uthority the burgomaster was also
wondrously sharp; and the consequence of the burgomaster's sharpness
was, that an amount of smuggling went on in the town which was
simply audacious. None knew better than the burgomaster that the
smuggling was audacious; scarcely a shopkeeper he knew, but laughed
to his nose; but his dignity was so great, and he had made the
central authority believe so strongly in him, that he could not lay
a complaint; and the consequence of _that_ was, that, though the
townspeople laughed at their mayor, they would not have parted with
him on any account. Not a soul in the town but knew of the smuggling,
--not a soul who, publicly, was in the least aware of that illegality.

Bertha, as she was commonly called, did not positively belong to the
town, but she had lived in it for sixteen years,--at the beginning
of which time a very great commotion was created by her discovery,
at the age of three, sitting staring on the sea-beach.

She was adopted by the town generally; for there were kind hearts in
it,--as most towns have, for that matter; but she was specially
adopted by Frau Klass, who took her home and straightway reared her,
under the name of Bertha,--for the reason that she had once had a
daughter with that name. The new Bertha in time met with a proposal
from a flaxen-haired young sailor named Daniel, who left Ruegen the
next day with a considerably lightened heart. When the foundling had
reached nineteen, three things had happened:--Dan had been away three
years, and the town had given him up forever; Bertha's mother was
no more; and Bertha rather found it her duty to submit to be married
to the most odious of his sex, Jodoque by name,--a man who was detested
by no one more heartily than by Bertha herself.

I say Bertha found it her duty to be married, and thus:--Frau Klass
called Jodoque her nephew, and tried to justify a testament in
Bertha's favor by suggesting to her the compensation to her nephew
of marrying him. Thus Frau Klass tried to follow both her inclination
and her duty, and died serenely at a great age,--assuring Bertha
with her last breath that Daniel must be dead, and that Jodoque was
an admirable youth, when known, and not at all poor.

So Bertha came into possession of a little farm and a little house.
_She_ tried to reconcile duty with inclination by suggesting to
Jodoque the propriety of waiting; and he _had_ waited, till he began
to question the probability of his ever