There are occasions – yes there are such occasions! – when all consolation is base and it is a duty to despair. Isn’t there a noble Greek who knows how to paint heroes who nonetheless does not disdain, when his heroes are overwhelmed with grief, to let them weep? He even has a proverb which says: Men who give way easily to tears are good. I have nothing to do with those whose hearts are dry and whose eyes are dry! My curse on the happy who see in the unhappy no more than a spectacle to be watched. Let a man be tortured, physically and mentally tortured, in the cruellest way imaginable, still he is supposed to bear himself bravely so as to win their applause and so that when he dies they will go on applauding him, as if he were a gladiator perishing with decorum in the arena. My dear Mittler, I am grateful for your visit, but you would be doing me a great favour if you would disappear for a while and take a walk round the garden or the valley. Come back again later. I will try to be more composed and more like yourself.’

But Mittler preferred continuing the conversation to breaking it off, because he felt he would not find it very easy to resume. Eduard too was not really averse to continuing and the conversation was in any event moving, if painfully, towards its objective.

‘Thinking round and round and talking back and forth is of no help, that I know,’ said Eduard. ‘But it was only as we were talking that I came to know my own mind, that I felt quite definitely what I ought to do; what I had in fact already decided to do. I see my life before me as it is now and as it will be. My only choice is between misery and happiness. My dear chap, I want you to help me get a divorce. That is what I need and that is what has already in effect taken place. Get Charlotte to agree to it. I won’t go into why I think she will be amenable. Go to her, my dear fellow, set all our minds at rest, make us happy again!’

Mittler faltered. Eduard went on: ‘My fate and Ottilie’s are inseparable, and we shall not perish. Look at this cup! Our initials are cut into it. At a moment of rejoicing a man threw it into the air, nobody was to drink out of it again, it was to shatter on the stony ground, but it was caught before it could fall. For a high price I bought it back and now I drink out of it every day, so that every day it tells me that when fate has decreed something that thing is indestructible.’

‘Heaven help us,’ cried Mittler, ‘but what forbearance my friends demand of me! Superstition is it now? Is that the latest? I abominate it, it is the worst thing that ever plagued the human race. We play with prophecies, intuitions and dreams, and use them to try to give some significance to everyday life. But when life has for once got some real significance of its own, when everything buffets and blows about us, these ghosts and spirits only serve to make the storm blow harder.’

‘Leave the needy heart,’ cried Eduard, ‘tossed as it is between hope and dread in the uncertainty of this life, some guiding star it may look up to even if it cannot steer by it.’

‘That would be all very well,’ Mittler replied, ‘if only people who believe in such things would show some consistency. But I have always noticed that no one pays any attention to warning or admonitory signs, the only signs that are believed in or paid attention to are fair and flattering ones.’

Since Mittler could see he was being led into mystic regions in which he felt the more uncomfortable the longer he stayed, he was now somewhat more disposed to accede to Eduard’s urgent desire he should go to Charlotte. Why should he oppose it? His own objective must now be to gain time so as to find out what the women were thinking and doing.

He hurried to Charlotte and found her, as usual, cheerful and composed. She was glad to tell him of all that had happened: from Eduard he had been able to gather only the effect of what had happened. He cautiously advanced his own view of the matter, but could not bring himself to utter the word divorce even in passing. He was therefore very surprised and astonished and in his own fashion exhilarated when, after so much disagreeableness, Charlotte concluded by saying: ‘I must believe and hope that all will be well again and that Eduard will come back again. How can it be otherwise, since you find me in a certain condition.’

‘Do I understand you aright?’ Mittler interjected. ‘Perfectly,’ Charlotte replied. ‘A thousand blessings on this news!’ he cried, clapping his hands.