To-day, moreover, the old woman had reason to laugh, as she looked down into the Gurlitz garden. "Now, just look there!" cried she, and smiled right goldenly over the meadow and the green corn, "how strangely things go on in this crazy world! For long years I have always seen down there that pretty, white fellow standing, and holding out a staff to me, that the poor hungry creatures of the human race might be able to know when it was mid-day, and time for their dinners; and now there stands in his place a stout, malicious-looking beast, with green breeches, smoking tobacco. Nowhere do things go on so strangely as in the world!" And with that the old woman laughed from the bottom of her heart over the landlord Herr Pomuchelskopp, who stood in his yellow nankeen coat and green plaid trowsers, by the sun-dial, in the very place where the handsome heathen god, Apollo, had stood, only instead of a lyre he had a short pipe in his hand; and yet a shadow often passed over her face when her eyes fell on her handsome, friendly secretary, who had for so many years recorded her doings with his pencil, and now lay among burdocks and nettles in the grass. But she had to laugh again, for all that.
Pomuchelskopp laughed also; there were no indications of mirth in his face, but, whenever, from the height which his short stature allowed, he looked around him, he laughed in his heart: "All mine! All mine!" The sunbeam which brightened the world was not noticed by him, it touched neither his face nor his heart; the sunbeam which shone for him was properly a sum in arithmetic, which warmed his heart, but there were no signs of it in his face; there must be a joke, an actual joke, to make him laugh outwardly, and that was not wanting at the present moment.
His two youngest children, Nanting and Philipping, had come out, and Philipping had made a rod of burdocks and nettle stalks tied together, and was flogging the poor, white heathen god, so that Father Pomuchelskopp laughed heartily; and Nanting ran into the kitchen and brought a coal, to give him a pair of moustaches, but his father would not allow this. "Nanting," said he, "let that go, it might disfigure him, and we may possibly be able to sell him yet. But you may beat him,"--and they did beat him, and Father Pomuchelskopp laughed as if he would shake himself out of his green trowsers.
Meanwhile the "Madam" also walked out, the dryer half of Pomuchelskopp. She was of an extremely tall figure, and as dry as the seven lean kine of King Pharaoh. Her eyebrows were always puckered up into wrinkles, as if the cares of the whole world weighed o'er her mind, or her forehead was drawn into peevish lines above her nose, as if all the crockery broken by the maid-servants in this world, during a whole year, had belonged to her; and her mouth looked as sour as if she had drank vinegar and fed on sorrel all her days. She wore in the morning at this warm season of the year, a black merino over-sack, which she had once bought in a time of mourning and still wore; and through the day, cotton garments dyed olive-green with alder-bark, and to make up for the extravagance of Pomuchelskopp's new blue dress-coat with bright buttons, she bundled up her head with old bandages and caps, out of which her anxious face peered like a half-starved mouse out of a bunch of tow; and about the rest of her body she heaped one old thing above another, till her poor little legs looked like a couple of pins lost in a bundle of rags. However, I would advise every servant to keep out of her way, for even when her poor bones flew around frivolously on velvet and silken wings, her troubled soul was anxiously reckoning the expense and the wearing out.
She was such a mother as one reads of in books,--she planned day and night how she might make over Malchen's coat into an under-jacket for Philipping; she loved her children according to the Scriptures, and chastened them in like manner, and Nanting could often show for one spot on his jacket two on his back, and for every one on his trousers two on the flesh they covered. Yes, she was strong against herself and against her own flesh and blood, but she could rejoice also, according to the scriptures, with moderation; and, as she came out to-day, and saw the joyous activity of her youngest offspring, there flew over her face such a hopeful light as when the February sun looks down on the fast-frozen soil, and says, "Patience! there will be a good crop of potatoes here this year."
And she was also such a wife as one reads of in books; no neighbor could charge her with neglecting her duties a hair's breadth in thought, word or deed, all her days, although Pomuchelskopp was in her opinion quite light-minded, because often when joking was going on he would laugh right out loud, which she thought unbecoming in the father of a family, and she feared he would at length ruin his fortunes and bring herself and her children to beggary. She did another thing, which the minister had not inculcated at her betrothal,--she condemned his failings, and gave him daily of her own vinegar to drink and of her sorrel to eat. She tutored him--that is to say when they were alone--as she did her youngest child, her Philipping, and as if Pomuchelskopp still wore his green plaid trousers fastened behind; in short, she drove him just as she pleased. She did not beat him--God forbid! all was with dignity. Merely by her manner of speaking, she knew how to express her opinion of him: if he was unusually frivolous, she called him sharply and shortly by the last syllable of his name, just "Kopp!" ordinarily she called him by the middle syllable, "Muchel," and when he was quite after her own heart, and sat sulkily in the sofa-corner striking at the flies, she called him by the first syllable, and in an affectionate tone, "Pöking."
She did not call him "Pöking" to-day. "Kopp!" said she, on account of his light-minded behavior with the children, "Kopp, why do you stand there smoking like a chimney? I think we should call at the Pastor's."
"My Klücking," said Pomuchelskopp, reluctantly taking the pipe from his mouth, "we can go. I will put on my dress-coat directly."
"Dress-coat! Why so? Do you think I shall dress up in black silk? It is only our Pastor." She emphasized the "our," as if she had spoken of her shepherd, and as if she considered the Pastor merely their hired servant.
"Just as you please, my Häuhning," said Pomuchelskopp, "I can put on my brown overcoat. Philipping, let the beating go; Mama doesn't like it."