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Updated: July 29, 2025
The Commissionsrath was much alarmed and exercised in his mind, for Tussmann had never come in upon him at such an hour, and his manner and appearance clearly indicated that something most remarkable had been happening. "What, in the name of Heaven, is the matter with you?" Bosswinkel cried. "Where have you been? What have you been up to? You look like I don't know what!"
"Hm!" said the Goldsmith, "there's something queer, too, which I want to speak to you about. I was at the Thiergarten just before I came here, and I found your old friend and schoolfellow, Tussmann, going to jump into the water because Albertine wouldn't have anything to say to him.
Only rid me of this terrible enchantment as you can, if you choose. 'Tussmann! he said, in that awful hollow voice of his, 'nothing shall annoy you more, if you will take your solemn oath, here where we stand, to give up all idea of marrying Miss Albertine Bosswinkel. Commissionsrath! you may fancy what I felt when this atrocious proposition was made to me.
Don't, I merely say, forget to tell your friend about them!" "Yes, yes," Tussmann said; "of course you mean those terrible witchcraft trials which took place in those old days. Ah! they were atrocious businesses; fortunately the enlightenment of the present age has altered all those things."
"What?" cried the goldsmith, furiously "what business have you with Miss Albertine Bosswinkel?" "My dear sir!" said Tussmann, timidly "good gracious! My dear friend, she is the very lady whom I have made up my mind to marry!" "Good God, sir!" the goldsmith cried, with a face as red as a furnace, and eyes glaring with anger; "you must be out of your reason altogether.
Tussmann saw Albertine grow up from childhood; and, on her twelfth birthday, after presenting her with a bouquet, the finest that money could procure from the first florist in Berlin, kissed her hand for the first time with an amount of courtesy and ceremonious deference which no one would have supposed him to be capable of.
Tussmann, too, thanked him, with tears of the most heartfelt emotion, for making him the happiest of men by this most rare and wonderful of all rare and wonderful books; and, after the most profuse expenditure of politeness to Albertine, Edmund, and the old Goldsmith, he followed the Baron as quickly as ever he could.
Bosswinkel ran up and down the room like a lunatic, crying over and over again, "It's all over with me; I am a miserable man, a ruined Commissionsrath. O Lord, if I only could get the girl off my shoulders; the devil take the whole lot of them, Lehsen, and Benjie, and my old Tussmann into the bargain." "Now," said the Goldsmith, "there is one way of getting out of all this mess."
And he bethought himself that he might have seen at the first glance that the stranger could not possibly be an ordinary Privy Councillor, seeing that he had on an antique mantle, collar, and barret cap, such as Privy Councillors never went about in nowadays. Leonhard and Tussmann sat down at the same table with the old Jew, who received them with a grinning kind of smile.
Over and above all this, Albertine came to the front, and declared, of her own motion, having evidently completely made up her mind on the subject declared, we say, with the utmost distinctness, that she loved Edmund more than words could express, and would never marry either that insufferable and unendurable old pedant of a Tussmann, or that equally not-to-be-heard-of beast of a Baron Benjamin.
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