Макс Нордау - How Women Love

"Do you ask pardon for that? What you say is so interesting. I suppose you have a very bad opinion of women, since you do not think them capable of understanding you?"

"I do not generalize. Whatever opinion I might have of women, I should not apply it to you."

"You understand how to pay compliments admirably. You are not commonplace."

He made no reply, but gazed at her with so earnest a look, expressive of such unconscious admiration and worship that she flushed, and with a nervous flutter of her fan rose. Bergmann rose also, bowed, and made a movement to retire. Ada opened her eyes in surprise, and involuntarily a word escaped her lips: "Why----"

"I thought I was wearying you."

She held out her finger-tips, which he pressed so warmly that she hastily withdrew her hand. Going to one of the three large windows in the drawing-room, she opened it and stepped out upon the broad, projecting balcony, which on the second story extended along the whole front of the castle. Leaning against the balustrade, both silently watched for a moment the scene before them. The July night was warm, and the air was stirless. Not a cloud appeared in the blackish-blue sky, the stars were sparkling brightly, and among them, almost at the zenith, sailed the full moon. At their feet lay the park, from which rose faint odours of unknown wild flowers and the more pungent fragrance of dewy grass and leafage. Directly in front of the building extended a lawn, with beds of flowers, on which the moonlight poured a sort of filmy glimmering mist, which gave the green grass and the bright hues of the flower-beds a light, silvery veil. Beyond the lawn, on all sides, towered the trees of the park, intersected by broad paths, through which the moonbeams flowed like a gleaming white stream between steep black banks. At the end of the central avenue appeared the Main, flowing in a broad, calm stream, with here and there a noisy, troubled spot in the midst of its peacefully-gliding waves, where a rock or a sand-bar interrupted the mirror-like expanse, and caused a rushing, foam-sprinkled whirlpool. Beyond the river, amid the light, floating night-mists, were dimly seen the houses of a little village, on whose window-panes a moonbeam often flashed, and at the left of the park rose the indistinct mass of the city of Marktbreit, whose steep, narrow streets were filled with shadows, while above the steeples and higher roofs the moon-rays rippled, bringing them out in bright relief against the dark picture.

The spell of this moonlight night mounted to the heads of the two silent watchers on the balcony like an intoxicating draught, and sent cold chills down their spines. Almost without being aware what he was doing, Bergmann offered Ada his arm, which she accepted, leaning against him with a gentle, clinging movement of her whole figure. There they stood, letting their dreamy eyes wander over the woods, the river, and the city. They would have forgotten the castle and the entertainment had not the subdued notes of the dance music reached them from the ball-room, whose windows opened upon the balcony on the opposite side of the facade, filling the night with low harmonies which were continued in the vibrations of their own nerves.

At this moment the clock in the Marktbreit steeple struck twelve, directly after the sound of a night watchman’s horn was heard, and a wailing voice, rising in the sleeping streets of the city, called a few unintelligible words.

"What was that?" Ada whispered.

"The night watchman, according to the custom of the country, called the hour with a verse," replied Bergmann. A few minutes later the call was repeated, this time nearer, and so distinctly that it could be understood. The night watchman, with mournful emphasis, sung:

"Life in your Germany is like a fairy tale," said Ada, after repeating the verse to herself; "everything is so dreamy; so pervaded with poetry."

"Then stay in our Germany, stay with us," he pleaded, softly, his voice expressing far more than his words.

She shook her little head sorrowfully. "I came five years too late."

"Do not say that," replied Bergmann, pressing the bare arm which rested on his closely to his side. "How old are you now?"

It did not occur to her to smile at the question or to answer it, according to the ordinary custom of women, with an affected reply. She said, instead, as simply as a child:

"Twenty-three."

"And at twenty-three would it be too late to seek and strive for happiness in life? When sorrow has been experienced so young, it can surely be regarded as a childish disease and there is nothing to be done except to forget it as quickly as possible."

Ada gazed fixedly into vacancy, saying, as if lost in thought:

"No, no. That is not so. There are injuries which are incurable. The mother of two children is old at twenty-three. Since she can no longer offer a man the full happiness of love, she has no right to expect it from him."

He was about to answer, but with a hasty movement she placed her slender finger on her lip, saying:

"Hush! Not another word on this subject. Look"--and her hand pointed, down to the park.

From a bow window in the castle a powerful apparatus was sending a broad stream of electric light into the darkness. It often changed and moved, being thrown now here, then there. In its course it illumined the tops of the trees with a faint, livid phosphorescence, interwove the shrubbery with fantastic gliding spots of light, and gave the turf, wherever it was visible, the appearance of a strip of a glittering glacier. In the distance, where the light was lost in the dense groups of trees, it produced the illusion of indistinct shapes gleaming out there for a moment and then vanishing. It seemed as if one could see something mysterious moving or standing, perhaps a human form, wrapped in floating robes, perhaps a white marble statue hidden behind the foliage, perhaps a mist, gathering and scattering. Night moths and bats, fluttering across the bar of light out of the darkness into the darkness, shone brightly during the brief period of their passage, then suddenly vanished again like moss blown through a flame. The electric light seemed to make a road through the park, spread a silver carpet over it, and invite the two who watched its course to walk along this shining road to the distance where the shadowy white shapes hovered in the shrubbery, appearing and disappearing.

The temptation was irresistible.

"Let us go down," said Ada, and a few minutes later, with a light mantilla over her shoulders, she was walking by his side over the creaking gravel of the avenue and then over the noiseless side paths.

How blissful is the wandering of a handsome young couple, with glowing hearts in their breasts, through a moonlit, fragrant summer night! Their feet do not feel the earth on which they tread, but seem to be floating on clouds. Nothing is left of the world save these two and the night which maternally conceals them—he and she, naught else, like Adam and Eve, when they were the only human dwellers in Paradise.

A damp branch of the bushes often brushed Ada’s shoulders like an affectionate, caressing hand, as she slowly passed along. Now and then a bird whose nest was in the underbrush, disturbed in its sleep, fluttered up before them, and, stupid with slumber, flew to a neighboring bough. Ada sometimes plucked a flower, or cautiously touched with her finger one of the little glow worms, which in great numbers edged the path with their greenish light. They went down to the Main and back again to the park fence, facing Marktbreit. Just as they reached it the clock struck one, and the night watchman blew his horn, and again solemnly intoned his old-fashioned melody: