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Updated: May 18, 2025
Yes, unless I am very much deceived, the blood should be flowing in your veins, my dear lady, as warm...." The glance which Bertha now gave him was so full of anger and loathing that Klingemann was unable to complete the sentence. He therefore began another. "Ah, when you come to think of it, what sort of a life is it that I am now leading?
Throughout the town Herr Klingemann was known as a man to whom nothing was sacred, and as he stood before her, Bertha could not help thinking of the various bits of gossip that she had heard about him.
Bertha uttered a low cry. Klingemann let go her hand, and added in quite an easy conversational tone: "Perhaps that strikes you as rather odd." "It is unheard of! unheard of!" Once more she sought to go, and she called Fritz. "Stop! If you leave me alone now, Bertha...." said Klingemann, now in a suppliant tone. Bertha had recovered her senses again. "Don't call me Bertha!" she said, vehemently.
Klingemann looked back again, and in his glance there was something of regret at not having been able to play out his scene at the graveside to a finish.
He knows about it as well as you or I do!" "What do you say! No, no!" "Indeed, he caught them together you understand me! Herr Klingemann and Albertine! So that, however much inclined he might have been to make the best of things, there was no doubt possible!" "But, for Heaven's sake what did he do, then?" "Well, as you can see for yourself, he has not turned her out!"
"Who gave you the right to do so? I have no wish to say anything further to you ... and here, of all places!" she added, with a downward glance, which, as it were, besought the pardon of the dead. Meanwhile Fritz had come back. Klingemann seemed very disappointed. "My dear lady," he said, following Bertha, who, holding Fritz by the hand, was slowly walking away: "I recognize my mistake.
And when his words had died away she heard them again in her mind but as though from the lips of another who was waiting for her in Vienna and she felt that she would not be able to withstand this other speaker. Klingemann continued to talk; he spoke of his life as being a failure, but yet a life worth saving.
Suddenly Herr Klingemann blew on her eyes, and laughed in a rumbling way. Bertha opened her eyes at that moment a train was rushing past the window. She shook herself. What a confused dream! And hadn't it begun quite nicely? She tried to remember. Yes, Emil played a part in it ... but she could not recollect what part. The dusk of evening slowly fell. The train sped on its way along by the Danube.
"Certainly," she replied, greatly pleased; "whenever you wish." She began to tell him about Fritz, and then went on to speak about her family. Emil threw in a question at times, and soon he knew all that happened in the little town, even down to the efforts of Klingemann, of which Bertha gave him an account, laughingly, but with a certain satisfaction.
It was a full-length portrait; he was wearing a morning coat and a white cravat, and was holding his tall hat in his hand. It was all in memory of their wedding day. Bertha knew for a certainty, at that moment, that Herr Klingemann would have smiled sarcastically had he seen that portrait.
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