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Strauch, Dora; Brockmann, Walter / Satan came to Eden
(1936)
Chapter XX: The stage is set, pp. 204-210
Page 209
the scene of his luckless fishing enterprise, his survival, at least, was certain, and we hoped that we should now see him again, and hear the story of his subsequent adventures. We had liked him very well in the old days. Yes, the old days. Floreana had become another place since all the settlers had come, bringing with them to our island dissension, mistrust, envy, hatreds, all the mean and trifling pother of the world which they pretended to have put behind them. But Arends never came. Even had Wittmer not told us the reason why, we should have known it-the Baroness had found another slave, and for every member of that household, free or bound, Friedo was forbidden territory. Arends, we learned, occupied the position of the new favorite. She had met him on Chatham, and ostensibly hired him at a monthly wage of 8o sucres. As the new lover, however, the work- ing clauses of his contract were not regarded very seriously, and the major portion of the daily labor fell, as before, to Lorenz. This, and other details of domestic life at the "Hacienda Paradise," were told us later by Lorenz himself, and in a manner which made it impossible not to accept them as true. If Philippson retained the position of husband by night, Arends held it by day. Hardly a day went by but the Baroness and he set out on "hunting expeditions," returning very often with no bag at all, sometimes with only a piece or two. Whatever the reasons that had brought Lorenz with the Baroness to Floreana, they were not all love. Doubtless she had him erotically in her power, but the prospect of retrieving the financial position she had ruined helped to lure him there. Not so Philippson. He had lost himself entirely to love. He had left everything for her sake; he would have followed her unquestioningly into the bottom- less pit. The advent of Arends was more than he could endure. Day after day, he was forced to watch this stranger supersede him in a thousand ways, until at last he broke out into one of those insensate passions of his-we had experienced one such paroxysm at Friedo- and hurled the whole of his rage and jealousy and wretchedness at the Baroness in one indescribable scene. The Stage Is Set 209
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