"I don't know," said Bräsig. "I am wholly unacquainted with his affairs, since I don't trouble myself about secrets. Hear to the end, says Kotelmann, to-morrow we shall know."
"But this Gottlieb, this quiet man!" exclaimed Frau Nüssler.
"The Pietists are not wholly to be trusted," said Bräsig. "Never trust a Jesuit!"
"Bräsig!" cried Frau Nüssler, and the old chair shrieked aloud, as she sprang up, "if there is something concealed here, I shall take back my child. If Rudolph had done it, I could have forgiven him, for he is a rough colt, and there is no secrecy about him; but Gottlieb? No, never in my life! One who can set himself up for a saint, and then do such a trick--don't come near me! I want nothing to do with such people!"
And when Gottlieb came to the table that evening, his future mother-in-law looked at him askance, as if she were a shop clerk, and he were trying to cheat her with a bad groschen. And when he asked Lining, after supper, if she would take a glass of fresh water up to his room, she told him Lining had something else to do, and when Gottlieb turned to Marik, the waiting-maid, she told him he might go to the pump himself, he could do it as well as Marik. And so she speedily drew a magic circle around him, over which no woman might pass.
As they sat at table next morning, Krischan came to the door, and beckoned to Frau Nüssler; "Madam, Oh, just a word." And Frau Nüssler motioned to Bräsig, and the two old lovers went out with Krischan into the hall.
"Here it is," said Krischan, pulling out a great letter, from his waistcoat pocket, "and I know the name of the woman, too."
"Well?" asked Frau Nüssler.
"Yes," whispered Krischan privately into Frau Nüssler's ear. "Mine is her own name, and Sterium is her father's name."
"What? Is her name Mine Sterium?"