Chapter XXXVIII…

Chapter XXXVIII

When Braesig had opened his budget of news from Rexow and Gurlitz, and the Frau Pastorin and Habermann had no more questions to ask, he took flight again.

"You won't take it unkindly, Frau Pastorin, or you either, Karl, but as soon as I can change my boots I must go to the Reform. You ought to come with me, Karl, we are going to elect a new president to-day, because the old one, as he says, can't stand it any longer. I shall vote for the advocate Rein,--do you know him? A capital man, a thoroughly good fellow,--but he makes jokes, to be sure; and then we have a very important question for discussion, to-day,--Rector Baldrian says it is demanded by the spirit of the times,--we are going to find out how there comes to be such great poverty in the world. You ought to come with me, Karl."

But Karl would not go, and Braesig went alone.

The first person upon whom his eyes fell, as he entered the hall of the Reformverein, was--Zamel Pomuchelskopp, who, as he perceived Braesig, came right up to him, saying, "Good-evening, dear brother, how are you, dear Zachary?"

There were not many who observed how Braesig received this salutation, and those who saw it did not comprehend it clearly; but shoemaker Bank had seen it, and told me about it. "Fritz," said he, "see here, if you should look at the Herr Inspector's face in a shoemaker's glass, he looked like that; the mouth was so broad, and the nose so thick, and his whole face looked like fire and fat, and as he put out one foot before him and said, 'Herr Zamwell Pomuchelskopp, I am no brother of yours,' do you know what he looked like? Exactly like the old Sandwirth Hofer, of Tyrol, when he is to be hung on the wall by Landlord Voss, at Ivenach, only that he had no musket in his hand. And then he turned his back to him, and such a back! and went up to the election-table, and gave his vote for the new president, and said aloud, through the hall, 'I vote for the Herr Advocate Rein, for our business must be pure (rein), and if any dirty fellows come in here they must be turned out.' No body understood what he meant; but they were all still as mice, for they knew something had happened; and as he went through the hall they all made room for him, for he looked like a mad bull; but he seated himself quietly at the other end of the hall, and all the members of the Reformverein know what happened afterwards."

This is what Hanne Bank told me, and I believe him, for he was a good friend of mine, and an honest man, although he was only a shoemaker; he was sent to a bloody grave, in his best years, by a good-for-nothing scoundrel, because he stood up for the right, and although it may be out of place here, I will write it, that the memory of such an honest man and good friend may be honored elsewhere than on his tombstone.

So Zachary Braesig seated himself at the farther end of the hall, and sat there like a thunder-storm, ready at any moment to break loose. The advocate Rein was made president, he touched the bell, crawled into the cask, and returned thanks for the honor, and finally said,--

"Gentlemen, before we begin our discussion of the poverty-question, I have the pleasure to announce to you that the Herr Proprietor of Gurlitz proposes himself as a member of our Reformverein. I believe there is no one who will oppose his admission."

"So?" cried a terribly spiteful voice behind him, "are you so sure of that? I beg for a word or two," and as the new president turned round, there stood Uncle Braesig, by the cooling-vat.

"Herr Inspector Braesig has the floor," said the president, and Uncle Braesig stuffed himself into the cooling-vat.

"Fellow-citizens," he began, "how long is it, since we declared for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity here at Grammelin's? I will say nothing about Liberty, although I cannot stir my body in this confounded cask; nor will I speak of Equality, for our new president gives us a good example of that, since he always goes about in a gray coat, and not, like certain people, in a blue dress-coat with gilt buttons; but I wish to speak of Fraternity. Fellow-citizens! I ask you, is that Fraternity, when a man wants to pull off his brother's boots? and when a man will let his fellow-creature run about in the snow, like a crow, or if the snow is gone, in the mud? and a man boasts himself against another, and makes game of him? I ask you, is that Fraternity? and I tell you Herr Zamwell is such a brother as that. And I have nothing more to say."

He came down from the speaker's stand, and blew his nose, as if he were sounding a trumpet over his speech.

Tailor Wimmersdorf then took the floor, and said the Rahnstadt Reform must consider it a great honor to have a proprietor among them; so far as he knew, it was the only one, for the Herr von Zanzel, although he owned an estate, and was a member, was not to be counted, for he made no purchases in Rahnstadt, and had nothing to do with them. He voted for the Herr Proprietor.

"Bravo!" resounded through the hall. "Wimmersdorf is right! Neighbor, you are right! How shall we live, if we don't keep on good terms with such people?"

"That is not my opinion," said Schultz, the carpenter, creeping softly up into the cask, like a fat snail, out of its shell, and he looked like one, for all the world. "Stuff and nonsense, tailor Wimmersdorf, stuff and nonsense! Did the Gurlitz potentate trouble himself about us, did he pay up our bills, before he needed us? Why does he stand here in the hall, when his admission has been opposed? Hasn't he modesty enough to go out? But no! And why? Because he is a Great Mogul. I say, out with him, out!" and the snail crept into its shell again.

"Out! out!" cried several voices, and others cried, "Speak again! Go on!" and a rascally shoemaker sung out in a clear voice,--

"Snail, snail, come out of your shell! Stick out your horns, we know you well!"

But Schultz the carpenter would not come, he knew very well that he should only weaken the impression his speech had made; he preferred to strengthen it, he stood with Braesig, behind the scenes, and both called, "Out! out!" and they would certainly have gained their point, had not the devil pushed forward David and Slusuhr, into the cooling-vat, each with a moustache, to signify that they were excessively liberal. They sung Pomuchelskopp's praises with psaltery and harp; he was a helpful angel, said Slusuhr,--"Yes, a fat angel," cried that rogue of a shoemaker,--he had helped many a poor family here in Rahnstadt,--he said nothing about the ten per cent. interest,--and he would do much more for the city. David began the same song, a little colored with saffron and spiced with garlic. "Gentlemen!" said he, making a low bow to the roguish shoemaker, who received it very quietly, "bethink yourselves, think of the good of the whole city! In the first place, there is the Herr Pomuchelskopp himself, in person, then there is the gracious Frau Pomuchelskopp,--a fearfully clever woman,--then there are the Fraeuleins Salchen and Malchen, and the Herr Gustaving and the Herr Nanting and the Herr Philipping, and then come the Fraeulein Mariechen and the Fraeulein Sophiechen and the Fraeulein Melaniechen, and then come the little Herr Krischaning and the little Herr Joching, and then comes the youngest of all,--well, wait a moment, I am not through yet,--and then come the house-maids, and the kitchen-maids, and the nurse-maids, and the swine-maids,--and I don't know how many more,--and then come the coachman and the grooms, and the herdsmen, and they all want something. Why should they not want something? Everybody has his wants. And they need coats and they need trousers, and they need shoes and boots, and they need stockings and shirts and jackets; and when it is cold they need warm coats, and when it is warm, they need cool ones, and when Palm Sunday comes, and they go to be confirmed, they must have nice coats, and on Christmas--good heavens! I have always said this Christ must have been a great man, what an amount of business has he introduced into the world by Christmas! And all these things we make, and sell in our shops. But who buys them of us? The Herr Pomuchelskopp buys them of us. I have nothing more to say."

And it was not necessary, for, as he finished his speech, all the tailors and shoemakers were, in imagination, making boots and shoes and trousers and jackets for the little Pomuchelskopps, and the shopkeepers were disposing of their remnants to Muchel, and Kurz had, in anticipation, sold him half his stock in trade.

But in spite of this, Braesig and the carpenter Schultz still cried, "Out with him! Out!" and the other side cried; "Let him stay!" "Out with him!" "Let him stay!" And there was a dreadful uproar. The material interests represented by the Pomuchelskopp's boots and trousers, rose up in opposition to the ideal fraternity; it was a hard fight. At last the bell from the president's desk quieted them sufficiently for the Herr President Rein to make himself heard.

"Gentlemen," said he--"Out with him!" "Out with him!" "Let him stay!"--"Gentlemen," he began again, "Thank God!"--"Out! out!" "Let him stay!"--"Thank God! the opinion of the assembly has expressed itself so decidedly, that we can proceed to a vote. So; let all those who are in favor of admission go to the musician's gallery; those who are opposed, go to the speaker's stand."

The Rahnstadt Reformverein put itself in motion; every one trotted off as fast as he could, to show his decided opinion, and it sounded, from a distance, as if a fulling-mill were in full progress at Grammelin's, and the result of this quiet proceeding was soon manifest, for Grammelin rushed into the room, crying, "Herr President! Children! I beg of you go to some other place, or vote in a more quiet way!"

"Eh, what?" said Thiel, the joiner; "we must vote! Else it is no Reform."

"I know that, Thiel, but you are voting so hard, that the plaster is all tumbling down from the ceiling."

They perceived by this that they were going a little too fast; and from that time, they did not attempt to vote with their feet; but only with their hands.

The votes were counted; Pomuchelskopp was admitted as a regular member of the Reformverein. Schultz the carpenter turned to Braesig, and asked, over, his shoulder, "Well, if it comes to this, Herr Inspector, what will become of Germany?"

"It is all one to me," said Braesig; "but don't talk to me of your Fraternity!"

Now the poverty-question came upon the carpet, and after the president had explained the question, the Rahnstadt Reformverein took it up for discussion: "How poverty came to be in the world, and why it remains here."

The first who rose was Rector Baldrian. He came up from behind, like all the rest, into the speaker's stand, but piled up a great heap of books before him, as high as his shoulders, to create a favourable opinion of himself, in the minds of the audience. As he had arranged the Bible and Xenophon, and Plato and Aristotle, and Livy and Tacitus, and all that he had on hand of Cicero, he made a bow, and said those were his reserves.

"Gossip," said Johann Bank to the shoemaker, Deichert, "this will be tedious; we know what he is, come and have a glass of beer."

Then the rector began, and proved first, from the Bible, that in very old times there was poverty among the Jews.

"That is not so!" cried an eager voice from the crowd, "the confounded Jews have all the money there is; they know well how a poor man feels."

The rector did not let himself be disturbed, he proved the matter from the Bible, and then took up Xenophon, and told about the Helots in Sparta, but the assembly did not seem quite to understand it. Upon that, he opened Plato, and began on him, that is, on the "Republic," and said that if the Rahnstadters had such a state of things as Plato had planned for the Athenians, every laborer in Rahnstadt could have roast beef and potatoes for dinner every day, and could ride in a coach Sunday afternoons, and the children, who now went begging about the streets, would go with gold chains around their necks, instead of beggars' sacks.

"Let him tell us more about that!" "Three cheers for Plato!" sounded through the hall. "Gossip, is that the old Jew-grinder Platow, who is blind of one eye?"

"Eh, gossip, I knew him well enough; he has bought many a piece of beef of me," said Kraeuger, the butcher.

The president's bell produced quiet, and that rogue of an advocate Rein turned to the rector, and begged, in the name of the assembly, that he would have the kindness to give the Rahnstadt Reformverein a particular account of the Platonic Republic.

That was a hard request, and the sweat ran down the poor old rector's face, as he began three times, and three times broke down, for he was far from having a clear idea of it himself. He finally said, in his distress, the Platonic Republic was a republic, and what a republic was his hearers, so well educated in political matters, knew very well. Well, everybody knew that; and then the rector got off among the Romans, and told something quite different, how sometimes the old Romans got hungry, and how they clamored loudly for panem et circenses. "Panem, my dear hearers," said he, "signifies bread, and circenses, open air plays."

All at once, shoemaker Deichert sprang up on a bench, and cried, "That is what I say! The old Romans were no fools; and what they did, we Rahnstadters can do, any day! What? when I and Bokel and Juerendt and all the others are sitting at Pfeifers, playing vingt-et-un, shall the burgomeister come and take away our cards, and send us and Gossip Pfeifer to the Rath-house, and make us pay a fine and costs? What? I say, like the old Romans, free, open play for all!"

"You are right, there, gossip," cried Juerendt, "three cheers for the old Romans and the Herr Rector!" And the others echoed: "Hurrah! hurrah!"

The rector acknowledged the compliment to himself and the Romans by a bow, and as he noticed that the president glanced frequently at the clock, he hastened to finish his speech, and concluded with these words: "My respected hearers, if we consider poverty at the present time, we shall find that it is only the children of poor people, and of the mechanics, who go begging in our city." With that he retired, carrying off his "reserves" under his arm.

He was followed by Johann "Meinswegens." "Gentlemen," said he, "I am, meinswegens,[11] a dyer," and thereupon he extended his two hands over the cask with so much emphasis that the whole Reformverein was astonished,--"I used to go to school to the Herr Rector, and he is right, we must have a republic, meinswegens Plato's, meinswegens somebody's else; but what the Herr Rector said about the mechanics, that is a sin and a shame; I mean, meinswegens, the mechanics and not the Herr Rector. Gentlemen, I have, meinswegens, travelled into strange countries as a journeyman mechanic--"

"You sat in the chimney-corner, with your mother," cried a voice from the crowd.

"What? I have been as far as Birnbaum in Poland, and, meinswegens, farther still, ever so far! as true as the sky is blue, and on the word of an honest blue dyer," and he smote on his breast. "And, gentlemen, I could, meinswegens, keep two journeymen, only that, unfortunately, indigo is so dear."

"Oh, you rascal! You color with logwood!" cried shoemaker Deichert.

"That is a stupid joke!" cried Johann.

"What, indigo? Hear!" cried several voices, "he colors with logwood!"

"Yes," cried the roguish shoemaker, "one can easily tell the women-folk that he colors for, they look like tar-barrels, the old logwood gives such a strong color."

"Young man," asked Johann, in a very superior way, "have you, meinswegens, ever looked into my dye-tub?"

"You should hold your tongue, when we are talking about poverty; you are well enough off," cried another.

"Gentlemen, meinswegens, that is a stupid joke! It is true, I have built myself a new house----"

"Of logwood," cried the shoemaker. "Of logwood!" repeated the others.

"No! no!" cried the dyer, "of fir wood, with oaken beams!"

"Of logwood!" cried the others.

"Gentlemen," began Johann once more, very impressively, raising himself up, and striking his breast with his blue fist, "I am, meinswegens, a Rahnstadt burgher, and I have no more to say."

"That is enough!" cried several.

"Then do as you ought!" cried the day-laborers, "down with the blockhead, he tells us nothing but what we know already."

And Johann "Meinswegens" was obliged to come down from the platform.

Then came Kurz: "Fellow-citizens! We are to discuss poverty, and my honored predecessor has been speaking of indigo. That is a pretty business! Why should we poor merchants pay taxes, if every dyer may get his own indigo, and my honored Herr Predecessor can only do this, because no one can overlook his cards, and see how much indigo he uses, and how much logwood!"

"You look at the cards, yourself!" cried a voice behind him,--he looked round, right into Braesig's face, but was not disconcerted, and went on: "For he can buy his indigo cheaper of me than even at Rostock. But, fellow-citizens, about poverty--if it goes on like this, we shall all become poor."

"He is right there, gossip," said shoemaker Deichert to Johann Bank.

"Fellow-citizens, I purchased myself an express wagon and a horse, to send home my goods, and also to make a little profit."

"We common people don't care about your little profits!" interrupted Fritz Siebert, the carrier.

"But," Kurz went on, "what happened? They laid an attachment on my wagon, last year, at Teterow----"

"Because you had not paid the tax," again interrupted Fritz Siebert.

Kurz did not mind such little interruptions as these, for he had been turned out once, and he was a persevering character, so he went on: "Our Herr Burgomeister sent for me, and asked me what sort of a wagon I sent my goods home in. 'In my own wagon,' I said. 'So, per se?' said he. 'No,' I said, 'not per sea, Rahnstadt is not a seaport; per land-carriage.' Then he laughed, and said he had expressed himself in Latin. Fellow-citizens, What are we coming to, when the magistrates express themselves in Latin, and attachments are levied on horses and wagons? That is the way to poverty. How shall we merchants live on the small profits we get on coffee and sugar, tobacco and snuff?"

"Don't talk about your cursed snuff!" cried shoemaker Deichert, "it has given me a nose like that!" and he held up his fist before his face; but he did not have a chance to say more, for everybody laughed, as they saw his natural nose peeping out on both sides of his fist.

"Fellow-citizens!" said Kurz, again, "I know, very well, there must be poverty, but it should be of a reasonable kind; I mean, so that every one may be able to take care of himself, and not be a burden to other people. But is that possible, under the sad state of things in our city? Fellow-citizens! for some years, I have been striving against the unjust privileges which certain people have obtained, and in which they have been protected."

"Gossip," said Thiel, the joiner, to Juerendt, "you see, he is coming to the stadtbullen. There he must stop, baker Wredow is my brother-in-law."

He was right. "Fellow-citizens!" cried Kurz, "I mean the stadtbullen, these----"

"Down with him!" cried Thiel, the joiner.

"Yes, down with him!" echoed through the hall.

"We will hear nothing of bulls and cattle!" cried several voices.

"He grudges everybody the least profit!" cried Fritz Siebert.

"He wants it all for himself, even the stadtbullen!"

The president struck his bell emphatically, Kurz drew himself up in the stand, and made one more attempt: "Fellow-citizens!"

"Eh, what, fellow-citizens?" cried Thiel the joiner and Deichert the shoemaker, and pulled the unlucky tradesman down backwards, by the skirts of his coat, out of the cooling-vat, so that he gradually disappeared, and only his two hands trembled for a moment on the rim of the cask, as if he were drowning, and smothered sounds arose, "Stadtbullen--bullen--bullen--bullen?" Then all was silent, and Kurz fell half fainting into Braesig's arms. Braesig and the carpenter carried him out.

"I wish you would hold your confounded tongue!" said Uncle Braesig, as he dragged Kurz into the next room, and got him into a corner, "do you want to be turned out again?" and the two old fellows planted themselves to the right and left of Kurz, and stood there like the two men in the "Wild Man's gulden," who keep watch over a springing lion, lest he should attack the people; only the two old boys went more sensibly to work than the wild men, and each had a pipe in his hand, instead of a club.

Meanwhile, Fritz Siebert was showing that poverty came from the turnpike toll; the turnpike tolls must be given up; and tailor Wimmersdorf made a very reasonable proposition; something must be done for the poor, and he could think of nothing better at the moment, than to write down the grand-duke's castle, at Rahnstadt, as "national property;" if that could be sold, a good bit of poverty might be remedied, this was carried, and seven men went off to the castle, with Grammelin's stable lantern, and a piece of chalk, to attend to the business.

"Krischan," said a voice behind Pomuchelskopp, "I like that. You can write,--you shall write, to-morrow evening, on the door of our master's house."

Pomuchelskopp looked round--the voice struck him as familiar--right into the face of one of his own Reform day-laborers, and the cursed rascal had the impudence to nod. He had very peculiar feelings; he had no idea what to do; whether to play his trump of master, or to try fraternity again. Something must be done, he must at least get the Reformverein on his side; and when Braesig and Schultz returned to the hall, after having frightened Kurz into going home, the president was saying:

"Herr Pomuchelskopp has the floor."

Pomuchelskopp pressed slowly through the crowd, shaking Thiel's hand by the way, clapping Wimmersdorf on the shoulder, and speaking a few friendly words to the roguish shoemaker's apprentice. When he had squeezed himself into the cask, he began: "Gentlemen!"

Well, that always makes a great impression, when a blue dress-coat with bright buttons addresses a laborer's frock, and a mechanic's soiled coat, as "Gentlemen!" and a murmur went through the hall: "The man is right! He knows how to treat us!"

"Gentlemen!" said Pomuchelskopp, once more, when the murmurs ceased, "I am no orator, I am a simple farmer; I have heard better speakers here,"--and he bowed to the rector and Johann "Meinswegens," and tailor Wimmersdorf, Fritz Siebert also came in for a share, on account of the turnpike tolls,--"I have also heard worse,"--and he glanced at the door where Kurz had been carried out,--"but, gentlemen, I have not been drawn to you by the speeches, so much as by the sentiments which I find here."

"Bravo, bravo!"

"Gentlemen! I am all for Liberty, all for Equality, all for Fraternity! I thank you for admitting me into this noble union." Here he drew a white handkerchief from his pocket, and laid it down before him. "Gentlemen, you have been talking about poverty. Many a silent hour have I spent in thinking upon this subject, through many a sleepless night have I wearied myself with the question how this evil could be averted,"--here he wiped the sweat from his face with the handkerchief, probably to show what a difficult matter ne had found it,--"that is to say, gentlemen, poverty in our small towns, for our day-laborers in the country know nothing of poverty."

"So?" cried a voice from the rear. "Krischan, it is time now, speak up!"

"Our day-laborers," continued Pomuchelskopp, not allowing himself to be disturbed, although he knew the voice well enough, "receive a free dwelling and garden, free pasturage for a cow, hay and straw for the same, wood and peat, and land for potatoes and flax, as much as they need; once a week, alternately, a bushel of barley, a bushel of rye, or a thaler, and all the chaff from the threshing-floor, and the housewives can earn five shillings a day. Now, I ask you, gentlemen, is any day-laborer in the city as well off? Ought a day-laborer to require any more?"

"No, no!" cried the city laborers.

"Gentlemen," said Stosse Rutschow, "I am a journeyman carpenter, and I never get more than nine groschen a day, the summer through, and one groschen of that goes to the master; I would rather be a day-laborer with Herr Pomuchelskopp."

"Donkey!" cried Schultz the carpenter, "have you worked at all, this whole spring? You have been loafing about!"

"Quiet! quiet!" cried the people.

"Gentlemen!" Pomuchelskopp went on, "this is the way our day-laborers are situated, and look at their treatment! Any day-laborer can give notice at any time, and seek another place; isn't that honest? isn't that satisfactory?"

"Krischan, speak, it is time!" again cried the voice in the rear.

"Gentlemen!" said Pomuchelskopp, drawing to a close, "I am heartily agreed with this noble union in its sentiments, and on this subject of poverty in the small towns, and you shall see--I am not a rich man, but what I can do shall be done. And now, gentlemen, I ask your assistance and protection; if city and country are true to each other there will be order, and we can arrange and settle everything in a peaceable manner, in this noble Reformverein. Long live the Rahnstadt Reformverein!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the Reformverein!" echoed from every corner of the hall.

