as on specially good terms with old Sperber, because he too had a
strong objection to the way things were going down in the town. "That's
all silly impudence down there," he would say. "Well, we'll see how far
they'll go with it--we'll see. Those fellows in the town might give
over scribbling; no cock would crow the louder, nor would loaves of
bread get any smaller. But we ...! Suppose we up there, and people like
us up and down the country were to stop working, what do you think
would happen then, my friend? Simply the end of the world--all up,
done!

"And so I don't set foot down there, if I can help it. I don't let it
irritate me any more--God forbid. I'm very well off up here, I'm bound
to say--and I wouldn't change places with any of those frogs that have
swelled to such unnatural proportions down there in the marsh."

Indeed, the old fellows up on the Ettersberg often held discourses over
their bezique which were almost blasphemous, if you consider that they
were talking about the greatest man of Germany; without whom Germany
would not be Germany; the man to produce whom nature labored for
thousands of years, tossed up millions and millions of stupid or
average heads, more or less lacking in sense and reason.

That down there in Weimar at last the barren tree of humanity had borne
a fruit seemed to the card-players of the Ettersberg a matter of no
importance; but the tree went on producing its green leaves quite
joyously. To them this fruit, indeed, seemed to be not a fruit at all
but a blister, a perfectly unnecessary excrescence.

And they had nothing to complain of, heaven knew, up on their
Ettersberg; their fine properties were prospering.

Herr and Frau Sperber worked together, getting through the day's
business honestly and good-humoredly. Very early in the morning you
might see brisk Frau Sperber in her pink print apron, with her keys
jingling at her waist, cross the courtyard to hold a general inspection
of the stables and stock-rooms; and Herr Sperber's huge rubber boots
carried their fat little master through hedge and ditch, over ploughed
field and meadow and woodland.

On the Rauchfuss place a brave woman was working beyond her strength;
but she made it go--the two properties showed but little difference. To
be sure, it would have been much easier for Frau Rauchfuss if her jewel
of a husband had been of a less jovial disposition and had not
considered it his principal duty to show the people down