A German Landlady

PART I.

IT was by one of those predestinations which men call lucky chances that I came to know the Fräulein Hahlreiner. An idle question put to a railway acquaintance, and in a moment more had been spoken the name which will stand in my memory forever, calling up a picture of the best, dearest, jolliest landlady in all Germany.

Up two such flights of stairs as only victims of monarchies would consent to climb we toiled to find her. There was a breeze of good cheer in the first opening of her door.

“ Is the Fräulein Hahlreiner in ? ”

“ I are she,” laughed out of the broad red lips and twinkled in the pretty brown eyes. We had not suspected it, for she looked in no wise like the proprietress of an apartment to let, — more like the happiest and best-natured of chambermaids ; untidy a little, it must be owned, but so picturesque in every word and motion, that one would not have risked any change, even to additional neatness. The rooms were just what we wanted. Who could have believed that, while we were journeying sadly away from beloved Tyrol, there stood waiting in the heart of Munich just the beds, the sunny windows, the cheerful parlor, that would fit us ? The readiness of one’s habitations is a perpetual marvel in the traveller’s life : it is strange we can be so faithless about accommodations in the next world, when we are so well taken care of in this. It took few words to make our bargain, and few hours to move in ; in a day we were at home, and the big, motherly Fräulein understood us as it she had nursed us in our cradles. How her presence pervaded that whole floor ! There were thirteen rooms. A German baron with wife and two children, to whom he whistled and sang and shouted twelve hours a day, like a giant bobolink in a meadow, had some of the rooms. Two mysterious Hungarian women, who were secret and stately and still, and gave dinners, lived on the corner ; and we had all the rest, except what was kitchen, or cupboard, or the Fräulein’s bedroom.

It is wonderful how soon it seems proper to have kitchen opposite parlor, unknown neighbors the other side of your bedroom wall, dishes washed on the hall table, and charcoal and company coming in at same door. When we learn to do this in New York, there will be fewer deaths from breaking of bloodvessels in the effort to be respectable.

No artist has ever yet taken a photograph of the Fräulein Hahlreiner which could be recognized. Neither can I photograph her. I can say that she was five feet seven inches high, and fat to the degree of fatness which Rubens loved to paint ; that she was fifty-two years old, and did not look as if she were more than forty'; that she had hazel brown eyes, perpetually laughing, a high white forehead, two dimples in her left cheek which were never still, and hair, as free as the dimples, too long to be called short, too short to be called long, always floating back in the air as she came towards you: on great occasions she had it curled by a hair-dresser, — the only weakness I ever discovered in the Fräulein ; but it was such a short-lived one, one easily forgave it, for the curl never stayed in more than two hours. I can say that, in spite of her fatness, her step was elastic and light, and her hands and feet delicately shaped ; I can say that her broken English was the most deliciously comic and effectively eloquent language I have ever heard spoken ; I can say that she cooked our dinner for us at two, went shopping for or with us at five, threw us into fits of laughter at eight by some unexpected bit of mimicry or droll story, and then tucked us up at bedtime, with an affectionate “ Good night. Sleep well ! ” But after all this is told, I have told only outside truths, and given little suggestion of the charm of atmosphere that there was about our dear Fräulein and everything she did or said.

The Munich days went by too quickly, — days in the Pinakothek, days in the Glyptothek, days in the Art Exposition, with its two thousand pictures. We had climbed into the head of the statue of Bavaria, roamed through the king’s chambers at the Nymphenburg, seen one hundred thousand men on the Teresina meadows, and the king giving prizes for the horse-races ; and now the day came on which we must leave Munich and each other.

My route lay to the north, — Nuremberg, Rhine, Rotterdam, London. For many days I had been in search of a maid to go with me as far as Rotterdam. The voluble Madame Marksteller, who supports a family of ten children, and keeps them all in kid gloves and poodles by means of an intelligence office, swept daily into my room, accompanied by applicants of all degrees of unsuitability. It grew disheartening. Finally I was reduced to the choice between a pretty and young woman, who would go with me only on condition of being my bosom companion, and an ugly old woman, who was a simpleton. In this crisis I appealed to the Fräulcin.

“ Dear Fräulein, why could not you go with me to Rotterdam ? ”

“O my dear lady, you make me go to be like fool, to think of so nice journey,” said she, clapping one hand to her head, snapping the fingers of the other, and pirouetting on her fat legs.

But all sorts of lions were in the way : lodgers, whose dinners must be cooked.

“ I will pay the wages of a cook to take your place, my Fräulein.”

A country cousin was coming to make a visit; a cousin whom she had not seen for twenty-five years. She might stay a week.

“ Very well. I will wait till your cousin’s visit is over.”

“ But, my lady, I fear I make stupid thing for you. I knows not how to do on so great journey.”

“ Ha!” thought I, “ I only wish I were as safe from stupidities and blunderings for the rest of my life as I shall be while I am in your charge, you quickwitted, bright-eyed old dear ! ”

The country cousin, I fear, was hurried off a little sooner than she liked-

“ I tell she she must go. My lady cannot wait so long. Six days in Munich are enough for she,” said the Fräulein, with a shrug of the shoulders which it would have cut the country cousin to the heart to see.

On a windy noon, such as only Munich knows, we set out for Nuremberg. If I had had any misgivings about the Fräulein’s capacity as courier, they would have been set at rest in the first half-hour at the railroad station. It was evident that anything she did not know she would find out by a word and a smile from the nearest person : all were conciliated the minute they looked into her ruddy face. And as for me, never in my life had I felt so well presented as by the affectionate tone in which she said, “ My lady.”

Trusting to Murray, I had telegraphed to the Würtemberger Hof for rooms. At nine o’clock of a dark night the German crowd in the Nuremberg station lifted up its voice, and said there was no Würtemberger Hof.

“ There must be,” said I, brandishing my red Murray, with my thumb on the spot. Crowd chuckled, and said there was not.

“ O my lady, wait you here while I go and see,” said the Fräulein, bundling me into a chair as if I had been a baby. Presently she came back, with, “ My lady, she do not exist these now four years, the Würtemberger Hof. We go to the Nuremberger Hof, which are near, and he have our telegram.”

Out into the darkness we trudged, following a small boy with a glass of beer, and found, as the Fräulein had said, that the Nuremberger Hof had received our telegram, and had prepared for us two of the cleanest of its very dirty rooms. How well I came to know ray Fräulein before the end of that rainy day in Nuremberg !

