marry
first, had been overtaken by old age before they had got the question
settled; here was a little young wife with a great old husband; there,
on the other hand, was a dapper little man and an unwieldy giantess. In
one house, every step one took one stumbled over a child; another,
however many people were crammed into it, never would seem full, because
there were no children there at all. Old husbands (supposing the estate
was not entailed) should get themselves buried as quickly as possible,
that such a thing as a laugh might be heard again in the house. Young
married people should travel: housekeeping did not sit well upon them.
And as she treated the persons, so she treated what belonged to them;
their houses, their furniture, their dinner-services--everything. The
ornaments of the walls of the rooms most particularly provoked her saucy
remarks. From the oldest tapestry to the most modern printed paper; from
the noblest family pictures to the most frivolous new copper-plate: one
as well as the other had to suffer--one as well as the other had to be
pulled in pieces by her satirical tongue, so that, indeed, one had to
wonder how, for twenty miles round, anything continued to exist.

It was not, perhaps, exactly malice which produced all this
destructiveness; wilfulness and selfishness were what ordinarily set her
off upon it: but a genuine bitterness grew up in her feelings toward
Ottilie.

She looked down with disdain on the calm, uninterrupted activity of the
sweet girl, which every one had observed and admired; and when something
was said of the care which Ottilie took of the garden and of the
hot-houses, she not only spoke scornfully of it, in affecting to be
surprised, if it were so, at there being neither flowers nor fruit to be
seen, not caring to consider that they were living in the depth of
winter, but every faintest scrap of green, every leaf, every bud which
showed, she chose to have picked every day and squandered on ornamenting
the rooms and tables, and Ottilie and the gardener were not a little
distressed to see their hopes for the next year, and perhaps for a
longer time, destroyed in this wanton recklessness.

As little would she be content to leave Ottilie to her quiet work at
home, in which she could live with so much comfort. Ottilie must go with
them on their pleasure-parties and sledging-parties; she must be at the
balls which were being got up all about the neighborhood. She was not to
m