Chapter XII: Part 12

The poor child fell down in a swoon and struck her head against the closet-door, so that the drops of blood trickled down her delicate white forehead. Barbara and Rettel ran in and carried the insensible girl to the sofa. Jonathan stood like a statue, as if thunderstruck, incapable of the slightest movement. It would be difficult to describe the inner emotions which revealed themselves on Wacht's countenance. His face, instead of being flushed with the redness of anger, was now pale as a corpse's; there only remained a dark fire gleaming in his fixed set eyes; the cold perspiration of death appeared to be standing on his forehead. After gazing unchangeably before him for some minutes without speaking, he relieved his labouring breast by saying in a significant tone, "So that was it!" then he strode slowly towards the door, where he again stood still, and turning half round towards the women, cried, "Dont' spare _eau de Cologne_, and this foolery will soon be over."

Shortly afterwards the Master was seen to leave the house at a quick pace and bend his steps towards the hills. It may be conceived in what great trouble and distress the family was plunged. Rettel and Barbara could not for the life of them imagine what terrible thing had happened; but when the Master did not return to dinner, but stayed out till late at night--a thing he had never done before--they were greatly agitated with anxiety and fear. At length they heard him coming, heard him open the street-door, bang it violently to, ascend the stairs with strong firm footsteps, and lock himself in his own chamber.

Poor Nanni soon recovered herself again and wept quietly to herself. But Jonathan did not stop short of wild outbreaks of inconsolable despair, and several times spoke of shooting himself. It is a fortunate thing that pistols are articles which do not necessarily belong to the furniture of sentimental young lawyers; or at least, if they are to be found amongst their effects, they generally have no lock or else won't go off.

After he had run through certain streets like a madman, Jonathan's course led him instinctively to his noble patron, to whom he lamented all his unheard-of misery in outbreaks of the most violent passion. It need hardly be added, it is so self-evident a thing, that the young love-smitten advocate was, according to his own desperate assertions, the first and only individual in all the wide world whom such a terrible fate had befallen, wherefore he reproached destiny and all the powers of enmity as having conspired together against him.

The canon listened to him calmly and with a certain share of interest; but nevertheless he did not appear to appreciate the full extent of the trouble which the young lawyer imagined he felt "My dear young friend," said the canon, taking the advocate by the hand in a friendly way, and leading him to a seat, "my dear young friend, hitherto I have looked upon our carpenter Herr Johannes Wacht as a great man in his way, but I now perceive that he is also a very great fool. Great fools are like jibbing horses; it's hard to make them move; but once they have been got to move, they trot merrily along the way they are wanted to go. In spite of the old man's senseless anger you ought not by any means to give up your beautiful Nanni in consequence of the unpleasant scene of today. But before proceeding to talk further about your love-affair, which is indeed very charming and romantic, let us turn to and discuss a little breakfast. It was noon when you went to old Wacht, and I don't dine until four o'clock in Seehof."9

A very appetising breakfast indeed was served up on the little table at which they both sat--the canon and the advocate--Bayonne hams, garnished round about with slices of Portuguese onions, a cold larded partridge of the red kind and a foreigner to boot, truffles cooked in red wine, a dish of Strasburg _pâtés de foie gras_, finally a plate of genuine Strachino10 and another with butter, as yellow and shining as lilies of the valley.

The indulgent reader who loves such dainty butter, and ever goes to Bamberg, will be pleased at getting there the finest and best, but will also at the same time be annoyed when he learns that the inhabitants, from mistaken notions of housekeeping, melt it down to a grease, which generally tastes rancid and spoils all the food.

Besides, good dry champagne was sending up its pearly sparkles in a beautifully-cut crystal decanter. The canon had not unloosed the napkin from his neck, but had let it stay where it was when he had received the young lawyer; and, after the footman had quickly supplied a second cover, he proceeded to place the choicest morsels before the despairing lover and to pour out wine for him; and then he set to work heartily himself. Some one once had the hardihood to maintain that the stomach is equivalent to all the other physical and intellectual parts of man put together. That is a profane and abominable doctrine; but this much is certain, that the stomach is like a despotic tyrant or ironical mystifier, and often carries through its own will. And this was the case in the present instance. For instinctively, without being clearly conscious of what he was about, the young lawyer had in a few minutes devoured a huge piece of Bayonne ham, created terrible devastation amongst the Portuguese garniture, put out of sight half a partridge, no inconsiderable quantity of trufles, and also more Strasburg _pâtés_ than was exactly becoming in a young advocate full of trouble. Moreover, they both relished the champagne so much that the footman soon had to fill up the crystal decanter a second time.

The advocate felt a pleasant and beneficial degree of warmth penetrate his vitals, and all he experienced of his trouble was a singular sort of shiver, which exactly resembled electric shocks, causing pain but doing good. He proved himself susceptible to the consolations of his patron, who, after comfortably sipping up his last glass of wine and elegantly wiping his mouth, settled himself into position and began as follows:--

"In the first place, my dear good friend, you must not be so foolish as to imagine that you are the only man on earth to whom a father has refused the hand of his daughter. But that's nothing to do with the present case. As I have already told you, the old fool's reason for hating you is so preposterously absurd that it cannot last long; and whether it appear to you at this moment nonsensical or not, I can hardly bear the thought of all ending in a tame commonplace wedding, so that the whole thing may be summed up in the few words,--Peter has wooed Grete,11 and Peter and Grete are man and wife.