“ O my lady, am I to go where you go, and see all ? ” she exclaimed in the morning, when I told her to be ready at nine to drive with me. “ O, never did I think to see so much.” She had evidently had in the outset a fear that she would see little except at the railway stations and hotels. She little knew how much pleasure I anticipated in her companionship.

They are cruel who tell you that a day is time enough to see Nuremberg. It is a place to spend two weeks in ; to lounge on doorsteps, and peer into shadowy places ; to study old stones inch by inch, and grow slowly wonted to all its sombre picturesqueness.

As we stood looking at Peter Vischer’s exquisite carvings on the shrine of St. Sebalds, I pointed out to the Fräulein the bass-relief representing St. Sebald’s miracle with the icicle. She looked with cold, steady eyes at the finely chiselled fire which was represented curling upward from the little pile of broken icicle, and then said, “ Do you believe, my lady ? ”

“ O no, Fräulein,” said I : “ I can’t quite believe that icicles ever made so good a fire as that, even for a saint. But I suppose you believe it, do you not ? ”

“ O no, I not. The Church ask too much to believe. If one would believe all, one cannot do,” said she, in a tone of timidity and hesitation quite unusual for her ; and a moment later, still more hesitatingly, “ Have you read Renan, my lady ? ”

I started. Was this my German landlady, who spent most of her time over her cooking-stove, asking me if I read Renan ? “ Yes,” I said, “ I have read most of his books. Have you ? ”

“ O yes, and I like so much. My confessor he say he no more give me — ” (here she halted : the long word “ absolution ” was too much for her, and she made a sweeping gesture of benediction to indicate it), — “ he no more give me —so — if I not put away that book ; so I go not to him, now, two year, because I will not make lie.”

“ But then you are excommunicated, are you not, if you have not been to confession for two years ? ”

“ Yes, I think,” cheerily, quite reassured now that I must be as much of a heretic as she, since I too read Renan ; “ but I will not make lie. I will have my Renan. Then I read, too, the book against Renan ; and he say St. Paul say this, and St. Peter say the other, but he go not to my heart. I love the Jesu Christ more by Renan, as in what the Church say for him.”

Strange enough it was to walk through the still aisles of these old churches, and, looking up at the dusty stone saints, to whom incense is burned no longer, hear this simple soul repeat over and over, with great emphasis, “ I love the jesu Christ more by Renan as in what the Church say for him.”

Then we went down into the old dungeons under the Rathhaus, through chilly winding galleries, into stone chamber after stone chamber, rayless, airless, pitiless, awful. The Fräulein grew white with horror. She had never believed the stories she had read of torture-chambers and dungeons.

“ Ach, mein Gott ! mein Gott ! and this is what might be to-day if Father —— had the way ; and they tell us we lose the good old times. I will tell to all peoples I know I have seen the good old times under the ground of this Nürnberg ! ”

When we came out again into the open air. she was so pale I feared she would be ill. She sat down trembling on the stone stairs, and drew a long breath : “ Ach Gott! but I am thanks to see once more the overworld.”

It was almost wicked, after this, to take her to the still worse dungeons under the city walls, which are literally hung and set full of instruments of torture, and in the last of which is kept the famous Iron Virgin. In the first chambers were milder instruments for punishments of common offences, many of which have been used in Nuremberg within seventy years, —grotesque masks to be worn on the street by men and women convicted of slanderous speaking (“ Ha, ha ! ” laughed the Fräulein, “ there could not be make enough such masks to be weared in Munich ”); and a curious oblong board with a round hole at each end, into which husbands and wives who quarrelled were obliged to put their heads, and live thus yoked for days at a time. This pleased the Fräulein greatly. “ Think you, my lady, this would be good ?” she said, sticking her fat fist through one of the holes, and opening and shutting it,—“ think you they would love theirselves (each other) more ? ”

But her smiles soon died away, and she was paler than in the Rathhaus dungeons. This great hearty woman, usually ruddy as a frost - bitten apple in December, and stronger than most men, grew white and trembling at the first look at the horrible instruments of torture with which the other chambers were filled. Indeed, it was a sight hard to bear, — racks and wheels and pulleys and weights and thumb-screws, helmets and cradles and chairs set thick with iron spikes, and at last, in the lowest dungeon of all, the Iron Virgin. I held the poor Fräulein’s hand. For the minute I was the protector and not she. The woman who was our guide recited her story with such glib professional facility, and pulled out bars, and shoved back the doors, and showed the sharp spikes, all with such a cheery smile, that to me it robbed the cruel stone statue of much of its atmosphere of the horrible. I even felt a morbid impulse to step into the image’s embrace and let the spiked doors be partly shut on me ; but for the Fräulein’s sake I forbore, and hurried her out as quickly as possible into her “ overworld.”

“ O, never would I live in this Nürnberg, my lady,” she said ; “ at each step I see ghost ; and see color of that water,” she added, pointing to the sluggish river : “ it are black with the old sins.”

How she laughed the Nuremberg jewellers into selling me oxidized silver cheaper than they meant to ! How she persuaded the stolid Nuremberg “ cocher ” to drive faster, at least ten times faster, than was his wont! And how, most marvellous of all, she convinced the keeper of the Nuremberg cemetery where Albert Dürer was buried, that it could do no harm for me to bring away a big bunch of bright sumac leaves from one of the trees ! I should as soon have thought of appealing to one of the carved Baumgartner burghers on their stone slabs to give me permission ; but the Fräulein was too much for the keeper. He turned his back, so as not to seem to condone the offence, and satisfied his conscience by calling out, “ Enough, enough, you have taken enough,” several times before we were ready to stop picking. How quickly she saw and how keenly she felt the best things ! Not a line of Adam Kraft’s or Peter Vischer’s carving was lost on her. Not a single picturesque face or group escaped her. Much more I saw in that one day of Nuremberg, for having her by my side ; and very short I found the next day’s railroad ride to Mayence, by help of her droll comments on all that happened.

Curled up in one corner were a fat old German and his wife, and opposite them an officer with his young bride. The officer and the burgher talked incessantly with great vehemence. I saw that the Fräulein listened with keenest attention ; it was evidently all she could do to keep quiet. At the first opportunity she said to me : —

“ O my lady, he are ultramontane, the fat man ; he are Senator ; they talk always about our government. I like so much to hear what they say ; but the fat man, he are such fool.”

