"That is a very fine idea," said Uncle Ernst.
"Who is Cilli?" asked Reinhold.
"An angel," answered Justus, applying himself still more eagerly to his occupation of shaping his bread pedestal. "She is the blind daughter of good old Kreisel, your uncle's head clerk, who of course officiates as superintendent, bending over his desk and making a list of the offerings. He alone will make my work immortal. Thirdly: Battle Scene. A mounted officer waving his sword; the Landwehr, with fixed bayonets, rushing to the attack; 'Forwards! march! hurrah!' commanded by our Captain here, already promoted to be a non-commissioned officer--you see now?--and so on. Fourthly: the Return Home. The loveliest girl in the town presenting laurel wreaths--of course Fräulein Ferdinanda, now the daughter of the burgomaster; the burgomaster, a stately personage, Herr Ernst Schmidt."
"I beg you will leave me out of the question!" said Uncle Ernst.
"I beg you will not interrupt me," cried Justus. "Where in the whole world should I find so perfect a representative of the good old genuine German burgher?"
"The old genuine German burgher was a Republican," grumbled Uncle Ernst.
"So much the better," cried the sculptor. "A monument of victory is also a monument of peace. What would victory have done for us if it had not brought us peace? Peace without and peace within, irrespective of party feeling! The stronger the party feeling expressed on the faces of my figures, so much the more apparent will be the deep patriotic symbolicism that my work will show forth. So my burgomaster must let people see his Republican principles and hatred of the nobility a hundred yards off, as my general must be a concentration of feudalism and aristocraticism. And there, again, I have got quite as classic a model in its way--General von Werben."
Reinhold looked up startled; the name came so unexpectedly, and Ferdinanda had said to him before, "My father hates the Werbens!"
And, indeed, Uncle Ernst's face had suddenly become black as night, and the ladies were in evident fear that the storm might burst upon them at any moment. Ferdinanda's beautiful features were suddenly covered with a rosy flush, and as suddenly turned deadly pale. Aunt Rikchen glanced at the sculptor with a quick, anxious look, and furtively shook her head as if in warning; but he did not seem to observe anything of all this.
"It will be the culminating point of the whole thing," cried he. "On the proud warrior's face shall be a look of satisfaction, mingled with the suppression of bitter party feeling, as though he were saying, 'Dissension between us is at an end for ever;' and my general leans down from his horse and stretches out his hand to the burgomaster, who grasps it with manly emotion, which says, as plainly as any words, 'Amen!'"
"Never!" exclaimed Uncle Ernst in a voice of thunder. "Before I grasp his hand, let my right hand wither! And whoever offers me such an insult, even in effigy, between that man and me there shall be war to the knife." And he drew the knife, which he had seized, across the table, threw it aside, pushed his chair back, and staggered to his feet.
But it was only an explosion of Berserker wrath; for, as Reinhold sprang up to support him, he completely recovered his steady bearing, and said, in a voice whose forced calm contrasted strangely and painfully with the previous wild outbreak:
"We have sat too long after dinner; it stops the circulation, and then all the blood goes to the head. Good-night, Reinhold; I shall see you again to-morrow morning. Good-night all of you."
He was gone.
"What, in Heaven's name, is the meaning of that?" asked Justus.
He still sat there, the rough bread model of his monument in his hand, with wide-open staring eyes, like a child who sees a black devil jump out of a harmless-looking box. "What in the world is the matter?"
"What possessed you to mention that unlucky name?" said Aunt Rikchen. "Goodness me! that was the only thing wanting, and now you have done it!"
Ferdinanda, with a half-sigh, tried to rise from her chair; but, pressing her hand to her heart, fell back again immediately, deadly white, her beautiful head sinking against the cushion.
"What is the matter with you?" cried Aunt Rikchen. "Water--quick!--and ring the bell!"
Reinhold filled a tumbler from the water-jug, Justus flew to the bell; a maid-servant hurried in soon, followed by a second, and all the women busied themselves over the fainting girl.
"I think we are in the way here," said Reinhold, and led Justus, who was still overpowered with astonishment, into the hall.
"Now can you explain this to me?" exclaimed Justus.
"I had hoped to get some explanation from you," answered Reinhold. "I only know that my uncle hates the General, has done so since '48, so I suppose something must have happened between them then."
"By-the-way, yes. Now I recollect," cried Justus; "Aunt Rikchen did once tell me about it, but I had quite forgotten it; and even if I had not, how could I know that the old madman would get into such a state about it? Shall I come up with you?"
"Thanks, I can find my way. And you?"
"I live at the back here over my studio. You must come and pay me a visit to-morrow, and we will talk further over this wonderful business. Do you stay long?"
"I had meant to, but after this scene----"
"Oh, you must not think too much about that; I know him well. To-morrow there will not be a trace of it. He is a capital old fellow through it all. Felicissima notte! a rivederci!"
Reinhold easily found his way to his room through the well-lighted stairs and passages. The candles stood on the table, but he did not light them, the crescent moon gave light enough, and a warm breeze came in at the open window, by which he stood in deep thought.
"What a pity," he murmured; "I should have liked to cast anchor here for some time, and might have got on with the old gentleman. He seemed to me rather queer, and sometimes lets go the rudder, but it is not a very uncommon thing, and perhaps it will all pass over by to-morrow. I could soon learn his ways. He drank at least three bottles, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild before he flew out in that way. I am afraid it is rather a family failing; our old sailor grandfather--but it is not the worst of faults, and we Schmidts cannot be expected to have the aristocratic manners of the Werbens. Ferdinanda is unquestionably very handsome; the sculptor was right: 'the prettiest girl in the town!' And yet, the noble carriage, the inexpressible grace of movement, the beautiful look of the eyes, the ever-changing and always sweet expression of the features--she cannot be compared with Elsa, and indeed who could? Then she has not spoken three words. Is there nothing behind that beautiful forehead? Is that gloomy silence only a cloak whose 'classic folds' she has borrowed perhaps of her master to conceal her insignificance? I had pictured to myself something quite different when first I saw her. There was some life about her when she cut short that introduction at the railway station, and hurried me away. Certainly since then I have discovered why it was painful for her. Capulets and Montagues, only divided by a garden wall. What was that?"
The moon had risen higher; the shrubbery walk at the bottom of the garden, down which Reinhold could see some distance from the window where he stood, was in parts quite light between the bushes. Across one of the light spots a female form had just glided, only to disappear, and did not pass into the light again. But she must do so if she belonged to the house; the path went round a grass-plot in its immediate vicinity, and lay in the full light of the moon, and by leaning out a very little he could easily see over it. But why should she belong to the house? On one side of the garden was a small outhouse in which there was a lighted window. The figure might have come from thence. "And at any rate," thought Reinhold, "it is no business of yours, and you can go to bed."
He was just about to shut the window when he observed the figure again, this time in the path which ran along the wall, or wooden paling (he could not distinguish which), that on the left hand separated the garden for a little way from the neighbouring one. The wall, or paling, was overshadowed by