Heppner chose a place from which he could gaze undisturbed at the girl's profile. She pleased him. She was just to his taste, this full-bosomed girl with salient hips and rounded arms. In his opinion her face was more than pretty; her eager, passionate eyes, and her mouth with the full, rather pouting lips, on which one longed to plant a big kiss, seemed to him quite beautiful. She wore her dark hair, which was as coarse as a horse's tail, dressed in a new-fashioned way which gave her a certain "individuality"; and, above all, she had some scent about her of a kind that was only used by the most distinguished ladies.
Heppner was annoyed that she noticed him so little. She was quite taken up with her betrothed, who was telling her of the progress made in the preparation of the house, and she only gave Heppner a glance at rare intervals.
At first she did not talk much; but when, in order to say something, he asked her where her home was, she immediately began to relate her whole history.
She came from Prague, and was the daughter of a shoe-maker--or, rather, of a boot and shoe manufacturer--and, moreover, not of an ordinary boot and shoe manufacturer, but of a Court boot and shoe manufacturer by Royal and Imperial appointment, who did not work for just any one, but only for the Archdukes and for the high Bohemian nobility. And she, Albina, had always to write down the figures when her father was taking measures, and so it had come about that a Count Colloredo had fallen in love with her. He had wished to educate and marry her; but she had at last refused because the noble relations of her beloved had threatened to disinherit him if he married the "shoemaker's daughter." She could never have endured causing him to discard his beautiful Thurn and Taxis dragoon's uniform.
Now came a pause in Albina's narrative, which however did not last long. Next, she had fled from her father's house. Why? She kept that a secret. And finally, after many vicissitudes she had found a refuge here, where she was safe from her father. For he had wished later to marry her to a master chimney-sweep, and although the latter was a millionaire she would have none of him.
In reality she was the child of a miserably poor cobbler; and after a stormy youth she had brought her somewhat damaged little ship of life to anchor in the small garrison town at the bar of Grundmann's alehouse.
Heimert waited impatiently for the conclusion of her romance, which he had heard many times before. But if Albina had a chance of telling the story of her life, she became like a freshly wound-up clock, which ticks on inexorably until it runs down.
She simply left unanswered the questions her lover interposed now and then; and when he interrupted her to say that Count Colloredo had been in the Palatine hussars, and not in the Thurn and Taxis dragoons, she said crossly that he had better pay more attention the next time she told him anything. Heppner, on the contrary, who appeared to listen with interest, rose in her favour, and in answer to his questions she launched still further into detail.
And now she looked at him more closely, and took his measure with those bright eyes of hers. But having brought her story up to the present date, she turned once more to Heimert, regarded him tenderly, and said, "Shall I not be happy with him, after having had such hard times in the past?"
A few newly-arrived guests now called her to her duties at the bar, and the two non-commissioned officers remained behind alone at the table. Heimert felt the sergeant-major looking at him, as he thought, with a sneering, incredulous sort of expression. He was embarrassed, and began describing figures on the table with a little beer that had been spilt.