The Senator’s wife looked like a man in woman’s clothes, — hard featured, bony, hideous. As night came on she proceeded to make her toilet ; she took off her boots, and put on huge worsted shoes, bound with scarlet; on her head she put a knit cap, of cranberry red; above that, the hood of her gray waterproof ; above all this, a white silk handkerchief, tied tight under her chin ; on top of all, her round hat. The effect was like nothing in earth but a great woollen gargoyle. The Senator looked on as complacently as if it were the adorning of Venus herself.

“ O my lady, have you seen what she make for mouth when she speak ? ” said the Fräulein. I had not, for we were on the same side of the carriage. “ My lady, you must see. I will make that she speak for you,” said the malicious Fräulein, drawing nearer to the unsuspecting victim, and asking some question in the friendliest of voices. I forgave the unchristian trick, however, at sight of the mouth in motion.

After the Senator and the officer had both left the carriage, the Fräulein told me the substance of their discussion ; political questions seemed familiar to her ; she had her own opinion of every candidate ; and O, how she did hate the ultramontanes ! “ O my lady, this Senator he wish to have for president a man who make always his walk backwards. Never he go forwards.”

It took me some seconds to comprehend that this was the Fräulein’s English for a conservative, the thing she hated with her whole heart.

The sun shone brightly on the fields and woods. She exclaimed with delight at each new mile : “ O, how I like to see smoke go up from house ! ”

“ O, find you not the world nice, my lady ? I find so nice, I could kiss the world. Always people say, this world are bad world. The world are good world. It are mens that are bad.”

Then she would startle me again by farmer-like comments on the country.

“ O, here are all such poor wood country ; I would cut down such poor wood, and make land for other thing.

“ Now begin to be more good stone, here.

“ O look, my lady, what nice farm with much meadow for coos.” (Never could I persuade the Fräulein to say cows.)

At last I said to her : “ Fräulien, you talk like a farmer.”

“ Ach, my lady,” and her face grew clouded, “ I make farm for eleven year. I am great farmer. That is all what I love. O, I could die, some time, I such hungry have for my beautiful farm.”

By this time I was prepared to hear that my Fräulein had at one time or another in her life filled every office for which German towns have an opening, from burgomaster down ; but that she had been a farmer I never suspected.

“ You must tell me, Fräulein, all about it, when we are on the Rhine. We can talk quietly there.”

“ Yes, my lady, I tell you. It are like story in book.”

For a few moments she looked dreamily and sadly out of the window; but her nature had no room for continued melancholy. Soon she began to laugh again, at sight of the slow, ditch-like Main, on which unwieldy boats and sloops were wriggling along.

“ O my lady, this river go all the way as if he think each minute, ‘ I go no farther.’”

Match that who can for a hit at a sluggish river.

At one of the stations I saw her talking with a conductor on another train bound back to Nuremberg.

“ I ask for my cousin. He are oberconductor on that train. I send him note. He can see me when I come back. He will be in Heaven when he get my note.” And her face twinkled more like the face of fifteen than of fifty. I looked inquiringly.

“ He are my cousin ; but I love he not; but he write me every year, for tirteen year, ‘ Will you marry me ?’ and I write to he: ‘ Thank you, thank you, but I think not to marry you, nor any other man. Live well, live well.’ And he speak no more, till come same time next year ; but always he say to all peoples, that he will me marry. He wait till I be glad of he. But I think he wait till I die. And his mother she hate me, because she wish that he had wife to take he out of her house. He make her cry so much, so much. He is so — how do you say, my lady, when peoples is all time like this ? ” And in an instant she had utterly transformed her face, so that she could have passed any police officer in the world, however he had been searching for her, so cross, so glum, so hateful did she become from eyebrows to chin. Never off the stage, and rarely on it, have I seen such power of mimicry as had this wonderful old Fraulein.

“ He are always like that, my lady, all time, morning, noon, night, all year ; and he say, every day to his mother, ‘ Hold tongue ! I will not have wife, if I cannot have Caroline.’ ” This last sentence she pronounced with a slow, sullen, dogged drawl, which would have made the fortune of an actress.

“ O Fräulein,” I said, “ you ought to have been an actress.”

“ Yes, my lady, I think,” she replied, as simply as a child, with no shade of vanity in her manner. “ I would be rich woman now. When I was child a great manager in Augsburg, he ask my grandfather to give me to study with his daughter. He say I make good, and be great player; but in those days no people liked artists like to-day, and my grandfather he are so angry, and he say, ‘ Go away; come no more in my house.’ ”

Thus laughing and listening, and looking out on the pleasant meadows of the Main, we came to Mayence, and at Mayence took boat to go down the Rhine. This was the Fräulein’s first sight of the Rhine. All the tenderness and pride and romance of her true German soul were in her eyes, as the boat swung slowly round from the pier, and began to glide down the river. And now began a new series of surprises. From Mayence to Cologne there was not a ruin of which my Fräulein did not know the story. Baedeker was superseded, except for the names of places ; as soon as I mentioned them to her she invariably replied, “ O yes, I know ; and have you read, my lady, how,” etc. The Johannisberg Castle, given to Metternich by his Emperor, the cruel Hatto’s Tower, the Devil’s Ladder, the Seven Virgins, the Lurley, the Brothers, Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth, — she knew them all by heart; and for the sake of hearing the time-worn old stories, in her delicious broken English, I pretended to have forgotten all the legends. Nothingmoved her so much as the sight of the two rocky peaks on which the two brothers had lived, and looked down on the Bornhofen Convent in which their beloved Hildegarde was shut up.

“ O, each brother, he could see her it she walk in that garden,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “ Now, it come no more that a man love so much, so long, so true.”

Just beyond the Brothers we passed the great Marienburg water-cure. Reading from Baedeker, I said: “ Fräulein, that would be a cheap place to live ; only twelve thalers a week for board and lodging and medical attendance.”

“ O no, my dear lady. It are not cheap, for there be nothing to eat. At end of eight day the man from Wassercure he shall be so thin, so thin, it shall shine the sun through him.”

Throughout our whole journey the Fräulein’s astonishment was unbounded at the poor fare and the high prices. In her beautiful goodness, she had supposed that all landlords were content, as she, with moderate profits, and anxious, as she, to give to their guests the best food.

“ O my lady, find you this chicken good ? ”

“ Not very, Fräulein. What is the matter with it ? ”

“ O, the bad man, the bad man, to ask for this chicken one gulden. He are old chicken, my lady, and he are boiled before he are in oven. O, I know very well. O, I win much money by this journey; never before had I courage to give old chicken. Now I give ! ”

Much I fear me that from this time henceforth the lodgers in my dear Fräulein’s house will not find it such a marvel of cheap comfort as we did.

