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Updated: May 6, 2025
When I did, I could scarcely help feeling sorry for the unfortunate schemer, although in truth he richly deserved the disappointment he had met. Never was there a more glaring instance of excess of cunning over-reaching itself, for no deception had been practised by Madame Sendel and her daughter.
Madame Sendel released my arm, and letting herself fall upon a chair with an hysterical giggle, closed her eyes and seemed preparing for a comfortable swoon. Her daughter hastened to her assistance and untied her bonnet; Van Haubitz grasped a decanter of water and made an alarming demonstration of emptying it upon the full-moon countenance of his respectable mother-in-law.
Retreat was impossible, for he saw me directly; and after handing out Madame Sendel and her daughter, seized me vehemently by both hands. "Delighted to see you!" he cried; "I wish you had been a day sooner. We were married yesterday," he added in a hurried voice, drawing me aside. "Have left Homburg, paid every thing there, and leave this to-morrow for Heaven knows where.
I will explain. La Sendel, you must know, has just terminated her last engagement, which was at a salary of ten thousand florins. She has already received and accepted an offer of a new one, at fifteen thousand, from the Vienna theatre. Vienna is a very pleasant place. Fifteen thousand florins are thirty-two thousand francs, or twelve hundred of your English pounds sterling.
So I remained; after a while he became calmer, and we talked over various plans for the future. By my suggestion, Madame Sendel and her daughter were invited to the conference. The old lady was sulky and frightened, and would hardly open her lips; Emilie, on the other hand, made a more favourable impression on me than she had ever previously done.
Sendel Senior, having only the innkeeper's report to rely upon, would have had her ungenerous suspicions re-awakened by my precipitation, and have instituted further inquiries; have written, probably, to some friend in Holland, and learned that the pretender to her daughter's hand, although unquestionably a son of the wealthy banker Van Haubitz, is excluded beyond redemption from the good graces of that respectable pillar of Dutch finance, who has further announced his irrevocable determination to take not the slightest notice of him in his testamentary dispositions.
The trap was too cunningly set to prove a failure; the birds are fairly snared, and tonight, when we take our usual romantic stroll, I shall raise the fair Sendel to the seventh heaven of happiness by asking her to become Madame Van Haubitz."
So after hazarding the fruitless hint with which the reader was made acquainted at the commencement of this narrative, I abstained from all further intermeddling, and retired to my apartment, leaving Van Haubitz to con the declaration with which he was that evening to rejoice the ears of the fair and too-confiding Sendel.
Mamma Sendel had bestowed her blessing upon the happy pair, and in the ardour of her maternal accolades had nearly extinguished her future son-in-law's left ogle with the wire stalk of an artificial passion-flower. The first burst of benevolence over, and the effervescence of feeling a little subsided, the bridegroom elect, who could not afford delays, pressed for an early day.
Truly, thought I, it is humbling to us, the bearded and baser moiety of humankind, to contrast our vile egotism with the beautiful self-devotion of woman, as exhibited even in this poor actress. Madame Sendel by no means acquiesced in her daughter's project. The flesh-pots of Amsterdam had attractions for her, far superior to those of a struggling and uncertain existence at Vienna.
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