Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/114

 the half of her body, cut away from life by the apoplexy, she lay upon her lard-pillow but as on a softer grave; nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was at once lively, pious, and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornucopia to all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from rigid devotion; the lower classes she assisted, cherished, and despised, regarding nothing in them, except it were their piety. She received the bowing Quintus with the back-bowing air of a patroness; yet she brightened into a look of kindliness at his disloading of the compliments from Thiennette.

She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, and said,—yet without losing the inflation of pride from her countenance,—"She should soon die; but the god-children of her husband she would remember in her will." Further, she told him directly in the face, which stood there all over-written with the Fourth Commandment before her, that "he must not build upon a settlement in Hukelum; but to the Flachsenfingen Conrectorate (to which the Burgermeister and Council had the right of nomination) she hoped to promote him, as it was from the then Burgermeister that she bought her coffee, and from the Town-Syndic (he drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg candles) that she bought both her wax and tallow lights."

And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, when she asked him sick-news of Senior Astmann, who guided himself more by Luther's Catechism than by the Catechism of Health. She was Astmann's patroness in a stricter than ecclesiastical sense; and she even confessed that she would soon follow this true shepherd of souls, when she heard, here at Schadeck, the sound of his funeral-bell. Such strange chemical affinities exist between