“ O my lady,” she said one day, “if you come again to me, you shall all have as before. But to other peoples, I no more give beefsteak for fifteen kreutzers. I will be more rich, I have been ass.”

By dint of the Cologne and Düsseldorf line of steamboats, and the Netherland steamship line, and endless questioning and unlading and lading, the Fräulein and I and the trunks at last came to land at Rotterdam. We had a day at Cologne, a night at Diisseldorf, and one never-to-be-forgotten night on the river. At Düsseldorf we wandered about the streets for an hour and a half seeking where to lay our heads. Here the poor Fräulein had on her hands, besides me, an English barrister and his wife, who could speak no German, and who drifted very naturally into our wake. What a procession we were, at eleven o’clock of the darkest sort of night, nobody knowing just where he was going, each person thinking somebody else was taking the lead. Suddenly the porters ahead of us plumped our trunks down in the middle of the street at the feet of two men with lanterns.

“ Really, aw, now this is, aw, the most extraordinary place for a customhouse, aw, ’pon my honor,” said the English barrister, whose name was not Dundreary.

“ Have you meat or sausages ? ” said the biggest man, flashing his lantern-light full into our dismayed faces. “ O mercy, no ! ” shouted we with bursts of laughter, and such evident honesty, that he let us go, contenting himself with punching the sides of all the carpet-bags.

“ O Fräulein, did you tell that man you had no sausages ? ” said I sure she could not have eaten up the six I saw her buy at Cologne.

“ My dear lady, he say, ‘ Have you meat or sausage ?’ and I say, ‘ No, I have no meat.’ I not make lie, I make diplomatique.”

From Düsseldorf to Rotterdam it was a day and a night and half a day. The Rhine stretched broader and broader. The shores of Holland seemed slowly going under water, and the wind-mill arms beat the air wildly like struggling arms of drowning monsters. It was as cold as winter in the cabin ; and it rained pitilessly on the deck. The poor Fräulein read all the magazines which I had bought for her in Cologne, and an old comic almanac which she borrowed from the steward, and at last curled herself up in a corner and went to sleep in despair. The night differed from the day only in being a little colder and darker, and in the Fräulein’s having a red-flannel petticoat over her head. When I waked up and saw her pleasant great face in this ruddy halo of fiery flannel, I felt as comforted as if it had been a noonday sun.

It was at noon of a Thursday that we came, as I said, to land at Rotterdam ; but this is hardly the proper phrase in which to describe arriving at a place which is nine parts water. Venice seems high and dry in comparison with it; and the fact that you go about in boats at Venice, and in cabs at Rotterdam, only serves to make the wateriness of Rotterdam more noticeable.

“ O my lady, it are all one bridge from one water to another water,” said Fräulein, as we drove up and down and across canal after canal, to find the house of Moses Ezekiel, the Jew, who is a money-changer. It rained dismally, but the Dutchwomen were out on all the doorsteps, with pails of water, scrubbing and wiping and brushing and rinsing, with cloths and mops and brooms, as if they were enchanted by some soap-and-watery demon. Windows shone like mirrors ; door-handles glittered like jewels.

“ O, how they do are clean, these Dutch,” said the Fräulein, taking account with a housekeeper’s eye of all this spotlessness.

How sorry I grew as the hour came for me to say good by to this dear, honest, droll, loving woman I cannot tell. The last thing she did for me was to look at the sheets in the dreary little berth in which must be spent my one night between Rotterdam and London, and to say with great indignation to the surprised stewardess, “ Call you those sheets clean, in English ? Never my lady sleep in such sheets, from Munich to Rotterdam. O, but I think a steamschiff (boat) are place for bad peoples to be punish for sin ! ”

Then she cried over me a little, and went away. I watched her till she had shut the cab door, and was being whirled off to take the early train for Munich. Then I too shed a few tears, saying to myself, “ God bless the old darling. I shall never see her like again.”

The story of the Fräulein’s life I feel a hesitancy about telling. It stands out so in my memory in its quaint, picturesque, eloquent broken English, that to try to reproduce it is like trying to describe one of Teniers’s pictures of peasant life. But nothing, not even the dulness of grammatical speech, can rob it of all its flavor of romance, and no one but myself will know how much it loses in my hands.

PART II.

HER father was a Suabian hunter, and one of the king’s rangers. Her mother was a daughter of a subaltern officer. There were ten children, of which my Frࢴulein and her twin brother were the youngest. They were poor but gay, living a free life in the woods, with venison for dinner every day. When the little Caroline — for now I must give her her name — was three years old her father died ; but she never forgot him, remembering to this day, she says, more vividly than almost anything else in her life, how he used to come home in his ranger’s uniform, and taking her on one arm and her twin brother on the other, toss them both up in the air, calling her his little “ rusty angel,” in affectionate jest at her freckled skin.

One year later the mother died, and the ten children, left with very little money, were scattered here and there, in houses of friends and relatives. Caroline was sent to her paternal grandfather, who was a government advocate in Augsburg. The grandmother had written that she would take the handsomest of the six little girls, and the lot fell on Caroline. O, what a picture it was she drew of her arrival, late at night, at the fine house in Augsburg ! She was carried, a poor little frozen bundle of baby, into a great parlor, where her grandparents with a small party of friends were playing whist. The servant set her on the piano while they unrolled her wrappings, one after another, for it was a cold winter night.

“ Then at last out come I ; and they stand me up on the piano, and my grandmother she say, ‘ Mein Gott ! if this be the handsome, what are the rest ? ’ And one old servant, — and she I hate all my life, — she put both her hands high, and she say, ‘ Mein Gott, she have red hair and rusty skin ! ’ ”

In a few days, however, the little redhaired, rusty-skinned child became the pet of the whole house ; and from this time till her grandmother’s death Caroline was happy. But before she was six she had become such an unmanageable little hoyden, that her grandparents, in despair, shut her up in a convent school in Augsburg, only allowing her to come home for Saturdays and Sundays and the vacations. In this school she spent seven years, and came out, at thirteen, a full-grown woman, knowing a little of many things, but no one thing well, and too full of animal life to be held with any bonds. That very year came her first lover, asking to marry her.

