Dr. Kuhl, it is true, proposed no toasts, but he was in a wild mood, which inspired his betrothed with some slight alarm, he spoke of his gallows-wit, and said he had courage to mention the rope, even in the house of a man who had been hanged; he was enjoying himself immensely at the wedding, but this fact did not upset his theories that marriage festivities were a public nuisance; however, as he had at last lost all his characteristics and fallen a victim to his own good nature, and another person's amiability, well, he could not help it; he, too, must let himself be married, but he should only permit two witnesses, selected from the midst of the sovereign people, to be present, who afterwards would disappear in the night of that plebeian universality where all cows are black; his marriage dinner he and Cäcilie should eat alone, or at the utmost invite his Caro who, on that day, should receive a specially good dish of meat and bones. Well, he had somehow got into the good-for-nothing frock-coat, and he only wished that all the seams would burst. The whole life of perishing humanity consisted in most abject concessions; he, too, now moved on that degrading course, and had already fallen far from that height upon which he had formerly stood in proud self-glorification, and he looked upon himself as an apostate, and with his better self, which still occasionally rose from out the slough, he looked upon his present self, planted up to its neck in a bog of social prejudices, with an indescribable feeling of pity and contempt. "Thank God," said Wegen to Olga, "that you have not fallen into the hands of this wicked hector, who seems to look upon his engagement as an act of suicide. How differently I appreciate you." Smiling meaningly, Olga pressed her lover's hand, but Kuhl had overheard the last words. "Dear friend and brother-in-law," said he, "I herewith pronounce you to be the greatest hypocrite at this round table. The theory of common love, for which the century is not yet ripe, permits many variations--and one of these variations you have performed, and all the world performs them with us. Enter upon an engagement to-day, give it up soon, and a week or so later fall in love and engage yourself again, and you are one of the most moral citizens in the world, and no one will assail your good name. But, if only you feel that affection a week sooner, before the old one is given up, then you are a Don Juan. Everything then depends upon time, just as in hiring anything, a week constitutes the whole difference between virtue and vice. Well, if we have not sinned, dear brother-in-law _in spe_, at least we have nothing with which to reproach ourselves! I have loved two sisters, but so have you also--your good health, my friend!" Wegen coloured at this address, which, to him, appeared intensely heartless. Olga laughed, but Cäcilie had long since compressed her lips and prepared herself for an armed reprimand.