She was not surprised at meeting him here. She was rarely surprised at anything. She sat down on a chair and her eyes were empty.
She discussed Imhof, who had introduced a Jewish friend of his to the house. She deprecated association with Jews as a practice. She added that Wahnschaffe--she always called her husband so--agreed with her.
She expressed her disapproval of Judith’s engagement. “Wahnschaffe is really opposed to this marriage too,” she said, “but it was difficult to find a pretext to refuse. If Judith sets her heart on anything! Well, you know her! I am afraid her chief ambition was to get ahead of her friend Letitia.”
Christian looked up in amazement. His mother did not observe it, and continued: “With all his good qualities Imhof does not seem reliable. He is a plunger, and restless and changeable as a weather vane. Of the ten millions which his foster father left him, five or six are already lost through speculation and extravagance. What is your judgment of him?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Christian answered. This conversation was beginning to weary him.
“Then, too, his origin is obscure. He was a foundling. Old Martin Imhof, whom Wahnschaffe knew, by the way, and who belonged to one of the first patrician families of Düsseldorf, is said to have adopted him under peculiar circumstances. He was an old bachelor, and had a reputation for misanthropy. At last he was quite alone in the world, and absolutely adored this strange child. Hadn’t you heard about that?”
“Well, now tell me something about yourself, my son,” Frau Wahnschaffe asked, with a changed expression and with a smile of suffering.
But Christian had no answer. His world and his mother’s world--he saw no bridge between the two. And as the knowledge came to him, another matter also became clear. And it was this, that there was likewise no bridge between the world of his conscious life and another that lay far behind it, misty and menacing, luring and terrible at once, which he did not understand, nor know, of which he had not even a definite presage, but which had come to him only as a vision through flashes of lightning, or as a dream or in a swift touch of horror.
He kissed his mother’s hand, and hastened out.