"How changeable the women are; there's nothing consistent about them."
After Hansei had, for two or three evenings, resisted his inclination to go to the inn, he was merrier than ever.
"I'm glad," said he, "that I can give up a habit, if necessary. I really think I could give up smoking, too."
Those dull days served to show the difference between the dispositions of Hansei and his wife. To the superficial observer, Walpurga, so cheerful and wide-awake, would seem the superior of her sullen, awkward husband. Her temperament was suggestive of life among the mountains; for there, when it is dull and rainy, everything is covered with darkness, but, as soon as the sun breaks forth, every object is lighted up afresh--the green meadows are brighter, the lake acquires a darker blue, every mountain height and every forest stream is revealed anew in clear and perfect lines. Like a beautiful flower, opening and revealing all its beauty in the glowing sunshine, Walpurga was always better and brighter in fair weather. Hansei remained steady and, indeed, gained in firmness while the bad weather lasted. When the storm raged, swaying branches and boughs to and fro, he resisted, as it were, and maintained his ground. He had something in common with the rough-barked, weather-beaten oak. The monarch of the forest does not don its robes of green with the first mild rays of the spring sun. Its boughs remain bare long after its neighbors are decked with foliage, but, in the end, it surpasses them all in strength and beauty.
The past year had indeed wrought a greater change in Hansei than in Walpurga.
The tree growing on a rock, drawing scanty nourishment from the thin crust of earth around it, and exposed to wind and storm, will, when transplanted to a rich soil, seem to languish at first; but it will soon shoot forth with new strength. Thus had it been with Hansei. The sudden transition, from a life of care and toil into a new sphere, had almost ruined him. But in a little while, all was well with him again. And now his firmness and self-possession stood him in good stead, for he was obliged to prevent Walpurga's kind but strongly self-conscious nature from gaining ascendency over his.
Walpurga was, at first, almost vexed at her husband's insensibility. She would go about in an angry mood, would curl her lips and clench her fists. She felt as if she must do something to punish the villagers. Hansei remained calm; it was not his habit to trouble his head with much thinking. It gradually dawned upon Walpurga's mind that Hansei was far stronger than she. Like a plant deprived of sunshine, and in spite of her happy home, she would have withered and languished because of the averted glances of her neighbors. She was so possessed by her anger that she was only sensible to that which, feeding it, provoked her the more. Hansei was quite calm, and Walpurga, for the first time, became fully aware of his strength of character. No one could make him change his gait. He was like a horse which jogs on, regardless of the dog barking at its heels, or which, when going up hill, will suffer no one to urge it into a trot.
In true humility, Walpurga bowed to her husband. He might have been wittier, readier, and more sprightly, but none could be better nor steadier than he.
CHAPTER VIII.
The village council were in session.