Kitabı oku: «The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 11», sayfa 35
It was a height where, between stones and the shifting sands of the dunes, low bushes and a few taller trees, curiously torn by the wind, struggled with laborious persistency to wring their existence from the hard soil, to defend it against the drifting sand and the storms. It was a lonely spot where one could hold communion with land and sea, with the clouds and gulls, with one's own thoughts. There Grips had built Fränzchen a simple seat and there, on the eve of the wedding, sat Hans Unwirrsch and Franziska Götz and spoke of their own fate and of Kleophea and watched the sun go down.
They spoke much of Kleophea while they looked at the sea above which the fog had closed in after the beautiful brilliant day. Poor Kleophea had entirely disappeared; no answer had come to any of the letters that Fränzchen had written in the course of the year. They knew nothing of her – it was so strange that just on this evening her image should keep ever rising before them anew, that their thoughts would not remain centred on their own happiness. Hans and Franziska did not know that the ship that bore Kleophea Stein was gliding along behind the gray fog that was rising on the waves. They did not know that Kleophea was at sea when, on the following day Pastor Josias Tillenius joined their hands for time and eternity!
On the eighth of September the sun would not come out from behind the clouds all day. On the evening before it had gone down, as the sea-folk say, "in a bag" and that meant dull weather for the next few days. It was a sultry day on which not a breath of air stirred, on which the same sad gray covered heaven and earth, on which one might have wished for a heavy shower if it had not been a wedding day.
It did not rain on Fränzchen's bridal wreath, it did not rain on Pastor Tillenius's excellent words, it did not rain on the grim emotion of Uncle Rudolf and Colonel von Bullau, it did not rain on the jubilance of the mansion and the village of Grunzenow. Johannes Unwirrsch and Franziska Götz gave each other their hands as they had already given each other their hearts; after the pastor's address Lieutenant Götz made a speech at the table and, following the peal of the organ and the sexton's cantata, came the musicians from Freudenstadt whom Colonel von Bullau had had fetched in a farm wagon to play merry dance music. The Colonel entertained the whole village in his castle and as Major domus and arbiter elegantiarum Grips did not show himself as he was but as what he could be: amiable, obliging, tender toward the fair, courteous toward the strong sex.
They danced in the great hall and there was endless applause when the Colonel opened the ball with the young bride. It was a pleasure to look into the Lieutenant's radiant eyes; it was a pleasure to watch Pastor Josias Tillenius talking to Mother Jörenson; and it was a particular pleasure to see how the Assistant Pastor and bridegroom Hans Unwirrsch fell a victim to the dizzy goddess Terpsichore and to use an expression of the experienced seamen who were present, "lurched and pitched" through the room. The oldest people, even the great-grandmother Margarethe Jörenson could not remember another such day; the enjoyment rose from moment to moment and carried old and young with it; half confused the bridal couple that with difficulty had found refuge in a quiet corner, looked at the tumult.
"Fire at sea!" Who shouted that? Where had that cry come from?
"Fire at sea! Fire at sea!" – the words went through the festive throng like an electric shock. The music broke off, the dancers stopped as if spellbound; those who were at the refreshment tables sprang from their chairs and the Malayan song that the old one-armed first boatswain Stephen Groote was singing to a small appreciative circle, was smothered in his throat.
Hans and Fränzchen too had jumped up although at first they did not grasp the reason of the panic-like fear. The Colonel pushed his way through the room towards the door followed by the majority of his male guests. Those who remained behind ran about excitedly or to the windows that looked out on the sea. Franziska seized Pastor Tillenius's arm.
"Oh, for God's sake, what is it? What has happened?"
"There, there! Truly! Oh God have mercy on them!" cried the old man who had thrown open the window and was pointing to the water. "A ship on fire – there, there!"
The young couple's eyes followed the trembling hand; their hearts stood still with terrible fear —
"There! There!"
It had grown to be half dusk and the transition from the gray light of the day had been so unnoticeable that not one of the joyful wedding guests had thought of it. There was still no breeze to stir the haze that hung above land and sea and completely veiled the horizon; only those who lived on the shore could know what the red glow out there meant; the hearts of the two children of the inland only beat the harder because of the unknown terror.
A burning ship! Hundreds of people in the most horrible danger of death! Their senses swam at the thought, at the hundred fearful scenes that passed through their minds.
