Els interceded for the unfortunate man, begging, pleading, and assuring her father that she would never give up Wolff.  The happiness of her whole life was centred in him and his love.  If he refused the Eysvogels the aid besought by the old merchant who, in his humility, seemed a different man——­

Here her father indignantly broke in, ordering her to disturb him no longer.  But now the heritage of his own nature asserted itself in Els and, with an outburst of indignation, she pointed to the picture of her mother, whose kind heart certainly could not have endured to see a broken-hearted man, on whose rescue the happiness of her own child depended, turned from her door like an importunate beggar.

At this the man whose locks had long been grey sprang from his chair with the agility of a youth, exclaiming in vehement excitement:  “To embitter the hours devoted to the most sacred grief is genuine Eysvogel selfishness.  Everything for themselves!  What do they care for others?  I except your Wolff; let the future decide what concerns him and you.  I will stand by you.  But to hope for happiness and peace-nay, even a life without bitter sorrow for you from the rest of the kin—­is to expect to gather sweet pears from juniper bushes.  Ever since your betrothal your mother and I have had no sleep, disturbed whenever we talked to each other about your being condemned to live under the same roof with that old devil, the countess, her pitiable daughter, and that worthless Siebenburg.  But within the past few hours all this has been changed.  The table-cloth has been cut between the Eysvogels and the Ortliebs.  No power in the world can ever join it.  I have not told you what has happened.  Now you may learn that you——­But first listen, and then decide on whose side you will stand.

“Early this morning I went to the session of the Council.  In the market-place I met first one member of it, then a second, third, and fourth; each asked me what had happened to the beautiful E, my lovely little daughter.  Gradually I learned what had reached their ears.  Yesterday evening, on his way home from here, the man outside, Casper Eysvogel, sullied your—­our—­good name, child, in a way I have just learned the particulars.  He boasted, in the presence of those estimable old gentlemen, the Brothers Ebner, that he had flung at my feet the ring which bound you to his son.  You had been surprised at midnight, he said, in the arms of a Swiss knight, and that base scoundrel Siebenburg, his daughter’s husband, dared at the gaming-table, before a number of knights and gentlemen—­among them young Hans Gross, Veit Holzschuher, and others-to put your interview with the Swiss in so false a light that No, I cannot bring my lips to utter it——­