"Those stupid old trousers!" cried Kurz, "you have made so much fuss about them already that----"
"Ha, ha!" interrupted Bräsig, "do you talk like that? Wasn't it pure wickedness on your part, to let me wear them, and you knowing they would turn red, and haven't I forgiven and forgotten? Well, not forgotten, to be sure, for I have a very good memory,--but if you don't forget what the young fellow has done, you can at least forgive him."
"Dear brother-in-law," began the rector, who believed that, in consideration of his having formerly been a clergyman, it was his duty to make peace.
"Do me the pleasure!" cried Kurz, turning short round, "you have a bride, and will get a parish,--that is to say, your Gottlieb will get one, and we--we--we have learnt nothing, we have no bride, no parish, and we have a scar!" and then he ran wildly about the room.
"Father!" cried Rudolph, "just hear me!"
"Yes," said Frau Nüssler, who was heated to the point of boiling over, and she caught Kurz by the arm; "just hear what he has to say for himself. If he did do a foolish thing about the sermon,--and no one was more troubled about it than I,--yet otherwise he is a good boy, and many a father would be proud of him."
"Yes, yes!" said Kurz, impatiently, "I will hear him, I will listen to him," and he placed himself before Rudolph with his hands on his sides: "Come now, say what you have to say, now say it!"
"Dear father," said Rudolph, standing there with a beseeching and yet resolved expression upon his face, "I know it will grieve you deeply, but I cannot do otherwise; I shall not be a clergyman, I am going to be a farmer."
It is said that they teach the bears to dance, in Poland, by putting them on hot iron plates, where they must keep their legs constantly in motion, to avoid being burned. In precisely such a manner, did Kurz hop about the room, at these words of Rudolph's, first on one foot and then on the other, as if the devil were under Frau Nüssler's floor, toasting his feet for him. "That is pretty," he cried at every jump, "that is fine! My son, who has cost me so much, who has learned so much, will be a farmer! will be a clodhopper, a blockhead, a stable-boy!"
"Young Jochen," cried Bräsig, "shall we suffer ourselves to be called by such names? Stand up, young Jochen! What, Herr!" exclaimed he, going up to Kurz, "such a herring-dealer, such a syrup-prince as you, to despise farmers! Herr, do you know who we are? We are your very foundation; if it were not for us, and our buying of you, the shopkeepers might all run about the country with beggars' sacks,--and you think your son has learned too much for such a calling? He has learned too much, perhaps, in one way, but he has learned too little in another. Do you believe, Herr, that a capable agriculturalist--stand up here by me, Jochen!--needs nothing but a sheep's head and asses' ears?"