partment left as soon as possible; they did not
stay long.

The Goose Man was always in a cheerful humour, always ready for a good
joke. At times he would whistle softly, and smooth out the wrinkles in
his doublet. There was a certain amount of rustic shyness about him, but
his affability, his good manners, and his child-like cheerfulness
removed any unpleasant impression this rusticity might otherwise have
made. He generally spoke the dialect of Nuremberg, though when with
Daniel he never spoke anything but the most correct and chosen High
German. His natural, acquired culture and the wealth of his vocabulary
were really amazing.

Ten times a day at least he would scamper into the room where little
Gottfried was sleeping and express his admiration for the pretty child.
"How you are to be envied to have such a living creature crawling and
sprawling around in your home!" he said to Daniel. And in course of time
Daniel actually came to have a new affection for the child.

As soon as the Goose Man felt perfectly at home in Daniel's house, he
took to bringing his two geese along with him. He would place them very
circumspectly in a corner of the room. One evening he was sitting
playing with them, when the bell rang. Andreas Doederlein stormed in, and
demanded that some one tell him where his daughter was.

"Upon my word and honour! An old acquaintance of mine!" said the Goose
Man, laughing and blinking. "I see him nowadays in the cafe much more
frequently than is good for his health."

"I must urgently request you to control yourself," said Benda, turning
to Andreas Doederlein, and pointed to the bed in which Daniel was lying.

"My daughter is not a bad woman. Let people overburdened with credulity
believe that she is bad," cried Doederlein, with the expression and in
the tone and gesture of the royal Lear, and shook his Olympian locks.
"The fact is that violence has been practised on her; she has been
driven into ruin! Men have stolen the sweet love of my dearly beloved
daughter through the use of vile tricks and artifices. Where is she, the
unfortunate, betrayed child? With what is she clothing her nakedness,
and how is she finding food and shelter--shelter in a world of wicked
men?"

A strange thing happened: the Goose Man took the gigantic arm of the
Olympian, put his mouth to his beefy ear, and, with a sad and
reproachful look on his face, whispered something to him. Doederlein
turned red and then pale, looked