"Let's have a gla.s.s of beer," he said. They sat down at the table and had a gla.s.s of beer.

"It's extraordinary," he began, after a little while, "I never realised before that we've grown old, for we really must have vied with Romeo and Julia as to who should age faster. It's twenty years ago since I heard the opera for the first time. I was a newly fledged undergraduate then, I had many friends and the future smiled at me. I was immensely proud of the first down on my upper lip and my little college cap, and I remember as if it were to-day, the evening when Fritz, Phil and myself went to hear this opera. We had heard 'Faust'

some years before and were great admirers of Gounod's genius. But Romeo beat all our expectations. The music roused our wildest enthusiasm. Now both my friends are dead. Fritz, who was ambitious, was a private secretary when he died, Phil a medical student; I who aspired to the position of a minister of state have to content myself with that of a regimental judge. The years have pa.s.sed by quickly and imperceptibly. Of course I have noticed that the lines under my eyes have grown deeper and that my hair has turned grey at the temples, but I should never have thought that we had travelled so far on the road to the grave."

"Yes, my dear, we've grown old; our children could teach us that. And you must see it in me too, although you don't say anything."

"How can you say that!"

"Oh! I know only too well, my dear," continued the wife, sadly; "I know that I am beginning to lose my good looks, that my hair is growing thin, that I shall soon lose my front teeth...."

"Just consider how quickly everything pa.s.ses away"--interrupted her husband. "It seems to me that one grows old much more rapidly now-a-days, than one used to do. In my father's house Haydn and Mozart were played a great deal, although they were dead long before he was born. And now--now Gounod has grown old-fashioned already! How distressing it is to meet again the ideals of one's youth under these altered circ.u.mstances! And how horrible it is to feel old age approaching!"

He got up and sat down again at the piano; he took the music and turned over the pages as if he were looking for keepsakes, locks of hair, dried flowers and ends of ribbon in the drawer of a writing-table.

His eyes were riveted on the black notes which looked like little birds climbing up and down a wire fencing; but where were the spring songs, the pa.s.sionate protestations, the jubilant avowals of the rosy days of first love? The notes stared back at him like strangers; as if the memory of life's spring-time were grown over with weeds.

Yes, that was it; the strings were covered with dust, the sounding board was dried up, the felt worn away.

A heavy sigh echoed through the room, heavy as if it came from a hollow chest, and then silence fell.

"But all the same, it is strange," the husband said suddenly, "that the glorious prologue is missing in this arrangement. I remember distinctly that there was a prologue with an accompaniment of harps and a chorus which went like this."

He softly hummed the tune, which bubbled up like a stream in a mountain glen; note succeeded note, his face cleared, his lips smiled, the lines disappeared, his fingers touched the keys, and drew from them melodies, powerful, caressing and full of eternal youth, while with a strong and ringing voice he sang the part of the ba.s.s.

His wife started from her melancholy reverie and listened with tears in her eyes.

"What are you singing?" she asked, full of amazement.

"Romeo and Julia! Our Romeo and our Julia!"

He jumped up from the music stool and pushed the music towards his astonished wife.

"Look! This was the Romeo of our uncles and aunts, this was--read it--Bellini! Oh! We are not old, after all!"

The wife looked at the thick, glossy hair of her husband, his smooth brow and flashing eyes, with joy.

"And you? You look like a young girl. We have allowed old Bellini to make fools of us. I felt that something was wrong."

"No, darling, I thought so first."

"Probably you did; that is because you are younger than I am."

"No, you...."

And husband and wife, like a couple of children, laughingly quarrel over the question of which of them is the elder of the two, and cannot understand how they could have discovered lines and grey hairs where there are none.

PROLIFICACY

He was a supernumerary at the Board of Trade and drew a salary of twelve hundred crowns. He had married a young girl without a penny; for love, as he himself said, to be no longer compelled to go to dances and run about the streets, as his friends maintained. But be that as it may, the life of the newly-wedded couple was happy enough to begin with.

"How cheaply married people can live," he said one day, after the wedding was a thing of the past. The same sum which had been barely enough to cover the wants of the bachelor now sufficed for husband and wife. Really, marriage was an excellent inst.i.tution. One had all one's requirements within one's four walls: club, cafe, everything; no more bills of fare, no tips, no inquisitive porter watching one as one went out with one's wife in the morning.

Life smiled at him, his strength increased and he worked for two.

Never in all his life had he felt so full of overflowing energy; he jumped out of bed as soon as he woke up in the morning, buoyantly, and in the highest spirits, he was rejuvenated.

When two months had elapsed, long before his new circ.u.mstances had begun to pall, his wife whispered a certain piece of information into his ear. New joys! New cares! But cares so pleasant to bear! It was necessary, however, to increase their income at once, so as to receive the unknown world-citizen in a manner befitting his dignity. He managed to obtain an order for a translation.

Baby-clothes lay scattered about all over the furniture, a cradle stood waiting in the hall, and at last a splendid boy arrived in this world of sorrows.

The father was delighted. And yet he could not help a vague feeling of uneasiness whenever he thought of the future. Income and expenditure did not balance. Nothing remained but to reduce his dress allowance.

His frock coat began to look threadbare at the seams; his shirt front was hidden underneath a large tie, his trousers were frayed. It was an undeniable fact that the porters at the office looked down on him on account of his shabbiness.

In addition to this he was compelled to lengthen his working day.

"It must be the first and last," he said. But how was it to be done?

He was at a loss to know.

Three months later his wife prepared him in carefully chosen words that his paternal joys would soon be doubled. It would not be true to say that he rejoiced greatly at the news. But there was no alternative now; he must travel along the road he had chosen, even if married life should prove to be anything but cheap.

"It's true," he thought, his face brightening, "the younger one will inherit the baby-clothes of his elder brother. This will save a good deal of expense, and there will be food enough for them--I shall be able to feed them just as well as others."

And the second baby was born.

"You are going it," said a friend of his, who was a married man himself, but father of one child only.

"What is a man to do?"

"Use his common-sense."

"Use his common-sense? But, my dear fellow, a man gets married in order to ... I mean to say, not only in order to ... but yet in order to.... Well, anyhow, we are married and that settles the matter."

"Not at all. Let me tell you something, my dear boy; if you are at all hoping for promotion it is absolutely necessary that you should wear clean linen, trousers which are not frayed at the bottom, and a hat which is not of a rusty brown."

And the sensible man whispered sensible words into his ear. As the result, the poor husband was put on short commons in the midst of plenty.

But now his troubles began.

To start with his nerves went to pieces, he suffered from insomnia and did his work badly. He consulted a doctor. The prescription cost him three crowns; and such a prescription! He was to stop working; he had worked too hard, his brain was overtaxed. To stop work would mean starvation for all of them, and to work spelt death, too!

He went on working.

One day, as he was sitting at his desk, stooping over endless rows of figures, he had an attack of faintness, slipped off his chair and fell to the ground.