Friedrich stood at the door, upright as a grenadier, and not moving or stirring a limb except to drink; Fritz Besserdich stood at his side, not moving or stirring either, except, too, when he drank. And Fieka Voss sat next to my Mother, and my Mother pressed her hand, and stroked her soft cheek, and when I came up to her side, she stroked mine too and said: "Shall you love me as much as Fieka loves her father?"
The Herr Amtshauptmann called Heinrich Voss into a corner, and talked to him aside. What had the Herr Amtshauptmann got to say in secret to Heinrich Voss, and why did he keep patting him on the shoulder? Old Miller Voss asked himself this, and when he had made out that it must be about the lawsuit, he said to Witte:--
"Well, I have finished with the lawsuit now, the Jew's the only thing remaining, and I'll drown him to-night in punch."
"By the way that reminds me ..." said the baker going out.
After a time he came back again, holding a basket in one hand and Strüwingken by the other:--"By your leave, Herr Burmeister, perhaps I may bring something towards the feast; here are a few sweet cakes; and here, Frau Burmeister, is my daughter Strüwingken; pardon the liberty, but she wished so much to see the company."
But what was all this to the splendour and pomp which surrounded my uncle Herse. He had taken off his cloak, and now stood there in full uniform; and everyone came round him, and thanked him; my father because he had taken him under the shelter of his cloak; My mother because he had thereby helped my father to escape; Mamsell Westphalen curtseyed three times, and said she should never forget what he had done for her; and Miller Voss said that, strictly speaking, they had only been set free at Brandenburg owing to the Herr Rathsherr; and when old Witte confirmed this, Strüwingken secretly promised herself that she would send the Rathsherr an immense tea-cake. His fine, full face beamed with pleasure and delight, and he bent down to my Mother and said:--"I can't at all make out why 'Aunt' does not come."
At the Miller's words, he suddenly recollected the French Colonel's message and turned to the Herr Amtshauptmann:--"I have two words to say to you, Herr Amtshauptmann, on a very secret matter," and so saying he drew him into a corner. We know what it is he is going to say, but if the corner could speak, and were to tell us what the Rathsherr had said there, we should be obliged to pretend that we had known nothing about it.
My father was obliged at length to free the old Amtshauptmann. He took my uncle and placed him in the post of honour at the head of the table, and never was anyone put in the right place more at the right time; for, hardly was he seated, when the door opened and in came Aunt Herse in a black silk dress, and behind this dress stood old Metz the father of the present old Metz, and the present rich Joseph Kasper who was then a little Jew boy. Aunt Herse had a wreath of green laurel in her hand picked from old Metz's laurel-tree, from which he generally picked the leaves only when his wife cooked bream; and the wreath was bound with a long red ribbon; Joseph Kasper had furnished this, and so Aunt Herse had brought him with her. She went up to uncle Herse, gave him a kiss, placed the wreath on his head with the ends of ribbon hanging down his back, and made a pretty little speech which nobody heard, for baker Witte broke out the same moment with: "Hurrah!" and the Miller with "Long live!" and every one joined in and clinked glasses.
Yes, it was a delightful evening! And a long time afterwards, when I saw a picture of Julius Cæsar it put me in mind of my uncle Herse, for he looked exactly like it in his laurel wreath, only my uncle was a good deal stouter and more genial than the crabbed dried-up Roman. And a long time afterwards whenever I had specially nice cakes before me I thought of Baker Witte's. And I can still praise them; for you may eat a great many, and yet not be made ill.