“ My grandfather, he send for me, and I come, like I go always on one foot, jumping like cat for bird ; and there sit this man I know not; and my grandfather be point to me, and he say, ‘ You think to marry that child ? Look at her ! ’ ” I am sure that the Fräulein was too modest to tell me how beautiful she was as a young girl. But I can easily make the picture for myself. She was above the medium height, and very slender ; her cheeks were red, her forehead high and white ; her eyes the brightest and wickedest hazel, and her mouth and chin piquant and wilful and tender and strong, altogether. Not often does the world see just such a face as she must have had in her youth.

The next year the grandmother died, and now began dark days for Caroline. Two of her aunts, who had not loved her father, came to keep her grandfather’s house. They locked up her piano. They took away the pretty clothes her grandmother had given her. They gave her more and more hard work to do, until in one short year she was like a servant in the house. Then they sent her away to another aunt’s house, on pretence of a visit, and kept her there three months ; and when she returned, she found that her grandfather, who was now very old and imbecile, had married a new wife.

“ Now came for me the worst of all the time. My grandfather’s wife, she say, ‘ You must not stay here, I will not have, you are too fine lady. You can go earn your bread like others.’ And I say, ‘ O, what can I do ? I nothing know, where can I go ? And, my lady, I are only fifteen when she tell me to go make living for myself.”

The grandfather was too old and feeble to interfere, and moreover had been prejudiced against Caroline by his wife and daughters. So the child went out into the world, with a little bundle of clothes, and a few gulden in her pocket. She had about one hundred dollars a year from her father’s estate, which luckily was in hands of a trustee, or the cruel aunts would have robbed her of that. A kind neighbor took her in, and tried to cheer her ; but her heart was broken. “ All day, my lady, I cry and I cry, till I look so ugly nobody would take such ugly girl to live in house for servant. My face get quite another shape.”

At last the good neighbor came home one day in great delight, and told Caroline that the Baroness —— had seen her in church, and liked her face so much that she had asked her name, and now sent to know if she would come and live with her as nurse for her three little children.

“ This are like help from Heaven, my lady; and when I go to Baroness, she take me by chin, and she say, ‘ Would you like to live in my house ?’ And I cry so, I can no more speak, and I say, ‘ O, I glad of any house, so I have home.”

For three years she lived with the Baroness, who proved a kind and wise mistress. The little children were sweet and lovable, and “ I think I stay in that house till my time come to be died,” said the Fräulein, with tender, wet eyes. But one day came a sharp, authoritative letter from her grandfather, ordering her to return home at once.

“ I get great afraid, I think he wish to me kill, and I would not go ; but the Baroness say, ‘ No, he are your grandfather, you must go.’ So I go, and my grandfather he look at me with such angry eyes I am sick, I cannot stand up; and he say, ‘The Baron love you too much. You are vile, bad girl. You go no more to his house. I will you shut up.”

Cruel, idle tongues had done poor Caroline this harm. Probably the scandal rose from the careless jest of some thoughtless man or woman, who had observed the beautiful face of the young nursery-maid in the Baron’s house. “ I should make lie, my lady,” said the Fräulein here, “ if I say that the Baron speak ever to me one word not like my father. He good man.”

After a few wretched weeks in the grandfather’s house Caroline found a second home in the family of the Countess —— of Augsburg. Here she lived for seven years as lady’s maid to the old Countess, who loved her much. “ But the young Countess, she love me not. She hate me. It are like cat see dog always when we see each other, we so hate ; but my old Countess, she say always to me, ‘ O Caroline, have patient, have patient ; for my sake go you not away.’ ” At last came a day when, for some trifling provocation, the young Countess took Caroline’s two ears in her noble hands, and jerked her head violently back and forth, until the girl could hardly see.

“ Many time, my lady, I say to her, ‘ Take your hands away, I will not from any man this bear ’ ; and at last, my lady, I make so,” said the Fräulein hitting out from the shoulder with a great thrust which a prize-fighter might admire, “ and she go back against the wall ; and the old Count, he come flying and scream, ‘ You kill my daughter, you shall to prison go.’ And he put his hand on me, and I make so again, my lady, that he go back against the other wall. O, I was strong like one hundred men ! And my poor old Countess she come with her two hands tight, and she cry, ‘ O Caroline, Caroline, be not like this ; go not away from me.’ And I say to her, ‘ My dear lady, I no more can bear. I go away to-night; and I go to my room, and in middle of my angry I stop to laugh, to see the old Count like he pinned to the wall where I put him with my one arm, and the young Countess like she pinned to the other wall, where I put her with my other arm.”

In an hour Caroline had packed her boxes, and was ready to leave the house, but she found herself a prisoner in her room. The door was firmly locked, and to all her cries she could get no answer. All night long she walked up and down, with her bonnet and cloak on. At eight in the morning the bell rang as usual for her to go to the Countess. “ Ha ! ” say I, “ the old Count he think I go to my lady, for her I so love. But I open my door, I have heard he come like cat and unlock with key ; and I go straight to big door of great hall; and at door stand old Count, and he say, ‘ What mean you ? Go to the Countess.’ And I say, ‘ No, I go no more to Countess, I go to burgomaster. ’ And I look at he so he no more dare move. I think,” with a chuckle of delight at the memory, “ he no more wish to fee! how heavy are my hand, for he are poor little man. I could him kill, like chicken, and so he know very well.”

Straight to the burgomaster the excited Caroline went, and told her story. For once a burgomaster was on the side of right ; reprimanded the Count severely, and compelled him to give up all Caroline’s boxes, and pay her the full sum due of her wages. Now she was, for the first time for many years, thoroughly happy. She had saved money in her seven years’ service, and she had become a skilful dress-maker. She hired a little apartment, and sent for an old servant who had been fond of her in her childhood.

Old Monika was only too glad to come and live once more with her young mistress ; and as for Caroline, after ten years of serving, to be once more independent, to have an affectionate waiting-woman ready to do her bidding, —“ it was like Heaven, my lady. In morning, Monika she bring me my bath, like I lady again ; and she say, ‘ Fräulein, my Fräulein.’ And I make my eyes like I sleep, sleep, so that I can hear her say ‘ my Fraulein ’ many times, it so me please. Then she be fear that I died ; and she come close and take my by shoulder ; and then I give jump quick out of bed, and make her great fright and great laugh. But always I eat with my Monika, as if I not lady, for I say, I too have been servant; and I cannot eat by self; I have not hungry; and I love my old Monika very much.”

