The young girl gazed moodily at the picture across the water. There, where the heavy silken curtains fell like a dark crimson blood-stain behind the huge panes of glass, stood the detested safe. Hitherto she had feared it, but to-day she hated those four iron walls that had thrust her own individuality aside to stand in the stead of a girl filled with youthful hopes and desires and a profound longing for the true happiness of life. When lovers sued for her hand, their tender glances were for the monster that dogged her steps; they wooed the heiress in her. This was the attraction for Councillor von Römer; the wealthy man wished to be still wealthier. Certainly no worm gnawing at the core of a delicious fruit could be more pernicious than this ever-recurring torturing thought which Flora had wantonly cast into the virgin soil of her sister’s mind.
And below, at the foot of the tower, yawned the dark cave where the rich man’s costly wines seethed and sparkled in flasks and casks. Only lately the councillor had taken the Frau President and his three sisters-in-law through the cellar. He had just increased the precious stock, and it was all ranged carefully in the huge vaults that burrowed deep into the hill on all sides of the tower.
The air was cool and dry below there; the tiled floor shone as if polished; not a grain of dust, not a cobweb, could be seen upon the stone ribs of the mighty arches, and the glasses on the shelves, the green for hock, the clear for champagne, were bright as crystal; it was easy to see that no more care was expended on the drawing-rooms than upon these subterranean halls. And where the finest wine was stored, where only a faint glimmer of daylight pierced the vaulted gloom, in the very darkest corner, stood the two barrels of historic gunpowder, in such complete preservation that Kitty had lately declared with a laugh that she was sure they must be renewed from time to time, like the famous ink-spot at the Wartburg. She never liked this corner; she could not understand how the rich man could endure it night and day beneath his feet; and when her fancy conjured up the ghostly ancestress of the Von Baumgartens gliding hither and thither with her gleaming torch, she shuddered with horror.