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Updated: May 22, 2025
Only rid me of this terrible enchantment as you can, if you choose. 'Tussmann! he said, in that awful hollow voice of his, 'nothing shall annoy you more, if you will take your solemn oath, here where we stand, to give up all idea of marrying Miss Albertine Bosswinkel. Commissionsrath! you may fancy what I felt when this atrocious proposition was made to me.
It was evident that Madame Albertine belonged to the very highest society, since she knew M. de Rohan, and that her own rank there was of the highest, since she spoke thus familiarly of so great a lord, and that there existed between them some connection, of relationship, perhaps, but a very close one in any case, since she knew his "pet name."
At two o'clock he returned once more. "Madame cannot see anybody yet," reported Albertine, "but she gave me a line for you." "Cannot see anybody yet?" repeated Lucien. "But I am not anybody " "I do not know," Albertine answered very impertinently; and Lucien, less surprised by Albertine's answer than by a note from Mme. de Bargeton, took the billet, and read the following discouraging lines:
I can assure you, you have no reason at all to be proud." "I know, of course, that it is very stupid of me." "Your sister-in-law that is delightful! your sister-in-law!" "What do you mean, then?" "I mean that she has had a lover too!" "Whatever put such an idea as that into your head!" "Well, she is not the only woman in this town." "Yes, there are certainly women who ... but, Albertine "
And whilst he was lighting said cigar at the ashes of the former one, he said, "So you are a painter? and a great one, from what my daughter Albertine tells me and she knows what she is talking about in such matters, I can assure you. I'm very glad you are. I love pictures, and, as my daughter Albertine says, 'Art' altogether, most tremendously. I simply dote upon it.
Albertine, soon after she made Edmund's acquaintance, came to the conclusion that the big oil portrait of her father which hung in her room was a horribly bad likeness of him, and dreadfully scratched into the bargain.
And he ended by saying that young people, especially the artistic, always have a turn for the romantic, and set great store by withered flowers and the ribbons which some beloved girl has worn, and go out of themselves altogether over any piece of work done by the hands of those divinities; so that Albertine had better knit a little purse for Edmund, and, if she saw no particular objection, even put into it a little lock of her bonny nut-brown hair, and thus get out of any little obligation they might be thought to be under to him.
The police don't let one smoke walking about in the Thiergarten, for fear of the grass getting burnt; one enjoys a pipe or a cigar more for that very reason." Bosswinkel went up to the lamp to light the cigar, and Edmund took advantage of his doing so to whisper to Albertine, very shyly, that he hoped she would let him walk home with her.
Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect calmness and complete immobility during the sermons and services. That day, as soon as she caught sight of M. de Rohan, she half rose, and said, in a loud voice, amid the silence of the chapel, "Ah! Auguste!" The whole community turned their heads in amazement, the preacher raised his eyes, but Madame Albertine had relapsed into her immobility.
He was in high good-humour, and his mind was full of quite other ideas and images; and, when the goldsmith had ended, he asked, with many smiles, and in a lisping manner: "Tell me, dear Herr Professor, if you will be so kind, was it really Miss Albertine Bosswinkel who came and looked out of the window of the Tower?"
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