ite handkerchief pressed to her eyes; and Lenz said, "I
could not help crying so much, but you know for all that how happy I
am; and we will remember to keep our honour one and the same, and, with
the help of God, we shall preserve it entire. And when I see what a
family you connect me with, I can never forget it. And, please God!
these shall be the last tears we ever shed together. Take off your
gloves, dear Annele, I have none."

Annele shook her head, but said nothing.

Dinner! dinner! dinner! was called out three times, and certainly
people seemed to eat threefold. There was only one person who
complained, "I can't eat, I cant swallow a single mouthful; it is a sad
pity when there are so many good things before me; but I can't!" and
this was Franzl.

Even before every one had dined, dancing had begun in the room above,
and the bride and bridegroom went backwards and forwards from the
dancing room to the dinner table.

"It is too bad in the Techniker to come to my wedding," said Annele to
Lenz, on the stairs. "No one invited him; pray don't speak to him."

"Oh, never mind him! I wish to see no one dissatisfied to-day," said
Lenz, kindly. "I am only vexed that Faller is not here. I sent a
messenger to him, but I see he is not come."

Pilgrim danced the first dance with Annele, who said to him, "You are a
first-rate dancer."

"But not a first-rate painter, you think?"

"I never said so."

"At all events, you won't be painted by me; and yet I had rather a
fancy to-day to take your portrait. Besides, I don't think you would be
easy to take: you are pretty so long as you are talking, but when you
are silent there is something in your face I don't like. I can't say
what it is."

"If you could only paint as well as you can chatter!"

"Well! well! you shall never be painted by me!

"I have no wish to go down to posterity painted by you," said Annele,
who soon recovered her good humour.

The bridal pair were summoned to the lower room, where the most
respectable of the connexions had assembled round Petrowitsch. They
wished him to declare distinctly what sum he intended to bequeath to
Lenz. Don Bastian, Pilgrim's cunning landlord, was the principal
speaker. He had a good opportunity of larding his shabby wedding gift
with another man's bacon, and he drove Petrowitsch into such a corner,
that he could scarcely slip through his fingers. The blacksmith, who
valued himself on being Lenz's only neighbour,--he live