"'Certainly, Anna Maria!' I was glad to have, in a certain degree, a slight claim on the girl. 'Do you like knitting, Susanna?' I asked.
"She laughed and shook her head. 'Oh, no, no! I grow dizzy when I see knitting always round and round.'
"Anna Maria did not seem to hear this answer. 'Fräulein von Hegewitz will teach you netting and plain knitting,' she said; 'with me you shall learn to understand the mysteries of housekeeping. And now we will have breakfast, and then begin at once. Klaus has been in the field for a long time already,' she added; 'the first grass is to be cut to-day.'
"And they went. Susanna tripped along, with hanging head, behind Anna Maria. 'Is she pursuing the right method with this child?' I wondered. 'With her energy she will destroy all at once, all the results of former education; but it surely is not possible. God help her to the right way!'
"Later, as I was taking my walk through the garden, I saw Susanna coming along by the pond; she did not walk, she actually flew, with outstretched arms, as if she would press to her heart the green tops of the old trees, the golden sunshine, and all the birds singing so jubilantly to-day, and all nature. Her short skirts were flying, the woollen wrap had disappeared, and her white shoulders emerged like wax from the deep black of her dress. Indescribably charming she looked, thus rushing along; she must have escaped somehow from Anna Maria. Close by my hiding-place she stood still, and looked up at the blue sky; then, singing lightly, she stooped, picked a narcissus and fastened the white flowers in her bosom, and then put her hand into her dress pocket, and drew out something which she put quickly into her mouth, but which did not interfere with her singing, for now as she went on she trilled the words:
'Batti, batti, o bel Masetto
la tua povera Zerlina.'
"I followed her slowly, and observed lying in the path a little object wrapped in white paper, which she had evidently lost. 'A bonbon! Well, that is the height of folly!' said I, taking it up in vexation. 'One could not expect anything different from such bringing up.' And as I unwrapped the thing, I found in it a French motto, a more sugary and frivolous one than which could scarcely have been composed in the time of Louis XIV., supposing that bonbon mottoes were known at that time. 'If Anna Maria knew of this, with her pure, maidenly mind!' I thought, shaking my head. 'Oh, Klaus, for my part, I wish your bird of paradise were in the moon, at any rate not here.' I overtook her at the next turn of the path, where there was a red thorn in the splendor of full bloom; it bent its branches almost humbly under this superabundance of rosy adornment, at which Susanna was looking admiringly.
"'Oh, how charming!' she cried, as she saw me. 'Oh, how wonderfully beautiful!' And the purest joy shone from her eyes. How did that accord with the bonbon motto?
"In that moment I resolved not to lose confidence in the girl's character, and at every opportunity to help lift the young spirit into higher regions. I have honestly striven to fulfil this promise. I may testify to it to myself—not so violently, not in so dictatorial and severe a manner as Anna Maria did I proceed; not like Klaus either. Ah, me—Klaus! Those first eight weeks in general! Ah, if I only knew how to describe the time which now followed! There is so little to say, and yet such an immense change was brought about in our house.
"Whether Susanna Mattoni ever missed her old nurse, I did not know. When she awoke on that first morning and found Anna Maria by her bed instead of the little actress, to inform her that the latter had left the house, great tears had streamed from her eyes. Anna Maria had said: 'Be reasonable, Susanna, and do not make a request that I cannot grant.' And Susanna had replied, with an inimitable mingling of childishness and pride: 'Have no fear, Fräulein von Hegewitz, I never ask a second time!'