And so it came to pass that Herr Dremmel, armed only with simplicity,
set aside the resistances of princes, potentates, and powers, and was
married to Ingeborg by her father the Bishop in his own cathedral. And
it was done as quickly as the law allowed, not only because Herr Dremmel
was determined it should be, but because the enduring of his daily
arrival for courting purposes from Coops, where he was staying, became
rapidly impossible for the Bishop. Also there was the Master of Ananias,
spurred to a frenzy of activity by Herr Dremmel's success in getting
things hurried on, insisting that he had been engaged long enough and
demanding to be married on the same day.
In the end he was, and Ingeborg's wedding, being Judith's as well, was
unavoidably splendid. All along the line the Bishop's hand was forced.
The very wedding-dress had to be as beautiful for the one as for the
other of his daughters; and, absurdly and wickedly, he was obliged to
spend as much on her trousseau who was going into pauperdom and
obscurity for the rest of her days as on hers who would no doubt be
soon, though of course only in God's good time, the most magnificent of
widows. He never afterwards was able to feel quite the same to the
Duchess. Without knowing anything of the circumstances, of the secret
disgrace of the affair, of the blank undesirability in any case of such
a son-in-law, of the extraordinary inconvenience and pecuniary loss of
Ingeborg's marrying at all, she had taken up Herr Dremmel to an extent
that was positively near making her ridiculous, supposing that, humanly
speaking, were possible, and had rammed him down the county's throat
till at last it believed that of the two husbands Ingeborg had secured
the better. And this gossip filtered through into the Palace, and
Judith, who never did speak, spoke less than ever, but edging away more
and more decidedly from the blandishments of the Master, who had not
been invited to Coops, spent most of her time in her own room engaged in
not looking at her trousseau; and the Palace became such an
uncomfortable place what with one thing and another, and the strain of
remaining calm and becoming in conduct to the ducally protected Herr
Dremmel was so great, that at last the Bishop was as eager as any one to
get the wedding over and feverishly furthered any scheme that would, by
hastening it, deliver him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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