Hermann Sudermann

“ Old Krakow blustered, the Baroness smiled a fine melancholy smile, and Iolanthe made eyes at me.
Yes, gentlemen, made eyes at me. You may be at the time of life when that sort of thing happens to you none too rarely. But just you get to be well on in your forties, conscious to the very depths of your soul of your fatness and baldness, and you'll see how grateful you'll be even to a housemaid or a barmaid for taking the trouble to ogle you. And a thousand times more so if she happens to be one of the élite like this one, a creature allowed to walk this earth by God's grace. ”

“ But gradually the storm in my soul subsided, and when it struck twelve and you, with a sleepy look in your eyes, came in to wish us a Happy New Year, I felt as though that instant of sin lay far, far behind me, in an era long past.
"From that time on I became calmer. I knew she did not return my love and I had nothing to hope for from her but compassion. The years went by. Your children grew up and married. We three grew old. You gave up sowing wild oats and lived for only the one woman, like myself. I did not stop loving her. No, that was impossible. But my love took on other forms. ”

“ He started.
"What an ugly notion!" he said dully.
"Ugly, perhaps, but all the truer," she replied, plucking at the tablecloth with palsied fingers. "We must not surrender to self-deception. This moment determines our future. It lies within our power to decide which way we shall go. You know that--I--love you--and that--I am lonely. So have pity on me. Spare me suffering. I should like to mean as much in your life as I always have."
"You are to mean more in my life, not less!" he cried, putting his hands to his forehead. ”

“ In that look my whole future--an existence of suspicion, and dread and gloom and ridicule, full of grey days and sleepless nights--lay unrolled before me like a map.
What was I to do, gentlemen?
My impulse was to take her by the hand and say to him, "She's yours, my boy. I have no longer any right over her."
But please put yourselves in my position. A look is something intangible and undemonstrable. It may be denied with a smile. ”

“ But nature punishes lying. When friendship between a man and a woman ends in love, either the friendship or the love is not true. And woe, woe if the friendship has not been friendship but love.
Apropos of this--do you happen to remember the portrait of a woman that created such a stir at the exhibition two or three years ago and brought the painter so much fame and so many orders? A frail figure, almost too frail, in a simple black velvet dress. A thin suffering face, a pale forehead with the crown on it of the quiet aristocracy of thought. ”

“ You stand with your feet planted in the upturned earth, and twirl your moustache and look stupid, while you feel like crying the soul out of your body.
He was dead--there was no use wishing he weren't.
In him was lost the greatest genius for concocting and mixing punches, cocktails, grogs, cobblers--every sort of drink. I tell you, gentlemen, when you went walking in the country with him and he began to draw the air in through his nose in his peculiar fashion, you might be sure he had just conceived a new idea for a punch. ”

“ My shirt bosom stiff as a board, necktie too short, everything awful.
About two o'clock I drove to the bride's home, where the wedding was to be celebrated.
And now, gentlemen, comes a dream, or rather a nightmare, with all the sensations of choking, of being strangled, of sinking into a pit.
And yet full of happy moments, when I thought, "Everything will be all right. You have your good heart and your fine intentions. You will spread a carpet for her to tread on. She will walk the earth like a queen and never notice her chains." ”

“ My two ancient gentlemen sat half in the dimness cast by the green shade. Mouldy ruins they were of a time long past, each tremulously sunk in himself and each staring into space with the dim eyes and the dull look of old age. The one, the host, was a military man, as was clear at first glance from his closefitting stock, his pointed moustache, shaved off under the points, and his eyebrows knitted in a martial frown. ”

“ Not myself--I was what they call the happiest mortal in the world. Lothar? Perhaps. The poor fellow had looked on me as his second father, and I was removing the ground from beneath his feet by going over bag and baggage to the enemy's camp.
So that was the way I kept the promise I had made my old friend Pütz on his deathbed.
Gentlemen, any of you who, under the pressure of circumstances, have found yourselves in the council of the wicked--that thing happens once in his life to every good man--will understand me. ”

