s from the wash, and then go and tell her father
that the house was on fire. No almond-tart ever came to grief in her
hands, and her butter-sauce is always of exactly the right thickness,
because she always stirs it from left to right, never the other way. As
Elias Roos has just poured out the last of the bottle into old Franz's
glass, I further remark, hastily, that it is because he's going to
marry her that she's so fond of Traugott; for what in the world would
become of her if she weren't to get married? After dinner Roos proposed
to the strangers a walk round the walls. How gladly would Traugott have
made his escape and been by himself! Never had he known anything like
the thoughts, feelings, and sensations which he had experienced to-day.
Escape he could not, however, for just as he was slipping out at the
door, without even kissing Christina's hand, Herr Elias seized him by
the coat-tails, crying, 'Come, partner; you're not going to give us the
slip, are you, son-in-law?' So he had to stay.

"A well known professor of natural philosophy was of opinion that
Nature, in her capacity of a skilled experimentalist, has somewhere or
other set up a tremendous electrical machine, from which mysterious
conductors stretch all through our lives; and, though we avoid them and
keep clear of them as well as we can, at some given moment or other we
can't help treading on them, and then the flash and the shock dart
through us, altering everything in us completely. No doubt Traugott had
stepped on to one of these conductors at the moment when he began
sketching the old man and the page, without having any idea that they
were standing behind him in the flesh; for the strange apparition of
them had gone darting through him like a flash of lightning, and he
felt that he now clearly knew and understood things which had formerly
been but presages and dreams. The shyness which used to tie his tongue
when conversation turned upon things which lay hidden, like holy
mysteries, in the depths of his being, had vanished; and so, when the
uncle began finding fault with the wonderful figures, partly painted,
partly carved, in the Artus-Hof, as being 'in bad taste,' and
particularly the soldier-pictures as being 'wild and extravagant,'
Traugott boldly maintained that, though it was possible that they might
not strictly conform to the canons of art, still, it had been the case
with him, as well as with many others, that a marvellous world of
imagi