This Month's Installment
As always the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.Hans had taken the path to Adlershorst. In front of him stept a young couple: his new friend with the Frenchman.
He saw them together often. They sat next to each other at dinner and talkt incessantly, always in French, which she spoke as fluently as German. There was a certain charm in their conversation, which became lively and bubbly but never loud or obtrusive.
Suddenly, they both turned around and stood opposite him.
"Well, that's where I find the best company!" the young girl said! "To be precise, Monsieur Guerard must go back to Zoppot, he wants to pick up his wife from the train station, and I would have liked to go a bit further yet because here is where it first starts to get beautiful. You'll walk with me, pastor, won't you? I'll see you this evening, Monsieur! If you still have time for me then."
"I didn't even imagine that Mr. Guerard would be married," Hans commented after he had left. There was certainly nothing in the world as unimportant to him as whether the Frenchman was married or not, but he wanted to say something.
"He has been for only a short time, his wife ought to be a lovely creature. They come to Zoppot because of the tennis week and now still want to warm themselves up well... but with these roaring waves, one cannot understand his own word. I mean, we're already taking the way to the summit."
Now they went on the dune planted with young conifers, above the sea that now lay far below them. She was wearing the green felt hat again, in which he saw her for the first time, the dark cloth skirt she had gathered up, and around her
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face a thick veil was drawn that should protect it against the storm. But up here in the middle of the protection of the fir trees, it was quieter; they could speak without trouble.
"Now for the third time already we are together, and I know little but something about you. You, however, nothing at all about me. You allow me then to give you my particulars: Nuscha Löwing, 24 years old, born in a small town close to the Russian border, where, as I probably already told you, my mother still lives to-day. I, however, have been around much in the world, was a governess in England and France, and am presently in the same position for a higher Russian official in Petersburg. If you want to know still more, you must ask. Though, whether I will tell you everything, I don't know."
He askt nothing. He had little practice in this type of conversation. Besides the path here close to the edge of the dune was very narrow, so that they could go only behind one an-other. She adjusted her fast, powerful stride to his and recounted further: about her father, who, initially a rich factory owner, through an unlucky venture lost his whole fortune and this so pulled at his soul that he took his life one day. How she now would have just stayed with her mother and a great number of siblings, how she took her teacher examination and provided for her own with her salary that she could send home with free rations. Only because he paid her so well, would she have then gone to the Russian baron.
Commentary/Grammatical Minutiae
I don't know whether there's really much to be made of this, but it might be significant that Nuscha refers to Guerard as "Monsieur Guerard" while Hans refers to him as "Herr Guerard." I tried to keep this distinction in my translation by retaining the French Monsieur but rendering Herr as Mr.This is unrelated to this month's installment, but in transcribing the original German of pages I've already translated, I discovered that way back in December (but in January's post), I misread the Gothic script and what I thought was Ozhöfter is actually Oxhöfter. I'm not exactly sure how this relates, but apparently Oxhöft is the German name of Oksywie in Poland, which is just north of Sopot (called Zoppot in the novel).
In contrast to "ich weiß wenig, doch einiges von Ihnen," the following "sentence" lacks a verb: "Sie aber von mir gar nichts," illustrating Hans' (and the reader's) complete lack of knowledge of Nuscha. I managed to maintain this in my translation: "You, however, nothing at all about me."
