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Updated: June 22, 2025
I'll explain it all to you later, but we must go now; it can't be helped." Antonie listened attentively, but it required more than such an announcement to stir her from her wonted repose, and the declaration that it was nothing of moment, satisfied her. "But will Willibald have to go, too?" she asked, without any special eagerness. "Can not he remain?"
"But, grandpapa, will you not introduce me to this gentleman?" "Certainly, my child. Herr Willibald von Eschenhagen of Burgsdorf " "Toni's betrothed!" interrupted Marietta delighted. "O, how comical that we should meet each other for the first time in the mud. If I had known who it was I would not have treated you so cavalierly, Herr von Eschenhagen.
But at this critical moment something unexpected happened. Willibald stepped forward and said, half reproachfully: "But, mother " "Is it you, Will? What are you doing here?" asked his mother, to whom this interruption was anything but pleasant. Willibald understood full well that his mother had been ungracious, and he usually retreated as quickly as possible when he found her in a bad humor.
"You sneered at me, Moritz, when I warned you your child would suffer from association with an actress. That such a thing as this could happen never entered my head until the moment when I discovered that Willibald, my own, only son, was in love with this Marietta Volkmar. I tore him from the danger and returned at once to Burgsdorf. That was the reason of our sudden flight.
During his leisure hours Willibald had to read to her, either from the newspapers or from trashy novels. When she was alone she lay perfectly quiet and stared at the ceiling. The time finally came when Willibald left school. He went to Fürth, where he was employed as an apprentice by a manufacturer.
Toni, who had not observed how attentively he was gazing at her friend, now said good-naturedly: "Yes, Will, do go. You'll be wearied to death with our gossip, and I'm not half through yet I have a great deal to tell Marietta." "As you will, dear Toni," answered her lover, hesitatingly. "But I may come back again?" "Of course, whenever you wish." Willibald went.
Willibald, of course, was horror stricken at what he heard, and agreed fully with his mother that his future wife must be protected from so contaminating an influence. He received orders never to let the young girls be alone, and to watch carefully how this Marietta behaved.
The coachman seemed to be in anything but a happy frame of mind. He turned now in his seat, and said to the traveler, of whom Willibald had not caught a glimpse: "Now really Fräulein, we can go no farther. I told you before that we couldn't get through here, and now you see for yourself how the wheels stick in the mud its a pretty piece of business."
Willibald stood like one in whose ears heavy thunder is echoing. He had felt most keenly the injustice of his mother's scathing remarks, and was trying in his timid way, to do what he could to make amends and show his good will, and here he was being soundly rated for his pains. He stood and stared at her without speaking, and his silence incensed the girl still more.
The young heir was no longer a "weak tool," as his uncle Schönau had called him, but a brave, determined, genuine man. "Our former meetings have been but fleeting," the prince went on, "so you must forgive the liberty if I offer you my congratulations; you are betrothed, I believe to " "I believe your highness is laboring under a mistake," Willibald interrupted him, with some embarrassment.
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