"Now you must be very gallant and tender to her," I said to myself and looked at her sidewise. Her elbow was grazing my arm and I could feel how she was trembling.
"She"s hungry," I thought, for I had not eaten a thing myself yet.
Her eyes were fixed on the candelabra in front of her. Their silvery sheen in the course of the years had faded and wrinkled like the skin of an old woman.
Her profile! G.o.d, how beautiful!
And that was to belong to me.
Nonsense!
And I tossed off a tumblerful of thin Rhine wine, which gurgled in my empty stomach like bubbles in a duck puddle.
"This is not the way to muster up tenderness," I thought, looking around longingly for the sherry.
Then I pulled myself together. "Please eat something," I said, satisfied that I had done something marvellous.
She nodded and lifted her spoon to her mouth.
After the soup came some excellent fish, Rhine salmon if I am not mistaken, and the sauce had the proper admixture of brandy, lemon juice and capers. Delicious, in short.
Then came venison. Pretty good even if a little too fresh still. Well, on this point opinions differ.
"Do eat something," I said again, pursing my lips so that people should think that what I was whispering was a compliment or something sentimental.
No, that sort of thing didn"t get me any farther.
Already I had disposed of the second bottle of the thin Rhine wine and began to swell like a balloon.
I looked around for Lothar, who had inherited from his father a scent for everything drinkable, but he had been seated somewhere downstairs.
Then I was saved by a toast, which gave me a chance to stand up. On my rounds I discovered a small but select company of sherry bottles which the old man had hidden behind a curtain.
I picked up two of them quickly and started to pour courage into me. It was a slow process but it succeeded. I can stand a good deal, you know, gentlemen.
After the venison came a salmi of partridges. Two successive dishes of game are not quite the right thing, but they were mighty tasty.
At just about this point something like a wall of mist loosened itself from the ceiling and descended slowly--slowly.
Now I was tossing gallantries right and left. I tell you, gentlemen, I was going it.
I called my bride "enchantress" and "charming sprite," and told a rather broad hunting story, and explained to my neighbours of what use the experiences are that a bachelor of today acquires before marrying.
To be brief, gentlemen, I was irresistible.
But the wall of mist kept sinking deeper and deeper. It was like in mountain regions, where first the highest summits disappear and then little by little the mountain side, one ledge after another.
First the lights in the candelabra got reddish halos round them. They looked like small suns in a vapoury atmosphere with rainbow rays radiating from them. Then gradually everybody sitting behind the candelabra talking and rattling forks disappeared from sight and sound.
Only at intervals did a white shirt bosom or a bit of a woman"s arm gleam from the "purple darkness"--isn"t that what Schiller calls it?
Oh, yes! Something else struck me.
My father--in--law was running around with two bottles of champagne, and whenever he saw an entirely empty gla.s.s, he would say, "Please do have some more. Why don"t you drink?"
"You old fraud!" I said when he bobbed up back of me, and I pinched his leg, "is that what you call letting it flow in rivulets?"
You see, gentlemen, my condition was growing dangerous. And all of a sudden I felt my heart expanding. I had to talk. I simply had to talk.
So I struck my gla.s.s madly for silence.
"For heaven"s sake--keep quiet!" my bride--I beg your pardon, my wife--whispered in my ear.
But even if it cost me my life I had to talk.
What I said was reported to me afterwards, and if my authorities tell the truth, it was something like the following:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer young. But I do not regret that at all, for maturity also hath its joys. And if anybody were to a.s.sert that youth can be happy only when wedded to youth, I would say, "An infamous lie! I myself am proof of the contrary. For I am no longer young, but I am going to make my young wife happy because my wife is an angel--and I have a loving heart--yea, I swear I have a loving heart, and whoever says that here underneath my waistcoat--there beats no loving heart--to him--I would like to lay bare my heart----""
At this point, according to reports, my words were choked by tears, and in the middle of my abject outpourings I was hustled from the room.
When I awoke I was lying on a couch much too short for me, with all kinds of fur collars and caps and woollen wraps thrown over me. My neck was strained, my legs numb.
I looked around.
On a console under a mirror a single candle was burning. Brushes, combs, and boxes of pins lay beside it. On the walls hung a ma.s.s of cloaks, hats and all that sort of thing.
Oho, the ladies" dressing room!
Slowly I became conscious of what had happened. I looked at the clock.
Nearly two. Somewhere, as though at a great distance, the playing of a piano and the sc.r.a.ping and sliding of dancing feet in time with the music.
_My_ wedding!
I combed my hair, arranged my necktie, and heartily wished I might lie right down in my lovely hard camp bed and pull the covers over my ears, instead of--brr!
Well, there was nothing to be done about it. So I started for the reception rooms, though without any real feeling of shame, as I was still too sleepy and drowsy to comprehend the state I was in fully.
At first n.o.body noticed me.
In the rooms where the gentlemen were sitting the smoke was so thick that at only a few feet away all you could discern was merely the vague outlines of human bodies. A very steep game of cards was under way, and my father-in-law was relieving his guests of their money so neatly that had he had three more daughters to marry off he would have become a rich man.
He called it "making wedding expenses."
I glanced in at the room where the dancing was going on. The dowagers were fighting off sleep, the young people were hopping about mechanically, while the pianist opened his eyes only when he struck a wrong note. My sister was holding a gla.s.s of lemonade on her lap and was inspecting the lemon seeds. It was a doleful sight.