The Grunzenow mansion was emptied of its guests; even the women rushed through the corridors and hurried down to the shore. When Pastor Josias Tillenius, Hans and Fränzchen arrived at the boat landing they found the fishermen as well as Colonel von Bullau, the Lieutenant and the farm hands hard at work getting ready to start, while the women ran hither and thither in feverish excitement pointing and gesticulating toward the glow in the northwest and screaming. Hans Unwirrsch took his place among the men and pulled and pushed with the others; the old pastor sought to bring the women to reason or at least to calm them, and his assistant's bride helped him to the best of her ability. In a happy moment the wind from the south, a true angel of God, unfolded its wings and filled the sails of the boats of Grunzenow; only the oldest men, the women and the children remained behind on the shore while the younger men sailed out to bring help. In the first boat to leave the shore were the Colonel and the Assistant Pastor; Lieutenant Rudolf Götz had sunk down completely exhausted and his niece knelt beside him and held his white head in her lap; – but the fearful brilliance in the distance grew more and more distinct.
"It's a steamer, or they couldn't make such headway against the wind," cried one of the old seamen who had had to stay behind.
"They are trying to run her ashore!" said another.
All sorts of guesses as to the course of the vessel were made. Some thought she was from Stettin on her way to Stockholm but there were many who were sure that was not so. Others thought it was the St. Petersburg packet on her trip from Lübeck to Kronstadt. This view was shared by the majority, among them Pastor Tillenius.
The boats of Grunzenow had long disappeared in the increasing darkness. Fuel was gathered on the shore and a tremendous fire kindled and on the shore itself as well as in the cottages preparations were made in case the people from the burning ship should be brought home by the men of Grunzenow.
"God bless you, my child, courageous little heart," said Pastor Josias pressing Fränzchen's hand. "Your wedding day is having a bad end but you are just made for the wife of a pastor of fishermen. You are fulfilling your first duties with honor; God bless you and give you a long, helpful, brave life!"
Lieutenant Götz was sitting on a boat that was turned upside down; his old enemy was at him again, he held his foot in both hands and clenched his teeth with pain.
"Yes, yes, old chap," he cried. "Here we cripples sit in the sand and gape. Take me in your cloak, Fränzchen, carry me home and give me some bread and sop! Sapperment, and Bullau is two years older than I!"
A scream from the crowd interrupted the Lieutenant's lamentations. The reflection of the fire on the sea lost its brilliance rather rapidly and suddenly went out altogether. A deep silence followed the cry of fright; all remarks that were made now were spoken in the lowest whisper. It was as if no one dared to breathe aloud any more.
"They are saved or – lost!" said the old pastor at length, took off his cap and folded his hands. He repeated the prayer for the shipwrecked, and men, women and children prayed fervently with him; and yet the fathers of these old men who were now praying had claimed the right of salvage in all its abominableness and had practised it.
An hour of deathly anxiety passed, then lights appeared again in the darkness on the sea. They were the torches of the returning boats and now everyone who still had any voice left cried out again. After half an hour of the most painful expectation the first boat, filled to overflowing, slid up to the landing.
"Saved! Saved! Sauvé! Sauvé!" rang the shout in German and French. In half-mad ecstasy the first of those saved sank down and laughing and crying convulsively, they kissed the earth, embraced and kissed the people of Grunzenow who came up to them busily offering them all possible refreshment and help.
Colonel von Bullau and the Assistant Pastor were not in this first boat; but it was now learnt that the burnt vessel was the "Adelaide" from Havre de Grâce bound for St. Petersburg with a cargo of French wines and a few passengers. The excitement was still too great, however, for details of the fire to be asked and given.
The men of Grunzenow had brought sixty-four unfortunate people ashore, some of them injured; only the last fishing boat was still to come with the Colonel and Hans Unwirrsch.
"They are bringing the captain and the women" was the answer Fränzchen received to her anxious questions. "They must be here soon now, nothing has happened to them."
Franziska Unwirrsch pressed her hand to her heart and turned back to her duties. She had to act as interpreter for the French crew and the village of Grunzenow. She moved about in the confused, wild tumult like an angel bringing help and comfort; Uncle Rudolf, who had also not quite forgotten his French, had lost his head to a much greater extent than had his niece.
