Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Niebeldingk was about to interfere with some reconciling remark when he observed, to his astonishment, that Alice who, as a rule, was bitterly hostile to all strident unconventionality, had taken no offence. "Let him be, Niebeldingk," she said. "As far as he is concerned he is, doubtless, in the right.
I'm sorry for the poor fellow for being mixed up in such a stupid mess, but I can't help him." "Why do you feel sorry for him?" the old gentleman asked. "He's as good a marksman as you are." "Assuredly," Niebeldingk returned. "Assuredly a better one.... Only it won't come to that." He conducted his visitor with great ceremony into the outer hall.
Niebeldingk, according to his promise, remained at home until sunset for three boresome days. On the morning of the fourth he wrote a letter to the excellent old gentleman telling him that he was tired of waiting and requesting an immediate settlement of the business in question. Thereupon he received the following answer: "SIR:
Early on the evening of the next day Meta reappeared. She was dressed in sombre black. She wept persistently and made preparations to stay. Niebeldingk gave her to understand that, in the first place, he had no more time for her that evening, and that, in the second place, she would do well to go home at a proper hour and spare herself the reproaches of her mother.
It was seven o'clock in the morning when Herr von Niebeldingk opened the iron gate and stepped into the front garden whose wall of blossoming bushes separated the house from the street. The sun of a May morning tinted the greyish walls with gold, and caused the open window-panes to flash with flame.
And do you suppose that she may have other, that is to say, financial aims, while she " The old gentleman looked at him with great scared eyes. "How do you mean?" he said and crushed the brown handkerchief in his hollow hand. "Well, well, well," Niebeldingk quieted him and poured a reconciling second glass of wine. But he wasn't to be bribed.
As for Alice, she treated her young guest with a smiling, motherly care which was new in her and which filled Niebeldingk with quiet pleasure.... On other occasions she had assumed toward young men a tone of wise, faint interest which meant clearly: "I will exhaust your possibilities and then drop you."
"Dear Herr von Niebeldingk, it's a rotten farce. For nine years the gymnasium trains you and drills you, and in the end you don't get your trouble's worth! I'm sorry for every hour of cramming I did. They released me from the oral exam., simply sent me out like a monkey when I was just beginning to let my light shine! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Did you ever?"
It was upon this occasion, however, that some beneficent chance assigned to Niebeldingk a sighing blonde who remained at his side all evening. Her name was Meta, she belonged to one of the "best families" of Posen, she lived in Berlin with her mother who kept a boarding house for ladies of the theatre.
No acquaintance had run into them, no waiter had intimated any suspicion, the very cabby who drove them through the dawn had preserved his stupid lack of expression when Niebeldingk suddenly sprang from the vehicle and permitted the lady to be driven on alone....
Word Of The Day
Others Looking