what crops they raised, and about their poultry and dairy. When
she was a child she had lived on a farm in Bavaria, and she
seemed to know a good deal about farming and live-stock. She was
disapproving when Claude told her they rented half their land to
other farmers. “If I were a young man, I would begin to acquire
land, and I would not stop until I had a whole county,” she
declared. She said that when she met new people, she liked to
find out the way they made their living; her own way was a hard
one.
Later in the evening Madame Schroeder-Schatz graciously consented
to sing for her cousins. When she sat down to the piano, she
beckoned Claude and asked him to turn for her. He shook his head,
smiling ruefully.
“I’m sorry I’m so stupid, but I don’t know one note from
another.”
She tapped his sleeve. “Well, never mind. I may want the piano
moved yet; you could do that for me, eh?”
When Madame Schroeder-Schatz was in Mrs. Erlich’s bedroom,
powdering her nose before she put on her wraps, she remarked,
“What a pity, Augusta, that you have not a daughter now, to marry
to Claude Melnotte. He would make you a perfect son-in-law.”
“Ah, if I only had!” sighed Mrs. Erlich.
“Or,” continued Madame Schroeder-Schatz, energetically pulling on
her large carriage shoes, “if you were but a few years younger,
it might not yet be too late. Oh, don’t be a fool, Augusta! Such
things have happened, and will happen again. However, better a
widow than to be tied to a sick man—like a stone about my neck!
What a husband to go home to! and I a woman in full vigour. Jas
ist ein Kreuz ich trage!” She smote her bosom, on the left side.
Having put on first a velvet coat, then a fur mantle, Madame
Schroeder-Schatz moved like a galleon out into the living room and
kissed all her cousins, and Claude Wheeler, good-night.
XI
One warm afternoon in May Claude sat in his upstairs room at the
Chapins’, copying his thesis, which was to take the place of an
examination in history. It was a criticism of the testimony of
Jeanne d’Arc in her nine private examinations and the trial in
ordinary. The Professor had assigned him the subject with a flash
of humour. Although this evidence had been pawed over by so many
hands since the fifteenth century, by the phlegmatic and the
fiery, by rhapsodists and cynics, he felt sure that Wheeler would
not dismiss the case lightly.
Indeed, Claude put a great deal of time and thought upon the
matter, and for the time being it seemed quite the most important
thing in his life. He worked from an English translation of the
Proces, but he kept the French text at his elbow, and some of her
replies haunted him in the language in which they were spoken. It
seemed to him that they were like the speech of her saints, of
whom Jeanne said, “the voice is beautiful, sweet and low, and it
speaks in the French tongue.” Claude flattered himself that he