"The situation is, however, so far new and grand in that it is merely hatred against a class to which the beloved foster-son belongs that can furnish the sole lever for setting a new and special tragic development in motion; but to the real matter at issue! You are a poet, my friend, and that alters everything. Your love, your trouble, ought to appear in your eyes as something magnificent, in the full splendours of the sacred art of poesy. You will hear the strains of the lyre struck by the muse who is nearest akin to you, and in the divine gush of inspiration you will receive the winged words in which to express your love and your unhappiness. As a poet you might be called at this moment the happiest man on the earth, since, your heart having been really wounded as deep as it can be wounded, your heart's blood is now gushing out. You require, therefore, no artificial incitement to allure you to a poetic mood; and mark my words, this period of trouble will enable you to produce something great and admirable.

"I must draw your attention to the fact that in these first moments of your unhappiness there will be mingled with it a peculiar and very unpleasant feeling which cannot be woven into any poetry; but it is a feeling which soon vanishes away. Let me make you understand. For example, after the unfortunate lover has had a good sound drubbing from the enraged father, and has been kicked out of the house, and the outraged mamma has locked the young lady in her chamber, and repelled the attempted storming on the part of the desperate lover by the armed domestics of the house, and when plebeian fists have even entertained no shyness of the very finest cloth" (here the canon sighed somewhat), "then this fermented prose of miserable vulgarity must evaporate in order that the pure poetic unhappiness of love may settle as sediment You have been fearfully scolded, my dear young friend, this was the bitter prose that had to be surmounted; you have surmounted it, and so now give yourself up entirely to poetry. Here--here are Petrarch's _ Sonnets_ and Ovid's _Elegies_; take them, read them, write yourself, and come and read to me what you have written. Perhaps in the meantime I also may experience a disappointment in love, of which I am not altogether deprived of hopes, since I shall in all likelihood fall in love with a stranger lady who has stopped at the 'White Lamb' in the Steinweg,12 and whom Count Nesselstädt maintains to be a paragon of beauty and grace, albeit he has only caught a fugitive glimpse of her at the window. Then, my friend, like the Dioscuri, we will travel the same bright path of poetry and disappointed love. Note, my good fellow, what a great advantage my station in life gives me, for every affection which I conceive, being a longing and hoping which can never be gratified, rises to tragic intensity. But now, my friend, out, out, away into the woods as you ought to."

It would doubtless be very wearisome to my kind reader, if not unbearable, were I to describe here at length, in detail and with all sorts of over-choice and exquisite words and phrases, all that Jonathan and Nanni did in their trouble. Such things may be found in any indifferent romance; and it is often amusing enough to see into what postures the struggling author throws himself, merely in order to appear original. On the other hand, it seems to be of great importance to follow Master Wacht on his walks, or rather in his mental journeyings.

It must appear very remarkable that a man of such strong self-reliant spirit as Master Wacht, who had borne with unshaken courage and unbending steadfastness the most terrible misfortunes that had befallen him, and that would have crushed many less stouthearted spirits, could be thus put beside himself with passion at an occurrence which any other father of a family would have regarded as an ordinary event and one easy to remedy, and would in fact have set about remedying it in some way or other, good or bad. Of course the indulgent reader is well aware that this behaviour of Wacht's must be traced to some good psychological reason. The thought that poor Nanni's love for innocent Jonathan was a misfortune which would exercise a pernicious influence upon the whole course of his subsequent life was only due to the perverse discord in Wacht's soul. But the very fact that this discord was able to go on making itself heard in the otherwise harmonical character of this thoroughly noble man, embraced the impossibility of smothering it or reducing it completely to silence.

Wacht had made his acquaintance with the feminine character in one who possessed it in a simple but also at the same time grand and noble form. His own wife had enabled him to see into the depths of the real woman's nature, as in a bright mirror-like lake. He saw in her the true heroine who fought with weapons that were constantly unconquerable. His orphan wife had forfeited the inheritance of an immensely rich aunt, she had forfeited the love of all her relatives, and she had opposed with unshaken courage the persistent efforts of the Church, which embittered her life with many a hard trial, when, though herself trained up in the Catholic religion, she had married the Protestant Wacht, and shortly before had gone over to this faith in Augsburg, impelled thereto by the pure enthusiasm of conviction. All this now passed through Master Wacht's mind; and as he thought upon the sentiments he had felt when he led the maiden to the altar, the warm tears ran down his cheeks. Nanni was her mother over again; Wacht loved the child with an intensity of affection that was quite unparalleled, and this fact was of itself more than enough to make him reject as abominable, nay, as fiendishly cruel, any attempt to separate the lovers that appeared in the remotest degree to savour of violence. When, on the other hand, he reflected upon the whole course of Jonathan's previous life, he was obliged to admit that all the virtues of a good, industrious, and modest youth could not easily be so happily united in another as they were in Jonathan, albeit his handsome expressive face bore the impress of traits which were perhaps a little too soft, and almost effeminate, and his diminutive and weak but elegant bodily frame bespoke a tender intellectual spirit. When he reflected further that the two children had always been together, and how evident had been their mutual liking for each other, he was really puzzled to understand how it was that he had not expected beforehand what had now really happened, and so could have taken precautions in time. Now it was too late.

