apartments all looked out on to the slow-flowing but clear
stream, which ran so close below them that the town-clerk might have
sat and fished from his windows had he been so minded; for there was
no road there--only the narrow slip of a garden no broader than a
balcony. And opposite, beyond the river, where the road ran, there
was a broad place,--the Ruden Platz; and every house surrounding this
was picturesque with different colours, and with many gables, and the
points of the houses rose up in sharp pyramids, of which every brick
and every tile was in its place, sharp, clear, well formed, and
appropriate, in those very inches of space which each was called upon
to fill. For in Nuremberg it is the religion of the community that
no house shall fall into decay, that no form of city beauty shall be
allowed to vanish, that nothing of picturesque antiquity shall be
changed. From age to age, though stones and bricks are changed, the
buildings are the same, and the medieval forms remain, delighting the
taste of the traveller as they do the pride of the burgher. Thus it
was that Herr Steinmarc, the clerk of the magistrates in Nuremberg,
had for his use as pleasant an abode as the city could furnish him.

Now it came to pass that, during the many years of their residence
beneath the same roof, there grew up a strong feeling of friendship
between Peter Steinmarc and the widow Staubach, so strong that in
most worldly matters the widow would be content to follow her friend
Peter's counsels without hesitation. And this was the case although
Peter by no means lived in accordance with the widow's tenets as to
matters of religion. It is not to be understood that Peter was a
godless man,--not so especially, or that he lived a life in any way
scandalous, or open to special animadversion from the converted; but
he was a man of the world, very fond of money, very fond of business,
doing no more in the matter of worship than is done ordinarily by men
of the world,--one who would not scruple to earn a few gulden on the
Sunday if such earning came in his way, who liked his beer and his
pipe, and, above all things, liked the fees and perquisites of office
on which he lived and made his little wealth. But though thus worldly
he was esteemed much by Madame Staubach, who rarely, on his behalf,
put forth that voice of warning which was so frequently heard by her
niece.

But there are women of the class to which Madame Staubach belonged
who th