"The hundred gulden and three crown dollars old Franzl offered you. All the rest is stuff."
"Why so?"
"Because your uncle will never help you. I suppose you will own now, that you should not have helped him to slip through our fingers as to his intentions towards you, this day five years?"
"But the proposal about the manufactory?"
"Who is to enter it besides you?"
"I know of no one at this moment but Pröbler; and it is true he has made many useful discoveries in his life."
"Ha! ha!—capital! Pröbler and you!—a famous match, certainly! Have not I told you a hundred times that you would sink to his level? But he is better than you, for at least he has not brought a wife and family to beggary by his misconduct. To the deuce with such hypocrites and milksops! Go in harness with Pröbler, by all means!" cried Annele. And snatching the boy from his knee, she said passionately to the child—"Your father is a scamp and an idler, and expects us to put every morsel of bread into his mouth. It is a pity his mother is not still living, to feed him with bread and milk. Oh! how low I am sunk! But this I tell you, that so long as I live you shall not enter that manufactory. I would rather drown both myself and my children; then, perhaps, the Doctor's long-legged daughter, the young lady who is so learned in herbs, might marry you."
Lenz sat still, entirely confounded. His hair stood on end. At last he said—"Don't dare to call on my mother: leave her at peace in eternity."
"I can do that easily enough. I didn't want anything from her, and I never had anything from her."
"What?—have you thrown away the plant of Edelweiss that was hers?"