“ Gentlemen, take off your hats! I stood there as if somebody had knocked me on the head. A thoroughbred, gentlemen, a thoroughbred! A figure like a young queen's, her hair loose, in a thousand wavelets and ringlets, golden brown, like the mane of a Barbary steed. Her throat full, white and voluptuous. Her bosom not too high, and broad and curving at the sides. In a horse, we call it a lion's chest. And when she breathed, her whole body seemed to breathe along with her lungs, so strongly did the air pulsate through that glorious young body. ”

“ Gentlemen, have you ever tickled a badger? I mean a tame or a half-tame one? When he blinks at you with his sleepy little eyes, half suspicious, half pleased, and keeps on snarling softly? That's just the way the old fellow behaved. ”

“ People come to you with hard-luck stories, you're a butt for their jokes, they blarney you and borrow from you. If once you make a timid attempt to defend yourself, then they say, "Why I thought you were a good fellow!" So you can't get out of it. You are and you remain a good fellow. You've been stamped and sealed.
And then you, a good fellow, want to take up with women? With women, who languish for the Mephistophelean, who, to love properly, want to be deserted, duped, and generally maltreated. ”

“ Mademoiselle's headache came at the very opportune moment, and the French lesson was dispensed with. Feverish with joy and excitement, I sat at the breakfast table waiting for him to go by. My pockets were stuffed with goodies of all sorts, which I had wheedled out of Mademoiselle, and beside me lay the switch, which I looked forward to swinging that day in the strict fulfilment of my duty.
Ah, there he was coming. His blue eyes glanced up at me slily as he bellowed his "Good mornin' to you" at us; and the instant I could slip away without attracting attention I was off after him. ”

“ I know men whose whole life goes in the service of a family with which they have become friendly, men who pass their days without desire beside a lovely woman whom they secretly adore.
You are sceptical? Oh, it is the "without desire" that you object to? You may be right. In the depths of even the tamest heart there probably lurks a wild desire, but a desire--it is understood--that is held in check.
I should like to give you an example and tell you of a conversation that two ancient gentlemen had with each other this very New Year's eve. ”

“ There was only one chief mourner--what the world calls chief mourner--his son, a dragoon of the Guards in Berlin. Lothar was his name. He had come from Berlin on the day of his father's death, and he behaved like a good son, kissed his father's hands, cried a good deal, thanked me gratefully, and did a dreadful lot of ordering around--a lieutenant, you know--when all of a sudden--well, I was there--and we had arranged everything. ”

“ My physician recommended the country and pine-needle baths, and so I was bundled on to the train and transported to my brother's estate.
I must have presented a pretty pitiful spectacle, because when I reached the house and was lifted out of the carriage, I saw tears in the old domestics' eyes.
It is a peculiar feeling to know you are back home again after long wanderings, especially if you have gone through as much trouble as I had. A rare softness takes hold of you, and you try to blot out forever the joy and the suffering imposed by an alien world. ”

“ My whole body quivered. Never before had a woman been so close to me. But I held on to myself and spoke to her comfortingly. She so needed comforting. Soon after, you came back. You did not notice my confusion. Your cheeks were flushed and there was a love-drunken weariness in your eyes.
"That New Year's eve produced a change in me, which filled me with alarm. Since I had felt her soft arms around my neck and had drawn in the perfume of her hair, the star had fallen from heaven, and instead of the star it was the woman,the woman, beautiful, and breathing love. ”

“ To be brief, gentlemen, I was irresistible.
But the wall of mist kept sinking deeper and deeper. It was like in mountain regions, where first the highest summits disappear and then little by little the mountain side, one ledge after another.
First the lights in the candelabra got reddish halos round them. They looked like small suns in a vapoury atmosphere with rainbow rays radiating from them. Then gradually everybody sitting behind the candelabra talking and rattling forks disappeared from sight and sound. ”

“ Gentlemen, put yourself in my place. A beautiful young woman, a perfect Venus, throwing herself at me out of pride and despair, and I, a good, corpulent gentleman in the late forties. Was it not a sort of sacrilege to snatch up and carry off a bit of good fortune like that? ”

