“And to turn her pretty little head completely,” added his wife.

“That, by our Lady, Christine,” protested the magistrate, “that, at least, did not happen.  It ran off from her like water from an oil jar.  I noticed it myself, and the abbess—­”

“Your sister,” interrupted the matron thoughtfully, “she was the very one who led her into the path that is not suited for her.”

“No, no,” the magistrate eagerly asserted.  “God did not create a girl, the mere sight of whom charms so many, to withdraw her from the gaze of the world.”

“Husband! husband!” exclaimed Frau Christine, tapping his arm gaily.  “But there go the Schurstabs and Ebners.  What a noise there is in the street below!”

Her husband looked out of the bow window, pointed down, and asked her to come and stand beside him.  When she had risen he passed his arm around the slenderest part of her waist, which, however, he could not quite clasp, and eagerly continued:  “Just look!  One would think it was a banquet or a dance.  The whole street is filled with sedan-chairs, servants, and torch-bearers.  A few hours ago the constables had hard work to prevent the deluded people from destroying the house of the profligate Es, and now one half of the distinguished honourable Councillors come to pay their homage.  Do you know, dear, what pleases the most in all this?”

“Well?” asked Frau Christine, turning her face towards him with a look of eager enquiry, which showed that she expected to hear something good.  But he nodded slightly, and answered: 

“We members of patrician families cling to old customs; each wants to keep his individuality, as he would share or exchange his escutcheon with no one.  Then, when one surpasses the rest in external things, whatever name they may bear, no one hastens to imitate him.  We men are independent, rugged fellows.  But if the heart and mind of any one of us are bent upon something really good and which may be said to be pleasing in the sight of God, and he successfully executes it, then, Christine, then—­I have noticed it in a hundred instances—­then the rest rush after him like sheep after the bellwether.”

“And this time you, and the other Berthold, were the leaders,” cried Fran Christine, hastily pressing a kiss upon her old husband’s cheek behind the curtain.

Then she turned back into the dusky chamber, pointed to the open door of the sitting-room, and said, “just look!  If that isn’t——­ There comes Ursula Vorchtel with her betrothed husband, young Hans Nutzel!  What a fine-looking man the slender youth has become!  Ursel—­her visit is probably the greatest pleasure which Els has had during this blessed hour.”

The wise woman was right; for when Ursel held out her hands to her former friend, whom she had studiously avoided so long, the eyes of both girls were moist, and Els’s cheeks alternately flushed and paled, like the play of light and shadow on the ground upon a sunny morning in a leafy wood when the wind sways the tree tops.