United States or Dominica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She has no support other than the ground beneath her feet; she is a poor, lost soul. There comes Alfons Diruf, who retired years ago. He has become stout and gloomy. He is out for his morning walk along the city moat. There goes the actor, Edmund Hahn, seeking whom he may devour. Disease and lust are writ large across his jaded face. There is the sculptor, Schwalbe.
Disturbing the same people in their domestic peace, prodding himself on to new effort every morning, listening to the same curtain lectures of that monster of monsters, the insatiate stock market, and standing up under the commands of his chief, Alfons Diruf—no, he was no longer equal to it. It was all contrary to the dignity of a man of his years.
In her anxiety Eleanore looked first at one object in the room and then at another; first at the bathing nymph, then at the silk curtains, then at the Chinese lampshade. “Well, sweetheart,” said Herr Diruf, his smile gradually changing into a sort of convulsion, “we are not bad, are we? By the beard of the prophet, we are all right, aren’t we? Hunh?” Eleanore lowered her head.
It was a rare smile, something quite beyond the bounds of what is ordinarily called a smile. Alfons Diruf was no longer fat and fierce; he was like a pricked bubble; he was done for. And finding himself alone, he stood there for a while and gaped at the floor. He looked and felt hopelessly stupid. Eleanore hastened through the streets, and suddenly discovered that she was in the Long Row.
Just then Benjamin Dorn came wabbling in: “The Chief would like to speak to Fräulein Jordan,” he said, and bent his long neck like a swan. Eleanore was surprised: what on earth could Herr Diruf want with her? Possibly it had to do with Benno. Alfons Diruf was sitting at his desk as she entered. He wrote one more line, and then stared at her.
He then put on his slippers. Each of them bore a motto embroidered in red. On the left one were the words “For tired father”; on the right one, “Consolation.” Eleanore had not told her father why she had left her position with Alfons Diruf. Nor did Jordan ask her why when he learned that she did not wish to speak about it.
Stout old Diruf and lanky Zittel did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a short time her wonted buoyancy had returned. She seemed like a child, and yet she was every inch a woman.
She thought she had misunderstood him: “You wanted to see me,” she said in a loud voice. Diruf laid his hand, palm down, on the edge of his desk. His solitaire threw off actual sparks of brilliancy. “I can crush every one of you,” he said, as he shoved his hand along the edge of the desk toward Eleanore. “That boy out there, your brother, is an underhanded sharper.
Look at those black, staring, pearly eyes: they remind me of Jason Philip Schimmelweis and Alfons Diruf and Alexander Dörmaul; they remind me of the reserved table, the Kaffeeklatsch, smelly feet, evenings at the club, and everything else that is unappetising, vulgar, and base. Don’t look at me in such astonishment, Eleanore, I have just had an ugly dream; that is all.
She accompanied Herr Zittel to the front door, whereupon he said: “Do everything in your power to get the money. If the loss can be made good at once, Herr Diruf may be willing not to take the case to the courts.” Eleanore knew full well that it would be exceedingly difficult to get such a sum as this.
Word Of The Day