For a long time now I have wanted to have the estate and the neighbourhood surveyed; he will take care of that. You intend to administer the estate yourself in the future, as soon as the leases of the present tenants have expired. That is a hazardous undertaking! We should benefit very much from his instruction! I feel only too well how I lack a man of his sort. The country people possess the knowledge, but the information they give is confused and not honest. The people from the town who have studied the subject are clear and straightforward, but they lack direct discernment in this particular business. I promise myself both from our friend; and I can imagine a hundred other circumstances which will then arise which will concern you too and from which I anticipate much good. You have listened very patiently; now tell me what you have to say, don’t be afraid to speak freely and to the purpose: I shan’t interrupt.’

‘Very well then,’ Charlotte replied, ‘I will begin with a general observation. Men think more of individual and present things, and rightly, because they are called upon to be active, while women, on the other hand, think more of what is continuous in life, and they are equally right, because their fate and the fate of their families is tied to this continuity and it is precisely this feeling for continuity that is demanded of them. So let us take a look at our present and past life; you will then grant me that to call the Captain here does not coincide so closely with our intentions, our plans or our arrangements as you have maintained.

‘I like so very much to think back to when we first knew one another! When we were young we loved very dearly. We were parted: you from me, because your father, from an insatiable craving for possessions, married you to a somewhat older wealthy woman; I from you, because having no special prospects, I had to give my hand to a well-to-do man I did not love, though he had my respect. We became free again; you earlier, when your little mother left you in possession of a considerable fortune; I later, just at the time you came back from your travels. And so we found one another again. We rejoiced at what we remembered, loved what we remembered, and there was nothing to hinder our living together. You urged marriage; I did not consent at once for, since we are about the same age, I have grown older as a woman, you have not grown older as a man. In the end I would not refuse you what you seemed to consider your only happiness. You wanted to recover at my side from all the distresses you had experienced at court, in the army, on your travels; to come to yourself again, to enjoy life; but to do this with me alone. I sent my only daughter off to a boarding-school, where she is, to be sure, developing in many more directions than she would have if she had stayed in the country; and not her alone, I also sent there my dear niece Ottilie, who might perhaps have grown up into a domestic companion more suitably under my own guidance. All this took place with your agreement, simply so that we ourselves might live and enjoy undisturbed the happiness we had earlier longed for so intensely and later at last attained. Thus did we enter upon our sojourn in the country. I took charge of affairs indoors, you of affairs outdoors and of whatever affected us as a whole. I have ordered my life to meet your wishes in all things, to live only for you; let us try, at least for a time, to see whether we cannot in this way suffice one another.’

‘Since, as you say, continuity is your real element,’ Eduard replied, ‘we ought not to pay attention to you when you call upon individual instances, nor give in to you without argument, though you may have been right before today. The foundation we have laid for our existence is a good one; but are we to build nothing more on it? Is nothing else to develop from it? What I have achieved in the garden, and you in the park – shall we have done that only for hermits?’

‘That is all very true,’ Charlotte replied; ‘only do not let us bring in any impediment. Remember that our pleasures too were intended to a certain extent to depend on our being alone together. You wanted first of all to show me your travel journals in correct sequence and in so doing to reduce to order all the papers that belong with them, and with my support and assistance to assemble out of these invaluable but muddled leaves and notebooks a whole which we and others might enjoy. I promised to help you copy them out, and we thought to travel in memory, and in comfortable seclusion, through the world we were unable to see together. Indeed, we have already made a start. Then you have taken up your flute again in the evenings and I join you at the piano; and we do not lack visitors or people to visit. I at least have made for myself out of all this the first truly happy summer of my life, as happy as any I thought to enjoy.’

‘That is very loving and sensible,’ Eduard replied, rubbing his forehead, ‘and I would agree with it were it not for the thought that the Captain’s presence will disturb nothing, but rather expedite and enliven everything. He was with me on some of my travels, and he too noticed many things and in his own way: only if we employed his recollections with mine would it become a proper whole.’

‘In that case,’ Charlotte said, somewhat impatiently, ‘let me confess in all sincerity that this proposal goes against my feelings. I have a premonition that no good will come of it.’

‘Granted this fashion of argument,’ Eduard replied, ‘you women would be invincible: first sensible, so that one cannot contradict; affectionate, so that one is glad to give in; sensitive, so that one does not want to hurt you; full of premonitions, so that one is frightened.’

‘I am not superstitious,’ Charlotte replied, ‘and would pay no attention to these obscure stirrings if that was all they were; but mostly they are instinctive recollections of the happy or unhappy consequences of our own or other people’s past actions.