The good Countess sent all her friends to Caroline, and in a short time she had more dress-making than she could do, even with Monika’s help; but she would not employ workwomen. She tried the experiment once, and had a seamstress for three months, but she could not endure the trouble and annoyance of it. “ O my lady, I get in such great angry with she, she make so stupid things. I send she away. I think I be died with angry, if she not go.”

It was, after all, but a bare living that one woman’s hands could earn with a needle in Augsburg, in those days. Caroline and her Monika had only about two hundred dollars a year.

“ How could you live on so little money, dear Fräulein ?” said I.

“ O my lady, in those time all are so cheap. I get pound of meat for nine kreutzers, now it are twenty. I get quart milk for three kreutzers, now it are five. I get nine eggs for four kreutzers, now I must pay two kreutzers for one egg ; and in Augsburg then I buy for one kreutzer all vegetable Monika and I eat for two day, and now in my house in Munich I give six kreutzers for what I must give one person at one time.”

Even at these low prices they had to live sparingly : one half-pound of meat three times a week ; never anything but coffee and bread for breakfast ; once a week a glass of wine. But Caroline was happy and content. “ Never did I think to ask God for more than I have. I are so glad with my Monika ; and I sing at my sew all day.”

But fate was spinning a new tint into Caroline’s life. In the spring of her third year of dress-making she found herself seized with a sudden ambition to go to Munich and get new fashions.

“ It are great journey for me to take alone ; and I had not money that Monika go too ; I know I need not to go ; but I cannot be free night nor day from thinking I will to Munich go, and get fashion for my ladies.”

On the fourth day after her arrival in Munich the poor solitary Augsburg dress-maker was taken ill with a terrible fever. In great fright, the lodginghouse keeper had her carried to the hospital, and gave herself no further concern about the friendless stranger. There poor Caroline lay in a crowded ward, so delirious with fever that she could not speak intelligently, and yet, by one of those inexplicable mental freaks sometimes seen in such cases, quite aware of all which was passing about her. She heard the doctors pronounce her case hopeless ; she knew when they cut off her beautiful hair, but she tried in vain to speak, or to refrain from speaking when the mad raving impulse seized her.

At length one night, the third night, between twelve and one o’clock, she suddenly opened her eyes, and saw a tall man bending over her bed, with a candle in one hand.

“ O my lady, never can I tell what I saw in his face ; never, my lady, have you seen so beautiful face. I say to myself, ‘ O, I think I be died, and this are the Jesu Christ; or if I not be died, this are my darling for all my life.’ And he smile, and say, ‘Are you better ? ’ And I shut my eyes, and I say to myself, ‘ I will not speak. It are Jesu Christ.’ ”

This was the young Dr. Anton ——, who had been, from the moment Caroline was brought into the hospital, so untiring a watcher at her bedside, that all his fellow-students persecuted him with raillery.

“ But my Anton he say to them : ‘ I do not know what it are, I think that beautiful girl ’ (for, my lady, all peoples did call me beautiful ; you would not now think, now I am such ugly, thick, old woman), — I think that beautiful girl die. But if she not die, she are my wife. You can laugh, all you ; but I have no other wife in this world.”

It was in very few words that my Fräulein told me this part of her story. But we were two women, looking into each other’s wet eyes, and I knew all she did not say.

They could not be married, Anton and Caroline ; for the paternal government of Bavaria, not liking to have too large pauper families left on its hands, forbids men to marry until they can deposit a certain sum in government trust for the support of their families, if they die. Anton had not a cent in the world : neither had Caroline. For four years they worked and waited, he getting slowly but surely into practice ; she, laying by a gulden at a time out of her earnings. Once in four weeks he came to Augsburg to see her, sometimes to stay a day, sometimes only a few hours. “ It took so much money for journey, he could not more often come. But he say, ‘ My liebling, I may die before we can marry ; I will make sure to kiss you once in four week.’ ”

There was, perhaps, a prophetic instinct in Anton’s heart. Before the end of the fourth year his health failed, and he was obliged to leave Munich, and go home to his mother’s house. For six months Caroline did not see him. Week by week came sadder and sadder letters. Anton was dying of consumption. At last his mother wrote, “ If you want to see Anton alive, come.”

At sight of Caroline he revived, so much so that the physicians said, if he had no return of hemorrhage, he might possibly live three months ; longer than that he could not hold out.

O cruel, paternal government of Bavaria ! Here were this man and woman, held apart from each other, even in the valley of the shadow of death, by the humane law providing against pauper children.

The one desire left in Anton’s heart was to be moved to Augsburg, and die in Caroline’s house. He and his mother were not in sympathy; the family was large and poor ; he was in the way. Then Caroline said, “ Come.”

“ O my lady, you think not it was harm. His mother she go on knees to me, and say, ‘ Take Anton with you.’ And I know I can keep him alive many weeks in my house ; he will be so glad when he are alone with me, he will not die so soon. No one could speak harm of me, for this man I lead like little child, and lift in my arms, he are so sick.”

So Caroline gave up her apartment in Augsburg, hired a little farm-house just out of the city, and took her lover home to die. The farm was just large enough for her to keep two cows and raise a few vegetables. The house had but one good room, and that was fitted up for Anton. Caroline and Monika slept in two little closets which opened from the kitchen. Before daylight Monika went into the city to sell milk and vegetables ; while she was gone Caroline took care of the stable and the animals, and worked in the garden. Not one kreutzer’s worth of work did they hire. The two women’s hands did all.

In the sweet country air and in the sight of Caroline, Anton grew daily stronger, until at the end of three months he could walk a few rods with out leaning on her arm, and hope sprang up once more in their hearts.

Then, lured by that illusive dream, which has cost so many dying men and women so dear, they started for Italy to escape the severe winter winds of Augsburg. They went in a little onehorse wagon, journeying a few miles a day, resting at farm-houses, where the brave Caroline took care of her own horse, like a man, and then paid for their lodging by a day’s dress-making for the women of the family. In this way they spent two months ; but Anton grew feebler instead of better, and when they reached home Caroline lifted him in her arms, and carried him from the wagon to the bed.

“ When I lay him down, he look up in my face with such look, and he say : ‘ Liebling, it are no use. I have spent all my money for nothing. Now I die.’”

The journey, cheaply as they had made it, had used up every kreutzer of the earnings which had been put by towards their marriage. Now they had nothing, except what Caroline could earn, with now and then a little help from Anton’s mother. But Caroline’s heart never failed her ; she thought of but one thing, the keeping Anton alive.

