tleman felt greatly annoyed when you
told him you should only see common covetousness in any Junker's wooing
of your daughter. But all would have been well if, when Spangenberg
began to speak of his son, you had interposed--if you had said, 'Marry,
my good and honoured sir, if you yourself came along with your son to
sue for my daughter--why, i' faith, that would be far too high an
honour for me, and I should then have wavered in my firmest
principles.' Now, if you had spoken to him like that, what else could
old Spangenberg have done but forget his former resentment, and smile
cheerfully and in good humour as he had done before?" "Ay, scold me,"
said Master Martin, "scold me right well, I have well deserved it; but
when the old gentleman would keep talking such stupid nonsense I felt
as if I were choking, I could not make any other answer." "And then,"
went on Paumgartner, "what a ridiculous resolve to give your daughter
to nobody but a cooper! You will commit, you say, your daughter's
destiny to Providence, and yet with human shortsightedness you
anticipate the decree of the Almighty in that you obstinately determine
beforehand that your son-in-law is to come from within a certain narrow
circle. That will prove the ruin of you and your Rose, if you are not
careful Have done, Master Martin, have done with such unchristian
childish folly; leave the Almighty, who will put a right choice in your
daughter's honest heart when the right time comes--leave Him to manage
it all in his own way." "O my worthy friend," said Master Martin, quite
crest-fallen, "I now see how wrong I was not to tell you everything at
first. You think it is nothing but overrating my handiwork that has
brought me to take this unchangeable resolve of wedding Rose to none
but a master-cooper; but that is not so; there is another reason, a
more wonderful and mysterious reason. I can't let you go until you have
learned all; you shall not bear ill-will against me over-night. Sit
down, I earnestly beg you, stay a few minutes longer. See here; there's
still a bottle of that old wine left which the ill-tempered Junker has
despised; come, let's enjoy it together." Paumgartner was astonished at
Master Martin's earnest, confidential tone, which was in general
perfectly foreign to his nature; it seemed as if there was something
weighing heavy upon the man's heart that he wanted to get rid of.

And when Paumgartner had taken his seat and drunk a glass of wine,
Mast