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Gottlieb already found himself involved in serious difficulties with the many customers who bought his lebkuchen; for with the departure of Hans he had been compelled to fall back upon his own resources, and with the most lamentable results. Great quantities of his first baking were returned to him, with comments in both High German and Low German of a very uncomplimentary sort.
But the lebkuchen dream of Gottlieb's youth remained unrealized; still unattained was the goal that twenty years before had seemed so near. However, being a stout-hearted baker of the solid Nürnberg strain, he did not at all surrender hope.
Altogether, Gottlieb was in a flourishing line of business; and but for the deep sorrow that time never wholly could heal, and but for the continued failure of his attempts to make a really excellent lebkuchen, he would have been a very happy man. By this time he had come to be a baker of ease.
And for love of her Gottlieb forgot for a while his high resolves in regard to lebkuchen making; and on the altar of his affections in part to pay for his modest wedding-feast, in part to pay for the modest outfit for their housekeeping over the bakery the money laid aside for the filling of his honey-pots very willingly was offered up.
Therefore it is that all makers of lebkuchen who aspire to become famous professors of the craft add each year to their stock of honey-cake, yet draw always from the oldest pots a time-soaked dough that ever grows more precious in its sweet excellence of age.
Somewhat to his surprise, one night, as he sat beside the oven smoking his second pipe, he found himself thinking once more about his project for making such lebkuchen as never yet had been known outside of Nürnberg lebkuchen that would make him at once the admiration and the despair of every German baker in New York.
Gottlieb had but a sorry Christmas that year. The best that even Aunt Hedwig could say of his lebkuchen was that it was not bad.
A second time were his honey-pots sacrificed, that the coming into the world of the little Minna might be made smooth. This, also, was a willing sacrifice; though in his heart of hearts Gottlieb felt a twinge of regret that his first-born was not a son, to whom the fame and fortune incident to the making of perfect lebkuchen might descend.
Gottlieb was a thief, and all that was needed to complete the chain of evidence against him was his first baking of lebkuchen; for that as clearly would prove him to be in possession of the stolen recipe as what the widow could tell would prove that he had created for himself an opportunity to steal it.
Whether the honey shall be brought to the boiling-point slowly or rapidly; whether it shall boil a long time or a short time; when and in what quantities the flour shall be added; how long the kneading shall last; in what size of earthen pot the dough shall be stored, and what manner of cover upon these pots best preserves the dough against the assaults of damp and mould; whether the pots shall be half-buried in the cool earth of the cellar or ranged on shelves to be freely exposed to the cool cellar air all these several matters are enshrouded in a mystery that is penetrated only by the elect few of Nürnberg bakers by whom perfect lebkuchen is made.
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