Franziska Götz talked of her father, and what the daughter told Hans of him was very different from what Lieutenant Rudolf Götz had said and even more so from what Dr. Théophile Stein had related. The daughter's eyes shone as she told how proud and brave her father had been and how on more than one battlefield he had shed his blood for freedom. Fränzchen talked of her mother, how lovely and kind she had been, how much anxiety, unrest and distress she had suffered in her eventful life without ever complaining and how at last in the year 1836 she had died a lingering death of consumption. Good little Fränzchen told how deeply her mother's death had bowed her father and how he had really never raised his head again joyfully after the funeral. She told how her good Uncle Rudolf had come to that funeral, an old invalid soldier himself, with a little bundle and a heavy, knobbed stick. She knew much to tell of the curious household of the two brothers in Paris and of how so many old warriors of all nations, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles, Italians, and Americans came and went in the house and were all so kind to Fränzchen. She told of the fencing lessons that the two brothers gave and of how, in a yard outside the barrier, they had taught the young pupils of the polytechnic school and the students of the Latin Quarter how to shoot with pistols. She told of the gruff old retired soldiers of the Old Guard who came to be such good friends with the two Germans whom they had met at Katzbach, Leipzig and Waterloo, and sat with them in their attic room smoking and drinking and telling stories like all the rest.
Then with bent head she told how good Uncle Rudolf had at last grown homesick for Germany; how he had gone away and then how evil times followed; times full of misery and trouble, evil, evil days. In a scarcely audible voice Franziska Götz told how life went worse and worse with her father, how, one after another, the sources from which he had drawn aid failed, and how more and more frequently he had sought comfort in stupefying strong drink and of how, gradually, many bad, false people had drawn close to him.
Finally Franziska Götz spoke in a low voice of Dr. Théophile, of how he had lived in the same house with them and how he had tried in the most abominable way to take advantage of her unhappy father's weakness. She spoke of her unutterable loneliness, and Hans Unwirrsch bit his lips and in imagination gripped the throat of Moses Freudenstein of Kröppel Street with his two good fists to squeeze his soul out of his body.
Franziska told of her father's death and how in her greatest distress Uncle Rudolf had come again to save her.
Franziska showed Hans a letter from Uncle Theodor and it was really most remarkable how differently Privy Councillor Götz could write from the way he looked and spoke.
Lieutenant Rudolf Götz was very poor and had no home to which he could take his brother's orphan child; and now for the first time Hans learnt how the good old man lived, how he roved about nomadically, actually omnia sua secum portans and settled down only in winter with some one of his comrades in war of the same age as himself, preferably with Colonel von Bullau in Grunzenow, far off on the shore of the Baltic.
Lieutenant Rudolf could only fetch the orphan from Paris, he could not offer her a protecting roof. Here now was the letter from Uncle Theodor which the Privy Councillor's wife had not dictated and which had not been written under her eyes but only under cover of one of his documents; and it was this letter which had led the lieutenant to bring his niece to his brother's house.
"And on the way I was fortunate enough to meet you in the Post-horn in Windheim," cried Hans. "I was going to my mother's deathbed and Mr. Götz called Moses a scoundrel, and the gale—and you, oh Miss Franziska ... Good God, and it is truth and reality that we are sitting here and waiting for Miss Kleophea!"
They both started at the mention of that name and looked toward the black windows on which the rain still poured down, which the wind still shook. They had given up hoping for the return of the unhappy girl.