"Long live Herr Pomuchelskopp!" cried several voices, and Muchel, with a bow and a very friendly demeanor, went back to his place.

As he turned round, the speaker's stand was already occupied, and Zachary Braesig's red face shone upon him, not like a peaceful sun or moon, but like a fiery meteor, which the Lord sends into the world as a sign of his righteous judgments.

"Fellow-citizens!" he cried, and made a grimace at his fellow-citizens, as if he had devoured two of them for breakfast that morning, and would now select a nice, fat one for his supper,--"Fellow-citizens! if the Herr Zamwell Pomuchelskopp had stayed quietly at home in Gurlitz, I would not have said a word; if he had not pretended to be friends with me, here in this very hall, and had not on this grand father-land platform," here he struck on the cooling-vat, "told such confounded lies, I would not say a word."

"You must not talk like that!" cried tailor Wimmersdorf, "that is all nonsense!"

"If tailor Wimmersdorf considers my speech nonsense," said Braesig, "he can stop his ears, for all I care; he is much too stupid for me to notice; and now he can go and complain of me if he likes, I am Inspector Braesig."

"You are right! Go on!" cried the people.

"Fellow-citizens, I should have said nothing at all, for I hold it for a very unsuitable thing, in an agriculturist or any other man, to stir up the laborers against their master; but when such a--" "Great Mogul," interposed Schultz,--"stands up on this altar of fraternity to deceive this Reform with lies, and glorify himself, and make false representations of the happiness of his laborers, then I will speak out. Fellow-citizens! my name is Inspector Zachary Braesig."

"Bravo! bravo!"

"The Herr Zamwell Pomuchelskopp has told you that there is no poverty to be found in the country, he has regulated all the conditions of the day-laborer so wisely--bonus! as our honored Herr President Rein says; but, fellow-citizens, these day-laborers' conditions are something like roast beef and plum pudding; they are very nice, but we can't get them. For example, and merely praeter propter, take the houses! Close by Gurlitz is a sort of pig-pen, which passes for a house, and Willgans lives there,--is Willgans here?"

Willgans was not there.

"No matter. The roof has not been mended these three years, and the rain runs in overhead, and when there is a hard storm, the living-room is flooded, and the poor little children must wade round like frogs, while their father and mother are away at work, and when he complained about it Herr Pomuchelskopp said his name was Willgans (Wild-goose), and water was suitable for geese."

"Fie! fie! He ought not to say that!"

"And now about the free pasturage, and the hay for the cow! Where is the pasturage? Half a mile from the village, on the out-field, where nothing grows but goat's-beard, and among the fir-trees, and can the women go back and forth three times a day to milk? Well they don't need to go so often as that, for eighteen laborers, out of the one and twenty, have lost their cows, from one complaint or another, and the three that are left are real dancing-masters."

"The fellow is a Great Mogul!" cried the carpenter, "out with him! out!"

"Quiet, quiet! Go on again!"

"Yes, fellow-citizens, I will go on. About the wood and peat! The peat is moss-peat from the bog, and crumbles apart, and gives no heat, and the wood is fir-brush, and scattered branches, which the children carry home on their shoulders; and then the potato and flax land! Where is it? In the out-fields, on the worn-out soil. How is it manured? Only by the birds, and when one looks at his few potatoes, at harvest, he clasps his hands above his head, and says, 'God preserve us! Shall the family and the pig live on those all winter!' But they do not live on them, they steal. They don't steal from Pomuchelskopp, for they would pay too dear for it, but they steal in the neighborhood, and a good friend of mine, Frau Nuessler, has given orders that, if the Gurlitz laborers are caught stealing potatoes there, they shall let them go, for they do it from necessity, and they are to be pitied!"

"Hurrah for Frau Nuessler!" said Johann Bank, and "Hurrah!" was repeated, again and again.

"And the flax!" continued Braesig, "so long!"--measuring about a foot on his arm,--"so that even the Herr Notary Slusuhr himself, who is a particular friend of Herr Pomuchelskopp's, once made the bad joke in my presence, that the womenfolk at Gurlitz wear such short dresses, because the flax is too short to make long ones."

"He is an infamous donkey," cried the carpenter, "to be cracking his jokes at the poor! Out with him!"

"Fellow-citizens!" began Braesig afresh, "I will only say, the house, the cow-pasture, and the wood and peat, and flax and potato land are, for the laborers in the country, their roast beef and plum pudding, they are very nice; but they can't get them, and therefore there is poverty in the country. But how does it come about in the city? Fellow-citizens, I will tell you, for I have lived here long enough, and have studied human nature: the great poverty in the city comes from the great destitution here!"

With that, he made a bow, and took his leave, and "Bravo!" resounded through the hall: "The man is right!" "Long live Inspector Braesig!"

And then President Rein dismissed the assembly, saying that after such a speech no one could have anything more to say; and they all came up and congratulated Braesig, and shook hands with him all at once, all except Pomuchelskopp and the city musician, David Berger; the one had stolen away quietly, and the other had run home to call together his fellow-musicians, and when Braesig stepped out of Grammelin's door, there stood seven brass instruments before him, in a semi-circle, and opened fire on him at once, with "Hail to the chief!" and David Berger had his spectacles on, and was conducting with Grammelin's billiard cue, so that Uncle Braesig must look out for his head. And the Gurlitz laborers stood around him, in a body, and weaver Ruhrdanz said, "Don't be afraid, Herr Inspector, you have stood by us, and we will stand by you." And as Braesig was escorted by this festive procession, across the market, and through the streets of Rahnstadt, these poor, despised people followed him in trust and reverence, for it was the first time that the world had troubled itself about their distress and sorrow, and the feeling that one is not wholly forsaken works more good in the human soul than any amount of admonitions.

Before the Frau Pastorin's house, Braesig made a short speech to his guard of honor: he regretted that he could not invite them in, but it would be unsuitable in a clerical house, for he lived with the Frau Pastorin; but he hoped they would all meet him at Grammelin's, to-morrow evening, over a bowl of punch. They received this with a "Hurrah!" and when Braesig had gone to bed, after telling Karl the whole story, the Rahnstadt glee-club sang under window,

"Laurels wave where the warrior sleeps,"

and on the road to Gurlitz went the day-laborers, in serious mood; and old weaver Ruhrdanz said, "Children, listen to me! We will get rid of him; but not by force, no! in all moderation, for what would the grand-duke and the Herr Inspector Braesig say, if we should show our gratitude for his speech by making fools of ourselves?"

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Chapter XXXIX

After church next day, for it was Sunday, Kurz came in to see Habermann and Braesig:

"Good day! good day! I am angry; nothing but vexations the whole day! What? Such a set of people! Won't let a man speak at all! Eh, one might better keep swine than be a democrat! They listen to the stupidest speeches, and cry 'Bravo,' and give serenades, disturbing people out of their sleep, and when one tries to make an important subject clear to them, do they drum and pipe then? and they call that a Reformverein!"

"Listen to me, Herr Kurz," said Braesig, stepping up to him, fully two inches taller than usual, "it is very unbecoming in you, to sneer at that serenade, for that serenade was given to me, and you would have been turned out again, if the well-meaning Herr Schultz and I had not taken you under our protection. What? What does the old proverb say? 'When it is the fashion, one rides to the city on a bull;' but it is not the fashion in the Reformverein, and if one persists in riding in and rampaging about on a bull, the people won't stand it, and they turn him out, with his bull, for the Reformverein is not designed for such purposes."

"It is all one to me!" cried Kurz, "other people rode in on donkeys, and were treated with great distinction."

"You are a rude fellow!" cried Uncle Braesig, "you are an impertinent rascal! If this were not Karl Habermann's room, I would kick you down stairs, and you might carry your bones home in a bag."

"Hush, Braesig, hush!" interposed Habermann, "and you, Kurz, ought to be ashamed of yourself, to come here stirring up strife and contention."

"I had strife and contention last evening; I have had strife and contention all day long. This morning, when I had hardly opened my eyes, my wife began with strife and contention; she is not willing I should go to the Reformverein."

"She is quite right, there," said Habermann, seriously, "you are not a fit person to go, for, with your hasty, inconsiderate behavior, you do nothing but mischief;" and leaving him he went over to Braesig, who was running up and down the room, puffed up like an adder: "Braesig, he couldn't have meant it so."

"It is no consequence to me, Karl, what such an uncouth, malicious, miserable beast thinks of me. Riding in on a donkey? Fie, it is nothing but the meanest envy."

"I did'nt mean you!" cried Kurz, running up and down the other side of the room, "I meant my brother-in-law, Baldrian, and the dyer, and the other blockheads. And is'nt it enough to drive one crazy? First, the quarrel with my wife, about the Reformverein, then a quarrel with my shopman,--he slept till nine o'clock this morning, was out singing on the streets last night, and at the beer-house, till four o'clock; then a quarrel with the stable-boy and the horse-doctor,--my saddle-horse has got the influenza,--then another quarrel with my wife, she don't want me to have anything to do with farming."

"There she is right again," interrupted Habermann. "All your farming amounts to nothing, because you don't understand it."

"So! I don't understand it? Nothing but vexations! Afterwards the stupid servant maid, she put on a table-cloth for dinner that came down to the floor; well, we sit there, a customer rings, I am provoked with the shopman because he doesn't start up immediately, start up myself, catch the table-cloth between my feet, and pull off the soup-tureen, and the whole concern, on the floor. Do you see, then my wife comes, and holds me fast, and says, 'Kurz, go to bed, you are unlucky to-day;' and every time that I get angry, she says, 'Kurz, go to bed!' It is enough to drive one crazy."

"And your wife was right again," said Habermann, "if you had stayed in bed, you would not have come here to make trouble."

"So?" cried Kurz, "did you ever lie in bed all day, with sound limbs, merely because it was an unlucky day? I will never do it again, no matter how much my wife begs me. One worries himself to death! She took away my boots and my trousers, and I lay there and fretted, because I could not get up, if I wanted to."

Uncle Braesig began to laugh heartily.

"Well," said Habermann, "then you came over here, and got vexed again."

"Eh, how?" said Kurz, "I did'nt mean that at all, I only came over to ask you two Herr Inspectors if you would go with me to my field, and see if it was ready for ploughing."

Through Habermann's persuasions the quarrel was made up, and the three farmers went to the field, Kurz making close calculations, and reeling off his agricultural phrases, while Braesig said to himself, "Who is riding on the donkey now?"

"I have a piece of ground here," said Kurz, "measuring a hundred and fifty square rods, and I have bought ten cartloads of manure from Kraenger the butcher, real, fat, slaughter-house manure; I am going to plant beets; I had it strewed yesterday; is'nt that enough, gentlemen? Look here!" and he turned out of the road into the field.

"Very badly strewed!" said Braesig. "A properly manured field should look like a velvet cover," and he began to poke the lumps apart with his stick.

"Never mind," said Kurz, "something will grow, it is good slaughter-house manure, cost me ten thalers."

All at once he stood stock still, caught at the air with his hands, and looked wildly around him.

"Good heavens!" cried Braesig, "what is the matter?"

"Thunder and lightening!" cried Kurz, "the devil is in it! This is not my field, this next one is mine, and that confounded rascal has gone and put my manure on another field! And I told him to do it! Ten thalers! And the carting! And the strewing! Isn't it enough to make one crazy?"

"Eh, Kurz, that is not so bad," said Habermann, "that can be settled, your neighbor will be good-natured, and pay for the manure."

"That is the very thing!" cried Kurz. "This is baker Wredow's field, whom I have such a quarrel with about the stadtbullen; he had better take care!"

"There's a farmer for you," said Braesig very quietly, "carting his manure into other people's fields!"

"It is enough to drive one crazy!" cried Kurz, "but I will save what I can," and he ran to the boundary of the field, and began tossing the lumps of manure over into his field with his stick, and worked away, until he was out of breath with exercise and rage, and then he threw his stick across the field, and panted out the words: "I will have nothing more to do with it! Why didn't I stay in bed! When I get home, and get hold of that rascal of a boy,--children, I beg you, hold me fast, or something dreadful will happen!"

"Rely upon me," said Braesig, "I will hold you," and he caught him by the coat-collar at once.

"But what was the stick to blame for?" said Habermann, going to pick it up. Something stuck fast to the stick, Kurz had thrust it through, with his working, and thrown it away with the stick; the old man was going to shake it off, but as he looked at it, he stood still. Braesig had been occupied with Kurz, and had not paid attention to his old friend, and he now called.

"Come, Karl, we are going! There is nothing to be made of this business."

He got no answer, and as he looked at his friend, he saw him standing, with something black in his hand, which he regarded with fixed attention, not turning nor moving.

"Good heavens, Karl, what have you there?" cried Zachary Braesig, going towards him. Still he got no answer, Habermann, pale as death, was looking at that which he held in his hand, and which made his features quiver with agitation.

"Karl, Karl! What have you found, what is the matter?"

And at last the words burst from Habermann's struggling breast: "That packet! This is that packet!" and he held out to Braesig a piece of waxed cloth.

"What? What sort of a packet?"

"Oh, I have held it in my hand, I have seen it for years, waking and dreaming! See, here is the von Rambow coat of arms, here are the marks on the cloth. It was put together like that, it was of that size! It was put up so, with the two thousand thalers in gold! This is the packet, which Regel was sent to Rostock with."

AH this came out as disjointedly, anxiously and confusedly, as when one talks in a dream, and the old man seemed to be so overpowered by excitement that Braesig sprang towards him, and held him, but he held the cloth fast, as if it had grown into his heart, and Braesig raised himself, to look at it nearer,--Kurz came up also, without noticing any thing remarkable, for he was not yet over his vexation: "Well," he exclaimed, "now, tell me, isn't it enough to drive me crazy? There lies my manure, there lies my ten thalers, on baker Wredow's field."

"Thunder and lightning!" cried Braesig, "do leave your confounded manure in peace! Your talk is as bad as the stuff itself. There is your cane,--we must go home. Come, Karl, recollect yourself."

And when Habermann had taken a few steps, the color returned to his face, and a restless agitation and a driving haste came over him, he began to ask after this thing and that; of whom Kurz had bought the manure, when it was loaded, how it was loaded, what sort of a man the butcher Kraeuger was, and then he stood still, and folded the packet together, and looked at the creases in the cloth, and at the seal, while Kurz quite forgot his anger, and wondered what had came over the old inspector, that he should take so much interest in his manure and his ten thalers. At last Braesig told him about the matter, but he made him promise with a fearful oath, that he would not repeat a word of it, to any one; "For," said he, "you are one of the people whose tongues run away with them."

And then they stood together in the street, and deliberated how the wrapper of the packet could have come into the butcher's yard, and Kurz, as well as Braesig, was of the opinion, that it was impossible the butcher could have anything to do with the business,--he was too respectable a man.

"Yes," said Habermann, and the old energy and decision and judgment, which he had seemed to lose in his trouble and grief, had quite come back to him, "yes, but a neighbor might have thrown it over there. Does the butcher live alone in the house?"

He had tenants in the back part of the house, Kurz said, but he did not know who they were.

"I must go to the burgomeister," said Habermann, and as they came back into the town, he went to his house. Kurz would have gone with him, but Braesig held him back: "We two have lost nothing." And as he said farewell to him, at his own door, he added, "You belied me to-day in the most shameful manner; I have forgiven you, however, the 'riding on a donkey;' but if you breathe a word about Karl Habermann's business, I will wring your neck for you,--you confounded old syrup-prince, you!"

Habermann found the burgomeister at home; he told him about his discovery and laid the waxed cloth together in the previous folds, while the burgomeister grew more and more attentive, and finally said:

"Yes, to be sure, to be sure! I had the packet in my hand, also, when I gave the messenger his pass; the examination, that followed immediately, fixed it clearly in my memory, and if I were called as a witness, I must testify that it is the same, or one exactly like it. But, my dear Herr Habermann, the trace is still too indistinct; for example, the butcher certainly can have nothing to do with the business, he is one of our best citizens; it is not to be thought of."

"But there are other people in the back of the house."

"That is true, yes! Do you know who lives there? Well, we can soon find out," and he touched the bell. The waiting-maid came in.

"Fika, who lives in the back part of the house with Kraeuger the butcher?"

"Eh, Herr, widow Kaehlert lives there, and then Schmidt the weaver," said Fika.

"Schmidt? Schmidt? Is that the weaver Schmidt, who is divorced from his wife?"

"Yes, Herr, and people say he is going to be married again, to the widow Kaehlert."

"So? so? Do people say that? Well, you may go;" and the burgomeister walked up and down, thinking and thinking, and then stopped before Habermann, and said, "It is really a remarkable coincidence; that is the divorced husband of the woman, whom we took up once for examination; you know, she claimed to have found the Danish double louis-d'ors."

Habermann said nothing, fear and hope were struggling too powerfully in his breast.

The burgomeister touched the bell again; Fika came: "Fika, go round to butcher Kraeuger's, and tell him I want him to come here, in a quarter of an hour."

Fika went; and the burgomeister said to Habermann, "Herr Inspector, these are very significant indications; yet it is possible we may come to a dead halt; I can give you very little encouragement. But even if we arrive at no certainty, what does it matter? No reasonable being can have any suspicion of you. I have been really troubled to see that you have taken such utterly groundless suspicions so much to heart. But I must ask you to go now; people will certainly think you are concerned in the matter. Say nothing about it, and take care that Kurz and Braesig are silent also. Yes--and--yes, that will do! You can send Inspector Braesig to me, to-morrow morning at nine o'clock."

Habermann went, and Kraeuger the butcher came.

"Dear Herr Kraeuger," said the burgomeister, "I sent for you, that you might give me information on a few points. The widow Kaehlert and the weaver Schmidt live with you?"

"Yes, Herr Burgomeister, they live in the back of my house."

"As I hear, weaver Schmidt is going to marry widow Kaehlert. Does the woman know that there are some legal hindrances in the way of Schmidt's contracting a second marriage?"

"Yes, Herr Burgomeister; I don't know about that last; I don't trouble myself about the people; but, you know, these women folks! if these is a courtship in the air, they are like the bees, and bring the news into the house,--well, Herr Burgomeister, you won't take it ill, mine is naturally no better than the rest; well, she came in lately, and said the business was so far settled that Kaehlertsch was quite determined about it, but the weaver wasn't ready yet. And Frau Kaehlert told Frau Bochert, she had cooked and washed for him over a year, and it was time he were making his preparations; but it was all the fault of that baggage his divorced wife, who came and teased the weaver to take her back again. If she should come again, however, she would trip her up, and the weaver might cook and wash for himself."

"The widow Kaehlert must be very foolish," said the burgomeister, "to want to marry that man. She has a little something, enough to live on; but he has nothing in the world but his loom; that came out in the evidence, at the divorce."

"Yes, it was so then. But, you see, Herr Burgomeister, I don't trouble myself about him,--if he pays his rent, I have no further business with him, and he has always done that honestly; and he has rented, for this year past, a little room of mine, that opens into his, and my wife says she went in there once, with Frau Kaehlert, and it was very nicely fitted up, with a sofa, and pictures on the wall."

"He must have had a good deal to do then, and have earned a good deal."

"Eh, Herr Burgomeister, a weaver! and it is such a noisy business, they can tell, all over the neighborhood, when the old loom stands still, and there are a good many days, when I don't hear its music. No, he must have something laid up."

"Then he lives very comfortably?"

"Yes, indeed! He has his fresh meat every day, and I told my wife, 'You shall see,' I said, 'it is only because of the nice mutton and beef that Kaehlertsch wants to marry him.'"

"Well, Herr Kraeuger, just tell me plainly,--I ask you in confidence,--do you think the man is really an honest man?"

"Yes, Herr Burgomeister, I think he is. Now in some things I am very observant, I have had some tenants who would run a splinter into their fingers, in the yard, and when they pulled it out, in their kitchen, it would be a four-foot log of my beechen timber, and when they went through the shop, a pound of beef would jump into their coat-pockets, and the apples from my trees were always falling at their feet. Well, it isn't so with him; I say to you, don't meddle with him!"

The burgomeister was an honorable man, and a man of the best intentions; but at this moment such good testimony in behalf of one of his fellow-men, was not agreeable to him; he would rather have heard that people thought the weaver a rascal. Some things are hard to explain; but so much is certain, there are dark abysses in human nature, and when such an abyss has opened in the office of the judge, it has swallowed up thousands of innocent men. "Judge, judge justly! God is thy master, and thou his servant!" is a fine old proverb, which my father taught me when I was a little boy, but the weakness of human nature does not always suffer us to act up to it, to say nothing of the openly wicked, who seek their advantage in injustice.

The butcher had gone, and the burgomeister walked up and down the room, thinking over the matter, and contriving how he could find out how the waxed cloth came into the butcher's yard. Two things urged him powerfully to this investigation, one was his deep compassion for Habermann's troubles, the other, his firm persuasion that this was the wrapper of the gold-packet which he had held in his own hand. But he knew, also, that he had not yet a firm clue, which he could follow; yet he was sure of so much, that the weaver's divorced wife still held intercourse with him.

Habermann, also, was walking up and down in his room, hastily, restlessly. Ah, how strongly he was impelled to share his hopes and his prospects with his child, and the Frau Pastorin! But unrest for both? And he had enough to do, to control his own.

Braesig sat in a chair, turning his head back and forth as Habermann walked up and down the room, and looking at him; like Bauschan when Jochen Nuessler had his cap on.

"Karl," said he, finally, "I am very glad to see you are growing so active, and you shall see, it will have a good effect upon you. But, I tell you, you must have an advocate. Take the Herr Advocate Rein; he is a good fellow, who knows how to turn and twist, in spite of his length. You can't go through with it alone, Karl; but he can help you, and, if it is necessary, I can bring the matter before the Reformverein, and your fellow-citizens can help you to your rights."

"Braesig, for mercy's sake! what are you thinking of? You might as well tell it to the town-crier! I am dreadfully afraid Kurz will let it out."

