The doors of the large entrance-hall stood wide open, and its floor was covered with sand, scattered over with short fir branches.
In the principal dwelling-room of the Pfarrhaus, where the simple arrangements proved the excellent taste which prevailed, and where the snowy window-curtains bore witness to the cleanliness and order of the household, there sat, around the coffee-table covered with a cloth of dazzling whiteness, the Pastor Berger, his daughter, and the candidate, Behrmann.
Helena Berger was busily preparing the brown beverage of the Levant, the fragrant aroma of which filled the room, in a pretty white china apparatus; and no lady, in a drawing-room of the highest fashion, could have performed all the complicated little arrangements with greater natural grace.
Pastor Berger sat opposite to her, in his large, comfortable arm-chair, dressed as usual in clerical black, which according to the good old custom he never laid aside for less professional clothes, even in his own home. The only indulgence he allowed himself was the small black velvet cap which he wore on his head, considering it the sign of household comfort.
The young candidate sat between them; he too was dressed in black, with a white neck-tie, but the cut of his clothes was different, and although the colouring was the same, the general effect of his dress was quite unlike his uncle's.
The pastor leant back comfortably in the depths of his arm-chair, his hands folded one over the other, whilst he spoke, as was frequently the case since his last visit to Hanover, of his interview with the king.
"There is," he said in a voice of emotion, "something glorious about the Lord's Anointed. He can give happiness with a word, and how willing is our own king to do so! He does not regard his subjects simply in the light of tax-payers; to him they are fellow-creatures, with feelings and with beating hearts, and wherever his royal heart meets with a fellow man, he is ready with human sympathy to join in his sorrow or his joy. How different it is in a Republic!" he continued; "there the law reigns, the dead letter, a cold majority, a chance. And in a great monarchy the sovereign stands on an unapproachable, solitary height; but here, in our beautiful, fertile, quiet Hanover, we know our king (though he from his eminence can take in everything with his clear gaze,) feels for us each individually, with his human heart."
Helena had finished preparing the coffee, and she brought her father his large cup, with the inscription, "dem lieben Vater," traced in wreaths of roses.
The old gentleman took a small sip, and his countenance assumed an expression of great satisfaction at the result of his daughter's skill.
"I must beg for a little water in my cup," said the candidate in a quiet persuasive voice, "I cannot take strong coffee."