Nor did the maid, who was in the personal service of the daughters of the house, make any complaint against them.  Indeed, she could not praise Els, the elder, sufficiently.  She was very just, the careful nurse of her invalid mother, and always unvarying in her cheerful kindness.

She had no fault to find with Eva either, especially as she was more religious than any one in the whole house.  Spite of her marvellous beauty—­Katterle knew that there was nothing false about it—­she would probably end by joining the nuns in the convent.  But her mood changed with every breath, like the weathercock on the steeple.  If she got out of bed the wrong way, or one did not guess her wishes before they were uttered, she would fly into a rage at the least trifle.  Then she sometimes used very unkind words; but no one could cherish anger against her long, for she had an indescribably lovely manner of trying to atone for the offences which her hasty young blood made her commit.  She had gone to the ball that night as if it were a funeral; she shunned men like poison, and even kept out of the way of her sister’s friends.

Biberli laughed, as if there could be no doubt of his opinion, and exclaimed:  “Just wait a while!  My master will meet her at the Town Hall tonight, and if the scrawny little squirrel I saw three years ago has really grown up into such a beauty, if he does not get on her track and capture her, my name isn’t Biberli.”

“But surely,” replied Katterle doubtfully, “you told me that you had not yet succeeded in persuading him to imitate you in steadfastness and truth.”

“But he is a knight,” replied the servant, striking himself pompously under the T on his shoulder, as if he, too, belonged to this favoured class, “and so he is as free to pursue a woman as to hunt the game in the forest.  And my Heinz Schorlin!  You saw him, and admitted that he was worth looking at.  And that was when he had scarcely recovered from his dangerous wounds, while now——­The French Knight de Preully, in Paris, with whom my dead foster-brother, until he fell sick-----” Here he hesitated; an enquiring look from his sweetheart showed that—­perhaps for excellent reasons—­he had omitted to tell her about his sojourn in Paris.

Now that he had grown older and abandoned the wild revelry of that period in favour of truth and steadfastness, he quietly related everything she desired to know.

He had acquired various branches of learning while sharing the studies of his foster-brother, the eldest son of the old Knight Schorlin, who was then living, and therefore, when scarcely twenty, was appointed schoolmaster at Stansstadt.  Perhaps he might have continued to teach—­for he promised to be successful—­had not a vexatious discovery disgusted him with his calling.

He was informed that the mercenaries in the Schnitzthurm guard were paid five shillings a week more than he, spite of the knowledge he had gained by so much toil.