"Kurz? No, Karl, don't be afraid, he can't talk about it to-day, for I have been to him and scolded him till he can scarcely see or hear, and to-morrow you shall see he will have the croup, so that he cannot speak a word."

"Braesig, I beg of you; Kurz have the croup?" and Habermann laughed in spite of his agitation, "what are you talking about?"

"Karl, you needn't laugh at me! See, his saddle-horse has the inflorentia,--the horse-doctor said so, and he ordered that the old mare should be separated from the other horses, on account of the infection, and there was Kurz running about the sick horse in his cotton-wadded dressing-gown, feeling her here, and feeling her there, and then he ran back to the sound ones, to see if they had caught it already, and so he has infected the sound ones, for the infectious matter would get into the cotton wool of the dressing-gown,--cotton wool is the best thing in the world to carry infection,--and, you shall see, he has caught it himself, and to-morrow he will have the croup. The glanders is catching, why shouldn't the inflorentia be?"

Habermann passed a very restless night; but although he had not closed an eye, he was full of energy next morning; a beam of hope had fallen into the darkness, and gilded his prospects; but he could not stay in the house, the four walls oppressed him, he must have room for his restlessness, and long before Braesig went to the Rathhaus to keep his appointment with the burgomeister, Habermann was wandering along the quiet footpaths through the green spring fields. And what a lovely spring it was! It was just as if heaven were saying to earth, "Hope confidently!" and earth again to man, "Hope confidently!" and to the old inspector also, she cried, with her green springing leaves and bird-voices, "Hope confidently!"

Heaven did not keep her promise to earth, the next year was a year of want; earth did not keep her promise to man, the next year was a year of misery; would she keep her promise to the old man? He knew not, but he trusted the message. He walked on, and on, he came to Gurlitz, he went along the same pathway where he had walked with Franz, that Palm-Sunday morning, when his daughter was to be confirmed. He knew that it was on this day that love had first stirred in the young man's heart,--Franz had written him so, he often wrote to him,--and a great bitterness arose in him that the happiness, which had grown so silently and purely in two innocent hearts, should be disturbed and destroyed by the foolishness and injustice of another person, and be turned off, abruptly, into another path which led to Rexow, that he need not go through the Pumpelhagen garden.

A girl came towards him with a child on her arm, and as she came nearer she stood still, exclaiming:

"Herr Inspector! Herr Inspector! How long it is since I have seen you!"

"Good day, Fika," said Habermann, and looked at the child, "how goes it with you?"

"Ah, Herr, very badly; Krischan Daesel mixed himself up in that business against the Herr, that we might be able to get married, and the Herr has sent him away, and I should have gone too, but the gracious Frau would not permit it. Well, if you want to get down, run then!" she said to the child, who was struggling in her arms.

"I always have to take her out about this time," she added, "for the gracious Frau is busy about the housekeeping, and the little one frets after her."

Habermann looked at the child. She plucked flowers at the roadside, and coming up to him with "Da! man!" she put a marigold blossom into his hand, and through Habermann's heart shot the recollection of such a flower, which another child--his own child--had put into his hand years ago, and he lifted the child in his arms, and kissed her, and the child stroked this white hair: "Ei! ei!" and he let her down, and turned to go, saying, "Fika Degel, take her home, it will rain soon."

And as he went his way, the spring rain fell to the earth in gentle drops, and his heart shone beneath it, like the fresh grain. What had become of his hatred?

When Habermann reached Rexow, his sister sprang to meet him, as quickly as her stoutness would allow:

"Karl! God bless you! Karl! Have you come at last! And how bright you look! And so handsome! Dear brother, has anything happened? Has something good happened to you?"

"Yes, child, yes; I will tell you by and by. Where is Jochen?"

"Jochen? Dear heart, you may well ask. Where he is, no mortal knows; he comes and goes like a bird on the fence. Since the time when it was settled that Rudolph and Mining are to be married next week, on Friday,--you are coming to the wedding?--he has no rest, day nor night, and busies himself about the farming, and now that the spring seed is all planted and he has nothing in the world to do, he runs about the fields, and when he comes home, he makes us all miserable. It is just as if he would make up, in the eight days between now and the wedding, what he has neglected for five and twenty years."

"Oh, let him work! It will do him no harm."

"So I say, but Rudolph is vexed because he follows him round so."

"Well, that won't last long. Is everything quiet here?"

"Oh, yes, and if Jochen had not wanted to make that speech about the geese, we should have known nothing about the troubles, but at Gurlitz and Pumpelhagen it looks badly."

"At Pumpelhagen, too?"

"Oh, yes, yes! They say nothing about it; he doesn't speak, and she doesn't speak, but the whole region knows that it may break out, any day. He has so many debts, now the day-laborers demand their wages, and he has been letting them run up, and then they want you again for inspector."

"Oh, that last is all nonsense!"

"So I said. No, I told the gracious Frau, my brother Karl will never come to this place again."

"What?" asked Habermann, hastily, "have you been to see her?"

"Yes, indeed, Karl. Didn't Braesig tell you we were going?"

"He said you were going, but I did not know that you had been there."

"Yes, Karl, it happened this way; Triddelsitz came here with his new-fashioned pistols, and said they would greet the day-laborers with them, and I said to Jochen we must go to those people. Well, they had affronted us, to be sure, and there was no need of our going; but, Karl, the times! If one will not stretch out his hand to help a neighbor in such times as these, I would, not give much for him! Well, we rode over there, but what Jochen said to the young Herr, of course no mortal knows. 'Jochen,' said I, 'what did he say to you?' 'Nothing at all,' said he. 'What did you talk about?' I asked. 'Eh, what should we talk about?' said he. 'What did he say to you at last?' said I. 'He said adieu,' said he, 'but, mother, I shall not go there again.'"

"Well, how did she receive you?" asked Habermann.

"Eh, Karl, I believe if she had allowed herself she would have fallen upon my neck and wept. She took me into her room, and looked so friendly and natural, and when I told her that being a neighbor and a friend, I had come to see if I could be useful to her in any way, she looked at me kindly and quietly, and said, 'Tell me, how is your brother?' and when I had told her you were pretty well,--thank God!--she asked after Louise, and when I had told her good news of her, she became quite cheerful, and began to tell me about her housekeeping; but it was not as when a couple of housewives, like me, sit down together to have a little sensible talk over their housekeeping; it was a little too quick for me; but one could see very well she understood it thoroughly. Dear heart, she may have need of it yet! See, Karl, I plucked up courage, and stood up and took her hand in both mine, and said she must not repulse me,--no one should throw away dirty water until he was sure of clean; she might be in trouble,--of course she had friends, but they might not be near at hand,--and then she must come to me, for, as her neighbor, I was the nearest to her, as the Frau Pastorin says, and whatever I could do should be done. Karl, the tears stood in her eyes, and she turned away, and pressed them back, and when she turned round to me again, her face was full of friendliness and sweetness, and she took me by the hand, and said I should have my reward, and she took me into another room, and lifted her little child in her arms, and reached her towards me, and the little thing must give me a kiss. What a dear sweet girl it is!"

"Yes, yes!" said Habermann, "I have seen her this morning. But did she make no complaint?"

"Not a word, Karl. She said nothing of him, and nothing of their troubles, and when we came away, we were as wise as before, at least I was; for Jochen told me nothing, if he had really heard anything from the young Herr."

"Well, sister, it is all the same. Every body knows that the young Herr is in great pecuniary embarrassment; Pomuchelskopp gave him notice for his money, and did not get it at St. Anthony's day, and has now sued him; Moses has given him notice for St. John's day, and will not get his money either, for in such times, and under such circumstances, he can raise nothing, and then his estate must be sold, and it will go very cheap, and Pomuchelskopp will buy it. In better times, and under the right sort of management, the estate would bring a good price. You will help the gracious Frau and so will I, I will gladly give up my little capital, if the young Herr will consent to a sensible management; but that would not go far. You must do something also; and I will talk seriously to Moses, and it will be a sin and a shame if we honest people cannot get the better of that old rascal, who muddied the water in the first place, that he might catch his carp the easier!"

"Yes, Karl, if he would manage sensibly, and have you for inspector again, then--"

"No, child," interposed Habermann, decidedly, "I shall never go there again. But there are plenty of skilful farmers in the country,--thank God!--and he must get such an one, and leave the management to him, we will make that a condition."

"Yes, Karl, that is all very well; but now we have the outfit for Mining,--Kurz might have done more about it, and for his only son, but he is always filling one's ears with complaints, and, Karl, it might make us trouble with Rudolph; and we must take care that we have something to live upon, in our old age, and then our money is all tied up in mortgages."

"Moses can arrange all that. You see, sister, you have promised the Frau you would help her, and I know you meant what you said; now is the time for you to help!"

"Yes, Karl, but Jochen! what will Jochen say?"

"Eh, Jochen! Jochen has done whatever you wanted for this five and twenty years, he will do so still."

"Karl, you are right; he must do so. I have always managed for his good, and would he set himself against me now? But he is always making trouble; it is very hard to control him," and Frau Nuessler sprang up from her chair, and struck her fist against the table, as if that were Jochen.

"My dear child," said Habermann, "you have brought about a great deal of good, in these long years; you will bring this about too. May God help you! and now, adieu!" and he gave his sister a kiss, and departed.

What a pleasant walk he had! His restlessness of yesterday and that morning were quite gone, such a sure hope had sprung up in him, and all that he saw, the blue sky and the green earth, harmonized with his mood, harmonized with the peace which had entered his heart. And as he arrived at home, and his daughter scolded him, and the Frau Pastorin wondered why he had not come home to dinner, which they had kept waiting for him, he looked so bright and cheerful, that Braesig gazed at him in astonishment, and said to himself, "Karl must have found out some new indicium," for he had learned several new Latin phrases that morning. And he sat there, and made the most frightful faces at Habermann, until the old man finally understood them as signs that he should go out, and went with him up-stairs to his room.

"Braesig," cried Habermann, in some excitement, "do you know anything about the business? Has anything come out?"

"Karl," said Braesig, walking up and down with his long pipe, and tugging at a high shirt-collar, which sat very uncomfortably, as he did not usually wear one, "Karl, don't you see anything unusual about me?"

"Yes, Braesig," said Habermann, "your shirt-collar, and it seems to scratch you dreadfully."

"That is nothing. Higher up!"

"Eh, then I don't know."

"Karl," said Braesig, standing before him, "so as you see me here, I am appointed assessor at the criminal court, and get, by the hour's sitting, eight shillings, Prussian currency."

"Oh, leave that alone! But tell me, is there any prospect that anything can come of the matter?"

Braesig looked his friend right in the eye, shook his head a little, and said; "Karl, I dare not tell you anything, and I will not, the Herr Burgomeister has expressly forbidden me to say anything here in town, and especially to you, for the Herr Burgomeister says it will only be a useless torment for you, and we must have more indiciums, for he can do nothing without indiciums, and these confounded things can only be obtained by the greatest secrecy, says the Herr Burgomeister, and, if the whole city knows it, it would only give opportunity for all sorts of confusions among the rascals. But so much I can tell you, they have lied already, and they will keep on lying, till they fix themselves in a trap."

There was a knock at the door; it was the letter-carrier, bringing Habermann a letter: "From Paris," he said, and went away.

"Lord preserve us, Karl! You have very distinguished acquaintances! Who the devil can it be? From Paris!"

"It is from Franz," said Habermann, and his hand trembled, as he hastily broke the seal. Franz had often written to him, and every time he had been in doubt whether to mention the correspondence to his child or not,--until now, he had said nothing to her about it. He read; the letter was full of friendship, and the old attachment; every word expressed the recollection of old times; but not a single one referred to his love. At the close, he said that he should remain in Paris until St. John's day, and then return home. This last Habermann told Braesig, as he put the letter in his pocket.

Braesig was walking back and forth meanwhile, thinking, and, if Habermann had not been occupied with his letter, he must have heard what he was saying to himself.

"Remarkable! quite remarkable! It seems to me like the finger of God! The Herr Burgomeister can have no objection to that, Paris has nothing to do with the indiciums, this is a purely private affair. Karl," he said at last, standing before Habermann, and looking at him, as he had seen the burgomeister look at the weaver that morning, "Karl, tell me the real truth; does your young Herr von Rambow know,--your old pupil, I mean,--that I know, that you and the Frau Pastorin know, that something has happened between him and Louise, that nobody is to know?"

"Eh, Braesig, I don't know----"

"Good, Karl, I see I have not expressed my meaning clearly enough, I mean, is he of the" opinion that you and the Frau Pastorin think that I think well of his love for Louise, and that you have told me? That is my opinion, and now tell me yours."

"Eh, Braesig, he knows that you know about it, and he knows that you think well of it; but what of that?"

"Good, Karl; lose no words! But I must go now, I have invited David Berger and his trumpeters and the whole glee club to Grammelin's this evening, to a bowl of punch, and I must go and look after it. So, adieu, Karl!" and he went, but came back again: "Karl, tell the Frau Pastorin, I shall not be home to supper. If I should say anything to her about the punch, she would preach me a little sermon; and you, Karl, don't be alarmed if I come home late to-night. I have the key." But he came back once more to say: "Karl, what can be done, shall be done."

"I believe it," said Habermann, who thought he referred to the punch, "you will do your business thoroughly." Braesig nodded, as if to say he might rely upon him with confidence, and went.

Habermann sat there, and read his letter a second time, and who would have thought that from this manuscript so many fair hopes would blossom? The warm friendship, which spoke in the letter, soothed him like the spring weather, and the trusting tone echoed sweetly in his ears, as the song of birds. Should his hopes be again deceived? Time would show!

Ah, time and hope! They stand over against each other, like the cuckoo and the seven stars; a man who, after long darkness, ventures to hope again, and sees the first faint gleams of happiness in the dark sky, must yet wait patiently the time when the sun stands full in the heavens.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XL

The next morning, when Zachary Braesig arose, he took hold of his head with both hands, saying:

"Karl, you may congratulate yourself that I haven't a worse headache than I really have: for who could play assessor to-day? If I had followed Grammelin's cursed punch receipt I should have a whole nest of sparrows in my head this morning. But I made it after my own fashion."

"Well, were you very jolly?" asked Habermann.

"Oh, yes! the younger part of the company were quite lively; as for me, I kept myself very quiet. I sat by the town-musician, David Berger, and, by the way, Karl! what an amount that fellow can stand! I thought to myself, that belongs to his business; but one glass after another, incessantly! and at last he became what they call sentimental, he embraced me, and, with tears in his eyes, told me how little he could earn in these political times, till Herr Suessmann, who is Kurz's shopman, and I really pitied him. And Herr Suessmann proposed to the company that we should get up a fraternity ball, for David Berger's benefit; that is, a political one, where all ranks, nobility, and ritter-proprietors, and paechters and burghers and their wives and children, should come together, and shake hands, and dance with, and, for aught I know, kiss each other. And this indicium was resolved upon, and it is to be a week from Sunday. And Herr Suessmann drew up a subscription paper, and I subscribed for you and me and the Frau Pastorin and Louise."

"Braesig, I beg of you, what would the Frau Pastorin and Louise do at a ball, or I, either?"

"But you must, for it is a noble cause."

"And you couldn't go either, Zachary, for a week from Friday is Mining's wedding day, and the next Sunday the going to church, and what would my sister say if you were absent, and at your stupid Reform-ball?"

"That alters the matter, we must have it put off, and so adieu, Karl, I will go at once to Herr Suessmann, and see about it, and then I must go to the Rathhaus, you know, to sit for four groschen an hour."

He went directly to Kurz's shop, but Herr Suessmann was not there, Kurz himself was running about, opening the drawers and looking in, and then shutting them again.

"Good morning, Kurz, where is your young Herr?"

"I have no young Herr; I am Herr[12] myself."

"Kurz, take care of your words, we live in democratic times, since----"

"Ah, what? Here? Take care! I despise the whole democracy, when my shopman goes out drinking punch over night, and cannot get up in the morning; and old people should be ashamed----"

"Hold, Kurz, you are beginning again with your flatteries, like last Sunday, but I cannot allow it at present, on account of my situation at the court. And adieu, Kurz! But I am sorry for you, for you have caught the inflorentia, you should go to bed, there is something in your bones, and if you will feel under your gaiters, you will find you are beginning to get the rheumatism. But adieu, Kurz!"

He went off, but Kurz raved about his shop, and stormed at the whole world, until his wife, as soon as the shopman was out of bed, got him into bed, and put him under arrest for the time.

After this little interview, Braesig went to the Rathhaus, and earned there without any further trouble, and in all quiet, five times four groschen, for the sitting lasted five hours. When he came home they had finished dinner, and as the table was spread again, expressly for him, the Frau Pastorin made some pointed remarks about irregularity in one's habits of life, and coming home at two o'clock in the morning, and sitting down to dinner at two o'clock in the afternoon; and Uncle Braesig sat there, and grinned, looking very well contented with himself, as if he would say, "Ah, if you knew what hard work I have been doing, and in what place I went through with it, you would stroke me and pet me, you would kiss me, and do more than you have ever done for me;" and when he rose from the table, he said, solemnly, "Frau Pastorin, it will all come to light, as the Herr Burgomeister says," and he nodded to Habermann, "Bonus! as the Herr President Rein says," and going up to Louise, he put his arms round her and kissed her, and said, "Louise, get me the finest sheet of writing paper that you can find, for I want to pack up a little--well, I will say indicium,--so that it may not be injured, for it is to go a long way."

And as he went out with the sheet in his hand, he turned round again to remark:

"Karl, as I said before, what can be done shall be done."

And he came back once more to say: "Frau Pastorin, I shall come home to supper to-night."

He went to the post-office. The postmaster was at home, he was always at home; for a hundred and fifty thalers salary, he had imprisoned himself for life, not in a room, no, in a bird-cage, which he called his "comptoir," and when he had no postal business, he sat there and played the flute, and sung, like the finest canary-bird. He was engaged in this agreeable business, when Braesig entered:

"Good-day, Herr Postmaster. You are a man of honor, therefore I wish to ask your assistance in a delicate matter. Of course, it isn't necessary for you to know the thing itself, that must remain a secret, and what I tell you must also remain a secret. I am going to write to Paris."

"To Paris? What the devil are you writing to Paris for?"

"To Paris," said Braesig, drawing himself up.

"What in the world!" said the postmaster, "one of you inspectors gets a letter from Paris, and the other will send one. Well, we will see how much it costs." He turned his books over, and said at last, "I can't find it here, I will reckon it up; it cannot be done under sixteen groschen."

"No matter, I have earned twenty groschen this morning, at the court."

"Whom is the letter for?"

"The young Herr Franz von Rambow."

"Do you know his address, where he lives?"

"Why, in Paris."

"But Paris is a great city. You must know the street, and the number of the house."

"God bless me!" said Braesig, "all that! I don't know it."

"Ask Habermann."

"That is just the thing, he mustn't know of it."

"Well, I know no other way, then, than for you to write your letter, and enclose it to the Mecklenburg ambassador, Dr. Urtlingen, he may be able to find him."

"He must," said Braesig, "for the business is of great importance, and that is what he gets his salary for. But what I was going to say, will you allow me to write the letter here? Because it must be kept a secret from Habermann."

"Oh, yes," said the postmaster, "come right in here, before my wife sees you, for, though it is the regular room for passengers, my wife will allow no one under a count to go in there. And you must let yourself be locked in."

Braesig had no objections to that, and so he sat there, from three o'clock in the afternoon, until it grew dark, and wrote his letter; the postmaster fluted and sung, in his bird-cage; he wrote; the Frau Postmaster came and rattled the door, she wanted to get into her sanctum, and scolded because the key was gone; the Herr Postmaster had it in his pocket, and fluted and sung; Braesig wrote his letter. Finally he finished it; he read it over, and we can look over his shoulder. Here it is.

