Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

THE ATTEMPT
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tour through the Thiiringer Forest with his betrothed. The professor and his wife
could only stay from home one day, as their children and pressing business would not
allow of a longer pleasure trip. This worthy couple were only going to Eisenach to
visit the castle, to eat their dinner in some romantic dell, and then return to Weimar
by the evening train. Man proposes, hut God disposes.
In the course of the conversation, the professor’s lady informed us that she had
a sister in Erfurt, who wished, if it were possible, to join their pleasure party; at all
events she was to be at the station to speak to them.
At that moment the train stopped at Erfurt. The guard opened the door,
“ Erfurt. Stop here four minutes.” The little man shot like lightning from the
carriage. There was a painful restlessness about the man. The professor’s lady, in the
mean time, was looking everywhere for her sister; but, in the hustle of the station, she
could not recognise her, and as she thought she discovered a blue bonnet at a distance
she told her husband so, and rushed out to find the long wished-for one. The
professor showed very little interest in this member of the family, hut made another
search for his spectacles, which he remembered, as he told us, to have had with him
when he came into the carriage, and which now seemed to have vanished into the
ground. He knelt down to search in the despairing possibility that they might have
got under the seat. He felt under the cushion, and opened his wife’s work-box, and
appeared quite inconsolable on account of this loss. He, therefore, did not hear the
bell ring, and came again into the outer world only when the missing articles had at
last been discovered in his cigar-case, into which he, absorbed in thought, had pushed
them instead of into their case. At the same moment the little man in nankeen
jumped into the carriage. He was immediately shut in, and the train started.
“ Where is your wife ? ” asked the little man.
“ Bless me, my wife ! ” exclaimed the professor, darting to the window which the
stout gentleman had again pertinaciously shut down. The train began to move slowly,
and, in trembling haste, the miserable man let down the window and thrust out his
head. Far away a door was opened by the guard for the professor’s wife, who came up
at that moment in bustling haste.
“ That is not my compartment,” she exclaimed.
“ Just step into this one,” urged the guard.
“ Eliza! ” her husband called at that moment.
“ I belong to that carriage,” his wife answered, and ran joyfully along the
platform opposite to us. But no other door was open here, and the train was in motion.
The guard could do no more; but the lady cried, “ Open the door, open the door,”