She invariably began by tears
and ended by scolding; and she was well entitled to both.

"How pretty and fresh our home was then, in the valley yonder! He was
our neighbour's son, and honest, and industrious, and handsome. No one
now-a-days is half so handsome. People may be offended with me if they
like, but so it is;--but he--I cannot name his name, though everyone
knows, all the same, that he was called Anton Striegler. He was
resolved to go to travel, and so he went off to foreign parts with
merchandise; and by the brookside he took leave of me, and said,
'Franzl,' said he, 'so long as that brook runs, I will be faithful and
true at heart to you; and be you the same to me.' He could say all
these fine words, and write them down too; that is the way with these
false men; I could never have believed it. In the course of four years,
I got seventeen letters from him--from France, England, and Spain. The
letter from England cost me at the time a crown dollar, for it came at
the moment when Napoleon did not choose us to receive either foreign
letters, or coffee; so our Pastor said the letter had come round by
Constantinople and Austria, but at all events it cost a whole crown
dollar. For a long, long time after, I never got one. I waited fourteen
years, then I heard that he had married a black woman, in Spain. I
never wanted to hear any more of the bad man, and none could be worse.
And then I took out of my drawer the fine letters, the fine lying
letters that he had written to me, and I burned them all, my love going
off with them in smoke, up the chimney."

Franzl always finished her tale of woe with these heroic words. On this
occasion she had a good listener,--there could not be a better; he had
but one fault, which was that, in fact, he did not hear one word she
said; he only looked intently at her, and thought of Annele. At last
Franzl, through gratitude, began to talk of her. "Yes, yes, I will take
care to tell Annele what an excellent creature you are, and how kind
you have always been to me. Don't look so grave and gloomy,--you ought
to be so merry. I know well--oh, heavens! but too well--that when we
have just secured such great happiness, we seem quite upset by it God
be praised! you are in luck;--you can stay quietly at home together,
and can say good morning, and good night, to each other every day that
God gives you. Now I must say good night! It is very late."

It was past midnight when at length Lenz went