Linda's
troubles did not come from the divided right which she had in her
father's house. Linda's troubles, as has before been said, sprang not
from her aunt's covetousness, but from her aunt's virtue--perhaps we
might more truly say, from her aunt's religion.

Nuremberg is one of those German cities in which a stranger finds it
difficult to understand the religious idiosyncrasies of the people.
It is in Bavaria, and Bavaria, as he knows, is Roman Catholic. But
Nuremberg is Protestant, and the stranger, when he visits the two
cathedrals--those of St. Sebald and St. Lawrence--finds it hard to
believe that they should not be made to resound with masses, so like
are they in all respects to other Romanist cathedrals which he has
seen. But he is told that they are Lutheran and Protestant, and he
is obliged to make himself aware that the prevailing religion of
Nuremberg is Lutheran, in spite of what to him are the Catholic
appearances of the churches. Now the widow Staubach was among
Protestants the most Protestant, going far beyond the ordinary
amenities of Lutheran teaching, as at present taught, in her
religious observances, her religious loves, and her religious
antipathies. The ordinary Lutheran of the German cities does not wear
his religion very conspicuously. It is not a trouble to him in his
daily life, causing him to live in terror as to the life to come.
That it is a comfort to him let us not doubt. But it has not on him
generally that outward, ever palpable, unmistakable effect, making
its own of his gait, his countenance, his garb, his voice, his words,
his eyes, his thoughts, his clothes, his very sneeze, his cough, his
sighs, his groans, which is the result of Calvinistic impressions
thoroughly brought home to the mind and lovingly entertained in the
heart. Madame Staubach was in truth a German Anabaptist, but it will
be enough for us to say that her manners and gait were the manners
and gait of a Calvinist.

While Linda Tressel was a child she hardly knew that her aunt was
peculiar in her religious ideas. That mode of life which comes to a
child comes naturally, and Linda, though she was probably not allowed
to play as freely as did the other bairns around her, though she
was taken more frequently to the house of worship which her aunt
frequented, and targed more strictly in the reading of godly books,
did not know till she was a child no longer, that she was subjected
to harder usage than others endured. B