"Ein Leipziger Student hat jungst nach haus geschrieben,
Frau Mutter, sagen Sie, darf denn kein Mädchen lieben?"
And as Bräsig went out of the door he sung:
"Custine schickt eine schnelle Post,
Die nach Paris reiten muss:
Die Sachsen and Preussen marschiren ins Feld,
Um Mainz zu bombardiren,
Und wenn ich keinen Succurs bekomm,
Denn muss ich capituliren."
"You may capituliren, as much as you please, for all me; only hold your tongue, as you have promised," said our old friend, and he went home, not only with the agreeable feeling that he had done a good action, but also with the equally agreeable feeling that he had accomplished a difficult task very skilfully, since he considered it pure finesse, as he said to himself, to have introduced Louise into the letter, so delicately, so præter propter and so circa, that one must have keen scent, to suspect anything.
Well, when one indulges such a delightful consciousness of his good and skilful performances, and, so to say, warms himself at its blaze as at a cosy fire, on a winter's evening, it must be doubly vexatious to be driven out in the wind and rain, with all manner of scolding and reproaches; and this happened to Bräsig, when he entered the Frau Pastorin's room, where she was sitting with the little assessor; Louise was not there. Frau Pastorin was just trying to light a lamp, and the matches would not catch, firstly, because Kurz did not supply them with the best quality, and secondly, because Frau Pastorin--perhaps from economy--had the habit of putting the broken matches, and those that would not light, back into the box, so that such a match, in the course of its short life, had the satisfaction of being tried at least twenty times, which may have been very agreeable to the match, but was very provoking to other people.
"Well, there you are!" cried the Frau Pastorin angrily, trying a match. "There you are, at last,"--the second match. "You are running about the town all day,"--another match; "but you go with blind eyes,"--two matches at once,--"and with deaf ears!"--another match. "You always know everything,"--a match--"and when anything happens, then you know nothing,"--three matches together.
Bräsig went up to the Frau Pastorin very politely and pleasantly, and took the match-box from her hand, saying, "By your leave!"--a match--"what do you mean by that?"--the second match. "Have I done anything to harm you?"--the third match. "Kurz ought to be paid with his own wares!"--two matches, "His things that ought to catch don't catch, and what ought not to catch, catches,"--three matches. "The confounded things have got the inflorentia!" and with that he threw the whole box on the table, pulled his own match-safe out of his pocket, and struck a light.
"Bräsig," said the Frau Pastorin, putting all the tried matches carefully into the box, "I am very much vexed with you. I am not inquisitive, but, when anything happens that concerns Habermann and Louise, I am certainly the nearest, and ought to know it. Why must our little Anna first come out with what you ought to have told me long ago, for you knew it. I see it in your face, you knew it."