She was just kneeling beside a bearded, half-naked Provençal sailor who had broken both legs when renewed shouting announced the arrival of the last boat. In his pain the Provençal held her hands so tightly that she could not have freed herself even if she had tried. She could not even turn round to look at her husband; but between the words of comfort that she was speaking to the poor injured man all her thoughts turned to the landing where it had suddenly grown perfectly quiet.
She was listening with all her soul when a stir went through the people. The high voice of a woman cried with a foreign accent:
"Where is she? O ciel, where is she?"
The Provençal let go of the gentle, merciful hand that he had held so tightly till now; a woman threw herself on her knees beside Fränzchen, seized her wildly with her arms, kissed her gown, her hand, sobbed and screamed. The burning pile of wood and the torches threw their flickering light on the excited stranger; Hans, too, bent down to his wife, – it was a dream, only a dream! How did Henriette Trublet come to be on the shore of Grunzenow?
"It's she! It's she! Oh, all Saints! Oh, Mademoiselle! Oh, Madame! ma mignonne, blessings on your sweet face! Praise God! Oh, what a miracle! It is she!"
"Henriette! Henriette Trublet!" murmured Fränzchen, looking at the French girl with fixed, doubting eyes.
"Yes, yes, la pauvre Henriette! And the other! The other!"
Hans Unwirrsch held his wife in his arms and drew her head to his breast.
"Oh, love, love, whom do you think we have brought ashore out of the fire and the raging sea?"
He led her gently down to the shore; she trembled violently; speechless, she swayed between her husband and the French girl as she walked through the crowd of natives and foreigners who respectfully made way for her.
The captain of the "Adelaide" was sitting on a stone with his head in his hands. Beside him stood Colonel von Bullau as if he were again on one of his battlefields. Lieutenant Rudolf Götz was on his knees in the sand and in his lap he held the head of an unconscious woman —
"Kleophea! Kleophea!" cried Franziska, sinking down with folded hands beside the unconscious form.
"Yes, Kleophea!" said the Lieutenant, and gnashing his teeth he added: "And she is alone! Praise God!"
Chapter XXXVI
Thus destiny had been fulfilled and, incomprehensibly strange as it all seemed at first, it had yet been quite simple and natural. We do not understand, either, the fate of the little bird that suddenly drops out of the air dead at our feet until we have held the little body in our hand for a while; – and then we do understand it.
They carried poor Kleophea to the vicarage and first prepared a bed for her in a room that looked out on the sea; but she could not bear the sound of the water and, shudderingly, in the delirium of fever, demanded to be taken from that place and they had to put her in another room where the beat of the waves could not be heard so clearly.
There she lay for more than a week, stupefied and unconscious, without suspecting that the friends whom she called in her fever were so near to her. It was only very gradually that she came back to consciousness and for days Franziska, Lieutenant Rudolf and Hans Unwirrsch were only phantoms of her dream in whose reality she could not believe.
Franziska Unwirrsch did not leave the sick woman's bedside and she, she alone, succeeded in keeping alive for a time, though only a short one, the dying flame of life in the Kleophea who had once been so full of life, so beautiful and vivacious. The time of delusion had passed, the sand had run through, in her naked helplessness the once so proud being lay there, trembling and bleeding and, in expectation of the last dark hour, Kleophea Stein freed her heart as far as possible from all that was earthly. She had nothing more to conceal. All the gay-colored veils that she had formerly drawn over her graceful head, her laughing life, all the veils from under which she had formerly peeped out so teasingly, so light-heartedly, were torn and tattered; the merciless storm of life had whirled them about and away. Kleophea told of the year that had passed since she left her parents' house so dispiritedly, hopelessly, wearily, that it was terrible to hear. But her head lay on Fränzchen's breast while she spoke and she had given her hand to the Assistant Pastor; – it was only to Hans and his wife that she told everything.
"Oh, it was only the maddest longing that drove me out of my parents' house; I have no excuse whatever. My heart was so cold, so empty; it makes me shudder to remember in what a bad, wicked mood I followed that – that man. Oh, what have I been, and how shall I die! You are good, and you know what I was in my mother's house. Did I know anything of love? I did not go away for love's sake! You see, I was suited all too well to Dr. Théophile Stein – I can reproach him with nothing, nothing. It had to be so, I wanted it so. In his dismal hunger the demon that was in me sought for one like himself and when he found what he sought the two beasts seized each other with their teeth. Ah, poverina, it was I who got the worst of it after all!"