“ Gentlemen, you don't have to go in for breeding animals as a passionate pursuit to know how much toil and effort it costs to produce a perfect specimen, no matter of what species. And I'm not a woman connoisseur, and one doesn't have to be, to fold one's hands at the sight of so perfect a creature and pray, "O Lord, I thank Thee for allowing such a thing to walk the earth. For as long as such bodies are created we need have no fear for our souls." ”

“ In love affairs you can never get at the truth."
"Why not?" I asked. "Don't you think it ever happens that two human beings like each other and say so--quite simply--without design or ulterior motives?"
"Like each other--like each other," she said tauntingly. "Are you such an icicle that you translate 'love' by 'like'?"
"Unfortunately, whether I am an icicle or not no longer matters," I answered.
"You're a noble-hearted man," she said, and looked at me sidewise, a bit coquettishly. "Everything you think comes out as straight as if shot from a pistol." ”

“ Many people have a contract for a number of years, for life even, and it's a good snug berth that love falls into in homey dwelling-places like that. But the giddy creatures, the butterflies--if one may speak of butterflies at New Year--the ones that have been evicted and all the others who are looking for new quarters either out of choice or out of necessity--you see them preparing at New Year's time for moving in or moving out. ”

“ I do believe it was invented by the devil especially for the annoyance of us bachelors, to impress upon us the dreariness of our homeless lives. The thing that is a source of delight to others is a torture to us. Of course, of course, we're not all of us lonely. The joy of bestowing joy blooms for most of us, too. But the pure pleasure of sharing pleasure with others is embittered partly by a dose of ironical self-criticism, partly by that acid yearning which I might call, instead of homesickness, marriage-sickness. ”

“ People are nice and amiable to you and then, just when something threatens to go wrong, they turn on you snapping and snarling.
However that may be, I gradually got rid of my feeling of shame, and behaved as if I had a right to so much youth and beauty.
My old sister's attitude was touching, even though she was the only one whom my marriage would directly injure. On my wedding day she was to retire from Ilgenstein to be shelved at Gorowen, a family home of ours for maiden ladies and dowagers. ”

“ At the edge of the woods was a marsh with gleaming puddles of greyish yellow, thickish water. The refuse of the geese floated on the surface, and roundabout on the ground--so moist that great bubbles gushed up between the clumps of grass--were thousands of fine tracks of the geese's feet, making the whole spot look like a patterned rug. ”

“ I have no personal feelings against Lothar Pütz. On the contrary, I'm told he is a magnificent fellow, a smart rider, a dashing young sport. But my dear man, I'll give you a good piece of advice. You're going to have a young girl for your wife. If she were not my own daughter and so raised above suspicion, I should suggest, 'Pick a quarrel with him, make him your enemy, insist upon payment of old loans instead of making a new one.' Nothing so sure as a sure thing, you know."
Gentlemen, until then I had taken him humorously, but from that moment on I hated him. ”

“ Gentlemen, I had a bed--and still have it--a perfectly ordinary bed, as narrow as a coffin, of pine, stained red--no springs, no mattress--a deerskin instead. Twice a year it is filled with fresh straw. That was the extent of my luxury. Gentlemen, there are many stories about the poor camp cots of persons in high life. ”

“ They glitter and glisten, and all you can say when you look at them is "By Jingo!" Yet they are rotten and mouldy. There are hearts in the ascending and descending scale, hearts of which the better is more hopeless than the much, much worse, because the worse improves while the other gradually declines. Well, and so on.
The Krakowitz yard was a little of all this. Bright, clean barns, miserable wagons, fine drains for the stables, but the stalls badly placed. An air of whimsicality about the whole place, with a touch of stinginess or lack of means. ”

“ Already I had disposed of the second bottle of the thin Rhine wine and began to swell like a balloon.
I looked around for Lothar, who had inherited from his father a scent for everything drinkable, but he had been seated somewhere downstairs.
Then I was saved by a toast, which gave me a chance to stand up. On my rounds I discovered a small but select company of sherry bottles which the old man had hidden behind a curtain.
I picked up two of them quickly and started to pour courage into me. It was a slow process but it succeeded. I can stand a good deal, you know, gentlemen. ”