The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I.

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

Spangenberg touched glasses with them, and then said, with a forced laugh, "You saw, of course, that I was only speaking in jest. My son, who has only to ask and have amongst the best and noblest in the land, were a raving lunatic to come here begging for your daughter."

"Ah, my dear sir," answered Martin, "even were it jest I could answer it in no other manner, without loss of my proper self-respect. For you must confess, yourselves, that you are aware that I am justified in holding myself to be the best cooper in all the country-side; that all that can be known as to wine, I know it; that I hold faithfully by the wine-laws framed in the days of our departed Emperor Maximilian; that, as a pious man, I hate and despise all godlessness; that I never burn beyond an ounce of sulphur in a two-fudder cask, which is needful for the preservation thereof. All this, dear and honoured sirs, you can sufficiently trace the savour of, in my wine here."

Spangenberg, resuming his seat, strove to assume a happier expression of countenance again, and Paumgartner led the conversation to other topics. But as the strings of an instrument, when once they have gone out of tune, stretch and warp more and more, and the master cannot evoke from it the well sounding chords which he could produce before, nothing that those old fellows tried to say would harmonise any longer. Spangenberg called his servants and went away depressed and out of temper from Martin's house, which he had come to in such a jovial mood.

THE OLD GRANDMOTHER'S PROPHECY.

Master Martin was somewhat concerned at his old friend and patron's having gone away annoyed. He said to Paumgartner, who had finished his last goblet and was leaving too:

"I really cannot make out what the old gentleman was driving at with all those odd questions; and why should he be so vexed when he went away?"

"Dear Master Martin," answered Paumgartner, "you are a fine, grand, noble, upright fellow, and you are right to set a value on what, by the help of God, you have brought to such a prosperous issue and carried on so well, and what has been a source of wealth and fortune to you at the same time. Still, this should not lead you to ostentation and pride, which are contrary to all Christian feeling. In the first place, it was hardly right in you to set yourself above all the other masters at the meeting to-day as you did. Very likely you do know more of your craft than all the rest of them put together; but to go and cast this straight in their teeth could only give rise to anger and annoyance. And then your conduct of this evening; you surely could not have been so blind as not to see that what Spangenberg was driving at was to find out how far your headstrong pride would really carry you. It could not but have hurt the worthy gentleman sorely to hear you attribute any young noble's wooing of your daughter to mere greed for your money. And it would have all been well enough if you had got back into the right road when he began to talk about his own son. If you had said, 'Ah, my good and honoured sir, if you were to come with your son to ask for my daughter (an honour on which, certainly, I could never have reckoned), I should waver in the firmness of my determination.' If you had said that, what would have been the consequence, but that old Spangenberg, quite forgetting his previous wrongs, would have smiled, and got back into the fine temper he was in before."

"Scold me well," said Master Martin; "I deserve it, I know. But when the old gentleman spoke such non sense, I really could not bring myself to give him any other answer."

"Then," Paumgartner continued, "this silly notion of yours that you won't give your daughter to anybody but a cooper. Was ever such nonsense heard of? You say your daughter's destiny shall be left in God's hands, and yet you go and wrest it out of God's hands yourself, by deciding that you will choose your son-in-law out of one limited circle. This may be the very destruction of both her and you. Leave off such unchristian, childish folly, Master Martin. Commit the matter to the Almighty. He will place the right decision in your daughter's pious heart."

"Ah, my dear sir," said Master Martin quite dejectedly, "I see now, for the first time, how wrong I was not to make a clean breast of the whole business at once. You, of course, suppose that it is merely my high opinion of the cooper's craft which makes me resolve never to give Rosa to anybody but a master cooper. But that is by no means the case; there is another reason. I can't let you go away until I have told you all this. You shall not pass a single night, even, with a bad opinion of me in your mind. Sit down again; I beg it as a favour. See, here is still another bottle of my oldest wine; Spangenberg was too much offended to taste it. Sit, and stay but a few minutes longer."