"The Hofcavalier doesn't talk," said Sister Thecla. This Thecla had given the nickname of "Hofcavalier" (noble courtier), to Tabea at her first arrival in the convent on account of her magnificent figure and high carriage.
"You shouldn't give nicknames, Sister Thecla."
The last speaker was a sister with an austere face and gray eyes which had no end of cold-blooded religious enthusiasm in them.
"I need not give you a nickname," retorted Thecla to the last speaker; "Brother Friedsam did that when he called you Jael. You are just the kind of person to drive a tent-nail through a man's head."
"If he were the enemy of the Church of God," said Jael, in a voice as hard as it was sincere.
Then the talk drifted back to the singing school and Brother Friedsam's severity.
"But why doesn't the Hofcavalier speak?" again persisted Thecla.
"When the Hofcavalier speaks, it will be to Brother Friedsam himself," answered Tabea.
The temerity of this proposition took Thecla's breath, but it set the storm a-going more vigorously than before among the sisterhood, who, having found somebody ready to bell the cat, grew eager to have the cat belled. Only Sister Jael, who for lack of voice was not included in either of the three choruses of the sisterhood, stoutly defended Brother Friedsam, thinking, perhaps, that it was not a bad thing to have the conceit of the singers reduced; indeed, she was especially pleased that Tabea, the unsurpassed singer of the sisters' gallery, should have suffered rebuke.
At length it was agreed that Tabea should tell Brother Friedsam that the sisters did not intend to go to singing school again.