"Highly well-born young Herr von Rambow:

"A very remarkable thing has happened here, since Kurz the merchant had his manure carted on to baker Wredow's field, who is his rival in respect to the stadtbullen. Habermann found a piece of black waxed cloth there, with the Rambow coat of arms on it, which was a great relief to him, on account of the suspicion about the theft of the louis-d'ors, in the year '45, and the Herr Burgomeister also says that it is an indicium. The Herr Burgomeister has made me assessor at the court; there is a little something to be earned in that way, but it is very hard for me, being an old farmer, and accustomed to exercise, and also on account of the gout; it is not much trouble to be sure, but one gets sleepy in the long sittings. But the good of it is that I can know all about the business, which Habermann must know nothing about, because the Herr Burgomeister has forbidden it. Since you are in Paris, and not in Rahnstadt, I can talk with you freely, as a friend, about the business, and the business is this: the weaver, he lies, that he has no more intercourse with his wife, and the Herr Burgomeister says that is another indicium. We have a great many indiciums already. The principal business is still to come, however, namely, Kaehlertsch. Kaehlertsch is positively determined to marry the weaver, and is of the opinion that the weaver will not have her, because his divorced wife wants him to marry her again. This has caused bad feelings in Kaehlertsch,--what is called jealousy,--and she has come out with a lot of new indiciums, as the Herr Burgomeister says, very important and elevant, or, as I express myself in German, nearly connected with the matter. But the Herr Burgomeister says, one must be very careful, for the women-folks are spiteful when they are jealous, and tell lies sometimes. Meanwhile her lies have proved themselves, since she has come out with the whole truth, that the weaver was always getting Danish double louis-d'ors, as also the butcher Kraenger testified, in two compertinent cases. And while the weaver was before the court, telling us new lies and new indiciums, they searched the weaver's house, with Hoppner at the head, and found nine Danish double louis-d'ors, in his cupboard, in a secret place. Which he tried to contend against, later, but did not succeed. She, the weaver's wife, who is the worst of the lot, was also caught, this morning, since they found, in searching her house, a snuff-box, which had belonged to the blessed Herr Pastor himself, and was kept by the Pastor's family like a relic, in a glass case, for which shameful deed she has been furnished with free lodgings. Kaehlertsch has also been taken up, since in her wickedness she has belied the court, the Herr Burgomeister, and myself, as assessor. They all lie, till they are black in the face, but what good does that do them? The Herr Burgomeister says he is morally persuaded that they have done it, and it must come out, and it will come out. What a triumph it will be for my Karl Habermann, when he stands in his old age, like an angel of innocence tried in the fire, and goes about among the people, with his white hair, in the white robes of innocence. They must be as ashamed as drowned poodles for all they have done to him, I mean--to speak with respect--Pomuchelskopp and the Pumpelhagener, who have fallen out with each other, because Zamwell has sued the other, of which I will say nothing more, since I told Pomuchelskopp my opinion of him at the Reformverein, and your Herr Cousin of Pumpelhagen has given me the cold shoulder. He is going on in a bad way, for he is dreadfully disturbed because Moses has given him notice for the money on St. John's day, and he has no money and no grain, and how can they live? He is an utterly incapable man. You must never, while I live, let Habermann know of this letter; because it is a secret between us. But I thought it would be interesting for you to know who the real rascals were, and that Karl Habermann,--thank God!--is not among them. He is very much cheered up by these occurrences, and strikes out with his heels, like a young colt, when the saddle is taken off. I think this is an encouraging sign for the future. As for news of your old acquaintances in the region, I can only tell you that, next week Friday, Mining and Rudolph expect to be united in marriage. Frau Nuessler, whom you will remember as a very beautiful young woman, is still--no need to say--very handsome, but has grown a little stouter; Jochen also is very well, and is training up, for his future establishment, a new crown prince. Your Herr Colleague, of old times, is now the Totum at Pumpelhagen; Habermann says he will yet do well; I say he is a greyhound, who goes among people with his fire-arms, on account of which he has put Frau Nuessler and me formally under the ban. We have a Reform at present in Rahnstadt; the young Pastor Gottlieb preached against it, but the young Frau Pastorin knows how to manage him. Rector Baldrian brought the tailoresses, and a certain Platow or Patow or some such person, into the Reform; but Kurz has been repeatedly turned out; his four horses have the inflorentia; it began with his old saddle-horse, and it will end with himself, for he has already got the rheumatism. The old Frau Pastorin Behrends is still our honored hostess, also with eating and drinking, for Habermann and I lodge and sleep, and take our daily meals with her; she, as well as Habermann, would send greetings to you, but they cannot, for they know nothing about it. But we often speak about you, since you are always like an ever-present picture before our eyes. I cannot think of more to tell at present,--but one thing occurs to me. Pomuchelskopp got himself voted into the Reformverein; the master carpenter Shultz is a brave man, he stood by me, at that time. Krischan Daesel has been sent away by your Herr Cousin, and there is no definite trace of Regel; but Louise Habermann is--thank God!--very well indeed.

"In the hope that my humble writing may not be disagreeable or inconvenient, I have the honor to subscribe myself, with the deepest reverence, and greeting you from the heart as an old friend,

"Your most obedient humble servant,

"Zachary Braesig.

"Immeriter Inspector, and temporary Assessor.

"Rahnstadt, 13 May, 1848.

"Postscript.--Apropos! I write this letter in the Frau Postmaster's sanctum, since the Herr Postmaster has locked me in expressly for the purpose, and has sworn not to say a word. This is all because of the secrecy, for Habermann and the Frau Pastorin and Louise know nothing about it; Louise has given me this sheet of letter paper, it belonged to her, and I believe it will be a little gratification to you, for I remember my youthful days, when I had three sweethearts at once. She is devoted, in love and sadness, to her old father, and for others she is a precious pearl of the human race. If I receive an answer from you, that you have no objections, I will write again about the rascals they have caught. If you should be in our region again a week from Sunday, I invite you to our fraternity ball; the seamstresses and tailoresses are all to be invited.

"The Aforesaid."

When Braesig had finished this difficult piece of work, he rapped and pounded on the door, and as the postmaster unlocked it and let him out, he stood there, with the sweat dripping from his face.

"Bless me!" said the postmaster, "how you look! It is true, isn't it? Unaccustomed labor is painful!"

With that, he took the letter from him, and put it in an envelope, and directed it to the Herr Ton Rambow, and then enclosed it in another envelope, to the address of the Mecklenburg ambassador in Paris. Braesig paid his sixteen groschen, and the letter was now ready to start on its journey, for the postman, who should take it, that moment stopped at the door. And the postmaster sung, in his bower:

"Ein Leipziger Student hat jungst nach haus geschrieben, Frau Mutter, sagen Sie, darf denn kein Maedchen lieben?"

And as Braesig went out of the door he sung:

"Custine schickt eine schnelle Post, Die nach Paris reiten muss: Die Sachsen and Preussen marschiren ins Feld, Um Mainz zu bombardiren, Und wenn ich keinen Succurs bekomm, Denn muss ich capituliren."

"You may capituliren, as much as you please, for all me; only hold your tongue, as you have promised," said our old friend, and he went home, not only with the agreeable feeling that he had done a good action, but also with the equally agreeable feeling that he had accomplished a difficult task very skilfully, since he considered it pure finesse, as he said to himself, to have introduced Louise into the letter, so delicately, so praeter propter and so circa, that one must have keen scent, to suspect anything.

Well, when one indulges such a delightful consciousness of his good and skilful performances, and, so to say, warms himself at its blaze as at a cosy fire, on a winter's evening, it must be doubly vexatious to be driven out in the wind and rain, with all manner of scolding and reproaches; and this happened to Braesig, when he entered the Frau Pastorin's room, where she was sitting with the little assessor; Louise was not there. Frau Pastorin was just trying to light a lamp, and the matches would not catch, firstly, because Kurz did not supply them with the best quality, and secondly, because Frau Pastorin--perhaps from economy--had the habit of putting the broken matches, and those that would not light, back into the box, so that such a match, in the course of its short life, had the satisfaction of being tried at least twenty times, which may have been very agreeable to the match, but was very provoking to other people.

"Well, there you are!" cried the Frau Pastorin angrily, trying a match. "There you are, at last,"--the second match. "You are running about the town all day,"--another match; "but you go with blind eyes,"--two matches at once,--"and with deaf ears!"--another match. "You always know everything,"--a match--"and when anything happens, then you know nothing,"--three matches together.

Braesig went up to the Frau Pastorin very politely and pleasantly, and took the match-box from her hand, saying, "By your leave!"--a match--"what do you mean by that?"--the second match. "Have I done anything to harm you?"--the third match. "Kurz ought to be paid with his own wares!"--two matches, "His things that ought to catch don't catch, and what ought not to catch, catches,"--three matches. "The confounded things have got the inflorentia!" and with that he threw the whole box on the table, pulled his own match-safe out of his pocket, and struck a light.

"Braesig," said the Frau Pastorin, putting all the tried matches carefully into the box, "I am very much vexed with you. I am not inquisitive, but, when anything happens that concerns Habermann and Louise, I am certainly the nearest, and ought to know it. Why must our little Anna first come out with what you ought to have told me long ago, for you knew it. I see it in your face, you knew it."

"How so?" asked Braesig, and was going to pretend great ignorance; but the Frau Pastorin was too much provoked with him, for she thought he had treated her shamefully, and she said:

"You need not pretend; I know that you know everything, and you tell me nothing!" and now she began to tap the old man, and the little assessor also bored away at the Herr Assessor; finer and finer the two women drew their threads, and got everything out of Braesig that he knew, for silence was by no means a special gift of his, and when he at last cried out in sheer despair: "So, now I know nothing more," then the little round Frau Pastorin placed herself before him, saying, "Braesig, I know you, I see it in your face, you know something more. Out with it! What else do you know?"

"Frau Pastorin, it is a private affair."

"That is all the same; out with it!"

And Braesig shoved about in his chair and looked right and left, but there was no help for it, he must surrender, and he said finally, "I have written about it to Herr Franz von Rambow, at Paris; but Karl Habermann must never know it."

"To Paris!" cried the Frau Pastorin, putting her hands on her sides, "to the young Herr von Rambow! What have you written to him? You have written something about Louise, I see it in your face! Yes, you have written something, and what I would hardly dream of, you have done!" She rang the bell violently: "Fika, run to the post-office, the Herr Postmaster shall give you back, immediately, the letter that Herr Braesig has written to Paris."

Tereng-tereng-tereng-tentereng! blew the postillion, and the post with Braesig's letter drove by, with flourish of trumpets, before the Frau Pastorin's nose, express for Paris, and the Frau Pastorin in, great vexation, sank back in her sofa-corner, sent Fika back to the kitchen, and--alas! that we should have to confess it--she was almost ready to murmur against providence, that, perhaps for the first time, the Rahnstadt post had started at the right moment, to take Braesig's stupid letter to Paris.

Braesig declared, most solemnly, that he had managed the business with the greatest delicacy, so that there was not the least indicium to be perceived.

"Did you send greeting from her?" asked the Frau Pastorin.

"No," said Braesig, "I only said she was very well."

"Have you written nothing else about her?"

"I only wrote that the sheet of paper belonged to her, and that she was a precious pearl of the human race."

"So she is," interposed the Frau Pastorin.

"And then I closed in a very friendly way, by inviting the young Herr to our fraternity ball."

"That was foolish," cried the Frau Pastorin, "he will notice that, he will think you have the intention to bring him and Louise together again."

"Frau Pastorin," said Braesig, placing himself before her, "with all respect for your words, is it foolish and wicked, if one has the intention of bringing two people together again, who have been separated by the wickedness and meanness of other people? I had this intention, and therefore I wrote that letter; Habermann could not have done it; for why? He is her father, and it would not have been fitting. You could not have done it; for why? Because they have called you already, here in Rahnstadt, all sorts of scandalous names. It is nothing to me, however, if people do call me an old go-between; I don't trouble myself about it; I will fetch and carry between here and Paris, and if I am only considered in Paris to be an honest man and a faithful friend to Karl Habermann and Louise, it is nothing to me if all Rahnstadt calls me an old matchmaker."

"Yes, Frau Pastorin, yes!" cried the little assessor, falling upon the Frau Pastorin's neck, "the Herr Inspector is right. Who cares for the gossips of Rahnstadt? What matters the stupid judgment of the world, if two people can be made happy? Franz must come, and Louise must be happy," and in her delight she ran up to Braesig, and put her arms round his neck, and kissed him, right on his mouth. "You are a dear, old Uncle Braesig!"

And Braesig returned the kiss, and said, "Yes, you little clavier-mamsell, you dear little lark, you! You ought to try your happiness also, in such relations. But hold! We mustn't cackle too soon, the business is not settled yet, the rascals are not yet convicted, and, if I know Karl Habermann, he must be perfectly cleared in that affair, before he will consent to such an arrangement, and therefore I have said nothing about the matter, that he and Louise might not be disturbed. And it is a great blessing that Kurz has the inflorentia, for he could never have held his tongue so long otherwise."

"Braesig," said the Frau Pastorin, "taking it all together, I believe you have done right."

"Haven't I, Frau Pastorin? And you were only vexed, because you didn't write first. But you shall have the honor of writing to the young Herr, when it is all settled."

Three days after this interview, Braesig came home, and met the Frau Pastorin in the hall. Her right hand was in a bandage, for she had just sprained it, falling down the cellar-stairs.

"Frau Pastorin," said he, with great earnestness and expression, "I shall come down again immediately, and have something to tell you."

With that, he went up-stairs to Habermann. He said neither "Good day" nor anything else, as he entered the room, but, looking very solemn, went through into the bedroom. There he poured out a glass of water, and returned with it to Habermann.

"Here, Karl, drink!"

"What? Why should I drink?"

"Because it is good for you. What you will need afterward, will not hurt you before."

"Braesig, what ails you?" cried Habermann, pushing away the water; but he noticed that something unusual was coming.

"Well, Karl, if you won't take it, you won't; but collect yourself, collect yourself quickly;" and he walked up and down, while Habermann followed him with his eyes, and turned pale, as he felt that this moment was to influence his destiny.

"Karl," said Braesig, standing before him, "have you collected yourself?"

He had really done so; he stood up and exclaimed:

"Braesig, say what you have to say! What I have borne so long, I can bear yet longer, if need be."

"That is not my meaning," said Braesig. "It is all out, the rascals are convicted, and we have the money; not all, but some of it."

The old man had dreamed what it would be to be delivered from his troubles, for a ray of hope had gleamed upon his horizon; but when the sun was fairly risen upon this new day, and shone brightly in his face, his eyes were blinded by the sudden splendor, and a thousand suns floated around him.

"Braesig! Braesig! My honest name! My child's happiness!" and he sank back in his chair, and Braesig held him the glass of water, and the old man drank, and recovered himself a little, and grasped Braesig, who stood before him, about the knees: "Zachary, you have never in your life deceived me!"

"No, Karl, it is the pure truth, and it stands in the protocol, and the rascals will be sent to Dreiberg, the Herr Burgomeister says; but first to Buetzow, to the criminal court."

"Braesig," said Habermann, and he stood up, and went into his sleeping room, "leave me alone, and say nothing to Louise! Yes, tell her to come up."

"Yes, Karl," said Braesig, walking to the window, and looking out, and wiping the tears from his eyes, and as he went through the door he saw his Karl, in the bedroom, upon his knees.

Louise went to her father, Braesig told her nothing; but to the Frau Pastorin he was not so silent.

"Bless me," said the little Frau, "now Louise has gone away, and Habermann does not come, and you, Braesig, don't come at the right time, the dinner will be cold, and we have such nice fish. What were you going to tell me, Braesig?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Uncle Braesig, looking as if the rascals had infected him with all sorts of roguery, and he must exercise it now upon the Frau Pastorin, because she had abused him so about the letter; "only that Habermann and Louise are not coming to dinner. But we two can begin."

"Eh, Braesig, why are they not coming?"

"Well, because of the apron."

"The apron?"

"Yes, because it was wet."

"Whose apron was wet?"

"Why, Frau Kaehlert's. But we will eat our dinner, the fish will get cold."

"Not a morsel!" cried the Frau Pastorin, and put a couple of plates over the fish, and over those a napkin, and over that her plump hands, and looked so wildly at Braesig with her round eyes, that he could no longer persist in his role, but burst out: "It is all out, Frau Pastorin, and they are convicted, and we have most of the money again."

"And do you tell me that now, first?" cried the little Frau, and jumped up from the table, and was running up to Habermann. Braesig would not allow that, and, by promising to tell her everything, brought her back to the sofa.

"Frau Pastorin," said he, "the chief thing that is, the principal indicium, came out through Kaehlertsch, that is to say, not properly, of her own accord, but through her wicked jealousy, which is a dreadfully powerful feeling in many women, and produces the most terrible consequences. I don't mean you, by that, I only mean Kaehlertsch. You see the woman had made up her mind to marry the weaver, and the weaver would'nt have her. Now, she is rightly of the opinion that the weaver's divorced wife wishes to marry him again, herself, and she lies in wait for them, and so it happened once that her apron--I mean Kaehlertsch's--was wet, and she was going to dry it on the garden fence. While she was there, half concealed behind the fence, she saw the weaver and his divorced wife, holding a rendezvous,--well, you know what that is, Frau Pastorin----"

"Braesig, I tell you----"

"Quiet, Frau Pastorin! and they were not sitting in a ditch, they were standing among the pole-beans, so that the woman must have got into the garden from over the fence, in the rear, since she had not gone through the house. Kaehlertsch in her wicked jealousy, called Frau Kraeuger, the butcher's wife, to come and look also, and they two watched the other two, till they disappeared among the beans, and after a little the woman got over the fence, and the weaver busied himself in the garden, whereupon the two women quietly retired. So far we had got, and this was true, for the butcher's wife swore to it.

"Then the Herr Burgomeister says, if Kaehlertsch would only speak out, we might learn more. Then I say, 'Herr Burgomeister, woman's jealousy!' then he says, 'But how?' Then I say, 'Herr Burgomeister, I knew something about it, when I had three sweethearts at once,--jealousy is a terrible passion, and it knows neither mercy nor pity. Let me try her.' and when Kaehlertsch came again I said, in an off-hand way, 'Well, if the weaver had not married any body else, meantime, I suppose he could marry his divorced wife again.' And the Herr Burgomeister took my hint, and said yes, if he wanted to, the clerical consistory could give him a desperation. You see, that put the woman, herself into a desperation, and she burst out, if it was coming to that, she would tell something, the weaver had brought money with him out of the garden, for before that he had had no money in his cupboard, but afterwards she had looked, and had found money there, several double louis-d'ors. You see, she had trapped herself, showing that she had been, with a night-key, into other people's cupboards. The Herr Burgomeister had her arrested and put in prison, so we now had the three rogues fast.

"When the weaver came in again, and lied again, as to how he had come by the money, and lied to the very face of the butcher's wife, that he had not been with his wife in the garden, you see, the butcher's wife got angry too, and said she had seen the calves of her legs, as she was climbing over the fence,--don't take it amiss, Frau Pastorin,--but she said so. And then the weaver was sentenced to have ten on his jacket, for our laws,--thank God!--still have penalties for infamous lying, and the Herr Burgomeister talked to him very solemnly, and told him he was a master weaver, and he should be degraded from his trade; but would he confess? not a bit of it. But so soon as he had had his first three on the jacket, he fell on his knees,--which was a dreadful sight to me, so that I turned away,--and said he would confess everything, and he did so, since he had not stolen it himself, but his wife. The woman had stolen the money from the day-laborer, Regel, taking the black packet from his waistcoat pocket, when he was intoxicated, and hid it in the woods, under the moss and bushes, and there it had lain for two years, and whenever she went to get wood, she would take out a couple of pieces, which she would get changed by the help of some of the old Jew women,--she has been to Kurz, also. And then, perhaps a year and a half ago, she met the weaver, and asked him if he would not marry her again, for she was no longer poor, she had something now, and she gave him a double louis-d'or; he would'nt listen to her then, however, because at that time he was in love with Kaehlertsch,--I beg you, Frau Pastorin, with Kaehlertsch! They might offer me Kaehlertsch on a silver salver, I should never fall in love with her. But he took the louis-d'or, and she teased him again, and made him other presents, till at last his inclination began to return to her, and he wanted nothing more to do with Kaehlertsch. And she showed him all her treasure, and they changed it about, now here and now there, to keep it concealed, and finally, this spring, they locked it up in a box, and he threw the black cloth into the butcher's compost heap, and they buried the treasure in the garden. And we went there with the weaver, and found fourteen hundred thalers, among the potatoes. Just think of it--fourteen hundred thalers among the potatoes! They had spent the rest of it."

"Good heavens!" cried the Frau Pastorin, "how clever you and the Herr Burgomeister must have been, to get so much out of them."

"So we are, Frau Pastorin," said Uncle Braesig, quietly.

"But the woman?" cried the little Frau. "She was the nearest to it."

"Yes, Frau Pastorin, that was an exciting moment, for the Herr Burgomeister had concealed the indicium of the box and the gold, under his every-day hat, and when the weaver's wife was confronted with her husband, and once more admonished to tell the truth, and persisted in lying, then the Herr Burgomeister lifted his hat, and said, 'It is no matter. We have the money already.' You see, when she saw the box, she flew at the weaver, like a fury, and in a moment she had torn his whole face, just with her nails, and screamed, 'Cursed wretch! I would have made him happy, and he has made me unhappy!' Frau Pastorin, love is madder than jealousy. Kaehlertsch never would have done that! But, Frau Pastorin, our fish must be quite cold."

"Ah, Braesig, how can you think of anything like that. But I must go to Habermann, I must tell him--"

"That you are very glad he is so triumphantly cleared." said Braesig, drawing her down on the sofa again; "so you shall, but not yet. For, you see, I believe Habermann has something to tell the Lord, and Louise will help him, and that is right too, but she is enough; for, Frau Pastorin,--as Pastorin you should know,--our Lord is a jealous God, and when He communes with a thankful soul he does not suffer that others should approach, but draws back, and, where the presence of God has shone, human sympathy must wait till afterwards."

The little Frau Pastorin looked at him in astonishment, and finally broke out:

"God bless you, Braesig! I always called you an old heathen; but you are a Christian, after all!"

"I don't know, Frau Pastorin, I don't know what I am. But I know that the little I have done, in this matter, I have not accomplished as a Christian, but as assessor at the criminal court. But Frau Pastorin, our fish is spoiled by this time, and I don't feel at all hungry. The house seems too narrow for me,--adieu, Frau Pastorin, I must go out in the fresh air a little while."

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Chapter XLI

The Friday, on which Rudolph and Mining were to be married, had come, and the loveliest Whitsuntide weather shone upon Rexow, and on the singular edifice which Jochen, with the aid of Schultz the carpenter, had constructed near his modest farm-house. From the outside, the affair was not very distinguished looking, it was only of boards and laths hammered together, and looked uncommonly like a building in which wild beasts are exhibited, at the Leipsic fair. Inside, the work of art presented a more stately appearance, for the boards were covered with blue and yellow cloth, half of one color, and half of the other, since there was not enough of one kind, in Rahnstadt, to cover so large a hall; and secondly, it was adorned with six notched beams, for on no other condition would carpenter Schultz undertake the job. There ought, properly, he said, to be nine, in such a building as a wedding-hall, but the expense would be too great, and since Jochen did not understand much about architecture, and Frau Nuessler had enough to do with the eating and drinking for the wedding, and Braesig was his friend, and would not oppose him, because he had helped him at the Reformverein, carpenter Schultz had his own way, like a moth in a rug, and built in the notched beams to his heart's content; and upon each of them Braesig hung a sort of contrivance, intended to represent a chandelier, and Krischan the coachman climbed about on them for a week, in his buckskin breeches, adorning them with oak-leaves; which he did very finely, but to the detriment of his apparel, since the beams, with their splinters, little by little devoured his buckskin breeches.

Jochen put his hand in his purse, and paid the money for the new house, for he wanted everything done, for his Mining, in the finest manner, and he got Krischan a new pair of breeches.

"Mother," he cried to his wife, "come! look! What shall we do about it?"