He was urged on through the hills by a mood of mind which set his whole being in a turmoil of distraction; such a state as this he had hitherto never experienced, and he was inclined to take it for a seduction of Satan, since several thoughts arose in his mind which in the very next minute he could not help regarding as diabolical. He could not recover his self-composure, still less form any decisive plan of action. The sun was beginning to set when he reached the village of Buch;13 turning into the hotel, he ordered something good to eat and a bottle of excellent beer from the rock.14

"Ah! a very fine evening! Ah! what a remarkable occurrence to see our good Master Wacht here in beautiful Buch, on this glorious Sunday evening. To tell you the truth, I can hardly believe my eyes. Your respected family is, I presume, somewhere else in the country." Thus was Master Wacht addressed by some one with a shrill, squeaking voice. The man who thus interrupted his meditations was no less a personage than Herr Pickard Leberfink, a decorator and gilder by trade, and one of the drollest men in the world.

Leberfink's exterior struck everybody's eye as something eccentric and extraordinary. He was of small size, thick and stumpy, with a body too long, and with short bowed legs; his face was not at all ugly, but good-natured, with round red little cheeks and small grey eyes that were by no means wanting in vivacity. Pursuant to an old obsolete French fashion, he was elaborately curled and powdered every day; but it was on Sundays that his costume was especially striking. For then he wore, to take one example, a striped silk coat of a lilac and canary- yellow colour with immense silver-plated buttons, a waistcoat embroidered in gay tints, satin hose of a brilliant green, white and light-blue silk stockings, delicately striped, and shining black polished shoes, upon which glittered large buckles set with precious stones. If to this we add that his gait was the elegant gait of a dancing master, that he had a certain cat-like suppleness of body, and that his little legs had a strange knack of knocking the heels together on fitting occasions,--for instance, when leaping across a gutter,--it could not fail but that the little decorator got himself singled out everywhere as an extraordinary creature. With other aspects of his character my kindly reader will make an acquaintance presently.

Master Wacht was not altogether displeased at having his painful meditations interrupted in this way. Herr, or better Monsieur Pickard Leberfink, decorator and gilder, was a great fop, but at the same time the most honest and faithful soul in the world; he was a very liberal- minded man, was generous to the poor, and always ready to serve his friends. He only practised his calling now and again, merely out of love for it, since he had no need of business. He was rich; his father had left him some landed property, having a magnificent rock-cellar, which was only separated from Master Wacht's premises by a large garden. Master Wacht was fond of the droll little Leberfink on account of his downright genuineness, and also because he was a member of the small Protestant community which was permitted to exercise the rites of its faith in Bamberg. With conspicuous alacrity and willingness Leberfink accepted Wacht's invitation to join him at his table, and drink another bottle of beer from the rock along with him. He began the conversation by saying that for a long time he had been wanting to call upon Master Wacht at his own house, since he had two things he wished to talk to him about, one of which was almost making his heart burst. Wacht made answer, he thought Leberfink knew him, and must be aware that anybody who had anything to say to him, no matter what it was, might speak out his thoughts frankly. Leberfink now imparted to the Master in confidence that the wine-dealer who owned the beautiful garden, with the massive pavilion, which lay between their two properties, had privately offered to sell it to him. He thought he recollected having heard Wacht once express a wish how very much he should like to own this garden; if now the opportunity was come to satisfy this wish, he (Leberfink) offered his services as negotiator, and expressed his willingness to settle everything for him.

It was a fact that Master Wacht had for some time entertained a desire to enlarge his property by the addition of a good garden, and especially so since Nanni was always longing for the beautiful shrubs and trees which gave out such a luxurious abundance of sweet scents in this very garden. Moreover, it seemed to him now as if Fortune were graciously smiling upon him, and just at the time when poor Nanni had experienced such bitter trouble, an opportunity for affording her pleasure should present itself so unexpectedly. The Master at once settled all the needful particulars with the obliging decorator, who promised that on the following Sunday Wacht should be able to stroll through the garden as its owner. "Come now," cried Master Wacht, "come now, friend Leberfink, out with it--what is it that is making your heart burst?"

Then Herr Pickard Leberfink fell to sighing in the most pitiable manner; and he pulled the most extraordinary faces, and ran on with such a string of gibberish that nobody could make either head or tail of it. Master Wacht, however, knew what to make of it, for he shook his head, saying, "Ah! that may be contrived;" and he smiled to himself at the wonderful sympathy of their related spirits.