Hans and Franziska shuddered at this dreadful lament; but at the same moment it seemed as if some of her former vivacious grace came back to the poor sick girl. She raised herself smiling, took tighter hold of the Assistant's hand and said:
"How I did torment you! How I did laugh at you! Oh, Fränzchen, Fränzchen, it was only yesterday that we were sitting in Park Street together —l'eau dormante– the hunger pastor – poor little Aimé. How I tormented you, how I sinned against you, – it was so funny, and everybody made such faces, it would have made a tombstone laugh."
Kleophea's smile faded, she hid her face in the pillows and sobbed softly. When Franziska bent over her with gentle, soothing words, she pushed her away and cried:
"Leave me alone, go away! Let me die alone, I have deserved love from no one, no one, and I have killed my father! Don't you know that I have killed my father? Why don't you leave me alone with my thoughts? They're enough to torment me to my dying hour – "
The next day Hans and Fränzchen learnt more about the unhappy woman's life in Paris. The more clearly Dr. Théophile Stein realized that he had erred in his calculations, the more miserably did he treat his wife. The certainty that Kleophea's mother would never forgive the step her daughter had taken relieved a character like Dr. Stein's from any obligation to keep up his smiling disguise. He had wanted money, much money and had received not it but only a burden that would make every step that he took through life, the way he looked upon life, infinitely more difficult. The ground that he had so cleverly won in the big German city, on which he might have built so firmly and well, he had lost entirely by this false move. He gnashed his teeth when he thought how his game had turned out. And yet he had considered all the probabilities so carefully, he knew how to calculer les chances so thoroughly. Nothing, nothing! There he sat in Paris and his wife had brought him nothing but a letter from her father telling her of his forgiveness. It was absurd, but it was also enough to drive one mad.
"He tore the letter up and threw the pieces at my feet," related Kleophea in the vicarage in Grunzenow, "and I – I had thought I was his master, I had the strength, I had the will, I had the brains! Because at home I went out unpunished, because no one at home had the power to control me, I thought the world was like my mother's house, to be moved by a laugh, a pout, a shrug of the shoulders. I had to try to move it by tears, and I tried my best, you may believe; but even that did not succeed and I often told myself that such a miserable, stupid, foolish little thing as I was had never yet sat five flights high in the quartier du Marais and looked at her misery in the glass. I learnt much, much, Mrs. Fränzchen Unwirrsch, but when I was in my mother's house I should never have believed that I should forget how to yawn. I was not bored in Paris, I had to make my black mourning dress for my dead father and to defend it against – against my husband. Oh, he had a large circle of acquaintance; many people came to the house and they all hated black. Oh, it was a mad life and if it had not been for my stupid, confused, aching head I think I might have played a very charming part. I think that we weren't any too particular about our honor, we needed money altogether too much to bother about ridiculous prejudices. We entered into correspondence with all sorts of curious persons of high position in Germany and wrote letters for which we were very well paid. I think that, at the request of different governments, we paid attention to the health of some of our countrymen who were not trusted at home. We made ourselves very useful for we were very hungry; – I had to be ashamed for two. We entertained too and played for high stakes and people liked to come to our house very much, – the disgrace threatened to drown us and it was a pity that I did not know how to swim as well as monsieur mon époux. – Leave me alone, Oh, leave me alone!"
The crew of the burnt "Adelaide" had gradually left the village of Grunzenow and gone by land to the nearest port. The injured had recovered and the last to leave was the Provençal who had broken his legs, and who parted from Colonel von Bullau with a thousand blessings. Grips drove him to Freudenstadt where he put him into the stage coach with a well-filled purse. Only the vicarage still kept its guests – for a short time and during that time Henriette Trublet had also a great deal to tell. She had kept her word, she had sought Dr. Théophile Stein and Kleophea and she had found them.
