I couldn't help smiling at this. "And you, my dear, pretty ward, have actually taken the schoolmaster to husband, cherry-stem and all?"
"I should like to have taken him, but he didn't surrender himself so easily. I assured him that I would submit myself to the most stringent discipline of virtue, and if I transgressed against him, I should not mind his beating me. But even that did not vanquish him. By no means whatever could he be brought to sit down beside me on the sofa. He even pushed back the chair on which he was sitting, when he saw that I was besieging him. At last he brought his big guns to bear upon me.
"'Look now, my dear dame, I know very well that humorous habit of yours of never remaining long in one nest. You deal with your sweethearts on a sort of give-and-take system. You are here to-day and off to-morrow. Supposing now, that in the exercise of my marital authority, I were to inflict an edifying chastisement upon you for your flightiness, you might easily take it into your head to bolt, and there should I be left in the lurch for the finger of scorn to point at. A Calvinist schoolmaster cannot submit to the fate of an ordinary man. If my wife were to leave me, I should be expelled from the Church with contumely. Then I should have to flee. I should be as good as excluded from human society. Now, I am very well satisfied with my present condition. I have a fixed salary of six hundred florins in good hard cash, and my perquisites amount to about as much again. I live honourably, you see, and I cannot afford to stake everything on a throw of the dice.'
"Then I talked big also.
"'Listen to me!' I said. 'I have capital sufficient to bring me in as much as your yearly income—that is to say, twenty-five thousand florins. I will make over the whole amount to you by way of a dower, and I am ready to forfeit it all in case I am unfaithful to you.'"
"And didn't your Esaias capitulate even then?" I inquired of Bessy.
"He asked for three days to think about it. I immediately hastened to you to signify my desire that your guardianship might cease."
"Then Esaias has still two days' grace," I said. "I hope and trust he may be inwardly illuminated to say no!"
"Then you do not approve of my determination?"
"I am a friend of truth, and I understand a little about prophecy too. It doesn't matter to me if you surrender all your capital as a sort of shrift-money, and your house as well."