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Updated: June 29, 2025
After gazing for a while into the light of the fluttering candles, Jordan said: “I thank you, Philippina, I thank you. You are a real benefactress. I also thank you for remembering the child. It is a paltry makeshift you have bought there at the bazaar, but any one who gives gifts to children deserves the reward of Heaven, and in such giving we do not weigh the value or count the cost.”
“Does the sanctimonious clerk still live here?” asked Daniel, looking up at the crooked old stairway, while a flood of memories came rushing over him. “Thank God, no!” snarled Philippina. “He’d be the last straw. I feel sick at the stomach when I see a man.” Daniel again looked into her detestable, ugly, distorted, and wicked face.
An ineluctable voice put her on her guard. In so far as she could do it without grievously offending Philippina, she withdrew from further association with her. And even if she had not promised her absolute silence, a feeling half of fear and half of shame would have prevented her from ever mentioning Philippina’s name in Daniel’s presence.
In the hall some people were whispering. Martha Rübsam and her husband had come in. Martha was crying. Her slender figure with her pale face appeared in the doorway; she looked around for Daniel. “Don’t you want to see your Eleanore before the coffin is closed?” asked Philippina in a hollow voice. He never moved; the twitchings of his face were terrible to behold.
The church stands here, a noble sombre place, with the Silver Chapel of Philippina Wessler adjoining it, and in front the fresh cool avenues that lead to the river and the broad water-meadows, and the grand road bordered with the painted stations of the Cross.
“Good-night, then, you pesky old dormouse,” said Dorothea, in seemingly good-natured banter, and left the room. Hardly had she closed the door behind her when Philippina sprang like an enraged demon from her bed, clenched her fist, and hissed: “Damned thief and whore! She wanted to rob me, that’s what she did, the dirty wench! You wait! Your days in this place are numbered.
Dance with me, Eleanore; don’t be afraid, come, dance with me!” He threw his arms around her, pressed her to his bosom, sang a waltz melody, and drew the struggling and embarrassed girl across the floor. Philippina broke out in her slimy, malicious laughter, and then shrieked at the top of her voice that Frau Kirschner was outside and wanted to see the Kapellmeister’s wife.
Daniel moved his piano into the living room, and did all his work there. Philippina and Agnes remained in the room next to the kitchen. Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancy price for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her flowers in Daniel’s presence, or even near him; she did this in the old room up next to the roof.
Philippina was the mistress of the house. She went to the market, paid the bills, superintended the cook and the washwoman, and rejoiced with exceeding great and fiendish joy when she saw how rapidly everything was going downhill, downhill irresistibly and as sure as your life. As the time approached for Dorothea’s confinement she very rarely left the house.
Willibald was living in Breslau, where he had a poorly paid position as a bookkeeper and was just barely making ends meet. Markus was good for nothing, and head over heels in debt. Philippina thought the matter over for a moment, and then told her father to wait. She went upstairs. Jason Philip waited at the door, whistling softly.
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