Lenette, impelled by two imposing forces, what she was asked to do and what she wanted to do, tried to find the feminine line of the resultant, and hit upon the middle course of stopping her scouring and sweeping as long as he was sitting at his writing. But the moment he got up, and went to the piano for a couple of minutes, or to the window, or across the doorstep, that instant back she would bring her washing and scrubbing instruments of torture into the room again. Siebenkæs wasn’t long in becoming cognisant of this terrible alternation and relieving-of-the-guard between her besom and his (satirical) one; and the way she watched and lay in wait for his movements drove all the ideas in his head higgledy-piggledy. At first he bore it with really very great patience, as great as ever a husband has, patience, that is, which lasts for a short time. But after reflecting for a considerable period in silence, that the public, as well as he, were sufferers by this room-cleaning business, and that all posterity was, in a manner, watching and hanging upon every stroke of that besom, which might do its work just as well in the afternoon when he would only be at his law papers—the tumour of his anger suddenly broke, and he grew mad, i. e. madder than he was before, and ran up to her and cried—
“Oh! this is the very devil! At it again, eh! I see what you’re about. You watch till I get up from the table! Just be kind enough to finish me off at once; hunger and worry will kill me before Easter, whether or not. Good God! It’s a thing I really can not comprehend. She sees as well as possible that my book is our larder—that there are whole rations of bread in every page of it—yet she holds my hands the entire morning, so that I can’t do a line of it. Here I’ve been sitting on the nest all this time and only hatched as far as letter E, where I describe the ascent of Justice to heaven. Oh! Lenette! Lenette!”
“Very well,” said Lenette, “it’s all the same whatever I do, it’s sure to be wrong; do let me tidy the house properly, like any other woman.”
And she asked him, in a simple manner, why it was that the bookbinder’s little boy (the language is mine, not hers), who played fantasias the whole day long upon a child’s toy fiddle, composing and enjoying whole Alexander’s Feasts upon it, didn’t disturb him with his screeching unharmonical progressions—and how he bore the chimneysweep’s sweeping the other day so much better than he did her sweeping of the room. And as he couldn’t quite manage to condense, just in a moment, into few words the demonstration of the magnitude of the difference which existed between these things, he found it better to get into a rage again, and say—
“Do you suppose I’m going to make a great long speech and explanation gratis, and lose dollar after dollar at my work? Himmel! Kreuz! Wetter! The municipal code, the Roman pandects, forbid a coppersmith even to enter a street where a professor is working, and here’s my own wife harder than an old jurist—and not only that—she’s the coppersmith herself. I’ll tell you what it is, Lenette, I shall really speak to the Schulrath about this.” This did a great deal of service.
The produce of the Trinity dollar here arrived before the Schulrath; a piece of polite attention which no one would have expected from a man of so much learning and knowledge. No doubt all my readers will be as much delighted as if they were husbands of Lenette themselves at the fact that she was a perfect angel all the afternoon; her hands made no more noise at their work than her fingers or her needle; she even put off the doing of several things which were not necessary. She accompanied a sister in the oratorical art, who came in with a divine bonnet (in her hands, to be altered), all the way down stairs, not so much out of politeness as thoughtfulness, that all the points of principal importance connected with the doing up of the bonnet, which had already been settled, might be gone over again two or three times out of the advocate’s hearing.
This touched the old noise-hunter, and went to the weak and tender spot in him, his heart. He sought long in himself for a fitting thank-offering in return, till he at last hit upon quite a new sort of one.
“Listen, child,” he said, taking her hand very affectionately; “wouldn’t it be more reasonable in me if I were to amuse myself with my writing in the evening? I mean, if the husband were to do his creating at a time when the wife had no washing to do. Just think what a life of nectar and ambrosia that would be; we should sit opposite to each other with a candle between us—you at your sewing, I at my writing—the other people in the house would all have their work done and be at their beer—of course there wouldn’t be customers with bonnets coming at that time of night to make themselves visible and audible. The evenings will be getting longer too, and of course I shall have the more time for my writing fun, but we need say nothing about that now. What do you think, or what do you say (if you like the expression better), to this new style of life? Remember too, that we’re quite rich again now—the Russian Trinity dollar is like so much found money.”
“Oh! it will be delightful,” she said, “I shall be able to do all my household work in the morning, as a proper reasonable housekeeper should.”
“Yes, just so,” he answered, “I shall write away quietly at my satires all morning, then wait till evening, and go on where I left off.”