ain feel proud and childish to
find that I had such power over any human being. He was a young and
very rich tanner from the neighbouring town of M----, not so bad as to
face or figure; indeed he passed for a handsome man; but it made me
positively ill if I had to sit by him longer than a quarter of an hour,
first because his love rendered him so silly and mawkish, and then
because he had a habit of deluging himself with scents, probably to get
rid of the smell of the tan-yard. I will not weary you with the history
of this horrible engagement. I get goose-skin all over at the very
recollection of it; the visits here, there, and everywhere; the
congratulations at which I had to smile when I would much rather have
cried; the day when he took me over his house and factory, and I
thought the smell of the dyes and skins would have suffocated me. Well,
it went on as long as it could go on, that is till it came to the
point. On the day before the wedding day, my bridegroom gave a party to
my favourite friends and my parents at his own house; the actual
marriage was to be solemnized at my parent's house. He was so
inordinately happy, foolish, and scented, that I suddenly said to
myself, "Better suffer anything than please such a simpleton as this,"
and that very night when they were all asleep, I actually left the
house, only taking with me a few necessaries in a bundle, and leaving
behind a letter to my parents saying they must forgive the sorrow I had
caused them, but that marry I could not and would not, and so in order
to be no longer a burden to them, I had gone off to my aunt at Speyer,
and would see whether I could not do something to support myself.

"'I was helped in my flight by the brother of my Hans Lutz, who
happened to be on a visit to his parents at the time, and would have
gone through fire and water for me. He took me safely to where I wanted
to go, to my aunt Millie's, her real name was Amelia, but so we
children always called her. She was an old widow-woman, lived upon her
small means, and had always been very fond of me, though she used to
shake her head at the way in which my family idolised me. When I told
her all that had happened she neither praised nor blamed me, but wrote
to my parents and tried to bring them round. That, alas, was in vain.
My father answered very curtly that if I did not marry the young tanner
I was no child of his; my mother tried persuasion. I now found out that
it was only my unfor