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Updated: June 7, 2025
On a fine summer afternoon Frau Marianne, the young widow, came wandering up to the Ettersberg through the swelling fields, and asked for Mamsell Beate Rauchfuss, whom she found in the garden. The child was lying asleep on the lawn that was used for bleaching, and did not wake when the stranger approached her. "Queer," thought the young widow, "to lie and sleep like that!
And they had nothing to complain of, heaven knew, up on their Ettersberg; their fine properties were prospering. Herr and Frau Sperber worked together, getting through the day's business honestly and good-humoredly.
She was even to be called upon for poetical effusions for special occasions; under the great Saint Christopher's cloak that she wore winter and summer alike beat a feeling heart, and a noble soul dwelt in the big strong body. She was only too glad to go up to the Ettersberg as Beate's chaperon. It was the beginning of winter when they sent for her.
So she was obliged to put up with it while her two well-nourished boarders, on whom she had lavished so much conscientious labor, escorted the little brat home in the darkness to the Ettersberg. She was also obliged to endure it when the stupid girl, in her passionate anxiety, threw her arms around her once more, saying, "You would be sad and unhappy and you're so pretty and nice!
No long rainy spells now and then a heavy storm bursting over the old Ettersberg; showers in the night, and fresh, dewy, sunny mornings such a summer, in short, as one might have dreamed of. The burden of life had fallen from the girl; she fairly bloomed and glowed. "There's one up here that'll turn many a head," said old Sperber. "God only knows what that girl will do before she's through.
Together they looked out silently over the world which is closed to the people of Weimar, the world that lies behind the Ettersberg, a sunshiny, grain-bearing landscape, over which lay the last warm, lingering rays of the evening sun. "What's the matter, mother? You're so quiet!" "This time yesterday I had to carry you to bed because you had drunk too much."
That night the doctor stayed up at the Ettersberg and chatted with the three old people. Tubby watched by her father's bedside through it all, like a brave soldier. It was a hard death, and the child looked into the horrors of life as into a blazing furnace. She herself had so much life and sunshine in her that it was as though Life itself were standing by the deathbed.
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.
And so it came to pass that he finally installed as his wife up at the Ettersberg the daughter of his housekeeper, a young widow, and thus became not only a landed proprietor but the husband of a nice little woman to boot. He sat perched like a falcon above the cramped little town, where so many strange and remarkable things were going on, things that seemed quite unnecessary to the old soldier.
I really don't see any reason why we should provide her with a sinecure up on the Ettersberg." The first Sunday or two that the captain found the door locked, he was very much annoyed with Frau Kummerfelden. "An old woman like that," he growled in front of the door, "steals God's days from him and just when there's some use to be got out of her, she's off!"
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