This meeting with Leberfink had certainly done Master Wacht good; he believed he had conceived a plan by virtue of which he should manage not only to stand against, but even to overcome, the severest and most terrible misfortune which, according to his infatuated way of thinking, had come upon him. The only thing that can declare the verdict of the tribunal within him is the course of action he adopted; and perhaps, kindly reader, this tribunal faltered for the first time. Here is the place to offer a brief remark, which, perhaps, would not very well lend itself for insertion later. As so frequently happens in such cases, old Barbara had interfered in the matter, and been very urgent in her accusations of the loving pair to Master Wacht, making it a special charge against them that they had always read worldly books together. The Master caused her to bring two or three of the books which Nanni had. One was a work of Goethe's; unfortunately it is not known which work it was. After turning over the leaves, he gave it back to Barbara, that she might restore it to the place whence she had secretly taken it. Not a single word about Nanni's reading ever escaped him; once only, when some seasonable occasion presented at dinner, did he say, "There is a remarkable mind rising up amongst us Germans; God grant him success! My days are over; such things are not for my age, nor yet for my calling; but you--Jonathan? I envy you many things that will come to light in the days to come." Jonathan understood Wacht's oracular words the more easily, since some days previously he had discovered by chance _ Götz von Berlichingen_15 lying on the Master's work-table, half covered by other papers. Wacht's great mind, whilst acknowledging the uncommon genius of the new writer, had also perceived the impossibility of beginning a new flight himself.

Next day poor Nanni hung her head like a sick dove. "What's the matter with my dear child?" asked Master Wacht in the tender sympathetic tone that was so peculiarly his own, and with which he knew how to stir everybody's heart, "what's the matter with my dear child? are you ill? I can't believe it. You don't get out into the fresh air sufficiently. See here now; I have a long time been wishing you would for once in a way bring me my tea out to the workshop. Do so to-day; we may expect a most beautiful evening. You will come, won't you, Nanni, my darling? You will butter me some rolls yourself--that will make them ever so good." Therewith Master Wacht took the dear girl in his arms and stroked her brown curls back from her forehead, and he kissed her and pressed her to his heart, and tenderly caressed her,--treating her, in fact, in the most affectionate way that he knew how; and he was well aware of the irresistible charm of his manner at such times. A flood of tears gushed from Nanni's eyes, and with some difficulty all she could get out was, "Father! father!" "Well, well!" said Wacht, and a strain of embarrassment might have been detected in his voice, "all may yet turn out well."

A week passed; naturally enough Jonathan had not shown himself, and the Master had not mentioned him with a single syllable. On Sunday, when the soup was standing smoking on the table, and the family were about to take their seats for dinner. Master Wacht asked gaily, "And where is our Jonathan?" Rettel, with a view to sparing poor Nanni, replied in an undertone, "Father, don't you know then what's taken place? Wouldn't Jonathan of course be shy of showing himself here in your presence?" "Oh the monkey!" said Wacht, laughing; "let Christian run over at once and fetch him."

It need hardly be said that the young advocate failed not to put in an appearance immediately, nor that during the first moments after his arrival a dark oppressive thunder-cloud, as it were, hovered over them all. At length, however, Master Wacht's unconstrained good spirits, seconded by Leberfink's droll sallies, succeeded in calling forth a tone of conversation which, if it could not be called exactly merry, yet managed to maintain the balance of concord pretty evenly. After dinner Master Wacht said, "Let us get a little fresh air and stroll out to my workyard." And they did so.

Monsieur Pickard Leberfink deliberately kept close to Rettelchen's side, who was a pattern of friendliness towards him, since the polite decorator had exhausted himself in praising her dishes, and had confessed that never so long as he had lived, not even when dining with the ecclesiastics in Banz,16 had he enjoyed a more delicious meal. As Master Wacht now hurried on at a quick pace right across the middle of the workyard, with a large bundle of keys in his hand, the young lawyer was unintentionally brought close to Nanni. But all that the lovers ventured upon were stolen sighs and low soft-breathed love-plaints.

Master Wacht came to a halt in front of a fine newly-made door, which had been constructed in the wall parting his workyard from the merchant's garden. He unlocked the door and stepped in, inviting his family to follow him. They, none of them, knew exactly what to make of the old gentleman, except Herr Pickard Leberfink, who never laid aside his sly smile, or ceased his soft giggle. In the midst of the beautiful garden there was a very spacious pavilion; this too Master Wacht opened, and stepping in remained standing in its centre; from every one of its windows one obtained a different romantic view. "Yes," said Master Wacht in a voice that bore witness to a heart well pleased with itself, "here I am in my own property; this beautiful garden is mine. I was obliged to buy it, not so much to augment my own place or increase the value of my property, no! but because I knew that a certain darling little thing longed so for these shrubs and trees, and for these beautiful sweet-smelling flower-beds."

