbor at table, extorted from my reluctant brains one of the most remarkable compositions of the day, the famous sinfonia ironica. Fräulein Toinette too, whom I have not yet the honor of knowing very well, has—I read it in her black eyes—received her share of this hereditary virtue. For what is envy, except that which people usually call religion: the confession of our imperfections and distress, and the longing for improvement, to reach a higher round in the ladder, which we already see attained by loftier natures. Must we not feel better disposed toward the so-called gods, when we think that they too are not satisfied with themselves, that they too cherish unattained and forever unattainable longings for the joys of mortals, for a dinner in the Pagoda in pleasant society, bubbling over with wit and Cremant rosé? That they will go
