How often had Christine Unwirrsch gone hungry to bed, how often had she suffered all possible hardships without yielding to the temptation to reach out her hand for the black box! In every form distress had approached her in her miserable widowhood, but she had resisted with heroism. Even without letters and figures, she could render her account at any moment;—it was not her fault if the happy, honorable future which the dead man had dreamt of for his son did not rise out of the black box.
Mrs. Christine sat in front of the table for more than an hour that night, counting on her fingers and calculating, while across the street in a little back room of the junk-dealer's house a man also sat figuring and counting. Samuel Freudenstein, too, was sitting up for his sleeping boy's sake. More than a few rolls of gold pieces, more than a few rolls of silver pieces lay before him; he had more to throw into his child's scales of fortune than the poor widow.
"I will arm him with everything that is a weapon," he murmured. "They shall find him prepared in every way, and he shall laugh at them. He shall become a great man; he shall have everything that he wants. I was a slave, he shall be a master among a strange people, and I will live in his life. He has a good head, a sharp eye; he will make his way. He shall think of his father when he has reached the height; I will live in his life."
The widow divided her scanty day's wages into two parts. The greater part fell into the oak box and was added to the other savings of long years of toil, and the small coins gave a clear ring. Samuel Freudenstein added more than a hundred shining thalers to his son's fortune; no one in Kröppel Street as much as suspected what a rich man the junk-dealer had again gradually grown to be.
The moonlight had entirely disappeared from the widow's bedroom when she crept shiveringly back from the living room. Hans Unwirrsch still slept soundly and not even the kiss that his mother pressed on his forehead waked him. The lamp too went out and Mrs. Christine soon slept as peacefully as her child. About the bed of King Solomon stood sixty strong men with swords in their hands, skilled in battle, "for the sake of the fear in the night;" but at the head of the widow and her child there stood a spirit that kept better watch than all the armed men in Israel.
Throughout nearly the whole summer the battle with Uncle Grünebaum went on. It was long since the world had seen such an obstinate cobbler. Tears, pleadings, and remonstrances did not soften, touch or convince him. A man who could hold his own with the Seven Wise Masters, in every respect, could not be moved from his standpoint so easily by two silly women and a stupid boy. He had resolved in his shaggy, manly breast that Hans Unwirrsch, like all the other Unwirrsches and Grünebaums, should become a shoemaker and with a mocking whistle he repulsed every attack on his understanding, his reason and his heart. Scarcely a day passed on which he did not with his piping rouse Auntie Schlotterbeck from her calm. The more irritated the women grew, the hotter in their arguments, the sharper in their words, the more melodious did Uncle Grünebaum become. He generally accompanied the beginning of every new discussion with a valiant, warlike tune and brought the conversation to a vain conclusion with the most melting, yearning melodies.
"Master Grünebaum, Master Grünebaum," cried Auntie, "if the child is unhappy later it will be your fault—your fault alone! I have never seen a man like you in all my born days."
Whether Prince Eugene's song was sung as an answer to these words was open to doubt: Master Grünebaum whistled it like "himself a Turk."
"Oh, Niklas," cried his sister, "what kind of a man are you? He is such a good child and his teachers are so satisfied with him and his father wanted him to learn everything that there is to learn. Think of Anton, Niklas, and do give in, please do, I beg you to."
Uncle Grünebaum did not give in for a long time yet. He expressed the thought that cobbling was also a fine, meditative, learned business and that "trade is the mother of money," very strikingly by means of the melody: "The linen-weavers have a fine old guild," but refused to say more.