Then Nanni threw herself upon the old gentleman's breast and cried, "O father! father! You will break my heart with your kindness, with your goodness; do have pity"---- "There, there, say no more," Master Wacht interrupted his suffering child, "be a good girl, and all may be brought right in some marvellous way. You can find a great deal of comfort in this little paradise"---- "Oh! yes, yes, yes," exclaimed Nanni in a burst of enthusiasm, "O ye trees, ye shrubs, ye flowers, ye distant hills, you beautiful fleeting evening clouds--my spirit lives wholly in you all; I shall come to myself again when your sweet voices comfort me." Therewith Nanni ran out of the open door of the pavilion into the garden like a startled young roe; and Jonathan, the lawyer, delayed not to follow her at his fastest speed, for no power would then have been able to keep him back. Monsieur Pickard Leberfink requested permission to show Rettelchen round the new property.

Meanwhile old Wacht had beer and tobacco brought to a spot under the trees, close at the brow of the hill, whence he could look down into the valley; and there he sat in a right glad and comfortable humour, puffing the blue clouds of genuine Holland into the air. No doubt my kindly reader is wondering greatly at this frame of mind in Master Wacht, and is at a loss to explain to himself how a mood like this was at all possible to a temperament like Wacht's. He had arrived, not so much at any determined plan as at the conviction that the Eternal Power could not possibly let him live to experience such a very terrible misfortune as that of seeing his favourite child united to a lawyer; that is, to Satan himself. "Something will happen," he said to himself; "something must happen, by which either this unhappy affair will be broken off or Jonathan snatched from the pit of destruction. It would be rash temerity, nay, perhaps a ruinous piece of mischief, producing the exact contrary of what was wished, if with my feeble hand I were to attempt to control the fly-wheel of Destiny."

It is hard to credit what miserable, nay, often what absurd reasons a man will hunt up in order to represent the approaching misfortune as avertable. So there were moments in which Wacht built his hopes upon the arrival of wild Sebastian, whom he pictured to himself as a stalwart young fellow in the full flush and pride of youth, just on the point of attaining to manhood, and that he would bring about a change of direction in the drifting of circumstances, and make things different from what they then were. The very common, and alas! often too true idea came into his head, that woman is too greatly impressed by strong and striking manliness not to be conquered by it at last.

When the sun began to go down, Monsieur Pickard Leberfink invited the family to go into his garden, which adjoined their own, and take a little refreshment. Beside Wacht's new possession the noble decorator and gilder's garden formed a most ridiculous and extraordinary contrast. Whilst almost too small in size, so that the only thing it could perhaps boast in its favour was the good height at which it was situated, it was laid out in Dutch style, the trees and hedges clipped with the shears in the most scrupulous and pedantic fashion. The slender stems of the fruit-trees standing in the flower-beds looked very pretty in their coats of light blue and rose tints, and pale yellow, and other colours. Leberfink had varnished them, and so beautified Nature. Moreover they saw in the trees the apples of the Hesperides.17

But yet several further surprises were in store. Leberfink bade the girls pluck themselves a nosegay each; but on gathering the flowers they perceived to their amazement that both stalks and leaves were gilded. It was also very remarkable that all the leaves which Rettel took into her hands were shaped like hearts.

The refreshment upon which Leberfink regaled his guests consisted of the choicest confectionery, the finest sweetmeats, and old Rhine wine and Muscatel. Rettel was quite beside herself over the confectionery, observing with special emphasis that such sweetmeats, which were for the most part splendidly silvered and gilded, were not, she knew made in Bamberg. Then Monsieur Pickard Leberfink assured her privately, with a most amorous smirk, that he himself knew a little about baking cakes and sweets, and that he was the happy maker of all these delicious dainties. Rettel almost fell upon her knees before him in reverence and astonishment; and yet the greatest surprise, was still in store for her.

In the deepening dusk Monsieur Pickard Leberfink very cleverly contrived to entice little Rettel into a small arbour. No sooner was he alone with her than he recklessly plumped himself down upon both knees in the wet grass, notwithstanding that he was wearing his brilliant green satin hose; and, amidst many strange and unintelligible sounds of distress--not very dissimilar to the midnight elegies of the tom-cat Hinz18--he presented her with an immense nosegay of flowers, in the middle of which was the finest full-blown rose that could be found anywhere. Rettel did what everybody does who has a nosegay given to him; she raised it to her nose; but in the selfsame moment she felt a sharp prick. In her alarm she was about to throw the nosegay away. But see what charming wonder had revealed itself in the meantime! A beautifully varnished little cupid had leapt up out of the heart of the rose and was holding out a burning heart with both hands towards Rettel. From his mouth depended a small strip of paper on which were written the words, "Voilà le cœur de Monsieur Pickard Leberfink, que je vous offre" (Here I offer you the heart of Monsieur Pickard Leberfink).

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Rettel, very much alarmed. "Good gracious! what are you doing, my good Herr Leberfink? Don't kneel down in front of me as if I were a princess. You will make marks on your beautiful satin--in the wet grass, and you will catch cold yourself; but elder tea and white sugar candy are good remedies."

