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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!
And now Beate Rauchfuss, as an old woman, sat at the end of an afternoon in her garden on the Ettersberg. All was over that she had once known joys, longings, hopes, desires, and powers; and Herr Kosch was gone too. She, that loved most deeply, had the most to bear for she bore him the rest of his life. His sufferings were her sufferings, the movements of his life also the movements of hers.
It was the same carriage in Which Frau Rauchfuss, crouching down against the leather cushions, had come back to her house in mortal sadness. Frau Marianne was in a haughty mood, and thought lightly of her boarders. When she rolled up to her door it was getting late she was thinking, "Herr Leinhose ought to have had his beer some time ago, and Herr Oehmchen his sausage ... Oh, bother!
He would have to adapt himself to it and that would be no simple matter. Deeply moved, both of them, they reached the Rauchfuss farm, and found all sorts of guests awaiting them. The Kirsten girls and their friends, Frau Marianne's boarders and the little widow herself, and some of the bachelors were there. To all of these the guest who had dropped from the clouds seemed a doubtful addition.
"That's fine, Frau Marianne!" cried Herr Rauchfuss. "You've actually taken this long sunny walk in order to be a little company for my poor girl. I appreciate it, I can tell you!" The young girl looked anxiously at her father and the guest. What was this new idea of providing company for her? She had long been used to loneliness in her upland home.
The estate that lay nearer the woods belonged to an old soldier, Captain Rauchfuss, who, after a busy life in war and peace, had retired and come back to his native town a little stiff in the legs, to find a corner where he could live on his little pension in quietness.
In fact, the young woman seemed a wonder to her by the side of her own bashful awkwardness. It was a lively afternoon up at the old farm-house; not for years had the sound of such bright feminine laughter been heard there. The housekeeper got up an excellent tea and spread it in the garden under the same tree where Frau Rauchfuss had once watched her child dance, feeling like a departed spirit.
He saw things that other people could not see; and since the majority rules on this earth, and exceptions are penalized, Herr Rauchfuss was obliged to make a journey now and then to Jena, to a physician whose house offered a hospitable retreat for such peculiarly affected gentlemen, until such time as they had provisionally, at least, laid aside certain errors and misconceptions.
Many an eye had seemed to see old Rauchfuss go by and stop to shake the engraver's hand mysteriously, as though to say that he spoke after his own heart, and much more forcibly than he had ever been able to do. The engraver now approached his hostess and said in a rather thick voice, "To judge the living and the dead. In heaven's name, then, good night. Tomorrow I go."
You know that isn't the same thing as a grandmother!" So she could only try and content herself, and go on looking after the considerable estate alone. Frau Rauchfuss became the mother of a little daughter, a regular ruddy-golden fox's cub. That it was not a boy his wife had borne him annoyed Captain Rauchfuss. "Thunder! This won't do it's ridiculous! Me bringing women-creatures into the world!
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