The Pastor saw this plainly enough. He began to praise Annele on points where she really well deserved praise; that she was at all times so stirring and orderly, and, with all her bantering ways, she had yet invariably been strictly virtuous, and taken charge so admirably of her father's house.
"I am so little accustomed to hear praise now," answered Annele, "that the sound is quite strange to me, and I feel as if I never had been of use during my life, or ever had been good for anything."
The Pastor nodded, though very slightly. The hook was fast in; and just as a physician wins the confidence of an invalid by saying, "You suffer from such and such a pain, you ache here, or you are oppressed there,"—and the invalid looks up gladly, thinking, "This man knows my complaint already, and is sure to cure me;" so did the Pastor contrive to describe Annele's sorrows, as if he had experienced them himself.
Annele could no longer resist this sympathy, and Lenz came in for his full share of reproach and blame. "Help us, Herr Pastor!" said she.
"Yes, I can and will; but some one else must help too, and that is yourself."
The worthy man seemed suddenly to become taller, and his voice more powerful, as he reminded Annele of her hardheartedness towards Franzl, and of all the false pride she nourished in her heart. Annele listened with flashing eyes, and when the Pastor reproached her with her transgression against Franzl, she broke loose, as if on some prey for which she had laid in wait.
"So now it is come out,—the sly old woman! the horrid hypocrite!—it was she who had told all these things of her, and exasperated the Pastor, and the whole world, against her." No cat devours a mouse with greater satisfaction, than Annele now clawed and tore at old Franzl. "If I had her only here this minute!" said she repeatedly.
The Pastor let her rage till she was tired, and at last said: "You have exhibited no little temper just now, but I maintain, for all that, you are not really badhearted—in fact, not bad at all."
Annele burst into tears, and deplored her being so altered for the worse. She had become so passionate, which was not her natural disposition; and it all proceeded from her being able to earn nothing. She was not fitted to be the wife of a small clockmaker, and to look after his household. She ought to be a landlady, and if the Pastor would assist her in this project, she faithfully promised him, that she would never again give way to either anger or malice.
The Pastor agreed with her that to be a landlady was her peculiar vocation. She kissed his hand in gratitude. He promised to do what he could to effect this, but exhorted her not to expect a transformation of heart from any outward events. "You are not yet," said he, "sufficiently humbled by grief and misery. Pride is your besetting sin, and causes your unhappiness, and that of others also. God grant that some irrevocable misfortune to your husband, or children, may not eventually be the first thing to convert your heart!"