The night passed, the morning came, and carried him on his journey. Late in the afternoon he alighted at the hotel he called Clotilde’s. A letter was handed to him. His eyes all over the page caught the note of it for her beginning of the battle and despair at the first repulse. ‘And now my turn!’ said he, not overjoyously. The words Jew and demagogue and baroness, quoted in the letter, were old missiles hurling again at him. But Clotilde’s parents were yet to learn that this Jew, demagogue, and champion of an injured lady, was a gentleman respectful to their legal and natural claims upon their child while maintaining his own: they were to know him and change their tone.
As he was reading the letter upstairs by sentences, his door opened at the answer to a tap. He started; his face was a shield’s welcome to the birdlike applicant for admission. Clotilde stood hesitating.
He sent the introducing waiter speeding on his most kellnerish legs, and drew her in.
She was like a bird in his hands, palpitating to extinction.
Trembling, and very pale, hard in her throat she said, ‘The worst.’
‘You have spoken to them both subsequent to this?’ he shook the letter.
‘Both. They will not hear your name; they will not hear me speak. I repeat, it is past all hope, all chance of moving them. They hate--hate you, hate me for thinking of you. I had no choice; I wrote at once and followed my letter; I ran through the streets; I pant for want of breath, not want of courage. I prove I have it, Alvan; I have done all I can do.
She was enfolded; she sank on the nest, dropping her eyelids.
But he said nothing. She looked up at him. Her strained pale eyes provoked a closer embrace.
‘This would be the home for you if we were flying,’ said he, glancing round at the room, with a sensation like a shudder, ‘Tell me what there is to be told.’
‘Alvan, I have; that is all. They will not listen; they loathe Oh! what possesses them!’
‘They refuse. Their child, for daring to say she loves you, is detested. Take me--take me away!’
‘Run?--facing the enemy?’ His countenance was the fiery laugh of a thirster for strife. ‘They have to be taught the stuff Alvan is made of!’
Clotilde moaned to signify she was sure he nursed an illusion. ‘I found them celebrating the betrothal of my sister Lotte with the Austrian Count Walburg; I thought it favourable for us. I spoke of you to my mother. Oh, that scene! What she said I cannot recollect: it was a hiss. Then my father. Your name changed his features and his voice. They treated me as impure for mentioning it. You must have deadly enemies. I was unable to recognize either father or mother--they have become transformed. But you see I am here. Courage! you said; and I determined I would show it, and be worthy of you. But I am pursued, I am sure. My father is powerful in this place; we shall barely have time to escape.’