anger. His feeling simply was
that Minna was his Minna, and that neither Hans nor anybody else had any
right to her. This was not a position that admitted of logical defence;
but it was one that he could be ugly and stick to: which was precisely
what he did.

Minna did not remain long a prisoner in her own room, feeding upon
pumpernickel and water and bitter thoughts. Aunt Hedwig and Herr
Sohnstein succeeded in putting a stop to that cruelty. And these elderly
lovers, whose fresh love had made them of a sudden as young as Minna
herself, and had filled thera with a warm sympathy for her, laid their
heads together and sought earnestly to circumvent in her interest her
father's stern decree. It was a joy to see this picture, in the little
room back of the shop, of middle-aged love-making; and it was a little
startling to find how the new youth that their love had given them
had filled them with a quite extravagantly youthful recklessness.
Herr Sohnstein, who was well known as a grave, sedate, and unusually
cautious notary, seriously suggested (though he did not explain exactly
how this would do it) that they should make an effort to bring Gottlieb
to terms by burning down the bakery. And Aunt Hedwig, whose prudent
temperament was sufficiently disclosed in the fact that she had
hesitated in the matter of her own love affair for upward of a dozen
years, not less seriously advanced the proposition that they all should
elope from the Cafe Nuernberg and set up a rival establishment! Herr
Sohnstein did not make any audible comment upon this violent proposal of
Aunt Hedwig's, but it evidently put an idea into his head.

As Gottlieb happened to be walking along the south side of Tompkins
Square, a fortnight or so after the tempest, he found his steps arrested
by a great sign that lay face downward on trestles across the sidewalk,
in readiness for hoisting in place upon the front of a smart new shop.
Inside the shop he saw painters and paper-hangers at work; and on the
large plate-glass window a man was gluing white letters with a dexterous
celerity. The letters already in place read "Nuernberger Lebku--" And as
to this legend he saw "chen" added, he rolled out a stout South German
oath and stamped upon the ground. But far stronger was the oath that he
uttered as the big sign was swung upward, and he read upon it, in golden
German letters:

[Illustration: Bakery Sign 226]

That the Recording Angel blotted out with his tears the