was any cause for
emotional display, she set up trembling and screaming, and so got the
start of the countess, and generally managed to sob for a minute
longer; and when Theudelinde fell fainting upon one sofa Emerenzia
dropped lifeless upon another; likewise, she took longer coming to
than did her mistress. At night Emerenzia slept profoundly. Her room
was only separated from that of the countess by an ante-chamber, but
Theudelinde might tear down all the bells in the castle without waking
her companion, who maintained that her sleep was a species of nervous
trance.

One man only was ever allowed entrance into the Castle of Bondavara.
What do we say?--no man, no _masculinum_. The language of dogma has
defined that the priest is _neutrius generis_, is more and less than a
being of the male sex; bodily he can be no man's father, spiritually
he is father of thousands. No one need think he will here read any
calumnies against the priesthood. The pastor Mahok was a brave, honest
man; he said mass devoutly, baptized, married, buried when called
upon, would get up in the middle of the night to attend the death-bed
of a parishioner, and would never grumble at the sacristan for waking
him out of his first sleep. The pastor wrote no articles in the
_Church News_, neither did he ever read one. If he wanted a newspaper
he borrowed from the steward the daily paper. When his clerk collected
Peter's pence, Pastor Mahok sent it with an additional gulden or two
to the office of the chief priest; but this did not prevent him
sitting down in the evening to play "tarok" with the Lutheran pastor
and the infidel steward. He held to having a good cellar; he had a
whole family of bees in his garden, and was a successful cultivator of
fruit. In politics he was a loyalist, and confessed he belonged to the
middle party, which in the country means just this, and no more, "We
vote for the tobacco monopoly, but we smoke virgin tobacco because it
is good and we have it."

From this account every one will understand that during the course of
this narrative this excellent gentleman will offend no one. We would,
in fact, have nothing to say to him were it not that he came every
day, punctually at eleven o'clock, to Bondavara Castle to hear the
countess's confession, and that done, he remained to dinner, and in
both directions he honestly earned his small honorarium. There was a
general air of satisfaction in his whole appearance, in his double
chin,