"Poor Klaus!" I said. "He must have felt it deeply, in spite of all."
"Indeed he did," said Christel. "And no one knows how he came to his death; whether he did it himself, or whether it was done by others; for they swore--at that time, you know--that they would settle with him one day."
"Very likely, very likely," I said.
"Here I am again," said Klaus, coming in in his best coat, and with a face as red as cold water, black soap, and a coarse towel, all applied in haste, could make it.
The supper, at which Christel's young assistants joined us, was soon over, and after the cloth had been removed, the girls dismissed, and Christel had mixed us a glass of grog, for which she had not forgotten her old recipe, Klaus and I fell into such discourse as naturally arises between old friends who have not seen each other for many years, and have gone through many experiences in the interval. I had to narrate to Klaus the story of my imprisonment from that time in the first year when he paid me that memorable visit, which was within a hair of bringing him into contact with the criminal law. Not that I could tell him, or even desired to tell him, everything, good fellow as he was. We do not admit our friends, even the most intimate, behind the inmost of the seven walls with which we prudently surround the citadel of our soul; but enough came to discourse to arouse the interest of the good Klaus to the highest pitch, and quite passionate was his sympathy when I came to speak of the last period of my imprisonment, when I fell into the hands of the new superintendent and his accomplice, the pious Deacon Von Krossow, and in seven worse than lean months had to expiate the seven years of fatness which I had hitherto enjoyed.
"The wretches! The villains! Is it possible? Are such things allowed?" the good Klaus kept muttering.
"Whether it is allowed or not, my dear Klaus, I cannot say; but that it is possible is only too certain. Under the most frivolous pretexts in the world I was deprived of my place as secretary, and treated as an unusually ill-disposed and contumacious prisoner; and as all that did not satisfy their vengeance, I was ordered seven months of disciplinary punishment beside."
"And what did the good old overseer whom I saw with you that day say to that?"
"Sergeant Süssmilch? He would have sworn terribly, I promise you, if he had seen it. Fortunately, he went away with the family of Herr von Zehren a week after the death of the latter."
"I would never have done that," said Klaus with emphasis; "I would never have left you alone in their robber-den."