fiable to
fight the devil with fire. So his spirits rose, and now he longed for,
as eagerly as in the first moments of his loss he had dreaded, the
production of such lebkuchen at the Cafe Nuernberg as would prove the
proprietor of that highly respectable establishment to be neither more
nor less than a robber.

Hans was both annoyed and surprised as time passed on and the "cakes
succulent but damnatory" were not forthcoming from Gottlieb's oven. He
himself went on making unsatisfactory lebkuchen of bad materials by a
good formula, and Gottlieb continued to make unsatisfactory lebkuchen
by a bad formula of the best materials. Orthodox German palates found
nothing to commend and much to reprobate in both results. This was the
situation for several weeks. Hans could not understand it at all. The
subject was a delicate one to broach to Minna during their short but
blissful interviews about dusk in the central fastnesses of Tompkins
Square, at which interviews Aunt Hedwig winked and Herr Sohnstein
openly connived by keeping watch for them against Gottlieb's possible
appearance; for Hans had determined that until he had positive proof to
go upon he would keep secret, and most of all from Minna, the dreadful
fact of her father's crime. Therefore did he remain in a state of very
harrowing uncertainty, with his plan of campaign completely brought to a
stand.

During this period a heavy cloud hung over the Cafe Nuernberg. Gottlieb
came fitfully to his meals; and when he did come, he ate almost nothing.
Each day he grew more and more morose; each night, when poor Aunt Hedwig
was not kept awake by her own sorrowful thoughts, her slumbers were,
broken by hearing her brother pacing heavily the floor of the adjoining
room. In some sort he made up for his loss of sleep at night by sleeping
of an evening in the little room back of the shop, falling into restless
naps (when he should have been restfully smoking his long pipe), from
which he would wake with a start and sometimes with a cry of alarm, and
would dart furtive horrified glances at Aunt Hedwig and Herr Sohnstein:
who were doing nothing of a horrifying nature, only sitting cozily close
together, more or less enfolded in each other's arms. It was a little
inconsiderate on the part of the lovers, and very-hard on Minna, this
extremely open love-making; for Minna's love-making necessarily was
by fitful snatches amid the bleak desolations of Tompkins Square. They
would try to com