Not to mention that I was forced to purchase the happiness of being daily in her society, and making myself indispensable to her by a hundred little services, at the cost of witnessing her suffering, which, it is true, she bore like a heroine, but which nevertheless constantly consumed her strength and youth--it was a most painful thing to be compelled to witness her husband's steady progress toward the ruin to which the unfortunate man opposed less and less resistance. At first I had endeavored not to lose sight of him after the play was over, striving--in the outset with mild, afterwards with the most earnest remonstrances--to recall him from his fatal passion. As he had a gentle, yielding nature, I succeeded several times in doing so. But Daniel, who with fiendish cold-bloodedness played the part of his evil genius, soon made him disloyal to his best resolves and vows, so, at the end of a few weeks, I was forced to let the evil pursue its course. For a time the leonine constitution of which he boasted resisted the effects of his nocturnal debauches, at least so far that no traces of them were visible the following morning. Then, in the consciousness that he stood in need of forgiveness, he was courteous and affectionate throughout the day, like a little boy who fears punishment, and paid his wife all sorts of charming little attentions. But as his weakness gained more and more control, and his nervous strength began to fail, he no longer took any trouble to deceive us about his condition, and instead of showing repentance and embarrassment, after spending half the day in bed suffering from the effects of his intoxication, he tried to conceal his evil conscience under an air of boastful defiance, and bluntly declared that genius required great stimulants, and need not be restrained by Philistine rules. Of course, with such irregularities, which soon became the rule, no firm, careful management of the company was possible. By degrees all business cares and responsibilities were shifted to my insignificant self. It was enough if the sick lion crawled out of his den an hour before the performance, rolled his bloodshot eyes in front of the mirror, and then made his somewhat husky but all the more tragic voice resound through the theater till the puzzled spectators left the house with the acknowledgment that he had "roared well" again, and no one could easily outdo him in shaking his mane.