"God bless you, Bräsig! I always called you an old heathen; but you are a Christian, after all!"
"I don't know, Frau Pastorin, I don't know what I am. But I know that the little I have done, in this matter, I have not accomplished as a Christian, but as assessor at the criminal court. But Frau Pastorin, our fish is spoiled by this time, and I don't feel at all hungry. The house seems too narrow for me,--adieu, Frau Pastorin, I must go out in the fresh air a little while."
CHAPTER XLI.
The Friday, on which Rudolph and Mining were to be married, had come, and the loveliest Whitsuntide weather shone upon Rexow, and on the singular edifice which Jochen, with the aid of Schultz the carpenter, had constructed near his modest farm-house. From the outside, the affair was not very distinguished looking, it was only of boards and laths hammered together, and looked uncommonly like a building in which wild beasts are exhibited, at the Leipsic fair. Inside, the work of art presented a more stately appearance, for the boards were covered with blue and yellow cloth, half of one color, and half of the other, since there was not enough of one kind, in Rahnstadt, to cover so large a hall; and secondly, it was adorned with six notched beams, for on no other condition would carpenter Schultz undertake the job. There ought, properly, he said, to be nine, in such a building as a wedding-hall, but the expense would be too great, and since Jochen did not understand much about architecture, and Frau Nüssler had enough to do with the eating and drinking for the wedding, and Bräsig was his friend, and would not oppose him, because he had helped him at the Reformverein, carpenter Schultz had his own way, like a moth in a rug, and built in the notched beams to his heart's content; and upon each of them Bräsig hung a sort of contrivance, intended to represent a chandelier, and Krischan the coachman climbed about on them for a week, in his buckskin breeches, adorning them with oak-leaves; which he did very finely, but to the detriment of his apparel, since the beams, with their splinters, little by little devoured his buckskin breeches.
Jochen put his hand in his purse, and paid the money for the new house, for he wanted everything done, for his Mining, in the finest manner, and he got Krischan a new pair of breeches.
"Mother," he cried to his wife, "come! look! What shall we do about it?"
"Yes, Jochen, it is all very well. But there ought to be lights in the chandeliers!"
She was going out, when a voice spoke to her from the clouds, that is, the oak-leaf-clouds, and a face full of light, candlelight, bent down to her and said solemnly, "It shall all be attended to, Frau Nüssler," and as she looked nearer into the clouds, she saw the honest, red face of her old angel, Bräsig, looking out from the oak-leaves and tallow-candles, which he had strung around his neck, like a clergyman's bands, that he might have his hands free to fasten them in their places.
When this was done, the three stood together, and contemplated the effect, and Bräsig said, "Truly, Jochen! 'Tis like a fairy palace, out of the 'Arabian Nights,' which I read last winter from the circulating library!"
And Jochen said, "Yes, Bräsig; it is all as true as leather; but it is only for one night; for, day after to-morrow, we must tear it down."