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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Blood poisoning," he replied. "You are, of course, aware, my dear Frau Garlan, that people often cut their fingers and die as a result; the wound cannot always he located. It is a great misfortune.... Yes, indeed!" He went into the room, followed by the assistant. Bertha went into the street like one stupified. What could be the meaning of the words which she had overheard "information?"
It was a way he had always to squeeze up against her, and, moreover, she was accustomed to his jokes, but on the present occasion she thought him particularly objectionable. She was very much annoyed that he, of all men, always spoke of Frau Rupius in such a suspicious way. "Let us sit down," said Herr Garlan; "if you don't mind." They both sat down on a seat.
"I have a slight headache," she said, as if it were necessary to make some excuse; immediately, however, she felt as though it were beneath her dignity to say that, and she added: "I don't feel any inclination to play." Everybody looked at her, feeling that something rather out of the common was happening. "Won't you come and sit by us, Bertha?" said Frau Garlan.
"Softer," said her brother-in-law, turning round again. "Taroc with a musical accompaniment is a speciality of this house," said Doctor Friedrich. "Songs without words, so to speak," added Herr Martin. The others laughed. Garlan turned round towards Bertha again, for she had suddenly left off playing.
She was twenty-six years old and quite alone in the world when Victor Mathias Garlan had proposed to her. Her parents had recently died. A long time before, one of her brothers had gone to America to seek his fortune as a merchant. Her younger brother was on the stage; he had married an actress, and was playing comedy parts in third-rate German theatres.
I am not saying a word against Frau Rupius or you." She looked him in the face. His eyes were gleaming, as they often did when he had had a little too much to drink. She could not help recalling that somebody had once foretold that Herr Garlan would die of an apoplectic stroke. "I must pay another visit to Vienna myself one of these days," he said. "Why, I haven't been there since Ash Wednesday.
She was, of course, aware of the fact that if she did not marry him she would in a few months' time have to earn her own living, probably as a teacher, and, besides, she had come to appreciate Garlan and had become so used to his company that she was able, in all sincerity, to answer "Yes," both when he led her to the altar and subsequently when, as they set off for their honeymoon, he asked her, for the first time, if she loved him.
He did not notice Bertha, and she heard him say: "In any other case I would have notified the authorities, but, as this affair falls out as it does.... Besides, there would be a terrible scandal, and poor Rupius would be the worst sufferer " then he saw Bertha "Good day, Frau Garlan." "Oh, doctor, what is really the matter, then?" Doctor Friedrich threw his colleague a rapid glance.
At that time Bertha's parents had made fun of his notion, which seemed to them somewhat hypochondriacal, for Garlan was then scarcely forty years old. Bertha herself, however, had found a good deal of common sense in Garlan's reason, inasmuch as he had never appeared to her as, properly speaking, a young man.
Garlan took the newspaper from his pocket. "Ah!" said Bertha involuntarily. "Will you have it?" asked Garlan. "Has your wife read it yet?" "Tut, tut!" said Garlan disdainfully. "Will you have it?" "If you can spare it." "For you with pleasure. But we might just as well read it together." He edged closer to Bertha and opened the paper.
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