could have imagined a kindly, simple,
neighborly existence there. It in no wise suggested the calling of an
artist, perhaps because artists had not begun in Durer's time to take
themselves so objectively as they do now, but it implied the life of a
prosperous citizen, and it expressed the period.

The Marches wrote their names in the visitors' book, and paid the
visitor's fee, which also bought them tickets in an annual lottery for a
reproduction of one of Durer's pictures; and then they came away, by no
means dissatisfied with his house. By its association with his sojourns
in Italy it recalled visits to other shrines, and they had to own that it
was really no worse than Ariosto's house at Ferrara, or Petrarch's at
Arqua, or Michelangelo's at Florence. "But what I admire," he said, "is
our futility in going to see it. We expected to surprise some quality of
the man left lying about in the house because he lived and died in it;
and because his wife kept him up so close there, and worked him so hard
to save his widow from coming to want."

"Who said she did that?"

"A friend of his who hated her. But he had to allow that she was a
God-fearing woman, and had a New England conscience."

"Well, I dare say Durer was easy-going."

"Yes; but I don't like her laying her plans to survive him; though women
always do that."

They were going away the next day, and they sat down that evening to a
final supper in such good-humor with themselves that they were willing to
include a young couple who came to take places at their table, though
they would rather have been alone. They lifted their eyes for their
expected salutation, and recognized Mr. and Mrs. Leffers, of the
Norumbia.

The ladies fell upon each other as if they had been mother and daughter;
March and the young man shook hands, in the feeling of passengers
mutually endeared by the memories of a pleasant voyage. They arrived at
the fact that Mr. Leffers had received letters in England from his
partners which allowed him to prolong his wedding journey in a tour of
the continent, while their wives were still exclaiming at their encounter
in the same hotel at Nuremberg; and then they all sat down to have, as
the bride said, a real Norumbia time.

She was one of those young wives who talk always with their eyes
submissively on their husbands, no matter whom they are speaking to; but
she was already unconsciously ruling him in her abeyance. No doubt she
was ruling him