"Still the untiring peacemaker and mediator! and inexhaustible in arguments, where the point is to reconcile the nobility and citizens!"
"I can't help it, niece, since, as a nobleman and a proprietor at Schweidnitz, I have become a sort of doubtful thing, and don't well know whether I am a bird or a mouse. I am compelled, therefore, to speak in the way of reconciliation on both sides, lest a feud should break out, and it should eventually fare with me as with the flittermouse in the fable. May I call up the petitioner?"
"Call him in God's name, uncle," said Tausdorf: "I read my Althea's yes in her lovely and peaceful countenance."
"Excellently spoken!" cried the uncle, and hurried out.
"Heaven grant that we may never repent this yes," said Althea with heavy heart. "I only wish the wild Francis were not of the party!"
"Why is he so terrible to you?" asked Tausdorf, smiling.
"Because he is so rough, so fond of frays and drinking, and because he detests the nobles so irreconcilably. Since too he has been forced to submit to the long imprisonment, on account of the late unlucky affair, there is no managing with him."
"I have never seen him; but I should not like to subscribe to the damnatory sentence pronounced against him by the nobles of our acquaintance. Hot-headed men are frequently the best. As I have heard from good authority, this Francis fought bravely against the Turks, and I find it natural and pardonable that a soldier should not willingly suffer himself to be played upon. His late misfortune grieved me much. As he was absolved after all, he certainly did not belong to Bieler's murderers; and to suffer a year's undeserved imprisonment must embitter even the heart of a lamb."
"Heaven grant that you may never come in contact with this lamb; you would find in him a furious wolf. I tremble at the thoughts of it, for I think fire and water could not meet more hostilely than your dispositions. Your person would show him a true mirror of what he ought to be and is not; that would shame him, and shame exasperates vulgar minds. His roughness and your cultivation, his furious violence and your noble calmness, his inclination to every excess and your purity----"
"Still! still!" interrupted Tausdorf, ashamed, and gently pressing his hand upon the lips of the animated eulogist. "Do not forget that I also am no more than a frail man, and that exaggerated praise from an estimable mouth can corrupt even better than I am."