"No!" exclaimed the desperate lover--"No, O Margaret, Pickard Leberfink, who loves you with all his heart, will not rise from the wet grass until you promise to be his"---- "You want to marry me?" asked Rettel. "Well then, up you get at once. Speak to my father, darling Leberfink, and drink one or two cups of elder tea this evening."

Why should the reader be longer wearied with Leberfink's and Rettel's folly? They were made for each other, and were betrothed, at which Father Wacht was right glad in his own teasing, humorous way.

A certain degree of life was introduced into Wacht's house by Rettel's betrothal; and even the disconsolate lovers had more freedom, since they were less observed. But something of a quite special character was to happen to put an abrupt end to this quiet and comfortable condition in which they were all living. The young lawyer seemed particularly preoccupied, and his thoughts busy with some affair or another that absorbed all his energies; his visits at Wacht's house even began to be less frequent, and he often stayed away in the evening--a thing he had never been wont to do previously. "What can be the matter with our Jonathan? He is completely preoccupied; he's quite another fellow from what he used to be," said Master Wacht, although he knew very well what was the cause, or rather the event, which was exercising such a visible influence upon the young lawyer, at least to all outward appearance. To tell the truth, he looked upon this event as the dispensation of Providence through which he should perhaps escape the great misfortune by which he believed himself threatened, and which he felt would completely upset all the happiness of his life.

Some few months previously a young and unknown lady had arrived in Bamberg, and under circumstances which could only be called singular and mysterious. She was staying at the "White Lamb." All the servants she had with her were an old grey-haired manservant and an old lady's- maid. Very various were the opinions current about her. Many maintained she was a distinguished and immensely rich Hungarian countess, who, owing to matrimonial dissensions, was compelled to take up her residence in solitary retirement in Bamberg for a time. Others, on the contrary, set her down as an ordinary forsaken Dido, and yet others as an itinerant singer, who would soon throw off her veil of nobility and announce herself as about to give a concert,--possibly she had no recommendations to the Prince-bishop. At any rate the majority were unanimous in making up their minds to regard the stranger, who, according to the statements of the few persons who had seen her, was of exceptional beauty, as an extremely ambiguous person.

It had been noticed that the stranger lady's old man-servant had followed the young lawyer about a long time, until one day he caught him at the spring in the market-place, which is ornamented with an image of Neptune (whom the honest folk of Bamberg are generally in the habit of calling the Fork-man); and there the old man stood talking to Jonathan a long, long time. Spirits alive to all that goes forward, who can never meet anybody without asking eagerly, "Wherever has he been? Wherever is he going? Whatever is he doing?" and so on, had made out that the young advocate very often visited the beautiful unknown, in fact almost every day and at night-time, when he spent several hours with her. It was soon the talk of the town that the lawyer Jonathan Engelbrecht had got entangled in the dangerous toils of the young unknown adventuress.

It would have been, both then and always, entirely contrary to Master Wacht's character to make use of this apparent erring conduct of the young advocate as a weapon against poor Nanni. He left it to Dame Barbara and her whole following of gossips to keep Nanni informed of all particulars; from them she would learn every item of intelligence, and that, he made no doubt, with a due amplification of all the details. The crisis of the whole affair was reached when one day the young lawyer suddenly set off on a journey along with the lady, nobody knew whither. "That's the way frivolity goes on; the forward young gentleman will lose his business," said the knowing ones. But this was not the case; for not a little to the astonishment of the public, old Eichheimer himself attended to his foster-son's business with the most painstaking care; he seemed to be initiated into the secret about the lady and to approve of all the steps taken by his foster-son.

Master Wacht never spoke a word about the matter, and once when poor Nanni could no longer hide her trouble, but moaned in a low tone, her voice half-choked with tears, "Why has Jonathan left us?" Master Wacht replied in an off-handed way, "Ay, that's just what lawyers do. Who knows what sort of an intrigue Jonathan has got entangled in with the stranger, thinking it will bring him money, and be to his advantage?" Then, however, Herr Pickard Leberfink was wont to take Jonathan's side, and to assert that he for his part was convinced the stranger could be nothing less than a princess, who had had recourse to the already world-renowned young advocate in an extremely delicate law-suit And therewith he also unearthed so many stories about lawyers who, through especial sagacity and especial penetration and skill, had unravelled the most complicated difficulties, and brought to light the most closely hidden things, till Master Wacht begged him for goodness' sake to hold his tongue, since he was feeling quite ill and sick; Nanni, on the contrary, derived inward comfort from all Leberfink's remarkable stories, and she plucked up her hopes again. With her trouble, however, there was united a perceptible mixture of annoyance and anger, and particularly at the moments when it seemed to her utterly impossible that Jonathan could have been untrue to her. From this it might be inferred that Jonathan had not sought to exculpate himself, but had obstinately maintained silence about his adventure.

After some months had elapsed the young lawyer came back to Bamberg in the highest good spirits; and Master Wacht, on seeing the bright glad light in Nanni's eyes when she looked at him, could not well do otherwise than conclude that Jonathan had fully justified his conduct to her. Doubtless it would not be disagreeable to the indulgent reader to have the history of what had taken place between the stranger lady and the young lawyer inserted here as an episodical _novella_.

