peace-nay, even a life
without bitter sorrow for you from the rest of the kin--is to expect to
gather sweet pears from juniper bushes. Ever since your betrothal your
mother and I have had no sleep, disturbed whenever we talked to each
other about your being condemned to live under the same roof with that
old devil, the countess, her pitiable daughter, and that worthless
Siebenburg. But within the past few hours all this has been changed. The
table-cloth has been cut between the Eysvogels and the Ortliebs. No power
in the world can ever join it. I have not told you what has happened. Now
you may learn that you----But first listen, and then decide on whose side
you will stand.

"Early this morning I went to the session of the Council. In the
market-place I met first one member of it, then a second, third, and
fourth; each asked me what had happened to the beautiful E, my lovely
little daughter. Gradually I learned what had reached their ears.
Yesterday evening, on his way home from here, the man outside, Casper
Eysvogel, sullied your--our--good name, child, in a way I have just
learned the particulars. He boasted, in the presence of those estimable
old gentlemen, the Brothers Ebner, that he had flung at my feet the ring
which bound you to his son. You had been surprised at midnight, he said,
in the arms of a Swiss knight, and that base scoundrel Siebenburg, his
daughter's husband, dared at the gaming-table, before a number of knights
and gentlemen--among them young Hans Gross, Veit Holzschuher, and
others-to put your interview with the Swiss in so false a light that No,
I cannot bring my lips to utter it----

"You need hear only this one thing more: the wretch said that he thanked
his patron saint that they had discovered the jade's tricks in time. And
this, child, was the real belief of the whole contemptible crew! But now
that the water is up to their necks, and they need my helping hand to
save them from drowning-now they will graciously take Ernst Ortlieb's
daughter if he will give them his property into the bargain, that they
may destroy both fortune and child. No--a thousand times no! It is not
seemly, at this hour, to yield to the spirit of hate; but she who is
lying in her last sleep above would not have counselled me by a single
word to such suicidal folly. I did not learn the worst until I went to
the Council, or I would have turned the importunate fellow from the door
this morning. Tell the old man so, and ad