"Yes, Jochen, it is all very well. But there ought to be lights in the chandeliers!"

She was going out, when a voice spoke to her from the clouds, that is, the oak-leaf-clouds, and a face full of light, candlelight, bent down to her and said solemnly, "It shall all be attended to, Frau Nuessler," and as she looked nearer into the clouds, she saw the honest, red face of her old angel, Braesig, looking out from the oak-leaves and tallow-candles, which he had strung around his neck, like a clergyman's bands, that he might have his hands free to fasten them in their places.

When this was done, the three stood together, and contemplated the effect, and Braesig said, "Truly, Jochen! 'Tis like a fairy palace, out of the 'Arabian Nights,' which I read last winter from the circulating library!"

And Jochen said, "Yes, Braesig; it is all as true as leather; but it is only for one night; for, day after to-morrow, we must tear it down."

"That would be barbarous!" said the carpenter, "the six notched beams would last ages, and the fairies might walk in as if they were born and bred there."

And the next day came the fairies, not, indeed, exactly as Herr Schultz had represented, no, they came, at that time, all in crinoline, that is to say, the half-grown, horse-hair variety, not with bells and springs and bee-hives, and steel bird-cages, as at present; but they were beginning, even then, and Auntie Klein, from Rostock, had put a regular barrel-hoop of tough oaken wood, into her petticoat, which grazed her sister's shins so unmercifully on the way, that the poor woman had to stand on one foot through the whole wedding. But the fairies came, and they had wreaths in their hair, of natural flowers, and not artificial, which was a pity, for towards the close of the wedding, when the feet were weary, and the lovely eyes drooped, and the bright clouds of hair were tumbled about as if a storm-wind had blown through them, then the weary flowers drooped their heads and whispered to each other, "I wish it were over; nothing gives one such a longing for the quiet night, as all this gaiety." How much better we do things at present! The artificial flowers stand up brisk and lively, and say, "Always ready! Our stems and strings hold out, and when this is over, they will lay us away in a box; and we shall get rested, and when another time comes we are always ready!" Ah, how the world has improved! If they could only keep fresh and bright the youthful limbs and the fresh lungs and the innocent hearts,--well, for all me, the whole pretty fairies themselves,--with their wires and threads and steel springs!

Braesig distributed invitations for Frau Nuessler and Jochen with a free hand, and had selected from Rahnstadt and the vicinity a fine company of neat, willing and active dancers, and although there was now and then a crooked stick among the men, it was no matter, said Uncle Braesig, for you could see a man's legs distinctly enough, and could beware of them. Besides the Rahnstadters and a few others in the region, Jochen Nuessler had, through Rudolph, invited all his relations, a very wide-spreading race. Not that they themselves were so wide-spreading, I only mean the relationship, and they were scattered widely over all Mecklenburg and Pommerania.

There sat uncle Luting, there Uncle Krischaning, there Uncle Hanning, and there Cousin Wilhelming,--"who is my own second cousin, and a very witty fellow, when it comes to eating and drinking," said Jochen,--and there sat Aunt Dining, and Aunt Stining, and Aunt Mining, and Aunt Lining, and Aunt Rining,--"and Aunt Zaphie is coming too," said Jochen, "who was an extremely fine woman in her day." "She has been here this great while," said Braesig. And as one stately equipage after another drove up to the Rexow court, and the whole Nuessler family in a company stood around Jochen, welcoming each other, and inquiring how things had gone for the last sixteen or twenty years,--for it was as long as that since they had seen each other, and those who knew how to write never did,--Braesig said to Frau Nuessler:

"A very constant race, these Nuesslers! Regular thorough-bred Nuesslers! Only Jochen is a little different from the rest, since he has grown so thin, and so talkative." And going into the "temple of art," as carpenter Schultz called his edifice, and finding the architect sitting there, absorbed in admiration of his work and a bottle of Bavarian beer, he said, "Schultz, you have done your part, and I have done mine; but, you shall see, Jochen will spoil the whole performance, with his stupid relations, so that it will turn out like a mess of sour porridge."

"I have nothing to say about it, being only a guest here," said Herr Schultz, "but if they are what you say, then, out with them!"

And Braesig walked up and down the garden, like a tree-frog, not that he had on a green coat, for he wore his nice brown one, with the yellow vest, no, he was like a tree-frog only because he prophesied foul weather before night. All at once, he looked over the garden fence, and saw Jochen's own "phantom" approaching, not driven by Krischan, but by a day-laborer, and looking nearer he saw two women sitting in it, and when he looked nearer still, there sat his own sister the widow of the dairy-farmer Korthals, with her only daughter, who lived far away, in straitened circumstances, in a village in Pomerania.

"God preserve us!" he cried, "my own sister! And her little Lotting, too! This is her doing!" and running through the kitchen to the hall, he met Frau Nuessler, and cried, "You have done this for me! Oh, you are----"

Just then two ladies entered the hall, very simply dressed, but both of them lovely as pictures; the older, with tears of emotion and gratitude running down her friendly, true-hearted face, the younger, with her fresh, innocent soul shining out of great blue eyes, under a cloud of golden hair, and asking, "Where is my dear, good Uncle Zachary?" for it was long years since she had seen him.

"Here! here!" he cried, and pulled and pushed his dear relations through the hall, till he got them up to Frau Nuessler, and said, "There she is; now thank her!" And when the two had expressed their gratitude, and turned round again to look for him, he was gone. Like a miller, who has started his mill, and poured the corn into the hopper, he had crowded his way through the stout meal-bags of the Nuessler family, and now sat in the arbor, in the garden, blowing and trumpeting at his nose, until Schultz the carpenter decamped with his beer-bottle from the temple of art, believing that the musicians had arrived.

But they did not come yet; first came Kurz and the rector, each with his good old advocate at his side, and when they had been presented, and had crowded about, for a while, in the room with the Nuessler family, old Uncle Luting Nuessler came up to Kurz, in a pompous, overbearing way, and said, in a deep voice, "You can congratulate yourself upon being connected afresh with such a rich and noble relationship. Do you see," and he pointed to Uncle Krischan, who had just thrown himself upon the sofa, "there tumbles a hundred thousand thalers."

"I don't do it for that," said Uncle Krischan.

Well, that made Kurz angry, but he restrained himself; but when Uncle Luting went on to ask, "Have you ever in your life seen so many rich people together in one company?" then Kurz's wrath broke out, and he replied, "No! nor ever in my life so many blockheads!"

He turned away, and his wife, who had heard it, followed him and said, "Kurz, I beg you, for God's sake, don't begin again with your democracy! It would be much better for you to go to bed at once."

He would not do that, but he was placed under the ban, for the whole evening, by all the Nuessler family.

And Pastor Gottlieb came with Lining, and they were treated with great respect by their elders, because they were to perform the marriage ceremony. Don't misunderstand me! Not that Lining herself was to marry them, not at all! but, for once in her life, she had interfered in Gottlieb's professional affairs, and had altered his marriage ceremony a little, so that Gottlieb said it was not like a Christian minister's speech, it was more like a family speech; but she remained firm in her position that as Mining's twin she ought to know what would go most to her heart, and Gottlieb had to yield to her.

And now came Habermann, with the Frau Pastorin and Louise and the little assessor, driving up in a glass coach, for the Frau Pastorin had said, "So, and in no other way!" She had once been compelled to decline a wedding invitation from Frau Nuessler, in her great sorrow, and now she would make up for it in her great pleasure at this second wedding, and then she pressed the hands of Habermann and Louise and the little assessor, saying, "Isn't it so? We are all happy to-day." So they came to Rexow, and when they arrived Habermann saw Braesig's sister, whom he had known years ago, and it was not long before they sat together, talking of old times, and every other word was "Zachary," and Louise and the little assessor had Lotting between them, and every other word was "Uncle Braesig."

Then came a great harvest wagon, with flowers and wreaths, Krischan the coachman driving the four horses, in the saddle, in his new yellow buckskins, his whip ornamented with red and blue ribbons, and he himself with a wreath of roses around his hat, which looked uncommonly as if the old hat were celebrating its fiftieth golden wedding, upon this occasion, and on the front seat, sat David Berger, the town-musician, playing on his clarionet:

"Wer niemals sinen Rausch gehabt, Das ist kein braver Mann,"

and behind him sat his companions, blowing the same tune, though not in the same time, for since they sat on the second, third and fourth seats they could not possibly keep it, since he was always three ahead of them; and when he turned round angrily, or Krischan would go faster and used his whip, he always got his hair pulled, for one of his mischievous companions had fastened the handle of the whip to his back hair, and when Krischan touched the whip, or when he stirred himself, he was in constant torment.

And behind this wagon came another harvest wagon, full of white dresses, and from under the white dresses peeped pretty little dancing feet, and above them, on the round heads, nodded roses and pinks, which looked out modestly from the curly locks, as if they were too bashful to glance at the pretty faces. These were the little fairies. And right in the midst of the fairies sat the Herr Postmaster, in his new uniform, the only one Rahnstadt had to show,--otherwise he would not have arrived at such an honor,--and sung, gay as a finch, his finest song in this garden of roses. Behind this wagon came yet another harvest wagon, loaded with gentlemen, with dancers, the best dancers in Rahnstadt, and Kurz's Herr Suessmann danced along the wagon pole in front, and the Herr Rector's youngest pupil sat, with his legs dangling in the air, behind.

The guests all looked very joyous, but the Frau Hostess was in the greatest perplexity, for she was not acquainted with a single one of them, since Braesig had selected them merely with reference to their capacities for dancing, and she called for Braesig; but when he finally came Krischan the coachman had brought them all in, and undertook to dispose of them. He opened the doors of the kitchen and dining-room, and shoved them all in: "In with you, there! Take it easy! Get a little something to eat and drink; they are not ready yet!"

And the advice was good, for the marriage was delayed a little, because one of the groomsmen had not yet arrived, namely Fritz Triddelsitz, who at Rudolph's request had been persuaded to remove the ban from the Nuessler house, and to officiate in that capacity. At last he came, riding up the court on his dapple-gray and in full state, and mingled among the guests with so much dignity, and bowed right and left with so much elegance, that the rector's foolish little pupil whispered in Herr Suessmann's ear: "What a pity that we are all ready, he might have helped us." Whereupon Herr Suessmann regarded him with a look of compassion, and turning to Braesig, who stood at his other side, said, "Herr Inspector, have you heard that I am chosen dance-director for our fraternity ball, day after tomorrow?"

Braesig was going to tell him that he would be a blockhead if he undertook it, for Kurz would discharge him, but he did not have time to say it, for just then the bridal pair entered the room.

Rudolph was truly a fine looking bridegroom. His fresh, joyous demeanor was hidden, to-day, under a quiet earnestness, and only the firm resolve under all circumstances to fight for his wife and himself, like an honest fellow, shone in his brown eyes. Yes, he was a handsome bridegroom, for when does a man look handsomer than when, full of courage and hope, he goes out to his first conflict? Who could blame his mother, the good old advocate, for going up to him at this moment, and kissing him, and stroking his brown curls, and secretly pulling out his ruffle a little, from the dress coat, so that people might see it?

And now Mining! Mining looked, in her white satin dress and myrtle wreath, like a Bauersdorf apple, freshly plucked from the tree, and laid in its green leaves on a silver salver. Fresh and cool outside, as the ripe fruit, but her heart was glowing, and before Gottlieb had uttered a word of the ceremony, there was a pair betrothed,--confident hope and quiet blessedness had joined hands. And Frau Nuessler was crying quietly behind her handkerchief, and saying to Braesig, "I cannot help it, she is my last, my youngest." And Braesig looked at her, full of friendliness, and said, "Frau Nuessler, control yourself! It will soon be over;" and going up to Louise Habermann, he made a bow, saying, "My Fraeulein, if you are ready, it is time,"--usually he called her "Louise," but to-day he was a groomsman, and must do what was proper. And Fritz Triddelsitz went up to the little assessor, for she was the other bride's maid, and Kurz and Rector Baldrian placed themselves as leaders by Rudolph, and when young Jochen after some delay was shoved forward, he stood by his Mining, and on his other side stood Habermann, for they were the two leaders for the bride,--and then the procession moved to carpenter Schultz's temple of art, where Gottlieb stood behind a green and white altar, and began to read Lining's marriage ceremony.

I know very well that a marriage at home is not thought much of,--now-a-days all marriages must be celebrated in church, and I have nothing against it, for I was married in church myself about that time, since my wife was a minister's daughter, and would not have it otherwise; but, as I was saying, at that time this kind of marriage ceremony had not been established in Mecklenburg by the ecclesiastical consistory, and the old modes were still in fashion, and children were married as their parents had been. New modes were in fashion too, as Krischan Schultz said, when he fastened his horse by the tail; but Gottlieb knew nothing about them, and if he had known about them, and had wished to fasten his horse in the new mode. Lining would not have allowed it; Lining was a married woman, but she would not allow her other half to disgrace himself before these rich, stout, stupid Nuesslers, and the Rahnstadt shopmen and school-boys, or that her twin sister should have her marriage feast spoiled by an ecclesiastical consistory, although she was the most dignified of pastors' wives, that is, after the Frau Pastorin, who was always the nearest.

After the ceremony, the two little twin-apples lay in each other's arms, in full, untroubled blessedness, and Rudolph embraced them both together, and Frau Nuessler stood a little aside, looking over her handkerchief, with her head turned over our shoulder, as if she were listening to something,--possibly the angel's song,--and as the stout, rich, stupid Nuesslers pressed around, with their congratulations, young Jochen stood among them and bowed to this one and that, as if it were his own wedding-day over again: "Uncle Luting, it is my Mining! Cousin Wilhelming, it is our little governess! Aunt Zaphie, what shall we do about it!" These people crowded up, the men with their bright waistcoats, and gold watch-chains across their breasts, and the women with whole flower-pots on their caps, and some of them with dropping eyes, as if the flowerpots had been watered too plentifully, and were running over. And the men and the women of Jochen's family kissed, alternately, Rudolph and Mining, as if before all things they must be taken into this rich, stout, stupid relationship, so that Kurz at last grew terribly angry, because he could not reach his new daughter-in-law, and for once his good old advocate agreed with him, because she could not reach her own son. And the Rahnstadt dancers also crowded about and wandered around the pair, and what else could they do? they could not have their kisses yet; and among this company stood Fritz Triddelsitz with the little assessor, tall and slender and imposing, not as a groomsman, no, as commander of the whole, and behind him stood the rector's little pupil, imitating with his short body and black woolen stockings all the motions that Fritz made with his long body and black silk stockings. He was Fritz's natural shadow, that is, at noon-day, when shadows are short.

Near by stood two other couples, who were not crowding up, for they were sufficiently occupied with themselves, and had time to spare; these were Habermann and his Louise, and Uncle Braesig and the Frau Pastorin. Louise lay with her head on her father's breast, looking up to him, as if she had been long ill, and had been brought out from her couch, for the first time, into the free air, and the blue sky seemed to say: "Better days! better days!" and her face looked as peaceful and happy as the blue sky, and sun and moon and stars might wander there, and dew and rain might fall, to refresh and rejoice and enlighten mankind. Close to this pair stood Zachary Braesig, with his arm round the little Frau Pastorin, and his eyebrows elevated, and he blew his nose, and said, "My little Mining! My little goddaughter! How happy she is!" and every time that one of the old, stout Nuesslers gave Mining a kiss, he bent down to the Frau Pastorin, and gave her a kiss, as if he must make up to this good old lady what the stupid old people were inflicting upon Mining. "You see, because!" as our servant maid, Lisette, says, here in Eisenach, when she can think of no other reason. And so Braesig kissed the Frau Pastorin, and the Frau Pastorin suffered it, without thinking any harm; but when Aunt Zaphie, who had formerly been very handsome, and a sort of Venus among the Nuesslers, gave Rudolph three or four kisses, the little Frau Pastorin was startled, and when Braesig approached his lips again, in such a friendly way, she said, "Braesig, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! What have you particularly to do with me?"

And Braesig drew back embarrassed, and said, "Frau Pastorin, don't take it unkindly, but my feelings ran away with me," and he brought the Frau Pastorin to Habermann, saying, "Karl, you must exchange. Louise is my bride's maid, and I am a bachelor, and you and the Frau Pastorin are both widowers, and that is suitable."

Mining had taken her Rudolph by the hand, and, when she saw her dearest and oldest friends standing a little on one side, had made various efforts to penetrate the sand-bags of stout, rich, stupid Nuesslers, and the wooden palisades of shopmen and school-boys, but without success; but when her brand new husband saw her futile man[oe]uvres, he came to her assistance, shoved aside sand-bag No. 1, the rich Uncle Luting, and sand-bag No. 2, the witty cousin Wilhelming, grasped the longest palisade, Fritz Triddelsitz himself, in the short ribs, and moved him gently to another place, and neatly sent his pupil-shadow after him, and having thus made a breach through obstinacy, stupidity and tedium,--certainly no easy thing to do,--he brought his brand new bride to the people, who instead of congratulating her with flower-pots, and gay waistcoats and gold watch-chains, did it with what lies beneath them, their heads and their hearts. And when Frau Nuessler came up, and pressed her children, alternately, to her heart, Rudolph wiped the tears from his eyes, and said, "Let us all come out into the garden, and be by ourselves a little while."

And the carpenter, Schultz, who stood near and heard him, said; "Yes, out with you! All of you, out! We must set the tables here!" and he began to shove the rich Nuesslers about as if they were blocks and lumber. And when our company,--I say our--had come to the famous arbor, Braesig pointed to the cherry-tree, and said, "Mining, this tree must be an indicium and a token to you, all your life, since your future was decided under it, and under me that time; and since we are talking about tokens, Mining, bring me a blue larkspur again, there is one!"

And when Mining had gone for it Uncle Braesig said, "Rudolph, have you always remembered the blue larkspur?" And when Rudolph said he had, Braesig looked in his clear eyes, and then examined him from head to foot, and said, "I believe you!" and when Mining came back with the flower he said, "Thank you, Mining! And now I will give you my wedding present for it," and he pulled out an old thick, black pocket-book from his brown coat, and rummaged among his old milk and corn accounts, and took out a withered flower, saying, "See, my little godchild, this is the flower of that time,"--and he held it towards her with the fresh blossom,--"and if, after long years, Rudolph can look at you with the same clear eyes, and give you this new flower, then you may say, 'I have been a happy wife.' I have nothing more to say, nothing! and I have nothing else to give you, nothing at all!" and with that he walked away, and our company heard him saying to himself, "Nothing at all! but this indicium, Rudolph's indicium!" And when they found him again, he was walking with his sister and his niece Lotting, and the two women were caressing and thanking him, because he had never forgotten or forsaken them.

Then Frau Nuessler came up to our company: "Come children, all is ready. But don't take it ill! Jochen's family are the most distinguished, and I cannot offend Jochen to-day,--he is master for this once,--they must sit nearest the bridal pair. Kurz and his wife, of course, will sit among them, for, as you say, Frau Pastorin, they are the nearest, and Gottlieb and Lining must also sit there, he as clergyman, and she as twin, and Jochen, too, because they are his friends. But we, Frau Pastorin, Karl, Louise, and you, Braesig! we will sit together at one end, and it shall be a merry wedding."

"A la bong koer!" said Braesig, "but where is the shopman, Suessmann? I must speak to him about the fraternity ball."

"Oh, bless you! the poor fellow is sitting in the back kitchen; he and Triddelsitz were performing some kind of antics over a heap of pea-straw, and he fell, and something split, and Krischan had to get him Jochen's old blue trousers, and he will not let himself be seen by daylight, but is waiting until evening, when they will not noticed."

"And he wants to be dance-director!" said Braesig, as he followed our company to the hall.

Then the feast began, and Frau Nuessler's little waiting-maids, with their fresh faces and three-cornered caps, and white bib-aprons, ran about the temple of art, and turned and whirled like humming tops,--for the old waiters with their shabby black dress-coats, and white neck-ties a la turkey-cock, and white cotton gloves which are always dipping into the gravy, were not the fashion then,--and the stout Nuesslers sat there and ate, as if there were a French commissary in their stomachs, provisioning an army for a Russian campaign, and when they had finished the fricassee they began on the pudding, and when they had disposed of the pudding they attacked the roasted pigeons and sparrows, and wondered that the pigeons in Mecklenburg were not as large as the geese, and murmured against providence because sparrows were not as thick as hops, and when the roast meat came, Cousin Wilhelming, the wit of the Nuessler family, stood up and clinked his glass, and cried, "Quiet!" three times, and holding up his glass said, "To the health of the old General Knusemong (que nous aimons), who has been a very distinguished general, and is so to this day!" and with that he looked towards the young pair, blinking with his left eye at Mining, and with his right at Rudolph. And Uncle Luting--understand me, the rich Uncle Luting--stood up expressly for the purpose, and said, "Wilhelming, you are a devilish fellow!" And Braesig said to the Frau Pastorin, "Frau Pastorin, I know you are opposed to the Reform, but I assure you the witty shoemaker in the Reform would have done it much better!" And Frau Nuessler sat on thorns and thistles, in distress lest Jochen should take it into his head to make a speech; but Jochen restrained himself, his speeches were not for the world at large, they were only for the neighborhood, and all he said was, "Wilhelming, fill Luting's glass! Luting, help Wilhelming!"

