"For aught I care," cried the other, "it may be that a creature totally different from myself is speaking out of me; for that is often the case in life, and, even among those apostolical folks themselves, there often peeps a something like an ape, out of their fringed and stiffened drapery. Is it not so? Especially out of that elderly maiden, the too unworldly Miss Erhard, that incomparable mistress of the art of education? She has set the pattern of a close cap of inward sentiment for the whole family, while for herself she has fitted a headdress of religion after the most flourishing fashion. You think when she crows out her oracle, and twists her little eyes, we unbelievers must immediately truckle under. It is with her I am most out of patience, for she it is in fact that has radically ruined the whole family."
They were now standing at the spring. The sun had long set, and a man was seen winding out of the darkness from behind the willow bush. "Ah! Michael!" cried the Baron. "May you have occasion, gentlemen, for an honest servant?"
"Why," asked the officer, "have you quitted the service of the excellent Baroness, who takes such maternal care of her people?"
"Ah! your honour," said the servant, "because the other day I told a little bit of a harmless fib, I was directly turned off."
"That is as it should be!" cried the officer, "there I recognize that noble-minded woman."
"All was but a plot," proceeded Michael, "of that spiteful Miss Erhard: she cannot bear that man and maid should be kind to each other, because nobody will release her from her single life, and ever since she saw me give the housemaid a kiss, a month ago it was, she has borne me a grudge for it."
"How vulgar!" exclaimed Alfred.
"Yes, your honour," said the man, "she is not a fine lady, but she is pretty, and a kiss is a kiss after all. Now one day, that was on the maid's account too, I had forgotten to fetch a new book from town, it was one of the double-refined pious sort, I believe, and, in my quandary, I said the book was already lent, and it came out that I had not gone at all, and so, for that bit of a lie, I was immediately dismissed the service."
"Have you occasion for him?" the Baron asked the two young people. They however protested, they would never have to do with a man, who could not even be endured in the most liberal and indulgent of families. "Well then, stay in the mean time with me," concluded the Baron, "but lie as little as possible."
"Certainly, your honour," cried the man, "of set purpose never; there often comes across one in one's straits a forced lie, which the old priest in my village yonder himself thought excusable; but their honours, my mistresses, weigh every thing in scales of gold; and in a house where there is nothing to be seen but the quintessence of piety, and virtue in full trim, a poor ordinary servant does not get on at all. We have too much earth in us, my good sirs, the gentlefolk have easier work of it, that are always polishing and polishing at heart and soul, which is what we have no time for, by reason of knife-cleaning and other jobs. Miss Dorothy wanted to excuse me, and said it did not matter so much; but she came badly off, they all cried out together upon her, more than upon me. Her they all despise, and yet she is the best of the family, because she is not so highflown, for man after all was formed out of a lump of earth, and the old loam and clay will be stirring in him from time to time."