it was a
banquet or a dance. The whole street is filled with sedan-chairs,
servants, and torch-bearers. A few hours ago the constables had hard
work to prevent the deluded people from destroying the house of
the profligate Es, and now one half of the distinguished honourable
Councillors come to pay their homage. Do you know, dear, what pleases
the most in all this?"

"Well?" asked Frau Christine, turning her face towards him with a look
of eager enquiry, which showed that she expected to hear something good.
But he nodded slightly, and answered:

"We members of patrician families cling to old customs; each wants to
keep his individuality, as he would share or exchange his escutcheon
with no one. Then, when one surpasses the rest in external things,
whatever name they may bear, no one hastens to imitate him. We men are
independent, rugged fellows. But if the heart and mind of any one of us
are bent upon something really good and which may be said to be pleasing
in the sight of God, and he successfully executes it, then, Christine,
then--I have noticed it in a hundred instances--then the rest rush after
him like sheep after the bellwether."

"And this time you, and the other Berthold, were the leaders," cried
Fran Christine, hastily pressing a kiss upon her old husband's cheek
behind the curtain.

Then she turned back into the dusky chamber, pointed to the open door
of the sitting-room, and said, "just look! If that isn't----There comes
Ursula Vorchtel with her betrothed husband, young Hans Nutzel! What
a fine-looking man the slender youth has become! Ursel--her visit is
probably the greatest pleasure which Els has had during this blessed
hour."

The wise woman was right; for when Ursel held out her hands to her
former friend, whom she had studiously avoided so long, the eyes of both
girls were moist, and Els's cheeks alternately flushed and paled, like
the play of light and shadow on the ground upon a sunny morning in a
leafy wood when the wind sways the tree tops.

What did they not have to say to each other! As soon as they were
unnoticed a moment Ursel kissed her newly regained friend, and
whispered, pointing to her lover, with whom Fran Barbara Behaim was
talking: "He first taught me to know what true love is, and since then I
have realised that it was wrong and foolish for me to be angry with you,
my dear Els, and that Wolff did right to keep his troth, hard as his
family made it for him to do so. Had my Han