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Then, besides this, Lehsen seemed indifferent and indolent, in a way that nobody who really loved could be, not making any attempt to see her privately, or even to send her a message. On the Saturday night before the fateful Sunday she was sitting alone in her room, as the twilight was deepening into night, her mind full of the misfortune which was threatening her.
It would weary you very needlessly, dear reader, were I to waste words in telling you what you know quite well; namely, that Edmund Lehsen chose the ivory casket, inscribed "Who chooseth me doth gain his dreamed-of bliss," and found in it a beautiful portrait of Albertine, with the lines "Yes thou hast it read thy chance In thy darling's loving glance.
My dear girl, I see well enough already, that though I take all this tremendous interest in young Edmund Lehsen and you, and turn up at every corner like a regular deux ex machina, there will be plenty of people of the same way of thinking with those of the aesthetic school, who will never be able to swallow me, historically speaking, who will never be able to bring themselves to believe that I ever really existed at all.
His grand-aunt, Miss Lehsen, who lives in Broad Street, is going to leave him all her money, £12,000 at the very least." "What," the Commissionsrath cried, pale with the suddenness of his amazement, "£12,000. I tell you what it is. I believe Albertine is crazy about young Lehsen, and I'm not a bad-hearted fellow. I am an affectionate father; can't bear crying, and all that sort of thing.
Now, if this is not so, if she doesn't marry him, and if you give her to young Lehsen, there cannot be a doubt that the Clerk of the Privy Chancery will carry out his idea of jumping into that basin. Think what a sensation the suicide of a person of Tussmann's 'respectability' will create. Everybody will consider that you, and no other, are responsible for his death.
Edmund Lehsen, whom, at present at all events, you believe you love, is a special protégé of mine; and I am helping him with all the power at my command. Let me further tell you that it was I who put the lottery idea into your father's head; that I am going to provide and prepare the caskets, and, of course, you see that no one but Edmund will find your portrait."
"Stop, stop," Bosswinkel cried; "go, as fast as you can, to this terrible fellow; offer him fifty, yes, offer him a hundred thalers if he will let this business about my portrait remain in statu quo." "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Goldsmith; "you forget that Lehsen doesn't care a fiddlestick about money. His people are well off.
She blushed indeed over and over again when she saw him, and seemed unable to control herself. But when her father asked him his name, &c., she said with a delightful smile, and in gentle accents, "that she must be much mistaken if he were not Mr. Lehsen, the celebrated painter, whose works she so immensely admired."
Can a man enjoy the beauties of nature, or take part in any sort of rational conversation, when these damnable things won't burn? Oh, God! it's terrible!" He had involuntarily addressed these remarks to Edmund Lehsen, who happened to be close beside him with a cigar which was drawing splendidly.
"Oh, God," the Commissionsrath cried, "another bankruptcy in Hamburg, I suppose, or in Bremen, or London, to ruin me out and out! That was all that was wanted. Oh, I'm a ruined man!" "No," the Goldsmith said, "it's an affair of a different kind altogether; you say that you won't allow young Edmund Lehsen to marry Albertine, do you not?"
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