um Zahn, after which he did not
again allude to his wife's decease. In his last years, when my father
managed the estate, and he only lived with us and criticised, he came to
have the reputation of an oracle. The neighbours sent him their sons
at the beginning of any important phase in their lives, and he received
them in this very arbour, administering eloquent and minute advice in
the deep voice that rolled round the shrubbery and filled me with a
vague sense of guilt as I played. Sitting among the bushes playing
muffled games for fear of disturbing him, I supposed he must be reading
aloud, so unbroken was the monotony of that majestic roll. The young men
used to come out again bathed in perspiration, much stung by mosquitoes,
and looking bewildered; and when they had got over the impression made
by my grandfather's speech and presence, no doubt forgot all he had
said with wholesome quickness, and set themselves to the interesting and
necessary work of gaining their own experience. Once, indeed, a dreadful
thing happened, whose immediate consequence was the abrupt end to the
long and close friendship between us and our nearest neighbour. His son
was brought to the arbour and left there in the usual way, and either he
must have happened on the critical half hour after the coffee and before
the Kreuzzeitung, when my grandfather was accustomed to sleep, or he
was more courageous than the others and tried to talk, for very shortly,
playing as usual near at hand, I heard my grandfather's voice, raised to
an extent that made me stop in my game and quake, saying with deliberate
anger, "Hebe dich weg von mir, Sohn des Satans!" Which was all the
advice this particular young man got, and which he hastened to take, for
out he came through the bushes, and though his face was very pale, there
was an odd twist about the corners of his mouth that reassured me.

This must have happened quite at the end of my grandfather's life, for
almost immediately afterwards, as it now seems to me, he died before he
need have done because he would eat crab, a dish that never agreed with
him, in the face of his doctor's warning that if he did he would surely
die. "What! am I to be conquered by crabs?" he demanded indignantly of
the doctor; for apart from loving them with all his heart he had never
yet been conquered by anything. "Nay, sir, the combat is too unequal--do
not, I pray you, try it again," replied the doctor. But my grandfather
ordered c