And when the punch-bowls were placed on the table, and the champagne came, the old Nuesslers looked at the labels, and said they had just such in their cellars, and Fritz Triddelsitz and the Herr Shopmen and the Herr Pupils drank one glass after another, losing no time, until the left wing of the wedding-army became so uproarious that the little assessor remarked to the commander of these light troops, to Fritz Triddelsitz, that if they were to attack the enemy in that condition they would be obliged to retreat, and when Fritz was making arrangements to withdraw his forces, then there happened a diversion, for him and for the whole company. Well, just to think what clever things an ignorant beast will do sometimes! Bauschan, Jochen's Bauschan, our old Bauschan was sitting with a green wreath about his neck, and another about his tail,--for Krischan the coachman had dressed him up for the occasion,--on the green and white altar, which was behind the bridal pair, and where Gottlieb and Lining had married them, and he thrust his dignified autocratic face between their heads and licked Mining with his tongue, and struck Rudolph with his tail, and then licked Rudolph, and struck Mining. And when he had done this, the old fellow settled down again upon the altar with the greatest dignity, looking as if he were well contented with the whole affair, but meant to sit there a little longer, for his own pleasure. Jochen sprang up: "Bauschan, for shame! Down with you!" But Uncle Braesig sprang up also, saying; "Jochen, do you treat your best friend like that, on this solemn occasion?" and turning to Pastor Gottlieb, he added: "Herr Pastor, let Bauschan alone! When the beast shows his affection, here on this Christian altar, the beast knows something that we don't. And Bauschan is a clever dog! I know it; for when I heard about the love-affairs, up in the cherry-tree, he heard them from below, for he was lying in the arbor, under the bench. Herr Pastor, this Bauschan is certainly a marriage witness, for he was there when they were betrothed."

Gottlieb turned pale at the scandalous idea, but did not break out into a sermon this time, for there was suddenly a humming and buzzing, as of a swarm of bees; everybody had risen, and began to remove chairs and tables,--"Out! out!" cried carpenter Schultz,--and dishes and platters, and the rector's youngest pupil tumbled down with a great pile of Frau Nuessler's china plates, and the fragments clattered through the hall, and he stood looking at his work, and feeling in his vest-pocket for treasures which were as much concealed from his own eyes as from those of other people, and as Frau Nuessler passed by and saw the performance he turned very red, and said he would gladly pay for them, but he hadn't so much by him. And Frau Nuessler patted him kindly on the shoulder and said, "Oh, nonsense! But you must be punished!" and she took him by the hand and led him to Braesig's niece Lotting, and said, "You shall dance out my plates here, this evening." And he paid his debt honestly.

Then the dancing began. First the Polonaise. Fritz Triddelsitz had the lead for Herr Suessmann was not yet visible, and what a dance he led them! Through the hall, and through the garden, and through the kitchen, and the entry, and the living room and the sleeping rooms, and back into the garden again, and into the hall went the procession, until Jochen's stout relations were quite out of breath, and Braesig called out to him, why didn't he take the barn-yard by the way? And Jochen Nuessler danced, third couple, with Aunt Zaphie in her flower-pot on one side, and Bauschan in his wreath on the other, and he looked between them like a pearl in a golden setting, or an ass between two bundles of hay. And when the Polonaise was over, David Berger played the slowest of waltzes, "Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom, There, there, hast thou thy throne," and another band answered out of the distance: "Our cat has nine kits," and as he played on: "Speak, speak, Love, I implore thee! Say, say, hope shall be mine!"--came the answer from the distance: "Son and daughter, Into the water!"--and so on, for Frau Nuessler had given orders that there should be dancing in the milk-cellar also, and there sat old Hartloff, with his one eye, and Wichmann the joiner, and Ruhrdanz the weaver, and all the rest; and Hartloff had helped them all to a good drink, and told them not to be discouraged, they could cope with such a city band as that, any day, and so they did their best, and Krischan the coachman kept them supplied with liquor. And when the fun was at its height, Rudolph and Mining came into the milk-cellar, and Mining danced with Krischan, and Rudolph with the cook, and the bailiff got up a hurrah for the married pair, and Hartloff fiddled so madly that Ruhrdanz tried in vain to keep up with him on the clarionet, and finally gave up in despair. And when the bridal pair had gone, Krischan stood behind the door with the cook, arguing the matter.

"Duert, what must be, must."

"Eh, Krischan, what do you want?"

"Duert, we are a bridal pair too, and what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; we must show ourselves on this occasion, they cannot take it ill of us."

And Duert said it was very disagreeable to her, and, if she must do it, she would rather dance with Inspector Braesig, for she knew him; and Krischan said, for all he cared, and he would dance with the Frau. And nobody thought it anything out of the way, in the temple of art, when Krischan stood up with Frau Nuessler and Braesig with Duert, and danced as merrily as the rest. So it was, in those times, and 'tis a pity it is so no longer,--at least not in many places. Great joy and profound grief bring high and low together: why should a master who wishes his laborers to mourn at his funeral not share his pleasures with them also?

It was a joyful occasion, and I could not possibly describe the pleasure which filled every heart, as the young feet danced merrily about, and hands silently pressed each other. I only know that Fritz Triddelsitz stood there as commander-in-chief, and that the little assessor at his side very often blushed, and after the dance ran to Louise, as if to seek her protection. I only know that the little pupil got knocked over several times, in the dance, because he was lost in arithmetical calculations, how he, when his predecessor came to be sexton, and he should be appointed school-master, might live with the greatest economy, and rent a bit of potato-land from the shoemaker at four shillings the square rood, and if the rich Uncle Braesig could help them with a few thalers, perhaps he might marry the lovely blue eyes and the golden hair which looked up to him so joyously, and in the confusion of the dance got entangled in his black coat, which was about one third paid for at Kurz's shop. I only know that the only unhappy being, in the whole company, was Herr Suessmann, and he only when his eyes happened to fall upon Jochen's old blue trousers.

Yes, it was a joyful occasion; but everything has its end; the little fairies and the shopmen and school-boys and the dancers, and David Berger with the musicians, drove off home,--the old people had gone before,--and Jochen placed himself at the head of his relations, and showed them to their quarters, and Frau Nuessler took the ladies to their rooms, and every married lady had her nice bed; but the unmarried ones, with Aunt Zaphie at their head, had to sleep in the great blue room, en table d'hote.

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Chapter XLII

The Sunday after the wedding the young Frau von Rambow was busy in the morning with her housekeeping, and wrote down her expenses in her account book, and then sat in deep thought, till she was wholly disheartened with vague distress and anxiety, for she felt certain that things were going badly with Axel; but she had no idea of the desperate condition at which they had really arrived, through his unwise management, for her worst suspicions and anxieties fell far short of the truth. She merely inferred from his unsteady, hasty demeanor, and the restlessness which drove him hither and thither, that he was in great difficulty. That it was the most extreme difficulty, that the knife was at his throat, and a slight accident, a little maliciousness, might finish the business, she truly did not dream. He had told her nothing; he had ordered horses to be put to the carriage that morning, and had gone off for three days. Where? Why? Those were questions that no longer passed her lips, for why should she knock at a door from which issued only falsehood and evasion? She closed her account book with a sigh, and said to herself, "What is the use? A woman's hands cannot prop up a falling house." And as she saw Fritz Triddelsitz, through the window, strolling wearily and sleepily across the yard, she let her hands fall in her lap, saying, "And all the management depends on him; and it is fortunate too, for he is honest, and has been brought up by Habermann. Ah, Habermann! Habermann!" she cried, and mournful and remorseful thoughts overcame her, and enclosed her in their grasp. Who has not, some time in his life, passed such an hour, when one thought crowds upon the heels of another, like the ghosts of by-gone days, and all point with their fingers to the weak places in our hearts? They will not stir nor move, they stand like wall and mortar, ever pointing to the place, and connecting our present trouble with that place, and calling in our ears, this is the consequence, why hast thou acted thus? And what she had done, had been only out of love; but the ghosts did not turn any for that,--what does a ghost know of love?

As she sat there, Daniel Sadenwater came in, and announced the Herr Proprietor Pomuchelskopp. The Herr was not at home, Frida said. He had told him so, said Daniel, but the Herr Pomuchelskopp had said expressly, he wished to speak with the gracious Frau. "I will come directly," said Frida. She would not have said that usually, but at the moment she was glad to escape from her gloomy thoughts; she had a great aversion to Pomuchelskopp, but still he was a flesh and blood man, he was none of her grisly ghosts.

But she would not have done it, if she had known what awaited her. Pomuchel had previously, and at last on that very morning, held wise counsel with David and Slusuhr, and they were agreed in this conclusion: that it would be best for him to buy the estate of Axel, at private sale; "For" said Pomuchelskopp, "if it comes to an auction, they will put it up too high for me. Ah, how they would drive it up! the old nobility would come together, and some of them have a great deal of money,--and they stick to each other, like burs,--and they would pay his debts, if it came to the hammer, or buy it in for him."

"You must look out for them," said Slusuhr.

"No! no!" cried Pomuchelskopp. "If I can get it quietly, that is the best way. He is as mellow, as mellow as a rotten apple, and I know him, he never looks over the fence, he only reaches after the nearest thing, and if I offer him a good bit of money, enough to pay his debts and have a little left over, he will take it."

"You forget one thing," said the notary, "she is there still."

"Oh, she knows nothing about it," said Muchel. "Fortunate for us, else it would not have gone so far. She looked at me once,--when they had that fuss about the stolen money,--with a pair of eyes that I shall never forget, so long as I live."

"Well," said David, "what of that? she is a woman,--not such a woman as Frau Pomuchelskopp, for she is a dreadfully clever woman,--she is a noble lady, she knows a great deal about some things, and nothing at all about others. If he is mellow, well, she must be made mellow too."

David's advice prevailed; yes, when the poor lady should learn all, blow upon blow, then she must become pliable in their hands, then she would not oppose the sale of the estate; and it was decided that Pomuchelskopp should make a beginning, and the others should follow him, that very morning; they knew that Axel was not at home.

When the Frau von Rambow went down to Pomuchelskopp, he looked as gentle and compassionate as if he were a clergyman, come to condole with her upon her mother's death; he stretched out both hands with a cordial gesture, as if he would take her hand in his, and press it warmly. Not getting her hand, however, he folded his own together, and regarded her with such a fatherly expression, in his old fat eyes, as a crocodile assumes when he is just ready to cry.

He had come, he said, as an old friend, as a true neighbor, to speak with the Herr von Rambow; the business was very pressing, and since the young Herr was not at home, it was necessary that he should speak with the gracious lady. It would be a great grief to him, if he, as a neighbor, could not help, when there was such a misfortune in prospect as the public auction sale of Pumpelhagen.

Frida started back, exclaiming, "Sale of Pumpelhagen!"

And now Pomuchelskopp looked like an unfortunate, innocent mother, who has overlaid her child in sleep; "God bless me!" he cried, "what have I done! I believed, gracious Frau, that you knew already----"

"I know nothing," said Frida, pale, but firm, and looking at the old sinner as if she would look him through; "I know nothing, but I wish to know all. Why should Pumpelhagen be sold?"

"Gracious lady," said the Herr Proprietor, almost wringing his hands, "the many debts----"

"Whom is my husband indebted to?"

"I believe, to many people."

"To yourself, also?"

And now it seemed as if a sluice were drawn up in Pomuchelskopp's heart, and the streams of friendliness, which had been accumulating for long years, were poured out at once upon the house of Pumpelhagen. Yes, he said, he had also demands upon him, but the money which he had loaned had been given out of friendship, and so it should remain. He had merely come over, this morning, to give the young Herr good advice, how the business might be managed, and if possible to help him out of his difficulties. So far as he knew, it was Moses who insisted on the sale, and if his mouth could be stopped everything might be settled. And as he took leave, he said, very kindly, with such a dignified shaking of the head, and much blinking of the eyes, as if to repress tears, if he had known that the gracious lady knew nothing about it, he would rather have pulled out his tongue than have uttered a word on the subject.

If it had been a matter with which she was less nearly connected, she must have perceived the falseness of Pomuchelskopp's behavior; but she had only a vague feeling of it, for distress and terror prevented her from seeing clearly. She felt as if the house had been shaken by an earthquake, as if the walls, which had hitherto protected from the storm, were ready to fall upon her and her child, and bury, beneath themselves, the little happiness she still hoped for in the future, she must get out into the open air, into the garden; and there she walked up and down in the cool shade, thinking and thinking, and it seemed to her as if the very shadows cast by the trees were hers no longer, or even the flowers blooming at her feet, which she herself had planted. She sat down on the same bench where her father-in-law, the old Kammerrath, had sat, when he told Habermann of his troubles; Habermann had helped then,--where was Habermann now? The same tree shadowed her, which she had first seen from the distance when Axel had so proudly pointed out to her his fair estate; where was this pride? where was the estate? To whom did this tree belong?

She sat there for a moment, as she thought, but the moment lasted two hours. She heard steps approaching on the Gurlitz pathway, and started to go; but before she could get away the notary and David stood before her. Slusuhr was a little startled, coming unawares upon the woman whom he was about to put to the torture; but David grinned like a monkey, into whose hand an apple had fallen unexpectedly. The notary went up to the gracious lady with great respect, and with a low bow inquired if they could speak with the gracious Herr.

"He is away from home," said Frida.

"It is very necessary that we should see him," said David. Slusuhr looked at David over his shoulder, as if to say, "Will you hold your stupid tongue?" but he repeated the same words:

"Yes, gracious lady, it is necessary that we should see him."

"Then you must come again on Wednesday; Herr von Rambow is coming back on Tuesday," and she turned to go.

The notary stepped before her, saying, "The business is not so much ours, as the Herr von Rambow's; perhaps a messenger might be sent after him. It is really a very pressing case. We know of a purchaser for Pumpelhagen, a thoroughly safe man, who wishes, however, a definite answer, within three days, whether Herr von Rambow will dispose of the estate at private sale, or let it come to an auction, at the end of the term. The Herr, here, is the son of Moses, who has given notice of his money for St. John's day, and through me, as his man of business, urges the private sale."

Of course this was all a tissue of lies. The fair young Frau stood still and looked at the two rascals; her first fright was over, and all the pride of her innocent soul rose against this undeserved misfortune.

"Gracious lady," said David, after he had fumbled at his watch-chain a while, in great embarrassment under her steady gaze, "bethink yourself; there is my father with the seven thousand thalers,--with the interest and costs, it amounts to eight,--there is Herr Pomuchelskopp's eight thousand thalers, there are the trades-people at Rahnstadt,--we have the accounts by us,--three thousand, then there are the bills of exchange, and, here and there, ten thousand more, owing,--well, what do I know? perhaps to Israel at Schwerin. If you should sell, now, to a safe man, and you could sell the furniture, and the beds, and the linen, you would have ten thousand thalers over, or perhaps eleven, or, for all I know, even twelve thousand. And then, if you should move to Rahnstadt, and rent a house there, you would have nothing to do, and could live like a countess."

Frida said nothing, but bowed coldly to the two companions, and went into the house. Nothing drives a high spirit to defend itself and to present a brave front to the world, like the rude intrusion of the world into one's private affairs. Then the foot advances to tread upon the head of the adder, and pride and honor and a good conscience turn out all other emotions which have restlessly worked in the heart, and there is no longer strife, there is calm repose; but it is like the repose of death.

"There she goes, like a princess!" said David.

"You blockhead, you!" cried Slusuhr. "Well, I will never, in my life, go on any business again with such a dunce."

"Why, what is the matter?" asked David. "Didn't we do just that way with the peasant at Kanin, and the matter was settled at once?"

"Yes, with a peasant. But did you come into the world yesterday, that you don't know that a noble lady is no peasant? We wanted to make her mellow and pliable--well, much good may it do you! we have only stiffened her neck. If it had come over him in that way, he would have said yes to everything; but," he added, rather to himself than to David, "there are men,--yes, and women, truly,--who are really strong, for the first time, under misfortune."

As they returned to the Herr Proprietor, and he learned how the young Frau had received them, he was greatly enraged.

"Good heavens!" said he to David, "how is it possible you could go about such a critical business in such a rough way? You should merely have bored and pricked and teased her, instead of setting her whole future life before her. God bless me! I had it all so nicely in train; and now, you shall see, when he comes home she will stiffen his back up as well, and the end will be, it will come to an auction."

"Then you can buy it," said Slusuhr.

"No, no! They will drive it up too high for me, and it joins so finely to my estate!" So the worthy Herr complained and disputed with the others, and consulted what should be done, and how they could manage it.

In another part of Gurlitz, there were also consultations going on. In weaver Ruhrdanz's room, day-laborers and day-laborers wives were sitting together, and the talk that went round was not hasty and reckless, but thoughtful and deliberate, though venomous.

"Well, what do you say, brother?"

"Eh, what should one say? He must be got rid of, he is a regular skinner! Well, now you, Ruhrdanz?"

"You are right there, I say so, too; he must be got rid of! But, friends, you should see, they would send him back to us again. If we only had papers about it, so that he dare not come back."

"Oh, your stupid papers!" cried a great rough woman, from behind the stove, "when you come home, in the evenings, from the city, with your heads full of brandy, you are ready to do great things, and afterwards you flop together, like a dish-cloth. What? Must I send my children about the country, begging? I have had no bread, for three days, but such as the children have brought home."

"Things are a little better than they were, though," said old father Brinkman.

"Yes," cried Willgans, "but from fear, not from kindness. We will go up to the court, each with a good staff, and there we will teach him to know the Lord, and then we will lead him over the boundary, and give him a start on the way: 'There! now travel!'"

"What?" cried Kapphingst, "and that Satan of a woman, who almost killed my girl about an old chicken, will you let her stay?"

"And the old girls," cried a young woman, "who tormented us so, when we were servants at the court, and seemed like merciful angels in the parlor, when there was company, and knocked us round in the kitchen, like regular devils,--shall they stay too?"

"We must get rid of the whole concern," said Willgans.

"No, children, no!" said old Brinkman. "Do not meddle with the innocent children!"

"Yes," said Ruhrdanz's old wife, who sat by herself, peeling potatoes for dinner, "you are right, Brinkman, and Gustaving must stay too; I saw him bringing old Schultz a measure of potatoes, secretly; and when he measures the land for potatoes and flax, he always gives a couple of rods more than he does; and, Willgans, see! your oldest boy wears a pair of his outgrown breeches, at this moment. He cannot do as he would, the old man looks after him too closely. No, against Gustaving and the little ones, nobody must lift a hand."

"Mother, I say so, too," said Ruhrdanz. "And, let me tell you something, we must do everything regularly! The others are not here now; this evening we will talk about it again. He will not be at home; Johann Jochen had to get the glass coach ready, they are going to the ball, in the city, this evening; then we can talk it over."

"Yes," cried the great rough woman, "yes, talk and talk! You drink your heads full of brandy, and we are starving. If you don't get rid of these people, we shall do it, for we can do as other women have done, all over the country; thorn-bushes and nettle-stalks are not far to seek." With that, she went out of the door, and the company dispersed.

"Bernhard," said Ruhrdanz's wife to him, "the matter may turn out badly."

"So I say, mother, and you are quite right; but if the business is only conducted with regularity, the grand-duke can have nothing against it. The only trouble is that we have no proper papers to show; but if he should have to show his papers, fine papers they would be."

Ruhrdanz was right; as for the grand-duke, I don't know about that; but he was right about the glass coach, and Pomuchelskopp's journey to the ball; for towards evening the Herr Proprietor sat in the coach, in his blue dress-coat, and his brave, old Haeuning sat by him, looking, in her yellow-brown silk, like one of her own cookies, with all sorts of scalloped flourishes, though the soapy flavor was lacking; she was as dry and tough as a leather strap, and her bones clattered over the rough roads, like a bunch of hazelnuts, hung in the chimney-corner. Opposite sat the two fair daughters, sumptuously arrayed; but greatly vexed, because their father positively insisted upon taking them to this ball, a burgher ball. To punish him for it, they made no effort to amuse him, and talked of the burghers as canaille, and also wrought vengeance upon his shins, by the way, by means of the new hoops in their crinoline, which the wheelwright had put in freshly, that morning, of stout hazel stock. Gustaving sat by the coachman, Johann Jochen, on the box.

I cannot think of dancing, this evening, with my pretty readers, at the fraternity ball, I am too old, and besides, it is only three days since Rudolph's wedding, where I did my utmost. I will merely go as a spectator, and enjoy the pleasant summer evening, on the bench before Grammelin's door; I can look into the hall for a few moments, later in the evening, and drink a glass of punch, and fraternize a little, like the rest.

There were great doings at Grammelin's. All the grandees of Rahnstadt were there, the burghers, head and tail and neck and crop, a few proprietors, Pomuchelskopp at the head, a few noblemen and their sons,--their wives were not there, they were all troubled with corns that afternoon, and the daughters were absent from home,--the paechters in the neighborhood, and the young country people came in crowds. Very few of our friends were to be seen, for it was church-going with Jochen Nuessler's family, and the Frau Pastorin and Habermann and Louise had gone out there, and Rector Baldrian and Kurz, with their wives and Braesig, had also gone, but had returned in time to go to the ball. Kurz did not go, however, for he had been so provoked over Jochen's stout relations, that his wife put him to bed, which was a good thing, not only for himself, but for Herr Suessmann and the ball, for the young Herr could manage his affairs as dance-director without disturbance. He had got himself a new pair of trousers, and had put so much lard on his hair, that there was plenty to spare to grease his joints with. The little assessor went with her parents, and Fritz Triddelsitz, who was aware that she was coming, appeared as a proprietor of the highest rank, connected with the nobility. The little pupil, whose groschens were all gone, and who had discovered that Braesig's niece would not be there, sat just across the street from Grammelin's, before a forlorn old piano, which he belabored, while he sung:

"Mich fliehen alle Freuden, ich sterb vor Ungeduld,"

and so forth, only he mispronounced, in his distress, and said:

"Mich freuen alle Fliegen!"

Rector Baldrian came, with his wife, and Braesig with Schultz the carpenter, and Slusuhr and David. David had on two gold rings more than usual, which had been given him in pawn, and chewed cinnamon bark, to counteract the odor of the produce business.

And when they were all there, and they were ready to begin, David Berger played the "Mamsell jaes"--as the dyer Meinswegens called the thing,--and Herr Suessmann sang out, quite loud:

"Allons enfant de la partie!"

