Part 55 (1/2)

”Ah, this prebendary, it seems, is growing impudent,” exclaimed the prince, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, walking toward the door.

The baroness seized his hand and kept him back. ”Pay no attention to him,” she said, imploringly; ”let my steward settle this quarrel with that insolent man. Just listen! he is even now begging him quite politely, yet decidedly, to leave the room.”

”And that fellow is shameless enough to decline doing so,” said the prince. ”Oh, hear his scornful laughter! This laughter is an insult, for which he ought to be chastised.”

And as if the words of the prince were to be followed immediately by the deed, a third voice was heard now in the reception-room. It asked in a proud and angry tone, ”What is the matter here? And who permits himself to shout so indecently in the reception-room of the baroness?”

”Ah, it is my husband,” whispered f.a.n.n.y, with an air of great relief.

”He will show that overbearing Baron Weichs the door, and I shall get rid of him forever.”

”He has already dared, then, to importune you?” asked the prince, turning his threatening eyes toward the door. ”Oh, I will release you from further molestation by this madman, for I tell you the gentle words of your husband will not be able to do so. Baron Weichs is not the man to lend a willing ear to sensible remonstrances or to the requirements of propriety and decency. He has graduated at the high-school of libertinism, and any resistance whatever provokes him to a pa.s.sionate struggle in which he shrinks from no manifestation of his utter recklessness. Well, am I not right? Does he not even dare to defy your husband? Just listen!”

”I regret not to be able to comply with your request to leave this room,” shouted now the voice of the prebendary, Baron Weichs. ”You said yourself just now, baron, that we were in the reception-room of the baroness; accordingly, you are not the master here, but merely a visitor like the rest of us. Consequently, you have no right to show anybody the door, particularly as you do not even know whether you belong to the privileged visitors of the lady, or whether the baroness will admit you.”

”I shall take no notice of the unbecoming and insulting portion of your remarks, baron,” said the calm voice of Baron Arnstein; ”I only intend at this moment to protect my wife against insult and molestation. Now it is insulting a.s.suredly that a cavalier, after being told that the lady to whom he wishes to pay his respects is either not at home or will not receive any visitors, should refuse to withdraw, and insist upon being admitted. I hope the prebendary, Baron Weichs, after listening to this explanation, will be kind enough to leave the reception-room.”

”I regret that I cannot fulfil this hope,” said the sneering voice of the prebendary. ”I am now here with the full conviction that I shall never be able to reenter this reception-room; hence I am determined not to shrink back from any thing and not to be turned away in so disgraceful a manner. I know that the baroness is at home, and I came hither in order to satisfy myself whether the common report is really true that the baroness, who has always treated me with so much virtuous rigor and discouraging coldness, is more indulgent and less inexorable toward another, and whether I have really a more fortunate rival!”

”I hope that I am this more fortunate rival,” said Baron Arnstein, gently.

”Oh, no, sir,” exclaimed the prebendary, laughing scornfully. ”A husband never is the rival of his wife's admirers. If you were with your wife and turned me away, I should not object to it at all, and I should wait for a better chance. But what keeps me here is the fact that another admirer of hers is with her, that she has given orders to admit n.o.body else, and that you, more kind-hearted than myself, seem to believe that the baroness is not at home.”

”This impudence surpa.s.ses belief,” exclaimed the prince, in great exasperation.

”Yes,” said f.a.n.n.y, gloomily, ”the Christian prebendary gives full vent to his disdain for the Jewish banker. It always affords a great satisfaction to Christian love to humble the Jew and to trample him in the dust. And the Jew is accustomed to being trampled upon in this manner. My husband, too, gives proof of this enviable quality of our tribe. Just listen how calm and humble his voice remains, all the while every tone of the other is highly insulting to him!”

”He shall not insult him any longer,” said the prince, ardently; ”I will--but what is that? Did he not mention my name?”

And he went closer to the door, in order to listen in breathless suspense.

”And I repeat to you, baron,” said the voice of the prebendary, sneeringly, ”your wife is at home, and the young Prince von Lichtenstein is with her. I saw him leave his palace and followed him; half an hour ago, I saw him enter your house, and I went into the coffee-house opposite for the purpose of making my observations. I know, therefore, positively, that the prince has not yet left your house. As he is not with you, he is with your wife, and this being the usual hour for the baroness to receive morning calls, I have just as good a right as anybody else to expect that she will admit me.”

”And suppose I tell you that she will not admit you to-day?”

”Then I shall conclude that the baroness is in her boudoir with the Prince von Lichtenstein, and that she does not want to be disturbed,”

shouted the voice of the prebendary. ”Yes, sir; in that case I shall equally lament my fate and yours, for both of us are deceived and deprived of sweet hopes. Both of us will have a more fortunate rival in this petty prince--in this conceited young dandy, who even now believes he is a perfect Adonis, and carries his ludicrous presumption so far as to believe that he can outstrip men of ability and merit by his miserable little t.i.tle and by his boyish face--”

”Why is it necessary for you to shout all this so loudly?” asked the anxious voice of the baron.

”Ah, then you believe that he can hear me?” asked the voice of the prebendary, triumphantly. ”Then he is quite close to us? Well, I will shout it louder than before: this little Prince Charles von Lichtenstein is a conceited boy, who deserves to be chastised!”

The prince rushed toward the door, pale, with quivering lips and sparkling eyes. But the baroness encircled his arm with her hands and kept him back.

”You will not go,” she whispered. ”You will not disgrace me so as to prove to him by your appearance that he was right, and that you were with me while I refused to admit him.”

”But do you not hear that he insults me?” asked the young prince, trying to disengage himself from her hands.

”Why do you listen to other voices when you are with me?” she said, reproachfully. ”What do you care for the opinion of that man, whom I abhor from the bottom of my heart, and whom people only tolerate in their saloons because they are afraid of his anger and his slanderous tongue? Oh, do not listen to what he says, my friend! You are here with me, and I have yet to tell you many things. But you do not heed my words! Your eyes are constantly fixed on the door. Oh, sir, look at me, listen to what I have to say to you. I believe I still owe you a reply, do I not? Well, I will now reply to the question which you have so often put to me, and to which I have heretofore only answered by silence!”

”Oh, not now, not now!” muttered the prince.