are
our oaks, and they afford a glorious wood for lasting. Mill-wheels are
not to be cut out of poplars. For the rest, a shrewd handsome woman
must know how to tame a rake, and every one will respect the female
slipper when it is wielded merely for a man's benefit."

"God deliver me from such a castigatory office; I should soon sink
under it."

--"Or if you long for a great fortune, you have but to give the sign: I
have observed how Christopher Friend, whom you have drawn hither,
circles about you at a distance. He is a brisk widower, who was rich
from the first, and to that has inherited much from his late wife, the
Lauterbachin from Jauer. You would be able to bury yourself under your
gold bags."

"Shame on me if that could ever determine my choice!"

"Nor has honour any thing to say against it. Christopher's father is
burgomaster of Schweidnitz, where he rules it bravely, almost like a
little king. The Friends belong to the Patricians of the city, and are
therefore nearly as good as half nobles; in Augsburg or Nuremberg they
would be reckoned nobles, and admissible to the tournay; moreover they
are already allied to the family of Schindel by marriage."

"If you love me, uncle; cease to speak for the sycophant. If, to save
my son's life, I were compelled to choose between this Christopher and
his brother the wild Francis, by heavens I would choose the latter! I
do indeed fear the bear that roars and rushes on me with uplifted paws,
but the gliding serpent is a horror to my inmost soul."

"Well, the comparison is not particularly flattering to either of the
brothers," exclaimed Schindel, laughing. But on the sudden he was
silent, for there was a knocking at the door, and the two Friends
entered the apartment.

"We come in our father's service, noble lady," said Christopher, with a
courteous inclination: "He gives a ball and banquet the day after
tomorrow, and most kindly requests you to grace the festival with your
presence."

"I have not yet put off the mourning weeds for my husband; at the same
time I set as much value by the intended honour as if it had been in my
power to accept it."

"Your year of widowhood is already over, and my father would deem it a
very worthy proof of his kinswoman's friendship, if out of regard to
him she were to lay aside her mourning. Much as it may become you, it
is still only a useless remembrance of a loss, the greatness of which
you feel but too deeply without that."

"