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Updated: June 2, 2025
And looking at my Hermann's heavy, puffy, good-natured face, I knew he would not exert himself till greatly exasperated, and, therefore, would thrash very hard, and being fat would resent the necessity. How Falk had managed to turn the girl's head was more difficult to understand. I supposed Hermann would know. And then hadn't there been Miss Vanlo?
Next morning, however, he was lively enough as man-boat, a combination of splashing and shouting; of the insolent commotion below with the steady overbearing glare of the silent head-piece above. He turned us out most unnecessarily at an ungodly hour, but it was nearly eleven in the morning before he brought me up a cable's length from Hermann's ship.
Hermann drew from his pocket a bank-note and handed it to Chekalinsky, who, after examining it in a cursory manner, placed it on Hermann's card. He began to deal. On the right a nine turned up, and on the left a three. "I have won!" said Hermann, showing his card. A murmur of astonishment arose among the players. Chekalinsky frowned, but the smile quickly returned to his face.
On these occasions Hermann's usual stare became positively glassy and Mrs. Hermann's kind countenance would colour up. The girl herself never turned a hair. Falk was a Dane or perhaps a Norwegian, I can't tell now. At all events he was a Scandinavian of some sort, and a bloated monopolist to boot. It is possible he was unacquainted with the word, but he had a clear perception of the thing itself.
The tiny white curtains and the greenery of flower pots behind the glass completed the resemblance. On one or two occasions when passing under stern I had detected from my boat a round arm in the act of tilting a watering pot, and the bowed sleek head of a maiden whom I shall always call Hermann's niece, because as a matter of fact I've never heard her name, for all my intimacy with the family.
"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though not very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Bailey," a woman and the bottle have been the cause of Hermann's ruin.
He is dead!" softly. "God's will be done!" But Hermann's face turned lighter. "As a boy he loved you." "And did I not love him?" said Hermann fiercely. "Did I not worship that boy, who was to me more like a son than a brother? Had not all the brothers and sisters died but he? But you who are you to recall these things?" "I knew your brother; I knew him well. He was not a scoundrel; only weak.
The inconvenience, the damage, the expense! Gottferdam! Devil take the fellow. Behind the bar Schomberg with a cigar in his teeth, pretended to be writing with a pencil on a large sheet of paper; and as Hermann's excitement increased it made me comfortingly aware of my own calmness and superiority.
But as to Hermann's determination to go to Germany, which made this so terribly real, since it was beginning to enter into practical everyday life, he had neither means nor indeed desire to combat it. He saw perfectly clearly that Hermann must go. "I don't want to dissuade you," he said, "not only because it would be useless, but because I am with you. You couldn't do otherwise, Hermann."
And when in the earlier hours of the morning part of the guests had gone away, and part were broiling ham in the kitchen, Sylvia sang again, quite seriously, and Michael, in Hermann's absence, volunteered to play her accompaniment for her. She stood behind him, and by a finger on his shoulder directed him in the way she would have him go.
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