ised either, and surely life with one's wife and child was
best.

In the evening he drank his beer at the Lamb, and once, when the surgeon
Siedler called life a miserable vale of tears, he laughed in his face
and answered: "To him who knows how to take it right, it is a delightful
garden."

Florette was kind to her husband, and devoted herself to her child,
so long as he was an infant, with the most self-sacrificing love. Adam
often spoke of a little daughter, who must look exactly like its mother;
but it did not come.

When little Ulrich at last began to run about in the street, the
mother's nomadic blood stirred, and she was constantly dinning it into
her husband's ears that he ought to leave this miserable place and go to
Augsburg or Cologne, where it would be pleasant; but he remained firm,
and though her power over him was great, she could not move his resolute
will.

Often she would not cease her entreaties and representations, and when
she even complained that she was dying of solitude and weariness, his
veins swelled with wrath, and then she was frightened, fled to her room
and wept. If she happened to have a bold day, she threatened to go away
and seek her own relatives. This displeased him, and he made her feel
it bitterly, for he was steadfast in everything, even anger, and when he
bore ill-will it was not for hours, but months, nor at such times could
he be conciliated by coaxing or tears.

By degrees Florette learned to meet his discontent with a shrug of
her shoulders, and to arrange her life in her own way. Ulrich was her
comfort, pride and plaything, but sporting with him did not satisfy her.

While Adam was standing behind the anvil, she sat among the flowers in
the bow-window, and the watchmen now looked higher up than the forge,
the worthy magistrates no longer cast unfriendly glances at the smith's
house, for Florette grew more and more beautiful in the quiet life she
now enjoyed, and many a neighboring noble brought his horse to Adam to
be shod, merely to look into the eyes of the artisan's beautiful wife.

Count von Frohlingen came most frequently of all, and Florette soon
learned to distinguish the hoof-beats of his horse from those of the
other steeds, and when he entered the shop, willingly found some pretext
for going there too. In the afternoons she often went with her child
outside the gate, and then always chose the road leading to the count's
castle. There was no lack of careful fri