At first, all seemed very good-natured, but, as a whole, there wasn't much fraternity. On one side it was all right, the young gentlemen among the grandees, and those from the country, were very brotherly towards the pretty little burghers' daughters; but the young ladies from the country, and the grandees' daughters, were positively determined not to fraternize with the burghers' sons, and the first open quarrel began with Malchen Pomuchelskopp. The shoemaker, the wit of the Reformverein, who was a burgher's son in Rahnstadt, asked her to dance, and she thanked him, but she was engaged; and then she sat there, and waited for Fritz Triddelsitz or Herr Suessmann, or some other helping angel, whom providence might send to dance the next hop waltz with her. But there were no angels of the kind ready, and she remained sitting. The rogue of a shoemaker cracked his jokes over it, and at last said, quite aloud, that if the distinguished ladies would not dance with them, they ought not to let the distinguished gentlemen dance with their women-folks, for they had not come there to look at each other. And then the storm broke upon the poor, pretty, innocent, little burghers' daughters, and their brothers and lovers attacked them: "Fika, don't you dance any more with that long-legged apothecary's son!" and "Duert, wait, I shall tell mother!" and "Stine, another dance with the advocate, and we are parted!" So it went through the hall, and at last it came to Father Pomuchelskopp's ears, how the trouble originated, and it disturbed him so much that he went to Malchen, and represented to her in the most pathetic terms the mischief she had done. The shoemaker, he said, was a very worthy young man, he was counted equal to any ten in the Reformverein, on account of his terrible wit, and it must be made up, and in spite of all her opposition Father Pomuchelskopp took his educated daughter upon his arm, and led her through the hall to the shoemaker, and said it was a great mistake, his daughter would consider it a special honor to dance with such a distinguished member of the Reformverein. And, behold! the shoemaker and Malchen were dancing together!

Father Pomuchel had now, so to speak, sacrificed his first born upon the altar of fraternity, but it did not avail much, the discordant elements would not harmonize. Uncle Braesig was doing his utmost, on the other side, he puffed about in his brown dress-coat, introduced Herr von So and So to the wife of Thiel the joiner, and compelled himself to walk arm-in-arm, about the hall, with his worst enemy in the Reformverein, the tailor Wimmersdorf, and at last, before everybody, gave the wife of Johann Meinswegens, the dyer, a couple of fraternity kisses on her red face; but it was a hopeless task, what could one man accomplish, though with the best will in the world? "Herr Schultz," he said, at last, quite worn out with his labors, "when it comes to the eating and drinking, I hope we may be a little more brotherly; the dancing only seems to bring us farther apart."

But even the eating and drinking did not help the matter; the people of rank sat at one end of the table, the burghers at the other; at one end they drank champagne, at the other a frightful tipple, which Grammelin sold, with the greatest impudence, as fine red wine, at twelve shillings the bottle. The shoemaker, indeed, was invited by Pomuchelskopp to be his guest at table, he sat by Malchen, and Father Pomuchel filled his glass assiduously; the dyer, Meinswegens, had sat down with his wife between two proprietors, and ordered "Panschamber," for he had filled his pocket with four-groschen pieces; but when he went to pay he became aware that he had made a mistake, in the twilight, for he brought out a handful of dyer's tickets. Braesig had seated himself between a couple of the dearest little burghers' daughters, whom he treated in such a fatherly way that the Frau Pastorin, if she had seen it, would not have given him a good word for a week, and Gottlieb would certainly have preached him a sermon; but what good did it all do? Grammelin's sour wine did not suit well with his champagne, and so at supper they were farther asunder than ever.

"Herr Schultz," said Braesig to his old friend, who sat opposite, "now it is time to play our last trump, you speak to Herr Suessmann, I will tell David Berger."

Herr Schultz went round to Herr Suessmann. "Have you your song-books ready?"

"Oh, yes."

"Go ahead, then! Now is the time!"

Herr Suessmann distributed the songbooks, while Braesig went up to David Berger, and inquired:

"Herr Berger, do you know that air of Schiller's:

"'Schwester mit das Leinwand mieder, Bruder in das Ordensband?'"

"Yes, indeed," said David.

"Well, go ahead, then! Begin!" And suddenly resounded through the hall:

"Freude, schoener Gutter funken,"

but fewer and fewer voices joined the chorus, weaker and weaker grew the song, till, at last, old Uncle Braesig stood there, with the book before his nose, and the tears running down his cheeks, and sung:

"Seid umschlungen Millionen, Untergang der Luegenbrut!"

That was too strong, they couldn't stand that. "Lying brood!" No, that was too much; they all lied, to be sure, but only when it was necessary. The company rose from table, very much out of humor. Braesig sat down in a corner and began to grumble, he was vexed to his inmost heart; the young people began to dance again, and David and Slusuhr sat in an adjoining room, drinking champagne, and cracking their jokes over Uncle Braesig.

"Herr Inspector," said the carpenter Schultz to Braesig, after a while, "there are some people sitting in No. 3, and the notary and David are poking fun at you, because you bring your politics into everything, and the notary said, if the French should get no king after Louis Philippe, then you might become King of France; you had nothing to do, and might like the situation."

"Did he say that?" asked Uncle Braesig, rising from the corner, with great energy.

"Yes, he said that, and the others laughed at it."

"And he is sitting in Grammelin's No. 3?"

"Yes, he is sitting there."

"Come with me, Herr Schultz."

Braesig was angry, as I have said, he was exceedingly angry; the fine fraternity fete, from which he had hoped so much for mankind, was hopelessly ruined; he felt like the patriarch Abraham, when he offered up his darling child, he would have nothing more to do with it, he would go home; then providence sent him this scapegoat, upon whom he could express his anger, and so much the better, since he was the friend and tool of Pomuchelskopp.

"Come along, Herr Schultz," said he, crossing the hall with great strides to the dressing room, where he had left his hat and buckthorn walking-stick. The hat he left there, but the stick he took with him to No. 3.

There were many guests sitting here, over their bottles, and laughing at the jokes of the Herr Notary. All at once a great silence fell upon the merry company, as they saw a face among them which frightened them out of their laughter. That was Braesig's, which looked, in a very singular way, first at his buckthorn stick, and then at the notary, so that the company, with a suspicion of what might possibly happen, hastened to withdraw from the table.

"What rascal wanted to make me King of France?" cried Braesig, in such a voice that the plastering fell from the ceiling, and his stick seemed like a live thing in his hand: "I will not be made King of France!"--whack! came the buckthorn, between the notary's shoulder-blades. "Oh Lord!"--"I will not be made King of France!" and a second time the buckthorn did its work, and Uncle Braesig and his stick alternated in the assurance that they had no ambition for the French crown. Candlesticks, lamps and bottles entered actively into the battle-royal, and David got under the table, that is to say, he crept there for refuge. The notary shrieked for help, but no one stood by him; only when the affair was over, David plucked up courage, under the table, to inquire: "Begging your pardon, Herr Inspector, is this what you call fraternity?"

"Yes!" cried Braesig, "you miserable scamp! Between a man and a dog, blows are the best fraternity."

"Out! out!" said Herr Schultz and he grappled David, under the table, and dragged him to light.

"Gentlemen," cried Slusuhr, "you are witnesses how I have been treated, I shall enter a complaint."

"I have seen nothing," said one.

"I know nothing about it," said another.

"I was looking out of the window," said a third, although it was pitch dark.

"Herr Schultz," said Braesig, "you are my witness that I have treated the Herr Notary Slusuhr with the greatest forbearance," and with that, he left the room, got his hat, and went home.

The blows which Slusuhr had received in No. 3 had echoed by this time through the hall, and in no way tended to harmonize the existing discords. The two Herrs von So and So with their sons had taken leave long before, and some of the grandees had also quietly retreated. The little assessor had her hat on, and her cloak wrapped around her, though Fritz Triddelsitz was almost on his knees before her, begging for one more, just one more little Schottische.

Pomuchelskopp also prepared for departure; he had an indefinite, but just, premonition that something was going to happen to him that evening, so he went to his family and told them it was time they were starting for home. His family afforded a sad picture of the whole entertainment, for they were quite divided. Gustaving was still hopping about, contentedly, with tailor Wimmersdorf's youngest daughter, Salchen was standing a little aside with Herr Suessmann, listening attentively while he related how merely by way of joke he had taken the stupid situation at Kurz's shop, but he should remain there no longer than till he could decide which of the places to accept, which were offered to him in Hamburg, Luebeck or Stettin, or possibly he might conclude to establish himself in Rostock, for he had a rich uncle there, who was constantly urging him to get married and come and live with him. Malchen sat in a sofa-corner, crying with vexation over her shoemaker. Kluecking, our brave old Haeuning, sat there stiff as a stake; however agitated by the events of the evening she may have been, she gave no sign, she remained steadfast, even the shoemaker had not moved her out of her composure, and when Muchel proposed that they should go she merely said, in a very friendly way, "Poeking, will you not invite your friend, the shoemaker, to ride with us? You might also invite one of your noble acquaintances. And then, if you ask weaver Ruhrdanz, and Willgans, and your other brothers of the Reformverein, the company will be complete."

And with this matrimonial sting in his great fraternal heart, our friend set off on his homeward journey.

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Chapter XLIII

One should never be confident beforehand how a matter will turn out; especially, one should never make free with the devil, for he is apt to come when he is called, and often appears uninvited. The guests whom Haeuning advised Pomuchelskopp to invite, were standing before the gate of Gurlitz waiting for their host and hostess. All the villagers and Pomuchelskopp's day-laborers stood there together, as the summer morning began to dawn, before the court-yard gate, to give their master a reception.

"Children," said Ruhrdanz, "what must be, must, but do everything with regularity!"

"Out with your regularity!" cried Willgans. "Has he treated us with regularity?"

"No matter," said Ruhrdanz, "we cannot get our rights out of hand. That is where you are mistaken. When we go to the grand-duke about it afterwards, and that is no more than proper, and he asks, 'Willgans, what did you do?' and you tell him, 'Why, Herr, we first gave the old man and his wife a good beating, and then we took them over the boundary,' how will that sound? What will the man say to that?"

"Yes," said old Brinkmann, "Ruhrdanz is right? If we take him over the boundary then we are rid of him, and there is no need of our doing anything more."

This was finally resolved upon. Behind the men stood the women and children, and the great, strong woman of yesterday morning was there also, and she said, "Now we have things, so far, as we want them. If you don't do it though, and get rid of the fellow and his wife, I will beat my man till he cries for mercy."

"Yes, gossip," said another woman, "we must, we must! I went to the pastor's yesterday,--well, the Frau Pastorin gave me something, and he preached patience. What? Patience? Has hunger patience?"

"Johann Schmidt," said a tall, slender girl, "just run up the hill, and see if they are coming. Fika, how will our two mamsells look, when they are sent packing?"

"Shall we tell the pastor about the matter?" inquired the day-laborer Zorndt of Brinkmann. "It might be well that he should know about it."

"I don't think there is any use in it, Zorndt, he knows nothing about business. If the old pastor were only alive!"

"They are coming!" cried Johann Schmidt, running back.

"Come, who is to speak?" said Willgans, "I will hold the horses."

"Eh, Ruhrdanz," went from mouth to mouth.

"Well, if you are contented, why should not I speak?" said Ruhrdanz. Then all was quiet.

The coachman, Johann Jochen, drove up, and was going to turn in at the gate; then Willgans seized the two leaders by the heads, and turned them aside a little, saying, "Johann Jochen, stop here for a moment."

Pomuchelskopp looked out of the carriage, and saw the whole village assembled: "What does this mean?"

Ruhrdanz, and the rest of the company, stood at the door of the carriage, and he said, "Herr, we have made up our minds that we will not consider you our master any longer, for you have not treated us as a master ought, and no more have you other people before us, for you wear a ring around your neck, and we cannot suffer a master with a ring around his neck."

"You robbers! You rascals!" cried Pomuchelskopp, as he became aware of the meaning of this performance. "What do you want? Will you lay hands on me and mine?"

"No, we will not do that," said old Brinkmann, "we will only take you over the boundary."

"Johann Jochen!" cried Pomuchelskopp, "drive on! Cut them with your whip!"

"Johann Jochen," said Willgans, "so sure as you touch the whip, I will knock you off the horse. Turn about! So! to the right!" and carriage and horses were headed towards Rahnstadt. Salchen and Malchen were screeching at the top of their voices, Gustaving had sprung down from the box, and placed himself between his father and the laborers, to keep them off; all was in confusion, only our brave old Haeuning sat stiff and stark, and said not a word.

"What do you want of me? You pack of robbers!" exclaimed Pomuchelskopp.

"We are not that," cried Schmidt, "we would not take a pin-head from you, and Gustaving can stay here and manage, and tell us what to do."

"But the wife, and the two girls, we cannot stand any longer," said Kapphingst, "they must go too."

"Hush, children!" said Ruhrdanz, "everything with regularity. Merely to take them over the boundary amounts to nothing; we must give them up to our magistrate, the Rahnstadt burgomeister. That is the right thing to do."

"Ruhrdanz is right," said the others, "and Gustaving, you go quietly home, nobody will hurt you. And you, Johann Jochen, just drive at a steady pace," and they placed themselves, some on one side, some on the other, and the procession started, at a regular parade step. Pomuchelskopp had resigned himself, but he was not resigned to his destiny; he sat wringing his hands and lamenting to himself: "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! what will become of me? what will they do?" and then, putting his head out of the door, "Good people, I have always been a kind master to you."

"You have been a regular skinner!" cried a voice from the crowd.

Salchen and Malchen wept, Haeuning sat there, stiff as a thermometer tube, but if the day-laborers had understood that sort of thermometer, they would have seen that the mercury was far above boiling point, and Willgans, who was close by the door, would have been more careful, for suddenly, without saying a word, she made a grab at him, and got fast hold of his curly, chestnut hair, and pulled it to her heart's content, and her eyes gleamed and sparkled out of the dusky carriage, as if she had been transformed into an owl, and had taken him for a young hare.

"Thunder and lightning! Look at the carrion!" cried Willgans. "Strike at her, Duesing! See the devil! Strike her on the knuckles! ye, ya! ye, ya!"

Before Duesing could rescue him, Haeuning banged his nose, a couple of times, against the door-handle, and the blood ran in streams.

"Thunder and lightning! I say! Such deviltry is not to be put up with! Hold on, I will----"

"Hold!" cried Ruhrdanz, "you must not blame her for that, it is only her natural wickedness; you must let it go for this time; but you can tell the grand-duke about it and show him your nose, if you like, that he may see how they have treated you."

Haeuning said nothing, and the procession moved on; at the boundary the laborers sent home their wives and children, who had followed so far, behind the carriage, and about seven o'clock they marched, slowly and solemnly, into Rahnstadt.

Uncle Braesig lay by the window, smoking his pipe, and thinking over his heroic deeds of the previous evening. Kurz, although he had not attended the fraternity ball, was fearfully cross, and went scolding about his shop: "The stupid dunce! the harlequin! Only wait! Only come home!" and, although he intended to be in such different circumstances afterwards, he must at length come home, that is to say, Herr Suessmann. Herr Suessmann danced over the threshold. Kurz braced his two hands against the counter, and looked at him, as if he would spring over the counter in his wrath, and meet Herr Suessmann in the hall; he let him, however, come into the shop first.

"Morning, principal, principaelchen, principaelchen!" cried Herr Suessmann, staggering about the shop, and finally seating himself on the rim of a herring cask, with his hat cocked on one side: "Morning, Kurzchen, Schurzchen, Wurzchen----" but he had not time to finish his variations, Kurz had his hands in his hair, knocked off his hat into the herring-cask, and began dragging him about the shop by his ambrosial locks. Herr Suessmann groped blindly about him for something to lay hold of, and caught at the stop-cock of the oil-cask; the cock came out, and the oil poured out in a stream.

"Good heavens!" cried Kurz, "my oil! my oil!" and he let go of Herr Suessmann, and stuck his right fore-finger into the hole. Herr Suessmann held up the cock in triumph, and, as it often happens that crazy or intoxicated people do uncommonly clever things, the bright idea occurred to Herr Suessmann that he would do his work thoroughly. So he pulled out the cock from the vinegar barrel.

"Oh, good gracious! my vinegar!" cried Kurz, and he stuck his left fore-finger into the vinegar barrel. And as he was now fairly caught, and stooping over, the opportunity was too tempting for Herr Suessmann to neglect. "Principaelchen! Kurzchen!"--whack! "Leben sie wohl, Tuten dreherchen!"--whack, whack! "Johannageht, und nimmer kehrt sie wieder!"--whack, whack, whack! Then he fished his hat out of the herring-cask, put it on, as much askew as possible, laid the two cocks on the counter, about twenty feet from Kurz, and danced, laughing, out of the door.

"Help!" screamed Kurz, "help! he-l-p!" But his people were not in the house, and his good old advocate was in the back garden, cutting asparagus, and the only one who heard him was Uncle Braesig. "Karl," said he, "it seems to me, as if Kurz were yelling. I will go over, and see if anything has happened."

"He-l-p!" cried Kurz.

"Preserve us!" said Braesig, "what an uproar you are making here, at seven o'clock in the morning!"

"Infamous rascal!"

"How? Is that the way you greet me?"

"Good-for-nothing scamp!"

"You are a rude fellow!"

"Give me those cocks, that lie on the counter!"

"Get your dirty cocks yourself, you donkey, you!"

"I cannot, the oil and the vinegar will run out, and I don't mean you, I mean Suessmann."

"That is another thing," said Braesig, perching himself on the counter, and swinging his legs, "what is the matter with you?"

Kurz related how he had got into this situation.

"You strike me very comically, Kurz, but let this be a warning to you; a man is always punished in the members in which he has sinned."

"I beg you----"

"Quiet, Kurz! You have always sinned in oil and vinegar, since you have emptied the quart measure with a jerk, so that often two or three spoonfuls would be left in it. Will you always give right measure hereafter? Will you never look at the cards again, when we are playing Boston?"

"Good heavens! yes, yes!"

"Well, then, I will release you," and with that he brought the cocks.

Hardly was Kurz free when he darted out of the door, as if he expected to find Herr Suessmann waiting for him outside. Braesig followed, and they came out just as Pomuchelskopp and his escort were passing.

"Preserve us! What is this? Ruhrdanz, what does this mean?"

"Don't take it ill, Herr Inspector, we have turned out our Herr."

Braesig shook his head: "You have done a very foolish thing!" and he fell into the procession, and many people who were in the street followed to the burgomeister's house. Here the laborers took out the horses, and Ruhrdanz and Willgans and Brinkmann, and several others went in to see the burgomeister.

"Well, Herr," said Ruhrdanz, "we have got him here."

"Whom?"

"Eh, our Herr Pomuchelskopp."

"What? What is that?"

"Oh, nothing, only that we won't have him for our Herr any longer."

"Good heavens, people, what have you done."

"Nothing but what is right, Herr Burgomeister."

"Have you laid hands on your master?"

"Not a finger; but the old woman there, she laid hands on Willgans, for she----"

But the burgomeister had gone out of the room, and stood by the carriage, and begged the company to get out; they did so, and he brought the family into his living room.

"Oh, what will become of us! what will become of us!" moaned Pomuchel. "Herr Burgomeister, you know, I have always been a good master to my people."

"Kopp, for shame!" interposed Haeuning.

"No," said the burgomeister, paying no attention to Haeuning, and looking the Herr Proprietor firmly in the eye, "you have not been a good master. You know I have often remonstrated with you, on this account, and you know that, because of your behavior to your people, I have declined to act as your magistrate. I have nothing to do with the business, and if I were to concern myself in it, merely as a private citizen, I should not take your side, but that of your poor, oppressed people. You must excuse me, therefore----"

"But you can at least give me your advice," begged Pomuchelskopp. "What shall I do?"

"You cannot go back to Gurlitz, at least not at present, it might give occasion for violent deeds; you must wait the result, here. But wait a moment; I will speak to the people again."

Well, what good could that do? The people were firmly resolved in the matter; the bad fellows among them had yielded to the decision of the older, more peaceable laborers and villagers, and now they were all so fully persuaded that they were in the right, that they were not to be moved from their purpose.

"No, Herr," said Ruhrdanz, "we will never take him back; that is settled."

"You are guilty of a great offence, and it may go hard with you."

"Yes, that may be; but if you talk of offences, Herr Pomuchelskopp has been guilty of worse offences against us."

"Those foolish people at the Reformverein, have filled your heads with their silly ideas."

"Don't take it ill, Herr Burgomeister; that is what everybody says, but it isn't true. What? Our Herr Pomuchelskopp belongs to the Reformverein, and has made a speech there; but, Herr, he told nothing but lies, and we know better."

"Well, what do you intend to do?"

"Herr Gustaving is there, and when he tells us to do this or that, we shall do it; but Willgans and I will go to the grand-duke, and give him an account of the matter, and that is what I wanted to ask you, if you would give us some papers to take with us."

"What do you want with papers?"

"Well, Herr Burgomeister, don't take it ill, there is no harm in it. You see, I went to the old railroad, without any papers, and they turned me out, of course; but the grand-duke is no railroad, and he would not act so inconsiderately, and if we have no papers to show you can show your nose, Willgans, how the old woman has treated you, and I will show my honest hands, which have never been in any unjust business."

Upon that, the old man went out, and the laborers crowded around him, and felt in their pockets, and produced the few shillings and groschens they had by them: "There, now go! The shortest road to Schwerin!" and "Neighbor, don't forget Kapphingst's girl!" and "Neighbor, if he asks what we have lived on, you may say honestly we have stolen nothing from our master; but we have helped ourselves to a few of Frau Nuessler's potatoes, because she never minded it."

The two set out for Schwerin, the other day-laborers went home; Johann Jochen drove the empty carriage behind them; the people, who had assembled in quite a crowd before the burgomeister's door,--for the business had spread through the town like wildfire,--dispersed to their homes, and Uncle Braesig said to Habermann, "Karl, he is getting his deserts. I went in a moment, not on his account, but for those poor fellows, the laborers; but when he came in, I went away, for I didn't want to see him in his disgrace."

Pomuchelskopp had gone to Grammelin's, with his dear family, and he sat now, in misery and distress, by the bedside of the Herr Notary; for Slusuhr had gone directly to bed, after his beating, in order that the business might appear to be very serious.

"I have sent for the doctor, and shall have myself examined, so that I can catch the inspector nicely. Strump is not at home, but the other one will be here directly."

