FOOTNOTES:
[3] The diminutive for “Joseph” in the dialect of the country.
TWO PERIODS IN AFTER LIFE.
I.
It was about noon of a day in the spring of 175-, that a man of low stature and pale and sallow complexion might have been seen entering a meanlooking house in one of the narrow streets of Vienna. Before he closed the door, the sound of a sharp female voice, speaking in shrill accents, was quite audible to the passers-by. As the person who entered ascended the stairs to his lodgings, he was greeted by a continuance of the same melody from the lips of a pretty but slovenly dressed young woman, who stood at the door of the only apartment that seemed furnished.
“A pretty mess is all this!” she exclaimed. “Here the printers have been running after you all the morning for the piece you promised to have ready for them, and I nothing to do but hear their complaints and send them away one after the other!”
“My good Nanny——”
“But, my good Joseph, is not my time as precious as yours, pray? What have you from this morning’s work?”
“Seventeen kreutzers,” sighed he.
“Ay, it is always so—and you spend all your time in such profitless doings. At eight, the singing desk of the brothers de la Merci; at ten, the Count de Haugwitz’s chapel; grand mass at eleven—and all this toil for a few kreutzers.”