And indeed from his niece’s letters the Vicar saw that between her and the Baron there was eternal peace, and a great deal more that is eternal.
He seemed greatly touched as he laid the letters down; he stretched out his hand across the table, and said—
“Baron, I for my part will make peace with you. Susie shall be yours, and the law-suit may go to the dogs. But we must handle Aunt Rosmarin carefully. She is a dear, good woman, but she has peculiar ideas about some things. Up to this day I was a raging Saul, henceforth I shall be a gentle Paul, and shall begin at once upon my work of conversion.”
The Baron jumped up, embracing and kissing brave Saul in a rapture of delight.
Meanwhile Aunt Rosmarin had heard her brother relate the story of his adventure. When he told her how he found the horse, her eyes sparkled with pleasure at the discovery. The fact of his getting into the saddle she accompanied with the remark: “You don’t know how to ride. Every cobbler to his last!” When he came to his aerial flight across the bar, and his swim through the stream, she jumped up, nervously seized her brother’s two hands and cried, “For heaven’s sake, what dangers were you subject to!” And she did not regain her composure until he halted before the horse’s crib. Then, as the Baron came in, her face lengthened; the warmer the Vicar grew in chanting his praises the cooler was Aunt Rosmarin. And when he had the audacity to add, “Susie does not seem to dislike the Baron; seems to me we had better let the law-suit go, and let things take their course,” Auntie shook her head, while she gazed at her brother from top to toe with wide open eyes.
“Well, I never!” said she. “I fear me the ride and the fright have done you some injury. If the Baron did not turn you out into the pitch-dark night, giving you lodging and food instead, he did no more than heathens and barbarians would have done. You need not think I’ll give him Susie for his roasts and his Burgundy. A weak sort of man you must be to be willing to sacrifice your principles and all the disgrace and sorrow our family has suffered through the Baron for one poor supper.”
Then did the Vicar arise in indignation and say, “Why, Aunt Rosmarin, has all Christian charity gone out of you? I wish then that you had ridden the Baron’s horse in my stead; I wish you had been called upon to fly through the air, and to swim through the surging billows, to make the acquaintance of an honourable man. Then you would think different.”
Aunt Rosmarin thought her brother’s remarkable wish very improper, as well as insulting. She thereupon gave him a lecture lasting three hours, and having for its perpetual refrain, “I will not hear another word about the Baron. In future I shall act alone, in strict accordance with my principles.”
Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848).