“ All day, my lady, it are as if I see Death stand at door ; and I look at him in eyes, and I say, ‘ You go away ! I give not Anton to you yet. O Jesu Christ, let me keep my Anton one day the more.’ ”

And she kept him day by day, until the doctors said his life was a miracle ; and Anton himself said to her sometimes : “ O liebling, let me go; it is better for you that I die.”

At last the day came, but it was nearly at the end of the second year. It was late in the spring. Anton had not left his room for weeks ; but one morning he said to her that he thought he would like to sit under the trees once more.

“ And O my lady, the minute he say that I know he think it are his last day. So I dress him in warm clothes, and I carry him out in my arms, and put him in big chair I make myself out of old died tree ; and the sun it shine, shine, O so warm ! and I read to him out of book he like. But I see he no more hear, and very quick he say, ‘Come close to me’ ; and I go close, and he put his two hands on my face and say: ‘ Liebling, I think God be always good to you for your good to me.’ And then he point with finger that I take him in house ; and Monika and I we have but just get him in bed, when he fall back, and are died in one minute ; and, my lady, I can say true, that in the first minute I was glad for my Anton that he have no more pain.”

Soon after Anton was buried came Anton’s second cousin, Herr Bridmacher, to see Caroline. The Herr Bridmacher owned a great farm of seven hundred acres near Starnberg. By this time all Anton’s friends, far and near, had heard of the faithful and beautiful Caroline, who had so well administered the little farm, and made Anton’s last months so comfortable. Herr Bridmacher offered her good wages and absolute control of the farm. It was the very life she most liked, and it offered an escape from Augsburg, the very air of which had become insupportable to her. She accepted the offer immediately, and at the end of a week was walking by Herr Bridmacher’s side, up the broad road of Brentonrede farm.

“ O my lady, my heart he go down in me when I see that farm. The Herr Bridmacher he have been fool. He have the same thing in the same field all his life, till the ground be no more good ; and he are so mean, he have on that seven hundred acre only seven servant; he have four coos, three horse, and two pair oxen, and one are lame. And the house, it be shame to see such house ; it let water come in in many place ; and the floor it go up, and it go down, like the cellar are all of hills. And I say to him : “It are well for you, Herr Bridmacher, that I not see your fine farm before I come. But I have my word given, and I go not back. I stay.’ Then he begin to make great compliment to me, how he think I do all well. But I say : ‘ O, thank you, I not wish to hear. You think to journey, you have me told. The sooner you go the better I like. Good night, sir.’ So I go to my bed ; but all night the wind he blow my windows so I cannot to sleep ; but I say to myself, ‘Caroline, if only that fool go away, here are splendid farm for you.’ So I am quite quiet. And in the morning, Herr Bridmacher he say : ‘ Good morning, good morningI start to Italy tomorrow ’ ; and I say, ‘ I very glad to hear that. You stay two years, I hope.’ And when he go down the road I stand at door, and I snap my two hands after he, and I say, ‘ Long journey to you, my master.’ ”

With short intervals of interruption and annoyance from Herr Bridmacher, Caroline had the management of Brentonrede farm for eleven years. At end of that time Brentonrede owned seventy-five cows, eight horses, eight pairs of oxen, twenty-four calves, and two hundred chickens. There were twentyfive work-people, — seventeen men and eight women. The house was in perfect repair, and the place had more than doubled in value. Just before Caroline came to him the poor silly Herr Bridmacher had offered it for sale for sixty thousand gulden (about twenty-five thousand dollars); after she left him he sold it for one hundred and forty thousand gulden.

It would be impossible to reproduce the Fräulein’s graphic and picturesque story of her life during this time. She had no neighbors, but she was never lonely. Her whole soul was in her work. At three o’clock every morning she rose, and gave the laborers their first meal at four. Five times a day they were fed, the Brentonrede people : at four in the morning, bread, soup, and potatoes ; at eight, bread and milk, or bread and beer; at eleven, knoedels ¹ with which they had either meat, pudding, or curds ; at four, bread and beer ; and at six or eight, bread and soup.

One of her greatest troubles in the outset was the religiousness of her work-people : — the number of Paternosters they insisted on saying every morning in the little chapel on the place.

“ O my lady,” she said, “ I wish you could see that chapel. Such a Mother Goddess never did I see in my life. She look so like fool, that when I go first in I make that I drop something on floor I cannot find, so I put my face close to floor, that they not see me laugh. But I make she all clean ; and I make chapel all clean ; and then I say to men : ‘ Very well; if you need pray fourteen Paternosters on weekday, you need pray fourteen Paternosters on Sunday. So many as you pray on week-day, it are my order that you pray on Sunday, if you work at Brentonrede.’ Then they grumble, and they tell the priest. They like not to take time that are their own time on Sunday to say fourteen Paternosters ; but they like better to say Paternosters in my time than to dig in field. So the priest he put on his big hat, and he come to door, and knock, knock ; and I go ; and he say, ‘ Are you the Fräulein of Brentonrede ?’ And I say, “ Yes, Father, I are she.’ And then he begin to say, ‘ Now, my daughter,’ with long face ; and then he tell me that he are told I have pigs in the chapel, and that I will not let the people to pray. And I say, ‘ O no, that are not true.’ And I take he to chapel, and show how clean it are ; and only I have in corner two big bottle of vitriol, which I have afraid to keep in house, because it are such danger ; and I tell him I think Holy Mother Goddess will be so good to keep it safe, that it blow not up the house. And he say that are no harm, but why do I not let the people to pray. And I tell him that I say not the people shall not pray. I say they shall pray fourteen Paternoster on Sunday, if they pray fourteen Paternoster on week-day; and since then they pray but one Paternoster on week-day, so that they take not time from their Sunday. And he scratch his head very hard, and know not what to say me to that ; and then I give him good bottle wine and a cheese, and I say, ‘ Now, Father, it cannot be in this world that we believe all what are telled. I do not believe what are telled of you, and do you not believe any more what are telled of me.’ And he get so red in the face, for he know all peoples say his housekeeper are wife to he ; and so he shake my hand, and he go away. And always I hear after that he say, ‘ The Fräulein of Brentonrede she are good woman ; she are good Catholic.’ But he know in his heart I laugh at he.”

