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Updated: June 19, 2025
While Sanin was dressing, Emil began to talk to him, rather hesitatingly, it is true, about Gemma, about her rupture with Herr Klueber; but Sanin preserved an austere silence in reply, and Emil, looking as though he understood why so serious a matter should not be touched on lightly, did not return to the subject, and only assumed from time to time an intense and even severe expression.
'Your daughter? he repeated. 'My daughter, Gemma, broke almost with a groan from Frau Lenore, behind the tear-soaked handkerchief, 'informed me to-day that she would not marry Herr Klueber, and that I must refuse him! Sanin positively started back a little; he had not expected that.
He read them twelve specimens; he aroused very little mirth, however; only Sanin smiled, from politeness, and he himself, Herr Klueber, after each anecdote, gave vent to a brief, business-like, but still condescending laugh. At twelve o'clock the whole party returned to Soden to the best tavern there. They had to make arrangements about dinner.
'Monsieur Dimitri, said Gemma, and she passed her hand over her hair on the side turned towards Sanin, 'don't, please, call Herr Klueber my betrothed. I shall never be his wife. I have broken with him. 'You have broken with him? when? 'Yesterday. 'You saw him? 'Yes. At our house. He came to see us. 'Gemma? Then you love me? She turned to him.
At last Herr Klueber returned, announced that dinner would be ready in half an hour, and proposed their employing the interval in a game of skittles, adding that this was very good for the appetite, he, he, he! Skittles he played in masterly fashion; as he threw the ball, he put himself into amazingly heroic postures, with artistic play of the muscles, with artistic flourish and shake of the leg.
With just such a dinner the tavernkeeper at Soden regaled his customers. The dinner, itself, however, went off satisfactorily. After dinner, coffee was served, thin, reddish, typically German coffee. Herr Klueber, with true gallantry, asked Gemma's permission to smoke a cigar.... But at this point suddenly something occurred, unexpected, and decidedly unpleasant, and even unseemly!
Then Frau Lenore observed that Herr Klueber as she uttered the name, she sighed faintly, tightened her lips, and hesitated Herr Klueber, Gemma's former betrothed, already possessed an income of eight thousand guldens, and that with every year this sum would rapidly be increased; and what was his, Herr Sanin's income?
'It wouldn't, really, she added with a smile. Sanin made no reply, and reflected that considering the emptiness of his purse, he would have no choice about remaining in Frankfort till he got an answer from a friend in Berlin, to whom he proposed writing for money. 'Yes, do stay, urged Frau Lenore too. 'We will introduce you to Mr. Karl Klueber, who is engaged to Gemma.
The whole way home Herr Klueber discoursed ... and he discoursed alone; no one, absolutely no one, opposed him, nor did any one agree with him. He especially insisted on the point that they had been wrong in not following his advice when he suggested dining in a shut-up summer-house. There no unpleasantness could have occurred!
He began to hurry Sanin, telling him that there was not a minute to lose.... And Herr Klueber did, in fact, find Sanin still at his toilet. He knocked at the door, came in, bowed with a bend from the waist, expressed his readiness to wait as long as might be desired, and sat down, his hat balanced elegantly on his knees.
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