Count Z----, a Hungarian, owner of more than a million, married from pure affection a miserably poor girl, who drew down upon her head the hatred of his family, not only because her own family was enshrouded in complete obscurity, but also because the only valuable treasures she possessed were her divine virtue, beauty, and grace. The Count promised his wife that at his death he would settle all his property upon her by will.

Once when he returned to Vienna into the arms of his wife, after having been summoned from Paris to St. Petersburg on diplomatic business, he related to her that he had been attacked by a severe illness in a little town, the name of which he had quite forgotten; there he had seized the opportunity whilst recovering from his illness to draw up a will in her favour and deposit it with the court. Some miles farther on the road he must have been seized with a new and doubly virulent attack of his grave nervous complaint, so that the name of the place where he had made his will and that of the court where he had deposited it had completely slipped his memory; moreover, he had lost the document of receipt from the court acknowledging the deposition of the testament. As so often happens in similar cases the Count postponed the making of a new will from day to day, until he was overtaken by death. Then his relatives did not neglect to lay claim to all the property he left behind him, so that the poor Countess saw her too rich inheritance melted down to the insignificant sum represented by certain valuable presents she had received from the Count, and which his relatives could not deprive her of. Many different notifications bearing upon the features of the case were found amongst the Count's papers; but since such statements, that a will was in existence, could not take the place of the will itself, they proved not to be of the slightest advantage to the Countess. She had consulted many learned lawyers about her unfortunate situation, and had finally come to Bamberg to have recourse to old Eichheimer; but he had directed her to young Engelbrecht, who, being less busy and equipped with excellent intellectual acuteness and great love for his profession, would perhaps be able to get a clue to the unfortunate will or furnish some other circumstantial proof of its actual existence.

The young advocate set to work by requesting permission of the competent authorities to submit the Count's papers in the castle to another searching investigation. He himself went thither along with the Countess; and in the presence of the officials of the court he found in a cupboard of nut-wood, that had hitherto escaped observation, an old portfolio, in which, though they did not find the Count's document of receipt relating to the deposition of the will, they yet discovered a paper which could not fail to be of the utmost importance for the young advocate's purpose. For this paper contained an accurate description of all the circumstances, even the minutest details, under which the Count had made a will in favour of his wife and deposited it in the keeping of a court. The Count's diplomatic journey from Paris to Petersburg had brought him to Königsberg in Prussia. Here he chanced to come across some East Prussian noblemen, whom he had previously met with whilst on a visit to Italy. In spite of the express rate at which the Count was travelling, he nevertheless suffered himself to be persuaded to make a short excursion into East Prussia, particularly as the big hunts had begun, and the Count was a passionate sportsman. He named the towns Wehlau, Allenburg, Friedland, &c., as places where he had been. Then he set out to go straight forwards directly to the Russian frontier, without returning to Königsberg.

In a little town, whose wretched appearance the Count could hardly find words to describe, he was suddenly prostrated by a nervous disorder, which for several days quite deprived him of consciousness. Fortunately there was a young and right clever doctor in the place, who opposed a stout resistance to the disease, so that the Count not only recovered consciousness but also his health, so far that after a few days he was in a position to continue his journey. But his heart was oppressed with the fear that a second attack on the road might kill him, and so plunge his wife in a condition of the most straitened poverty. Not a little to his astonishment he learned from the doctor that the place, in spite of its small size and wretched appearance, was the seat of a Prussian provincial court, and that he could there have his will registered with all due formality, as soon as he could succeed in establishing his identity. This, however, was a most formidable difficulty, for who knew the Count in this district? But wonderful are the doings of Accident! Just as the Count got out of his carriage in front of the inn of the little town, there stood in the doorway a grey-haired old invalid, almost eighty years old, who dwelt in a neighbouring village and earned a living by plaiting willow baskets, and who only seldom came into the town. In his youth he had served in the Austrian army, and for fifteen successive years had been groom to the Count's father. At the first glance he remembered his master's son; and he and his wife acted as fully legitimated vouchers of the Count's identity, and not to their detriment, as may well be conceived.

The young advocate at once saw that all depended upon the locality and its exact correspondence with the Count's statements, if he wanted to glean further details and find a clue to the place where the Count had been ill and made his testament. He set off with the Countess for East Prussia. There by examination of the post-books he was desirous of making out, if possible, the route of travel pursued by the Count. But after a good deal of wasted effort, he only managed to discover that the Count had taken post-horses from Eylau to Allenburg. Beyond Allenburg every trace was lost; nevertheless he satisfied himself that the Count had certainly travelled through Prussian Lithuania, and of this he was still further convinced on finding registered at Tilsit that the Count had arrived there and departed thence by extra post. Beyond this point again all traces were lost. Accordingly it seemed to the young advocate that they must seek for the solution of the difficulty in the short stretch of country between Allenburg and Tilsit.

