Good Blood

Good Blood, by Ernst Von
Wildenbruch

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Title: Good Blood
Author: Ernst Von Wildenbruch
Release Date: October 27, 2007 [EBook #23223]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOOD
BLOOD ***

Produced by David Widger

GOOD BLOOD
By Ernst Von Wildenbruch
Is it possible that there are people quite free from curiosity? People

who can pass on behind any one they see gazing earnestly and intently
toward some unknown object without feeling an impulse to stop, to
follow the direction of the other's eyes, to discover what odd thing he
may be looking at?
For my part, if I were asked whether I counted myself among that class
of cold natures, I do not know that I could honestly answer "Yes." At
any rate, there was once a moment in my life when I was not only
goaded by such an impulse, but when I actually yielded to the
temptation and fell into the way of any mere curiosity seeker.
The place in which it happened was in a wine-room in the old town
where as Referendar {1} I was practising at court; the time was an
afternoon in summer.
1 The title conferred in Prussia on the candidate who has passed the
first of the two examinations held before appointment as judge.
The wine-room, situated on the ground floor of a house in the great
square which from the window one could look out upon in every
direction, was at this hour nearly empty. To me this was all the more
agreeable, for I have ever been a lover of solitude.
There were three of us: the fat waiter, who from a gray, dust-covered
bottle was pouring out the golden-yellow Muscatel into my glass; then
myself, who sat in a nook of the cozy, odd-cornered room and smacked
the fragrant wine; and still another guest, who had taken his place at
one of the two open windows, a tumbler of red wine lying before him
on the window-sill, in his mouth a long brown, smoke-seasoned
meerschaum cigar-holder, out of which he wrapped himself in a cloud
of smoke.
This man, who had a long gray beard framing a ruddy face tinged
bluish in places, was an old retired colonel, whom every one in town
knew. He belonged to that colony of the Superannuated who had settled
down in this pleasant place to wearily drag out the end of their days.
Toward noon they could be seen strolling deliberately in groups of

twos or threes down the street, shortly to disappear into the wine-room,
where between twelve and one they assembled at the round table to
gossip. On the table stood pint bottles of sourish Moselle, over the table
floated a thick mist of cigar smoke, and through the mist came voices,
peevish, grating, discussing the latest event in the Army Register.
The old colonel, too, was a regular patron of the wine-room, but he
never came at the hour of general assembly, but later, in the afternoon.
He was a man of lonely disposition. Rarely was he seen in the company
of others; his lodging was in the suburbs on the other side of the river,
and from the window of his room one could look out over a wide
stretch of meadow land which the river regularly inundated every
spring, when it overflowed its banks. Many a time have I passed by his
lodging and seen him standing at the window, his bloodshot eyes,
rimmed with deep bags beneath, thoughtfully gazing out toward the
gray waste of water beyond the embankment.
And now he sits there at the window of the wine-room and gazes out
upon the square, over whose surface the wind sweeps along in a whirl
of dust.
But what is he looking at, I wonder?
The fat waiter, bored to death over his two silent fees, had his attention
already drawn toward the colonel's behavior; he stood in the middle of
the room, his hands clasped behind the tail of his coat, and was gazing
through the other window out on to the square.
Something must surely be going on there.
Quietly as possible, so as not to break the interest of the other two, I
rose from my seat. But there was really nothing to be seen. The square
was nearly empty; only in the center, under the great street lamps, I
noticed two schoolboys who were facing each other in threatening
attitude.