‘Just give it to me!’ Ottilie cried suddenly.

‘You will not be able to get it finished,’ said Charlotte.

‘I would have to have it the day after tomorrow, first thing, and there is a lot to copy,’ said Eduard. ‘It shall be ready,’ Ottilie cried. She already had the paper in her hands.

Next morning, as they were looking out of the upper floor windows so as not to miss seeing their guests arrive and going to meet them, Eduard said: ‘Who is that riding so slowly down the road?’ The Captain described the figure in more detail. ‘Then it is him,’ said Eduard. ‘The details, which you can see better than I, accord with the general picture, which I can see very well. It is Mittler. But how does he come to be riding so slowly?’

The figure came closer and it was Mittler. They received him affably as he came slowly up the steps. ‘Why didn’t you come yesterday?’ Eduard called to him.

‘I do not like noisy festivities,’ he replied. ‘But today I come to celebrate my friend’s birthday with you quietly.’

‘But how can you manage to find time?’ Eduard asked, joking.

‘You owe my visit, for what it is worth, to a thought I had yesterday. I spent half the day very pleasantly in a home to which I had brought peace, and then I heard that birthday celebrations were going on over here. I thought to myself: it could be called selfish, when all’s said and done, to enjoy yourself only among people to whom you have brought peace. Why don’t you go for once and enjoy yourself with friends who have never needed peace brought to them because they keep it themselves! No sooner said than done! Here I am, as intended.’

‘Yesterday you would have found a large company here,’ said Charlotte, ‘today you will find only a small one. You will find the Count and the Baroness, with whom you have already had some dealings.’

The strange gentleman the four were welcoming jumped away with the sudden celerity of irritation. He looked round for his hat and switch. ‘An evil star unfailingly appears above me as soon as ever I decide to relax and do myself a favour! But why do I go against my own nature? I ought not to have come, and now I am being driven away. For I will not stay under one roof with that pair. And you watch out for yourselves too: they bring nothing but harm! They are like a leaven that spreads and propagates its own contagion.’

They tried to appease him but tried in vain. ‘Whoever attacks marriage,’ he cried, ‘whoever undermines the basis of all moral society, because that is what it is, by word not to speak of by deed, has me to reckon with. Or if I cannot get the better of him I have nothing further to do with him. Marriage is the beginning and the pinnacle of all culture. It makes the savage gentle, and it gives the most cultivated the best occasion for demonstrating his gentleness. It has to be indissoluble: it brings so much happiness that individual instances of unhappiness do not come into account. And why speak of unhappiness at all? Impatience is what it really is, ever and again people are overcome by impatience, and then they like to think themselves unhappy. Let the moment pass, and you will count yourself happy that what has so long stood firm still stands. As for separation, there can be no adequate grounds for it. The human condition is compounded of so much joy and so much sorrow that it is impossible to reckon how much a husband owes a wife or a wife a husband. It is an infinite debt, it can be paid only in eternity. Marriage may sometimes be an uncomfortable state, I can well believe that, and that is as it should be. Are we not also married to our conscience, and would we not often like to be rid of it because it is more uncomfortable than a husband or a wife could ever be?’

He would probably have gone on talking in this energetic vein for a long time more if the sound of coach horns had not announced the arrival of the Count and the Baroness.