in an old newspaper.

It was somewhat unusual for the shoemaker to be absent from the
workroom at this time of day. But it was also, as the reader will
remember, an unusual occasion, Reginchin's birthday, and her mother,
who generally attended to the management of everything in the shop, was
obliged to give up the charge to her husband, in order to go into the
kitchen and mix the dough herself, for the usual birthday cake. She
would not relinquish this task, though there was a confectioner's shop
at the very next corner. For ever since Reginchin was four years old,
she had been very fond of a certain kind of home-made plumb-cake, and,
though she could rarely do anything exactly to her mother's mind, and
was continually subject to her criticism, the young girl was, as she
very well knew, the apple of her mother's eye, and, for her the good
woman would have gone through fire. So, hot as the day was, Madame
Feyertag stood without a murmur beside the servant at the fire,
allowing herself to be troubled but little by the principal anxiety
which usually rendered her unwilling to have her husband in the shop:
the jealous fear that some female customers might come in, and that the
shoemaker might find other feet, whose measure he would be obliged to
take, prettier than those adorned with the legitimate slippers of his
wife.

To be sure the worthy man, though he might have been a sly fellow in
his bachelor days, had given very little cause for such a suspicion
during twenty-three years of extremely peaceful married life. But
within a few months a change had taken place which attracted the
attention of his clever wife; a change not much apparent in his actions
and conduct, since he quietly continued his regular mode of life and
did not even oppose the before-mentioned slippers, but noticeable in
his language. She was already accustomed to hear him talk much of
progress, and inveigh against all tyranny, especially domestic slavery,
giving utterance to very forcible expressions, and this harmless
amusement she willingly countenanced, since all affairs of state and
family pursued, as before, their even course. But during the last three
months his revolutionary table-talk had changed its tone, and had been
steadily pointed against "women," of whom he repeated the most
malicious things, usually in strange, outlandish words. Perhaps he
had merely picked up these contemptuous epithets at the liberal
trades-union, to which he owed all