But the truth was that the marriage had proved a miserable fiasco. The young bride had not taken long to discover that her husband was an improvident drunkard, who was heavily in debt and who lived on the verge of the gaol. Whenever she remonstrated he treated her cruelly, and it was only Gesina's pride that prevented her denouncing him. But she was compelled to conceal her grief because she would not give her jealous girl friends and former rivals an opportunity to jeer at her, for she had boasted often that she was going to be a lady and that when she was married she would have a servant of her own. They had derided her then, and she would not tell them now that she had made a mistake in marrying Miltenberg, the drunkard and wife-beater. So the girl who had dreamed of being a lady and had actually become a drudge was terrified every time she heard her husband enter the house. Food was scarce, but the cries of her children did not arouse a mother's love. She turned upon them and exhausted her rage by ill-treating them; yet Gesina was able to keep up appearances and her parents did not guess the real state of affairs. About four years after her marriage Gesina paid a visit to her mother. She found her engaged in a war against the mice that were infesting the kitchen, her principal weapon being white powder which she had bought from the local chemist. As Gesina sat and watched the bodies of the poisoned mice it seemed to her a pity that brutal husbands could not be as easily got rid of, and her thoughts dwelling for a long time on this injustice she finally abstracted some of the white powder when her mother was upstairs. Gesina reached home that night with the precious powder, half an hour before her husband returned from one of the vilest cafés in the town. She was trembling with excitement and her pale cheeks were now flushed, and she looked something like the girl Miltenberg had married four years earlier. But he was too far gone to notice anything, and beyond the customary threats his only remark was to growl his appreciation of the glass of beer with which Gesina unexpectedly presented him. The beer was not yet poisoned, for Gesina had decided to give him one more chance. It was, of course, a hopeless one, as it was not possible that he would reform unexpectedly and never strike her again. The drunken boor was sitting at the table clutching the glass when a knock came to the door, and a moment later Gesina had admitted a mutual friend, Gottfried, a young man who had shown for some time that he admired her. Locked within the ill-used wife's breast was the secret of her strange love for this weak youth, and now the sight of him inflamed her, as she knew that she had the means to free herself from the brute whose name she bore. Gottfried's coming there that night meant sentence of death on Miltenberg, and without any compunction the woman dropped some of the arsenic into his glass.