use were to dart in at
her chamber-window, she would make haste to feed the canary and lock up
the clean linen from the wash, and then assuredly hasten down into the
office and inform Herr Elias Roos that by that time his house also was
on fire. She has never had an almond-cake spoilt, and her melted-butter
always thickens properly, owing to the fact that she never stirs the
spoon round towards the left, but always towards the right. But since
Herr Elias Roos has poured out the last bumper of old French wine, I
will only hasten to add that pretty Christina is uncommonly fond of
Traugott because he is going to marry her; for what in the name of
wonder should she do if she did not get married?

After dinner Herr Elias Roos proposed to his friends to take a walk on
the ramparts. Although Traugott, whose mind had never been stirred by
so many wonderful and extraordinary things as to-day, would very much
have liked to escape the company, he could not contrive it; for, just
as he was going out of the door, without having even kissed his
betrothed's hand, Herr Elias caught him by the coat-tails, crying, "My
honoured son-in-law, my good colleague, but you're not going to leave
us?" And so he had to stay.

A certain professor of physics once stated the theory that the _Anima
Mundi_, or Spirit of the World, had, as a skilful experimentalist,
constructed somewhere an excellent electric machine, and from it
proceed certain very mysterious wires, which pass through the lives of
us all; these we do our best to creep round and avoid, but at some
moment or other we must tread upon them, and then there passes a flash
and a shock through our souls, suddenly altering the forms of
everything within them. Upon this thread Traugott must surely have trod
in the moment that he was unconsciously sketching the two persons who
stood in living shape behind him, for the singular appearance of the
strangers had struck him with all the violence of a lightning-flash;
and he now felt as if he had very clear conceptions of all those things
which he had hitherto only dimly guessed at and dreamt about. The
shyness which at other times had always fettered his tongue so soon as
the conversation turned upon things which lay concealed like holy
secrets at the bottom of his heart had now left him; and hence it was
that, when the uncle attacked the curious half-painted, half-carved
pictures in Arthur's Hall as wanting in taste, and then proceeded more
particu