"Voyez," she said, "I vould 'ave go after zem to ze end of ze vorld; but zey vere only go to Paree. Oh, monsieur le curé, Oh, mademoi – madame, ze good God who bring me to you in zat night, he 'as also bring me in my distress to ze pauvre enfant and ze bad man, zat I might do my part for 'er and keep ma parole – voyez vous? And if I should be a tousand year old I vould not forget ze night in vhich you cover me viz your mantle and give me your 'and, and your 'art speak to mine. Viz your money I came to ma patrie and to Paree and zought I 'ave dreamt a dream of zat bad Allemagne, —vraiment un très mauvais songe! Zere were my friends et le Palais royal et les Tuileries et Minette, et Loulou, et les Champs, et Arthur, Albert et les autres and I like a fish in ze water. But I have zought of ze cigale and ze fourmi and of ze Allemagne, of monsieur le curé and mademoiselle l'ange and I 'ave sit still like a mouse and 'ave made ze modes and looked only for ze villian monsieur Théophile and ze poor lady. Zat vas not difficult, to find zem. Zere vere Albert and Celestin, Armand, le Vicomte de la Dératerie, zen mon petit agent de change, I can ask zem in ze street and soon I know vat I vish. O, mon Dieu, voilà la petite in ze black robe and so pale, so pale, and such eyes. My heart bleed; but I 'ave said, courage, and 'ave asked ze concierge and his vife and zen I know vat I must do. Me voilà en robe bleue viz Armand. Mon cher, I say, 'ere I am back from ze vilaine Allemagne. Vive Paris, mon petit cœur, 'ow are you? Vat shall ve do? Comment vont les plaisirs? Théophile is back also, and viz a vife. You know how ve 'ave stood to each ozer, he and I, je m'en vengerai; I am one of you just like before, take me to him! Armand laughs like a enragé and ve shake 'ands. On ze following evening I come like ze Commandeur in ze Festin de Pierre and Armand does not know certainly how my poor 'eart beat on ze stairs. Monsieur Armand! Mademoiselle Henriette Trublet!—Voilà les autres and ze little pale lady en deuil and —Théophile! Ah, monsieur le curé, j'ai fait une scène à cet homme! I 'ave put zis man vell in ze scene."
Fränzchen and Hans looked at Kleophea frightened; but she only nodded, smiled faintly and said:
"It was well done. God bless her for her kind heart. She came at the right time, – but it was really a very funny scene and the people laughed at us very much. I cannot deny, to be sure, that at the beginning I lost my head a little and doubted very much whether I should keep my reason over night; but when I woke from my stupefaction and found myself in Henriette's arms and she called to me that Fränzchen had sent her; – when she called me her poor dear lamb and flew at my husband with her finger nails, I soon knew where I was. Oh, it was merry, so merry. Wasn't it, Henriette?"
Henriette was crying too much to be able to answer the question. She only shook her head and, passionately excited, threw herself down on her knees beside the sick woman's couch to kiss her lips and hands again and again.
Now, Kleophea told in her fashion how from that evening on Théophile had made her life more of a hell than ever, how she had spent her days in idle, unoccupied torment, how, trembling, she had counted the minutes in the night and listened for the step that she feared on the stairs. She told of her secret, timid meetings with Henriette, of senseless plans to free herself from that unendurable, terrible existence, of thoughts of death and hopes of death and finally how the idea of flight had occurred to her, had stuck in her mind and become a resolution. It so happened that at that time a very badly composed and spelt letter came from Mademoiselle Euphrosine Lechargeon, a girl friend of Henriette's, then in St. Petersburg. This friend wrote of the good fortune that the Parisian demoiselles who understood the art of finery had among the "Mongolians" and reported that she, Euphrosine Lechargeon, was the mistress of a magnificent establishment and enfant gâtée of all sorts of ladies and gentlemen ending in – off, – ow, – sky, – eff, – iev, etc., and that Eulalie, Veronique, Valerie and Georgette were also getting on well and that Philippine had made a brilliant match and had married Colonel Timotheus Trichinowitsch Resonovsky.
"Partons pour la Tartarie!" Henriette had cried. "Madame Kleophea has 'er jewels, I 'ave saved zirty-five francs. Allons au bout du monde! Let us save ourselves from zis traitor, filou and vicked juif. It is better to beg among messieurs les Esquimaux zan to breaze ze same air viz zis 'orror. Ve vill go as two sisters, ve vill open a business en compagnie, ve will trow ze polar bears into amazement, ve vill build a château d'Espagne en Russie. Allons, allons vive l'aventure!"
Kleophea had carried the idea of flight about with her for long, miserable weeks; she had sought in vain to fight against it, it returned again and again and the chains that bound the unhappy woman to that man became more and more unendurable. The day came on which Dr. Théophile of Kröppel Street raised his hand against his wife and struck her; the following night Kleophea fled and hid herself in Henriette's attic room till the preparations for the distant journey were completed.
"They probably did not look for me anywhere except in the morgue," said Moses Freudenstein's wife in the vicarage in Grunzenow.