"Ah, how fortunate you are!" said Pomuchel.

"I should not have supposed," said the Herr Notary, turning on his other side, "that it was a particular piece of good fortune to get a jacket full of blows from a buckthorn staff, as thick as your thumb."

"You can avenge yourself, but I,--poor man that I am,--what can I do?"

"You can get a detachment of soldiers, and then you can punish the rascals, within an inch of their lives, and if you are too much of a milksop to do it yourself, employ your wife, she will do it finely."

"God bless you! no! no! I have enough on my hands! I can do nothing about Pumpelhagen yet, and I dare not go back to Gurlitz, they will tear my house down over my head. No, no! I shall sell, I shall sell!"

"Shall I tell you some news?" said David, who came into the room, in time to hear the last words, "you are right, sell; I will look out for you, I know----"

"Infamous Jew rascal!" said Slusuhr, shifting his position again,--"aw! thunder!--do you think we cannot manage that for ourselves? Yes, Herr Pomuchelskopp, I would sell, for if they don't tear your house down they might get at the barns, and the potato middens."

"Well, Herr Notary, what will you do?" asked David. "You have some money; you might manage a farm-house, or a mill, but for an estate like that? You must come to my father."

"Your father? When he hears that it is for Pomuchelskopp, he will say: 'Cash down!' We three are not in very high credit with him."

"If I tell him----" began David, but just then the doctor came in, the father of the little assessor.

"Good morning! You sent for me?" turning to Slusuhr, "you wanted to see me?"

"Ah, Herr Doctor, you were at the ball last night. Oh, my bruises! You must surely have heard----"

"He got a beating," said David, "I am a witness he was dreadfully abused."

"Will you hold your cursed tongue?" cried Slusuhr. "Herr Doctor, I wish you would examine me medically; I fear I shall never recover the use of my limbs."

Without more words, the doctor went up to the patient, and removed the shirt from his shoulders, and there was much to be read there which is not usually seen on a pair of shoulders, and the inscription was written in red ink, in the largest capitals. Pomuchelskopp sat there, with folded hands, in the deepest melancholy, but when he saw the inscription on the notary's back, a very comfortable expression dawned in his face, and David sprung up, exclaiming, "Good heavens! How he looks! Herr Doctor, I will let you examine me too; carpenter Schultz dragged me out from under the table, and tore my new dress-coat."

"Send for the tailor!" said the doctor quietly, and turning to the notary: "I will leave a certificate for you, with Grammelin. Good morning, gentlemen!"

Then he went down-stairs, and after a little while, Grammelin's waiting-maid brought up the paper, which the doctor had left for the Herr Notary. Slusuhr opened it, and read:

"As in duty bound, I hereby testify that the Herr Notary Slusuhr has received a good, sound flogging, as is clearly evident from the suggillations upon his back. It has done him no harm, however. So and So, Dr. Med."

"Has the fellow the insolence to say that?" screamed Slusuhr. "It has done him no harm? Well, just wait, we will talk about that, by and by."

"Good heavens!" cried David, "isn't it better that it has done you no harm, than if had hurt you?"

"You are an idiot! But what am I lying here for?" said Slusuhr. "You will excuse me, I must go out, I must thank the Herr Inspector for his flogging--with a little writ."

"Don't forget me, my dear friend," said Pomuchel. "You must write for me to Pumpelhagen to-day."

"Rely upon me. I feel spiteful enough, to-day, to get out writs against the whole world. Haven't you something to write, David?"

"If I have anything to write, I can write it, if I have nothing to write, I shall write nothing," said David, and he went out with Pomuchelskopp.

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Chapter XLIV

Gloomy, heavy, leaden hours oppressed the young Frau von Rambow, after Pomuchelskopp's visit; slowly, step by step, they passed over her, and in their footprints new cares and anxieties sprang up; with firm, energetic hands, she pulled up these weeds from her path; but in time the most active hand grows weary, and the strongest heart longs for rest.

Her husband had not returned on the day appointed; instead there had come a messenger, with a letter, bearing Slusuhr's seal, who said he had orders to wait, until he could give the letter into the hands of the Herr von Rambow himself. What that signified, she could easily understand. She sat, in the twilight, in her room, by her child; her hands were folded in her lap, and she looked out, in the hazy summer evening, at the dark clouds gathering over the sky.

The day had been sultry, and in such weather, the blood flows heavily through the veins, not leaping and throbbing, like a living spring of clear water, but dragging; sleepily along, like the black water in a ditch, and even as Nature sighs and pants for the storm, which shall give her fresh life, so the heart longs and sighs, in impatience, for the whirlwind and thunderbolt of destiny, which may save it from such wearing torture,--come what may, deliver us from this fearful suspense. This was Frida's mood, so she longed and sighed for a sturdy thunder-bolt which might drive away the foul air in which she was stifling, and make everything clear around her; and she did not sigh in vain.

Korlin Kegel came in, bringing the post-bag, and stood there as if she wanted to do something, then unlocked the bag, and laid a letter on the table before her mistress, and again stood still.

"Gracious Frau, shall I light the lamps?"

"No, let them be."

Korlin did not go, she remained standing:

"Gracious Frau, you have forbidden us to come telling tales, but----"

"What is it?" asked Frida, rousing herself from her thoughts.

"Ah, gracious Frau, the Gurlitz people have driven away Herr Pomuchelskopp, and his wife and his two daughters."

"Have they done that?" cried Frida.

"Yes, and now all our day-laborers are standing outside, and want to speak to you."

"Are they going to drive us away?" asked Frida, rising, very quietly and proudly, from her chair.

"No, no! dear, gracious Frau," cried Korlin, throwing herself on the floor, and grasping her about the knees, while the tears started from her eyes, "no, no! There is no talk of that, and my old father says, if any one should propose such a thing, he would beat out his brains with a shovel. They only say there is no use in speaking to the Herr, he breaks up their talk too shortly. They want lo speak to you, because they have confidence in you."

"Where is Triddelsitz?"

"Dear heart! he is going round among them, but they won't listen to him, they say they have nothing to do with him, they want to speak to the gracious Frau."

"Come!" said Frida, and went down.

"What do you want, good people?" asked the young Frau, as she stepped outside the door, before which the laborers were assembled. The wheelwright, Fritz Flegel, stepped up, and said:

"Gracious Frau, we have only come to you because we are all agreed,--and we told the Herr so before; but nothing came of it. And the Herr answered us harshly, and we have no real confidence in Herr Triddelsitz, for he is so thoughtless, and doesn't know yet how things should be managed, and we thought you might help us, if you would be so kind. We are not dissatisfied because we want more, we are contented with what we get, and we get what belongs to us;--but never at the right time; and poor people like us cannot stand that."

"Yes," interrupted Paesel, "and last year, the famine year, the rye was all sold, and you see, gracious Frau, some of us get our pay in grain; and I was to have twelve bushels of rye, and live on it, and I got none, and they said we must be patient. Oh, patience! And all the potatoes bad! How can we live?"

"Gracious Frau," said an old white-haired man, "I will say nothing about the means of life, for we have never gone hungry; but for an old man like me to stand, all day long, bent over in the ditch, shoveling water,--and at evening I am too stiff to move, and cannot sleep at night for misery,--it isn't right. We didn't have such doing? when Herr Habermann was here; but now it is all commanding and commanding, and the commanders know nothing about the work."

"Yes, gracious Frau," said the wheelwright, stepping forward again, "and so we wanted to ask you if we couldn't have a regular inspector again, if Herr Habermann will not come, then some other; but one that would treat us kindly, and listen when we have something to say, and not snap us up, and scold us when we haven't deserved it, or knock our children about with sticks, as Herr Triddelsitz used to."

"That shall be put a stop to," cried Frida.

"Yes, gracious Frau, he has broken off that habit; about six months ago I had a very serious talk with him about it, and since then he is much better behaved, and more considerate. And if our gracious Herr would be considerate too, and think of his own profit, he would get a capable inspector, for he himself understands nothing about farming, and then he need not have a whole field of wheat beaten down by the wind, as it was last year, and the people would not talk about him so. And, gracious Frau, people talk a great deal, and they say the Herr must sell the estate, and will sell it to the Herr Pomuchelskopp; but we will never take him for our master."

"No!" cried one and another, "we will never take him." "A fellow who has been driven off by his own laborers!" "We can't put up with him!"

Blow after blow fell the words of the day-laborers upon Frida's heart. The little love and respect which they professed for her husband, the knowledge of their embarrassed situation, which was evident even to the common people, weighed heavily upon her, and it was with extreme difficulty that she controlled herself, and said:

"Be quiet, good people! The Herr must decide all these matters, when he comes home. Go quietly home, now, and don't come up to the house again in such a crowd. I will join in your petition to the Herr, and I think I may safety promise you that there will be a change in the management by St. John's day,--in one way or another," she added with a sigh, and paused a moment, as if to reflect, or perhaps to swallow something that rose in her throat. "Yes, wait until St. John's Day, then there will be a change."

"That is all right then."

"That is good, so far."

"And we are very much obliged to you."

"Well, good-night, gracious Frau!"

So they went off.

Frida returned to her room. It was beginning to thunder and lighten, the wind blew in gusts over the court-yard, driving sand and straw against the window-panes. "Yes," she said, to herself, "it must be decided by St. John's Day, I have not promised too much, there must be a change of some kind. What will it be?" and before her eyes rose the dreary picture which David had so coarsely drawn; she saw herself condemned to live in a rented house in a small town, with her husband and child, with no occupation, and no brighter prospects for the future. She heard the neighborhood gossip; they had seen better days. She saw her husband rising in the morning, going into the town, coming home to dinner, smoking on the sofa in the afternoon, going out again, and going to bed at night. And so on, day after day, with nothing in the world to do. She saw herself burdened with household cares, comfortless, friendless; she saw herself upon her death-bed, and her child standing beside her. Her child; from henceforth a poor, forsaken child! A poor, noble young lady! It is a hard thing to occupy a station in which one must keep up appearances, without the requisite means. A poor young gentleman may fight it through, he can become a soldier; but a poor young lady? And though the Lord should look down from heaven, and endow her with all the loveliness of an angel, and her parents should do for her all of which human love is capable, the world would pass her by, and the young Herrs would say, "She is poor," and the burghers, "She is proud." So Frida saw her child, who lay meanwhile in peaceful child-sleep, undisturbed by the storm and tempest without, or by the storm and tempest in her mother's breast.

Korlin Kegel brought a light, and the young Frau reached after the letter which lay upon the table, as a person will do, when he wishes to prevent another from noticing that he is deeply moved. She looked at the address, it was to herself, from her sister-in-law, Albertine; she tore open the envelope, and another letter fell into her hand, addressed to her husband.

"Put this letter on your master's writing-table," she said to the girl. Korlin went.

Her husband's sisters had often written to her, and their letters were generally such as ladies write to drive away ennui. Frida opened the letter; but ah! this was no letter born of ennui. Albertine wrote:--

"Dear Sister:

"I do not know that I am doing right. Bertha advises me to it, and Fidelia has twice taken away the paper from under my pen, she thinks it will only worry our dear brother Axel. But--I don't know, I cannot help myself,--necessity really compels us. We have already written twice to Axel, without getting an answer; he may be absent from home a good deal, in these hard times, and also very much occupied,--for these unhappy political troubles are beginning to reach us, as we have evidence enough in Schwerin,--and so I believe I am doing right in turning to you; you will give us an answer. You know that Axel borrowed the capital which our dear father left us, to invest it on the estate at Pumpelhagen; he promised us five percent, interest, instead of four and a half, which we got before,--it was not necessary, for we did well enough,--but he promised us the interest punctually, every quarter, and it is three quarters since he has sent us any. Dear Frida, we should certainly have said nothing about it, if we were not in the greatest embarrassment. Added to this, our brother-in-law Breitenburg has been here, who knew nothing of Axel's having borrowed from us, and when he found it out, he spoke of Axel in the most dreadful way, and declared that we were three geese. He asked to see our security by mortgage, which we could not show him, because Axel has always delayed sending it; and then he said, right to our faces, we should never see our money again; it was notorious that Axel was so deeply in debt, through his bad management, that Pumpelhagen would be sold over his head. We know, to be sure, how to make allowance for our brother-in-law's speeches, for he was always unfriendly to our dear Axel,--and how could it be possible? Pumpelhagen sold? In our family for hundreds of years! The Grand-Duke would not allow it, and we told him as much,--Fidelia in her lively way,--then he took his hat and stick, and said in his coarse way, 'Your brother Axel was always a fool, and now he has become a scoundrel,' whereupon Fidelia sprang up, and showed him the door. It was a frightful scene, and I never would have written you about it, if I had not a secret anxiety lest Axel and Breitenberg should encounter each other, and, like the brothers-in-law, Dannenberg and Malzahn, out of an exaggerated sense of honor, shoot each other, across a pocket-handkerchief. Caution Axel to avoid such a meeting, and, if it is possible, take care that he sends us our interest.

"We think of visiting you this summer; we have taken a childish pleasure in the thought of seeing you and the dear old place again, where we played as children, and dreamed as maidens, and--alas!--where we parted from our dear father. Yes, Frida, I rejoice in thinking of it all, and Bertha and Fidelia with me, for we live only in recollection; the present is dreary and comfortless. Only now and then some friend of our father's comes in, and tells us what is passing in the world, and it is really touching for Bertha and me to see how our little Fidelia, with her natural vivacity, will throw aside her sewing and interest herself in everything. She is very much interested in the court. Now, farewell, dear Frida, pardon my gossip, and give the enclosed letter to Axel. I have written him very earnestly and trustingly; but have spared him, as much as possible, anything disagreeable. We shall see you in August.

"Yours,

"Albertine von Rambow.

"Schwerin, June 11, 1848."

Frida read the letter, but she did not read it through; when she came to the place, "Your brother Axel was always a fool, and now he has become a scoundrel," she threw the letter on the floor, and wrung her hands, then sprang to her feet, and walked up and down the room, crying, "That he is! that he is!" Her child lay sleeping before her; she threw herself down in the chair, and took up the letter again, and read over the terrible words, and the dark picture she had been making to herself of her child's future was gone like a shadow, and before her eyes another shone, in livid colors; on it stood the three sisters, and underneath was written: "Betrayed! betrayed by a brother!" And in the back-ground stood her husband; but, dimly seen, she could not tell what was truth and what was falsehood, and underneath was written: "Scoundrel!" Horrible! horrible! Now all was lost,--doubly lost! For it was not her own loss merely, it was the loss of one whom she had loved, dearer than her own soul. That was fearful! Oh, for help, to remove this glowing brand from the brow she had so often lovingly kissed! But how? Who could help her? Name after name shot through her head, but these names all seemed inscribed on a distant, inaccessible, rocky wall, where she could find no footing. She wrung her hands in distress, and the prospect grew darker and darker, when, all at once, there beamed upon her in her anguish and torment an old, friendly, woman's face. It was Frau Nuessler's face, and she looked just as she had when she had kissed Frida's child.

The young Frau sprang up, exclaiming, "There is a heart! there is a human heart!" It thundered and lightened, and the rain poured in torrents; but the young Frau caught up a shawl, and rushed out into the storm.

"Gracious Frau! For God's sake!" cried Korlin Kegel, "in the rain? in the night?"

"Let me alone!"

"No, that I will not!" said the girl, as she followed her mistress.

"A human heart, a human heart," murmured the poor young Frau to herself; the rain beat in her face,--onward! onward!--she had the shawl in her hand, and never thought of it, her feet slipped in the muddy path, she did not know it, there was a voice in her ears crying ever, "Onward! onward!"

"If you must go, gracious Frau, then come along!" cried Korlin Kegel, taking the shawl and wrapping it about her head and shoulders, and encircling her waist with a strong arm. "Which way?"

"Frau Nuessler," said the young Frau, and murmured again, "a human heart!" And a human heart was beating close beside her, and she never thought of it; nothing keeps hearts asunder like the words, "Command and obey." She had always been good to her people, and had received every kindness from her servants with acknowledgments; but at this moment she did not think of Korlin Kegel, her whole heart was absorbed in the thought that Axel must be saved from shame and dishonor; and the friendly face of Frau Nuessler shone upon her through the rain and the darkness, like the nearest, and the only star. "Thither! thither!"

"Good heavens!" said Frau Nuessler, going to the window, "Jochen, what a storm!"

"Yes, mother, what shall we do about it!"

"Dear heart!" said Frau Nuessler, sitting down again, in her arm-chair, "suppose one were out in it! I should be frightened almost to death."

Frau Nuessler went on knitting, and Jochen smoked, and everything was quiet and comfortable in the room, when Bauschan, under Jochen's chair, uttered a short bark, such as signifies, in canine language: "What is that?" Receiving no answer, he lay still, but all at once he started up, and went with his old stiff legs, to the door, and began to whine vehemently.

"Bauschan!" cried Frau Nuessler, "What ails the old fellow? What do you want!"

"Mother," said Jochen, who knew Bauschan as well as Bauschan knew him, "Somebody is coming." And the door was thrown open, and a pale, female form tottered in and a strong girl supported her, and seated her on Frau Nuessler's divan.

"Dear heart!" cried Frau Nuessler, starting up, and seizing the young Frau's hands, "what is this? What does it mean? Good gracious! wet through and through!"

"Yes, indeed!" said Korlin.

"Jochen, what are you sitting there for? Run and call Mining! Tell Mining to come, and bid Duert to make camomile tea."

And Jochen also sprang up, and ran out, as fast as he could, and Frau Nuessler took off the young Frau's shawl, and wiped the rain from her face and her fair hair, with her handkerchief, and Mining shot into the room like a pistol-ball, and was full of questions; but Frau Nuessler cried, "Mining, there is no time for looking and questioning; bring some of your clothes and linen, quickly, into my bedroom." And when Mining was gone, she herself asked:

"Korlin Kegel, what does this mean?"

"Ah, Madam, I don't know; to be sure, she got a long letter this evening."

Mining returned quickly, and Frau Nuessler and Korlin took the young Frau into the bedroom, and when she was undressed, and had drunk the tea, and lay in Frau Nuessler's bed, her senses returned, for it was mere physical weakness which had overpowered her, and if the first shock, and the dreadful feeling that there was no creature who could help her, had turned her brain a little, here by this friendly face, and this friendly treatment, she was herself again. She sat up in bed, and looked confidingly into Frau Nuessler's eyes: "You told me once, if I were ever in trouble, you would help me."

"And so I will," said Frau Nuessler, quite overcome, and stroking her hands she said "Tell me, what is it?"

"Ah, much!" cried the young Frau, "our laborers are discontented, we are in debt, deeply in debt, they are going to sell the estate----"

"Preserve us!" cried Frau Nuessler, "but there is time enough for that!"

"I could have borne that," said the young Frau, "but another trouble has driven me to you, and I cannot and dare not tell you----"

"Don't speak of it, then, gracious Frau. But this isn't business for women; we ought to have a man's counsel, and if you feel able, we might drive over to see my brother Karl, at Rahnstadt."

"Ah, I could go; but how should I look the man in the face, whom----"

"That is where you are mistaken, gracious Frau, you don't know him. Jochen!" she cried at the door, "let Krischan harness up, but let him make haste, and do you make haste, too! Mining!" she cried at another door, "bring your new Sunday mantle and hat, and a shawl; we are going out."

All was quickly ready, and as she got into the carriage, Frau Nuessler said to Krischan:

"Krischan, you know I don't like fast driving; but drive fast to-night! We must be in Rahnstadt in half an hour. Else they will have gone to bed," she added to the young Frau.

The little assessor had just gone home from the Frau Pastorin's, Habermann and Braesig had said "Good-night!" and gone up-stairs, and Braesig opened the window and looked out, to observe the weather: "Karl," said he, "what a fragrance there is after the storm! The whole air is full of atmosphere." Just then a carriage stopped at the Frau Pastorin's, and the light from the house shone directly upon it. "Preserve us!" cried Braesig. "Karl, there are your sister and Mining, at this time of night!"

"Can any misfortune have happened!" exclaimed Habermann, snatching the candle, and running down to the door.

"Sister," he asked hastily, as Frau Nuessler met him at the foot of the stairs, "why have you come here, in the night? Mining,"--but he stopped abruptly,--"gracious Frau! You here, at this time?"

"Karl, quick!" said Frau Nuessler, "the gracious Frau wishes to speak with you alone. Make haste, before the others come!"

Habermann opened the Frau Pastorin's best room, and led the young Frau in; he followed her, just catching, as he shut the door, the beginning of Braesig's speech, on the stairs:

"May you keep the nose on your face! What have you come here for? Excuse me, for coming down in my shirt sleeves; Karl very inconsiderately took away the light, and I couldn't find my coat, in the dark. But where is he, and where is Mining?"

Frau Nuessler was not obliged to answer these questions, for Louise came out of the Frau Pastorin's room with a light.

"Bless me! aunt!"

"Louise, come in here, and you, Braesig, put your coat on, and come down to the Frau Pastorin's room!" They did so, and Frau Pastorin came in also, and the hall was left empty and still, and if one had put his ear to the door on the right, he would have heard the honest, touching confession, which the young Frau, at first with embarrassment and bitter tears, but afterwards with entire confidence and secret hope in her heart, poured out to the old inspector; and if he had listened at the door on the left, he would have heard the most frightful lying from Frau Nuessler, for it had occurred to the good lady that, since they had taken the gracious Frau for Mining, she might as well pass for Mining, till she had finished her business, so that they need not torment her with questions, and so she told them that Mining had a dreadful toothache, and that her brother Karl knew of a remedy, a sort of magnetism, which must be applied between twelve and one o'clock at night, in perfect silence; and Frau Pastorin said she thought that was an unchristian proceeding, and Braesig remarked, "I never knew that Karl had any taste for magnetism and doctoring." And after a little, Habermann put his head in at the door, and said, "Frau Pastorin, leave the door unlocked, I have an errand out, but I shall be back soon," and before Frau Pastorin could say a word, he was gone, and he went to the street where Moses lived.

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