The Torrents Of Spring

arm with Baron Dönhof. And afterwards when Pantaleone had paid him
the four crowns due to him … Ah! there was something nasty about it!
Yes, Sanin was a little conscience-smitten and ashamed … though, on
the other hand, what was there for him to have done? Could he have left
the young officer’s insolence unrebuked? could he have behaved like
Herr Klüber? He had stood up for Gemma, he had championed her …
that was so; and yet, there was an uneasy pang in his heart, and he was
conscience – smitten, and even ashamed.
Not so Pantaleone – he was simply in his glory! He was suddenly possessed
by a feeling of pride. A victorious general, returning from the
field of battle he has won, could not have looked about him with greater
self-satisfaction. Sanin’s demeanour during the duel filled him with enthusiasm.
He called him a hero, and would not listen to his exhortations
and even his entreaties. He compared him to a monument of marble or
of bronze, with the statue of the commander in Don Juan! For himself he
admitted he had been conscious of some perturbation of mind, ‘but, of
course, I am an artist,’ he observed; ‘I have a highly-strung nature, while
you are the son of the snows and the granite rocks.’
Sanin was positively at a loss how to quiet the jubilant artist.
Almost at the same place in the road where two hours before they had
come upon Emil, he again jumped out from behind a tree, and, with a
cry of joy upon his lips, waving his cap and leaping into the air, he
rushed straight at the carriage, almost fell under the wheel, and, without
waiting for the horses to stop, clambered up over the carriage-door and
fairly clung to Sanin.
‘You are alive, you are not wounded!’ he kept repeating. ‘Forgive me, I
did not obey you, I did not go back to Frankfort … I could not! I waited
for you here … Tell me how was it? You … killed him?’
Sanin with some difficulty pacified Emil and made him sit down.
With great verbosity, with evident pleasure, Pantaleone communicated
to him all the details of the duel, and, of course, did not omit to refer
again to the monument of bronze and the statue of the commander. He
even rose from his seat and, standing with his feet wide apart to preserve
his equilibrium, folding his arm on his chest and looking contemptuously
over his shoulder, gave an ocular representation of the commander
– Sanin! Emil listened with awe, occasionally interrupting the narrative
with an exclamation, or swiftly getting up and as swiftly kissing his
heroic friend.
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