To Elfinger's most eloquent attempts at dissuasion, the poor child had only replied by tears and shakes of the head, and had answered the long letters which her lover sent to her almost daily, by nicely-written little notes, not altogether free from orthographical blunders, in which she besought him in the most touching terms not to make her heart still heavier, but rather to move to some other lodgings and never to meet her again.
This correspondence had, of course, merely poured oil upon the fire, on this as well as on the other side of the street. Nevertheless it really did seem, after all, as though their love was not destined to overcome the evil powers; and in his grief at this Elfinger began more and more to lose his taste for the joys of Paradise, generally spending his evenings at home, brooding over plans for the overthrow of the priesthood--which resulted in his toiling through all the pamphlets against the Vatican Council, and in his composing for some of the smaller newspapers violent articles favoring the abolition of convents.
But, while his fate was trembling in the balance, his next-door neighbor was still worse off; and, sad to relate, solely because of the incredible worldly-mindedness of his sweetheart. Through his trusty ally, the servant-girl, he learned that the only son of a rich brewer, from one of the smaller cities of the region, was paying his attentions to her; and the pretty little witch appeared to have refrained from doing any of those things by which even the most obedient daughter may show her aversion to a hated suitor. Rosenbusch, whose soul still clung fondly to his romantic elopement project, refused, at first, to believe in such villainous treachery. But when his letters remained unanswered, the last one indeed being returned unopened by the post, he fell into a terrible passion, spent whole nights in composing the most insulting poems against brewers' sons and Philistines' daughters, and gave himself up more and more to the most extravagant melancholy, misanthropy, and dislike for work. He began to neglect his person too in the most terrible way, wore, as his daily clothing, that ample dress-coat of Edward Rossel's, which the latter had formally made over to him after the wedding evening; and over this a coarse red-and-blue plaid shawl, and a cap which he had cut out himself from his old slouch hat, whose rim had been nibbled and considerably diminished by his white mice, one night when he had left the door of the cage open.