Quite dispirited and full of anxious care he arrived one rainy evening at the small country town of Insterburg, accompanied by the Countess. On entering the wretched apartments in the inn, he became conscious that a strange kind of expectant feeling was taking possession of him. He felt so like being at home in them, as if he had even been there before, or as if the place had been most accurately described to him. The Countess withdrew to her apartments. The young advocate tossed restlessly on his bed. When the morning sun shone in brightly through the window, his eyes fell upon the paper in one corner of the room. He noticed that a large patch of the blue colour with which the room was but lightly washed had fallen off, showing the disagreeable glaring yellow that formed the ground colour, and upon it he observed that all kinds of hideous faces in the New Zealand style had been painted to serve as pleasing arabesques. Perfectly beside himself with joy and delight, the young lawyer sprang out of bed. He was in the room in which Count Z---- had made the all-important will. The description agreed too exactly; there could not be any doubt about the matter.

But why now weary the reader with all the minor details of the things that now took place one after the other? Suffice it to say that Insterburg was then, as it still is, the seat of a Prussian superior tribunal, at that time called an Imperial Court. The young advocate at once waited upon the president with the Countess. By means of the papers which she had brought with her, and which were drawn up in due authenticated form, the Countess established her own identity in the most satisfactory manner; and the will was publicly declared to be perfectly genuine. Hence the Countess, who had left her own country in great distress and poverty, now returned in the full possession of all the rights of which a hostile destiny had attempted to deprive her.

In Nanni's eyes the advocate appeared like a hero from heaven, who had victoriously protected deserted innocence against the wickedness of the world. Leberfink also poured out all his great admiration of the young lawyer's acuteness and energy in exaggerated encomiums. Master Wacht, too, praised Jonathan's industry, and this trait he emphasised; and yet the boy had really done nothing but what it was his duty to do; still he somehow fancied that things might have been managed in a much shorter way. "This event I regard," said Jonathan, "as a star of real good fortune, which has risen upon the path of my career almost before I have started upon it The case has created a great deal of sensation. All the Hungarian magnates are excited about it. My name has become known. And what is a long way the best of all, the Countess was so liberal as to honour me with ten thousand Brabant thalers."19

During the course of the young advocate's narration, the muscles of Master Wacht's face began to move in a remarkable way, till at last his countenance wore an expression of the greatest indignation. "What!" he at length shouted in a lion-like voice, whilst his eyes flashed fire-- "What! did I not tell you? You have made a sale of justice. The Countess, in order to get her lawful inheritance out of the hands of her rascally relations, has had to pay money, to sacrifice to Mammon. Faugh! faugh! be ashamed of yourself." All the sensible protestations of the young advocate, as well as of the rest of the persons who happened to be present, were not of the slightest avail. For a second it seemed as if their representations would gain a hearing, when it was stated that no one had ever given a present with more willing pleasure than the Countess had done on the sudden conclusion of her case, and that, as good Leberfink very well knew, the young advocate had only himself to blame that his honorarium had not turned out to be more in amount as well as more on a level with the magnitude of the lady's gain; nevertheless Master Wacht stuck to his own opinion, and they heard from him in his own obstinate fashion the familiar words, "So soon as you begin to talk about justice, you and everybody else in the world ought to hold your tongues about money. It is true," he went on more calmly after a pause, "there are several circumstances connected with this history which might very well excuse you, and yet at the same time lead you astray into base selfishness; but have the kindness to hold your tongue about the Countess, and the will, and the ten thousand thalers, if you please. I should indeed be fancying many a time that you didn't altogether belong to your place at my table there."

"You are very hard--very unjust towards me, father," said the young advocate, his voice trembling with sadness. Nanni's tears flowed quietly; Leberfink, like an experienced man of the world, hastened to turn the conversation upon the new gildings in St. Gangolph's.20

It may readily be conceived in what strained relations the members of Wacht's family now lived. Where was their unconstrained conversation, their bright good spirits, where their cheerfulness? A deadly vexation was slowly gnawing at Wacht's heart, and it stood plainly written upon his countenance.

Meanwhile they received not the least scrap of intelligence from Sebastian Engelbrecht, and so the last feeble ray of hope that Master Wacht had seen glimmering appeared about to fade. Master Wacht's foreman, Andreas by name, was a plain, honest, faithful fellow, who clung to his master with an affection that could not be matched anywhere. "Master," said he one morning as they were measuring beams together--"Master, I can't bear it any longer; it breaks my heart to see you suffer so. Fräulein Nanni--poor Herr Jonathan!" Quickly throwing away the measuring lines, Master Wacht stepped up to him and took him by the breast, saying, "Man, if you are able to tear out of this heart the convictions as to what is true and right which have been engraven upon it by the Eternal Power in letters of fire, then what you are thinking about may come to pass." Andreas, who was not the man to enter upon a dispute with his master upon these sort of terms, scratched himself behind his ear, and replied with an embarrassed smirk, "Then if a certain distinguished gentleman were to pay a morning visit to the workshop, I suppose it would produce no particular effect?" Master Wacht perceived in a moment that a storm was brewing against him, and that it was in all probability being directed by Count von Kösel.