How she gloated over some of her harvest memories, — of wonderful afternoons in which more loads of hay were piled up in Brentonrede barns than had ever been known to be got in in one afternoon before. One particular wheat harvest, I remember, she mentioned. She had seen at noon that a heavy storm was coming up. Whole acres of wheat were lying cut, ready to be made up into sheaves. “ Then I call all the men and women, and I say, ‘ If all the wheat are in before dark, I give you one cask beer, and two cheese, and all bread you can eat, and a dance.’ I think not it could be ; but I work with them myself, and I tie up with the straw till my hands they bleed, O so much ; but I nothing care. And the wheat it are all in, my lady, before nine o’clock, — twenty-five wagon-loads in one afternoon ; and in all the country they tell it for one great story that it was done in Brentonrede.”

The Brentonrede farm soon became well known in the whole region about Starnberg. Herr Bridmacher’s friends used to make it a stopping-place in their drives ; and the Fräulein often entertained parties of them at tea or luncheon. She was very proud of doing the honors of Brentonrede ; and to these parties, and to her two years of close intercourse with the invalid Anton, she owed a certain savoir faire, which, added to her native gracefulness and quickness of comprehension, would prevent her ever being embarrassed, I think, in any situation.

In the tenth year of her Brentonrede life came a burgomaster from a neighboring town to ask her to marry him. By this time her love for Anton had taken the healthful shape of tender, regretful memory, which made no sorrow in her active, useful life, and set no barrier between her and other men. But her heart was wedded to Brentonrede farm. So, like a true diplomatist, she told Herr Bridmacher of this offer, and asked his advice.

“ I know very well he not like that I leave farm. He know he cannot make farm by heself. I think he will marry me heself, to keep me for farm. I not love he. O no, my lady, I love no man after my Anton. But I know he go on journey every year, sometimes for two three year, and I think I like very well to be his wife, and stay on farm while he go.”

The Herr Bridmacher took the same view of it that Caroline did. Of course he could not have her leave the farm : so he said he would marry her when he came back from Italy, — from a year’s journey on which he was about starting. The burgomaster was sent away, and Caroline went contentedly on with her farming for another year. When Herr Bridmacher returned, and their marriage was again discussed, the question of settlements came up, and upon this they fell out. Caroline was firm in her demand that Brentonrede should be settled on her and her children.

I know very well, my lady, that all his people fine people. They think I am only poor work-girl who can make farm. Never I wish to go as his wife into one of their house. It are only for love of farm that I marry he ; if he die, and I not have farm, what I do then ?”

But Herr Bridmacher was equally firm. He would settle money on her, but not Brentonrede. Money Caroline would not have, not even if it were enough to buy another farm. It was Brentonrede she loved, and she did not in the least love Herr Bridmacher. “ I know all the time he are fool, and like mule, beside,” she said ; adding with the gravest simplicity, “ But I know he have been for ten year the most time away from Brentonrede, and I think when I are his wife he like it not even so much than before.”

So Caroline and Herr Bridmacher parted in great anger. With her savings she bought a little house in the suburbs of Munich. But the city air oppressed her. Her occupation was gone. At end of a year she sold the house for two thousand gulden more than she gave for it, and bought another, farther out of the city, with a few acres of ground about it. Here she lived as she had in Augsburg, keeping one servant, three cows, hens and chickens, and working all day in a vegetable and flower garden.

“ O my lady, it are like one picture, when I have work there one year. Not one inch in all my place but have a fine green leaf or flower growing on he ; all peoples that drive by from Munich, they stop and they look and they look, and I are so proud when I hear them say, ‘ It are all one woman that do this with her own hands.’ ”

One afternoon as the Fräulein sat alone in her little sunny parlor, there was a ring at the door.

“ I go, and I see, O such nice Englishman. I have he seen before, many times, stands to look in my garden. He are priest I know by his dress, — priest of your church, my lady. Then he say, ‘ Do you live here alone ? ’ And I say, ‘ Yes.’ And then he try to say more, but he cannot German speak, and I no English understand. So he laugh, and he say, ‘ I come again with my wife. She can all say in German.’ ”

The next day he came back with his wife, and the thing they had to say was no more nor less than to tell the Fräulein they were coming to spend the summer in her house. Her face and the face of her garden had been such magnets to them, that their hearts were set on coming to live for six months where they could see both every day.

“ I say, ‘ But I know not how to do for high people. I cannot make that you have comfortable.’ But they say, ‘ We will you show all. We want little.’ And so they come. They take my two rooms up stairs ; and they sit all day in my garden ; and the lady, she grow so fat, and she say she are never so happy in all her life, as in my house ; and they are, now these seven years, my best friends in the world.”

These best friends of the Fräulein’s were an English clergyman and his wife ; and her acquaintance with them was one of the crises in her romantic life. In the autumn when it was necessary for them to go back to Munich, they persuaded her to sell her little farm (which was not so profitable as pretty) and take part of a house in the city, and rent apartments. She entered with many misgivings on this untried experiment ; but her shrewd, sagacious nature was as successful here as in remodelling Herr Bridmacher’s exhausted farm. She has lived in Munich for seven years. Her apartment has never, for one month, stood empty, and she is only waiting for the opportunity to add to it another whole floor. She has nearly paid for her furniture, which is all thoroughly good and satisfactory, and she says : “ If I spare (save) very much and spend not on nothings, I think in six year I have enough money to go live as I like in country, and have garden.” She yearns for green fields, and the smell of the earth. I am not sure that the English clergyman did well to transplant her within the city walls.

As for Herr Bridmacher, he came to grief, as might have been predicted, soon after parting with Caroline. After several unsuccessful attempts to find some one to fill her place, he sold his farm for one hundred and forty thousand gulden, put most of the money into a commercial speculation and lost it.

The good Caroline, hearing a short time ago that he was seen in Munich looking very shabby and out at elbows, wrote asking him to come to her house.

“ I could not bear, my lady, to think that I so comfortable in this nice house by the money he pay me, and he have not money enough to go like gentleman as he always go before ; and now I are old woman, I can ask to my house if I like.”

But Herr Bridmacher was too proud to come.

“ He hate me. I hear from friend that know, that he hate me, O so much ! He say I are reason for all his trouble. But I think he are reason heself. Except for he had been one mule, I are in his house to-day, and Brentonrede are worth three hundred thousand gulden, and he have six children to make that he are no more sorry.”

Poor Herr Bridmacher! From my heart I pity him, when I think what he has lost. But I have almost more resentment than pity, when I think that, but for his foolish pride and obstinacy, my Fräulein would have been to-day the loving mother of children and the gracious Lady of Brentonrede.

H. H.

1. * Knoedels are dumplings made of flour, chopped herbs, and sometimes a little ham. They are the common food of farmers throughout Germany.↩