"Yes, with a peasant. But did you come into the world yesterday, that you don't know that a noble lady is no peasant? We wanted to make her mellow and pliable--well, much good may it do you! we have only stiffened her neck. If it had come over him in that way, he would have said yes to everything; but," he added, rather to himself than to David, "there are men,--yes, and women, truly,--who are really strong, for the first time, under misfortune."
As they returned to the Herr Proprietor, and he learned how the young Frau had received them, he was greatly enraged.
"Good heavens!" said he to David, "how is it possible you could go about such a critical business in such a rough way? You should merely have bored and pricked and teased her, instead of setting her whole future life before her. God bless me! I had it all so nicely in train; and now, you shall see, when he comes home she will stiffen his back up as well, and the end will be, it will come to an auction."
"Then you can buy it," said Slusuhr.
"No, no! They will drive it up too high for me, and it joins so finely to my estate!" So the worthy Herr complained and disputed with the others, and consulted what should be done, and how they could manage it.
In another part of Gurlitz, there were also consultations going on. In weaver Ruhrdanz's room, day-laborers and day-laborers wives were sitting together, and the talk that went round was not hasty and reckless, but thoughtful and deliberate, though venomous.
"Well, what do you say, brother?"
"Eh, what should one say? He must be got rid of, he is a regular skinner! Well, now you, Ruhrdanz?"
"You are right there, I say so, too; he must be got rid of! But, friends, you should see, they would send him back to us again. If we only had papers about it, so that he dare not come back."
"Oh, your stupid papers!" cried a great rough woman, from behind the stove, "when you come home, in the evenings, from the city, with your heads full of brandy, you are ready to do great things, and afterwards you flop together, like a dish-cloth. What? Must I send my children about the country, begging? I have had no bread, for three days, but such as the children have brought home."