From Paris to Havre de Grâce, then the sea, the ship, the journey! Everything was indefinite, blurred, intangible and incomprehensible!
"Les côtes de l'Allemagne!"
The shout pierced Kleophea to the marrow. Poor, homeless, wandering soul! Oh, to lie still in the grave, there, where the dark, hazy strip, the German coast, lies on the horizon. It is as if she had once heard a song of firm, green ground, green trees, of a quiet, peaceful churchyard among the green, and could not remember it exactly and yet was obliged to keep on trying to find it again. The ship went its way, groaning and panting; again the evening came and the coast of her native country disappeared in the dusk; – she has not yet found the sad old song and the ship groaned and panted all night long and on into the next day, the gray, hazy day.
Kleophea leant immovable against the rail of the ship and looked into the haze above the water and sought to remember the old song. She had been told that the German coast was quite near again and that without the fog they would long since have seen it.
Henriette Trublet told how a quarter of an hour before the fire broke out she had found Kleophea leaning against the side of the ship, unconscious, and that during all the horrors that followed she remained in the same condition. She was not awake until she had reached the vicarage in Grunzenow and lay in Fränzchen's arms!..
How the waves roll up toward the vicarage that looks out from its hill on the expanse of the Baltic! The waves of the sea do not reach the poor little building; neither can they do it any harm however fierce they may at times appear. They may swallow up islands, villages, towns, light-houses, churches and churchyards. They may wash out the mouldering coffins of long-buried generations and throw them before the feet of the shuddering present, wound about with sea-weed, covered with slime. The waves of the great sea can be wrathful, very wrathful; but the little house on the hill where stands the church of the poor village of Grunzenow is secure, it stands on safe ground and whoever takes refuge beneath its low roof is well protected. But best protected of all was Kleophea's poor, erring heart; it, above all, might rest.
Until the middle of the winter Moses Freudenstein's wife lay still and peaceful and was no longer afraid. The cruel scenes of the near past faded, God gave poor, beautiful Kleophea a happy death.
When you have become accustomed to the voice of the sea it lulls you very gently to sleep. It seems to you as if to eternity had been given a tongue with which to sing the children of earth to sleep.
It was touching to see how old Uncle Rudolf would not leave his niece's bedside, how he held her head on his breast, how he talked to her – how he cried outside her door. They all wept about poor, beautiful Kleophea: Pastor Tillenius, his assistant Hans Unwirrsch, Fränzchen Unwirrsch, Henriette Trublet, Colonel von Bullau – all of them.
Once more Kleophea wrote to her mother but this letter too was returned unopened; that was the last hurt that her poor, harassed heart received. Hans Unwirrsch had written to Dr. Théophile Stein and even though his letter was not returned no answer came to it. Nothing more was heard in Grunzenow of Dr. Théophile Stein who in Kröppel Street had been Moses Freudenstein, until in the year 1852 when he, despised by those who had made use of him, despised by those against whom he had been used, received the title of "Privy Councillor." To all decent men he was an outcast, a pariah.
In the little churchyard in Grunzenow there was a half-sunken mound beneath which there slept an unknown woman whose body had been washed ashore there by the waves many, many years before. Beside that mound Kleophea was buried, who had been cast ashore by a still wilder sea than the Baltic. Fränzchen had picked out the spot for the poor, shipwrecked girl and a more suitable one could hardly have been found in the whole world. Johannes Unwirrsch preached the funeral sermon; but much as he had to say, just as little could he put it in words; still those who stood nearest to the coffin and to the open grave all understood him.
Franziska Unwirrsch was a good guardian and gardener for Kleophea's grave and many a flower that usually would not live on that bleak shore, of the existence of which the village of Grunzenow had known nothing until then, throve under the care of her blessed hand behind the churchyard wall that protected the mound from the sea wind.
Franziska's hand was blessed, indeed, everything throve under its care – the vicarage, the castle, the village.
Lieutenant Rudolf Götz recovered but slowly from the heavy shock which the death of his niece gave him. For a long time he was again tied to his armchair and Fränzchen could not kiss away from his lips every curse that he sent after Dr. Théophile Stein. The Colonel became more and more gallant, his castle more and more homelike, more and more he came to realize that "without the womenfolk the world was not worth a round of powder." For him as well as for Uncle Rudolf fate had still many a good year in store.
