s corner
room.

And then, while wandering again through the pathless woods, he shoots at
a roe but hits Lisbeth, the girl of his dreams. The wound is, however,
slight, and by the time it has healed their love has become perfect, so
that, immediately after the wedding of the Hofschulze's daughter, for
whom Lisbeth had been a bridesmaid, and before the same altar at which
the ceremony had just been performed, the good Deacon pronounces the
blessing upon the newly betrothed pair.

With the Deacon's official act over, imaginary troubles cease and real
ones begin. Oswald, grieved beyond expression to learn that Lisbeth is
the daughter of Muenchhausen and Emerentia, is on the point of leaving
the Farm immediately and Lisbeth forever; Lisbeth, having thought all
the time that her lover was a plain hunter, is in complete despair when
told that he is a real Count; the Hofschulze does not take kindly to the
idea of their marriage, for Oswald has not always revered Westphalian
traditions, the secret tribunal, for example, as he should have done;
Oswald's friends in Suabia object to his marrying a foundling, and
advise him to come home and straighten out a love affair he has there
before entering into a new and foreign one; the doctor is not even
certain that the wedding is hygienically wise. But love dispels all
fears and doubts, and the good Deacon makes Oswald and Lisbeth man and
wife.

Immermann's lifelong attempts at the studied poetizations of
traditional, aristocratic, high-flown themes brought him but scant
recognition even in his day, and they have since been well-nigh
forgotten. But when, one year before his death, he wrote an
unpretentious love story taken from the life of simple people whom he
met on his daily walks, he thereby assured himself of immortality. Few
works prove more convincingly than _Der Oberhof_ that great literature
is neither more nor less than an artistic visualization and faithful
reflection of life. The reading of this unassuming "village story," the
first of its kind in German literature, warms the heart and stirs the
springs of living fancy, simply because it relates in terse and direct
language a series of incidents in the lives of very possible and very
real human beings.

* * * * *

KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN

THE OBERHOF (1839) TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS

CHAPTER I

THE JUSTICE OF THE ESTATE

With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up the ol