Yes, one has to get used to a great deal. It is a real foreign country. The strange currency, the difficulty of understanding the common people—I speak too fast to them and they seem to talk gibberish to me—and then the Catholicism. I hate it, as you know; I have no respect for it—
Here the Consul began to laugh, leaning back in the sofa with a piece of bread and herb cheese in his hand.
“Yes, Tom, you are laughing,” said his Mother, and tapped with her middle finger on the table. “But it pleases me very much that she holds fast to the faith of her fathers and shuns the unevangelical gimcrackery. I know that you felt a certain sympathy for the papal church, while you were in France and Italy: but that is not religion in you, Tom—it is something else, and I understand what. We must be forbearing; yet in these things a frivolous feeling of fascination is very much to be regretted. I pray God that you and your Gerda—for I well know that she does not belong to those firm in the faith—will in the course of time feel the necessary seriousness. You will forgive your mother her words, I know.”
On top of the fountain (she continued reading) there is a Madonna, and sometimes she is crowned with a wreath, and the common people come with rose garlands and kneel down and pray—which looks very pretty, but it is written: “Go into your chamber.” You often see monks here in the street; they look very respectable. But—imagine, Mamma!—yesterday in Theatiner Street some high dignitary of the church was driving past me in his coach; perhaps it was an archbishop; anyhow, an elderly man—well, this gentleman throws me an ogling look out of the window, like a lieutenant of the Guard! You know, Mother, I’ve no great opinion of your friends the ministers and missionaries, but Teary Trieschke was certainly nothing compared to this rakish old prince of the Church.
“Horrors!” interjected the Frau Consul, shocked.
“That’s Tony, to the life,” said the Consul.
“How is that, Tom?”
“Well, perhaps she just invited him a trifle—to try him, you know. I know Tony. And I am sure the ‘ogling look’ delighted her hugely, which was probably what the old gentleman wanted.”
The Frau Consul did not take this up, but continued to read:
Day before yesterday the Niederpaurs entertained in the evening. It was lovely, though I could not always follow the conversation, and I found the tone sometimes rather questionable. There was a singer there from the Court opera, who sang songs, and a young artist, who asked me to sit for him, which I refused, as I thought it not suitable. I enjoyed myself most with a Herr Permaneder. Would you ever think there could be such a name? He is a hop dealer, a nice, jolly man, in middle life and a bachelor. I had him at table, and stuck to him, for he was the only Protestant in the party. He is a citizen of Munich, but his family comes from Nuremberg. He assured me that he knew our firm very well by name, and you can imagine how it pleased me, Tom, to hear the respectful tone in which he said that. He asked how many there are of us, and things like that. He asked about Erica and Grünlich too. He comes sometimes to the Niederpaurs’, and is probably going tomorrow to Wurmsee with us.
Well, adieu, dear Mamma; I can write no more. If I live and prosper, as you always say, I shall stop here three or four weeks more, and when I come back I will tell you more of Munich, for in a letter it is hard to know where to begin. I like it very much; that I must say—though one would have to train a cook to make decent sauces. You see, I am an old woman, with my life behind me, and I have nothing more to look forward to on earth. But if, for example, Erica should—if she lives and prospers—marry here, I should have nothing against it; that I must say.
Again the Consul was obliged to stop eating and lean back in his chair to laugh.
“She is simply priceless, Mother. And when she tries to dissimulate, she is incomparable. She is a thousand miles away from being able to carry it off.”
“Yes, Tom,” said the Frau Consul, “she is a good child, and deserves good fortune.” And she finished the letter.
II
At the end of Frau Grünlich returned home. Another epoch was behind her, and the old existence began again—attending the daily devotions and the Jerusalem evenings and hearing Lea Gerhardt read aloud. Yet she was obviously in a gay and hopeful mood.
Her brother, the Consul, fetched her from the station—she had come from Buchen—and drove her through the Holsten Gate into the town. He could not resist paying her the old compliment—how, next to Clothilde, she was the prettiest one in the family; and she answered: “Oh, Tom, I hate you! To make fun of an old lady like that—”
But he was right, nevertheless: Madame Grünlich kept her good looks remarkably. You looked at the thick ash-blonde hair, rolled at the sides, drawn back above the little ears, and fastened on the top of the head with a broad tortoiseshell comb; at the soft expression of her grey-blue eyes, her pretty upper lip, the fine oval and delicate colour of her face—and you thought of three-and-twenty, perhaps; never of thirty. She wore elegant hanging gold earrings, which, in a somewhat different form, her grandmother had worn before her. A loose bodice
