But you will make no bad use of what I have said; I could not
help speaking out, and my words and acts needn't shun the light. Yes,
yes, dear sir, there is much to be learned from God's word."

While uttering these sentences, broken by numerous pauses, she had
reached the street door; here, taking a friendly farewell of Edwin, she
crossed the street to a shop.

He, too, turned away. He had not the courage to look back at the second
story windows from the other side of the street; the fair occupant
might think it strange that he was still hanging about the house. And
yet how much he would have given, for even a fleeting glance which
might dispel the dense cloud of suspicion and sorrow, which during the
loquacious gossip of the landlady had fallen more and more heavily on
his heart.

CHAPTER IX.

Meantime Reginchen's birthday had been celebrated in the
Dorotheen-strasse.

First of all came the dinner in her parents' great sitting-room, at
which, as usual, the journeymen and apprentices were present. Madame
Feyertag insisted that, before coming to the table, each should wash
his hands at the pump, and brush his jacket. To-day this ceremony,
which frequently was somewhat hurried, was performed with a
thoroughness that proved the homage each offered his master's daughter
to be no mere formality, but an offering from the heart. The head
journeyman had even availed himself of his superior social position, so
far as to appear with a bouquet, which, with a few well-chosen words,
he presented to the blushing child. Madame Feyertag pretended not to
notice this. She seemed to have some suspicion that the worthy man
might consider it a standing tradition in the family, that the head
journeyman must marry the master's daughter, and though she herself had
experienced the blessings of such a _mesalliance_, she hoped for a
better match for her only daughter. The shoemaker had no such
aspirations. When he reflected upon the past, he remembered very
different attentions, which even without any festal occasion, he had
paid the female members of his master's family. He was in a very good
humor, eat three large pieces of the famous plum cake, and finally
ordered two bottles of wine to be brought from the cellar, in which he
drank Reginchen's health in a speech, that spite of the strange
admixture of fatherly tenderness and incomprehensible allusions to
Schopenhauer, was admired by all the journeyme