Moll

Moll, identified as Irene Moll’s husband, disappears after embezzling money entrusted to his notary’s office. His flight and the police presence at their home overturn the financial security around which the couple’s earlier life had been organized, while Irene responds by converting their former domestic world into a business of her own.

Identity and Disappearance

Moll is discussed through Irene’s account to Jakob Fabian. She tells Fabian that her husband has gone by ship to France or somewhere else, and that the criminal police are now living at their home. The exact destination remains uncertain; what she presents as certain is that he cannot be relied upon and has fled after misappropriating funds entrusted to his notarial office.

Irene says the embezzlement had been going on for years and that she would never have expected it of him. Her admission that they had underestimated him gives the crime a personal as well as financial consequence: Moll’s conduct has made the apparent stability of their marriage and household suddenly untrustworthy.

Marriage and Fabian’s Rejected Offer

Moll’s absence also clarifies the circumstances behind Fabian’s earlier refusal of his offer. When Irene encounters Fabian later, she tells him he was hasty to reject her husband’s proposal and says that he could have kept the keys. She had expected Fabian to return to her bed, and presents his reserve as something that made him more enticing. The episode connects Moll’s vanished authority in the household to Irene’s continuing attempt to draw Fabian into an intimacy he had declined.

Irene’s remarks are both practical and provocative: the keys represent access to the life and arrangements Fabian turned away from, while her teasing recasts his refusal as part of the attraction. Moll himself is absent from this encounter, but his former offer remains a point of comparison as Irene explains what Fabian might have accepted and what she had hoped would follow.

Irene’s Business After Moll

With Moll gone and the household’s money compromised, Irene says she has opened a boarding house, taking advantage of the availability of large, inexpensive apartments. An old acquaintance supplied the furniture; she jokes that the acquaintance is young, though the man himself is old, and explains that he owns only a few peepholes in the doors. The detail makes the new enterprise’s commercial and sexual character explicit.

Irene calls it her association of unchristian men. Its customers are wealthy women from respectable society, and its male residents receive room and board as well as thirty percent of the takings. Irene says some clients pay regardless of the price and describes men being purchased and given their own homes and discreet girlfriends. She cites a Hungarian resident acquired by an industrialist’s wife, who lives like a prince and might make a fortune within a year.

She regards the enterprise as more viable than a women’s brothel, says she had dreamed of owning such a business since girlhood, and describes herself as satisfied with its earnings and growth. She recruits new men almost daily and makes applicants pass an entrance examination, insisting that genuine talent is rare and that she may have to establish training courses. Moll’s flight thus precedes a sharp reversal in the household’s economic arrangement: Irene replaces dependence on her husband with a business that sells access to men and treats its residents’ desirability as an asset.

Narrative Significance

Moll’s role is defined by the gap between the respectable financial life implied by his notarial work and the years-long embezzlement Irene reveals. His departure does not end the consequences of his actions. The police occupy the couple’s home, Fabian’s rejected connection to Moll’s offer is recalled, and Irene builds a new livelihood out of the changed circumstances.

The account also places marriage, sex, and money in close proximity without suggesting that Moll’s flight has produced a moral restoration. Instead, Irene’s brisk, entrepreneurial response makes the collapse legible as a change in who controls the household’s resources and how intimacy is exchanged. Moll remains offstage, but his fraud is the event that leaves this altered domestic economy in motion.