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Look at my old woman and the Kummerfelden. I take my hat off to those two good old souls! They think simply about everything; but what they think is nothing foreign, nothing learned it is their own, their hard-won property. We men are seldom so natural, so penetrated by our convictions, so simple. We have much in us that is foreign or dead.
She thought of going to all the people she knew, whom she felt to be kind-hearted and begging them to watch over her child; to the Sperbers, her neighbors, to old Frau Kummerfelden who had a sewing-school in Weimar, to her pastor. She found few, as she passed them in review for qualities of heart and head, of whom she could be sure that they would not soon forget her prayer.
The pastor, he'll have somebody decent," said Frau Kummerfelden. "And what about our nephew?" asked Frau Sperber. "Both the girl and the estate would be just the thing for him; and then we should have him near us." "Oh, of course," said Frau Kummerfelden; "everything would be beautifully arranged then."
"It's a very good thing that Providence has sent a couple of decent, sensible men into this part of the town, or how should the poor thing live?" The captain laughed a little awkwardly. When she had gone, he got up stiffly from the table and walked about the room. "That boarder business doesn't please me at all," he said crossly. "Look at the man!" laughed Frau Kummerfelden.
"Gentlemen?" said the captain, taken aback. "What kind of gentlemen have you got?" "For board and lodging," she said; and her merry heart-shaped face with its round brown eyes looked up rather challengingly at the old soldier. "The devil!" he cried. "What's the matter with you?" said Frau Kummerfelden.
There was something pugnacious about his manner of expressing himself, about his whole bearing and every gesture he made. "May one ask," began little Madame Kummerfelden, in her charming flowered dress and from under her big cap, "where the gentleman has come from, and where he is purposing to go?" "I was purposing to pay a visit to your town down there and see your old man." "The Duke " "No."
"Soul, perhaps ... but a little too much body with it!" said the little woman, spinning round to emphasize her dainty figure. "Well, facts are facts," said Frau Kummerfelden. "The raven-mother is perhaps a trifle massively built. To be sure, last winter, when I was full of all kinds of pains, she picked me up out of bed and put me in again like a child.
Then came the suitors, the Kirsten girls with their friends, the pretty young widow, and often the good Kummerfelden, who took great delight in listening to the irrational chatter of the amorous youths. "These men-creatures are enough to drive one mad when they're in love," she said once to the Raven-mother.
The old friends were sitting together one Sunday afternoon in the little house in the Entenfang the captain and the old actress turned sewing-teacher. "Well, Rauchfuss has got a pretty good-looking daughter, eh, my good Kummerfelden? Such plump, firm arms and the walk of her! A well set up creature and then her red-gold hair, and her confounded eyes!
They are only really clever when they're driven into a corner and can't help themselves; it must be a fearful strain on them." "Yes," said the Raven-mother, "it's as if they thought that a fresh girl like that could only be caught by extraordinary nonsense to be sure, she laughs at their foolishness; but I tell you she's a cool head all the same." "And she's right," said Frau Kummerfelden.
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