The Project Gutenberg EBook of Good Blood, by Ernst Von Wildenbruch

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Title: Good Blood

Author: Ernst Von Wildenbruch

Release Date: October 27, 2007 [EBook #23223]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOOD BLOOD ***

Produced by David Widger

GOOD BLOOD

By Ernst Von Wildenbruch

Is it possible that there are people quite free from curiosity? People
who can pass on behind any one they see gazing earnestly and intently
toward some unknown object without feeling an impulse to stop, to follow
the direction of the other's eyes, to discover what odd thing he may be
looking at?

For my part, if I were asked whether I counted myself among that class
of cold natures, I do not know that I could honestly answer "Yes." At
any rate, there was once a moment in my life when I was not only goaded
by such an impulse, but when I actually yielded to the temptation and
fell into the way of any mere curiosity seeker.

The place in which it happened was in a wine-room in the old town where
as Referendar {1} I was practising at court; the time was an afternoon
in summer.

1 The title conferred in Prussia on the candidate who has
passed the first of the two examinations held before
appointment as judge.

The wine-room, situated on the ground floor of a house in the great
square which from the window one could look out upon in every direction,
was at this hour nearly empty. To me this was all the more agreeable,
for I have ever been a lover of solitude.

There were three of us: the fat waiter, who from a gray, dust-covered
bottle was pouring out the golden-yellow Muscatel into my glass; then
myself, who sat in a nook of the cozy, odd-cornered room and smacked the
fragrant wine; and still another guest, who had taken his place at one
of the two open windows, a tumbler of red wine lying before him on
the window-sill, in his mouth a long brown, smoke-seasoned meerschaum
cigar-holder, out of which he wrapped himself in a cloud of smoke.

This man, who had a long gray beard framing a ruddy face tinged bluish
in places, was an old retired colonel, whom every one in town knew. He
belonged to