The Torrents Of Spring

XVI
Who does not know what a German dinner is like? Watery soup with
knobby dumplings and pieces of cinnamon, boiled beef dry as cork, with
white fat attached, slimy potatoes, soft beetroot and mashed horseradish,
a bluish eel with French capers and vinegar, a roast joint with jam, and
the inevitable ‘Mehlspeise’, something of the nature of a pudding with
sourish red sauce; but to make up, the beer and wine first-rate! With just
such a dinner the tavernkeeper at Soden regaled his customers. The dinner,
itself, however, went off satisfactorily. No special liveliness was perceptible,
certainly; not even when Herr Klüber proposed the toast ‘What
we like!’ (Was wir lieben!) But at least everything was decorous and
seemly. After dinner, coffee was served, thin, reddish, typically German
coffee. Herr Klüber, with true gallantry, asked Gemma’s permission to
smoke a cigar… . But at this point suddenly something occurred, unexpected,
and decidedly unpleasant, and even unseemly!
At one of the tables near were sitting several officers of the garrison of
the Maine. From their glances and whispering together it was easy to
perceive that they were struck by Gemma’s beauty; one of them, who
had probably stayed in Frankfort, stared at her persistently, as at a figure
familiar to him; he obviously knew who she was. He suddenly got up,
and glass in hand – all the officers had been drinking hard, and the cloth
before them was crowded with bottles – approached the table at which
Gemma was sitting. He was a very young flaxen-haired man, with a
rather pleasing and even attractive face, but his features were distorted
with the wine he had drunk, his cheeks were twitching, his blood-shot
eyes wandered, and wore an insolent expression. His companions at first
tried to hold him back, but afterwards let him go, interested apparently
to see what he would do, and how it would end. Slightly unsteady on his
legs, the officer stopped before Gemma, and in an unnaturally screaming
voice, in which, in spite of himself, an inward struggle could be discerned,
he articulated, ‘I drink to the health of the prettiest confectioner
in all Frankfort, in all the world (he emptied his glass), and in return I
take this flower, picked by her divine little fingers!’ He took from the
table a rose that lay beside Gemma’s plate. At first she was astonished,
alarmed, and turned fearfully white … then alarm was replaced by indignation;
she suddenly crimsoned all over, to her very hair – and her
eyes, fastened directly on the offender, at the same time darkened and
flamed, they were filled with black gloom, and burned with the fire of irrepressible
fury. The officer must have been confused by this look; he
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