oper for elderly people; even your old mother is
still too young for them, and if you, in your seventeenth year, come
out in mink or marten the people of Kessin will consider it a
masquerade."

It was on the second of September that these words were spoken, and
the conversation would doubtless have been continued, if it had not
happened to be the anniversary of the battle of Sedan. But because of
the day they were interrupted by the sound of drum and fife, and Effi,
who had heard before of the proposed parade, but had meanwhile
forgotten about it, rushed suddenly away from the work-table, past the
circular plot and the pond, in the direction of a balcony built on the
churchyard wall, to which one could climb by six steps not much
broader than the rungs of a ladder. In an instant she was at the top
and, surely enough, there came all the school children marching along,
Jahnke strutting majestically beside the right flank, while a little
drum major marched at the head of the procession, several paces in
advance, with an expression on his countenance as though it were
incumbent upon him to fight the battle of Sedan all over again. Effi
waved her handkerchief and he promptly returned the greeting by a
salute with his shining baton.

A week later mother and daughter were again sitting in the same
place, busy, as before, with their work. It was an exceptionally
beautiful day; the heliotrope growing in a neat bed around the sundial
was still in bloom, and the soft breeze that was stirring bore its
fragrance over to them.

"Oh, how well I feel," said Effi, "so well and so happy! I can't think
of heaven as more beautiful. And, after all, who knows whether they
have such wonderful heliotrope in heaven?"

"Why, Effi, you must not talk like that. You get that from your
father, to whom nothing is sacred. Not long ago he even said:
'Niemeyer looks like Lot.' Unheard of. And what in the world can he
mean by it? In the first place he doesn't know how Lot looked, and
secondly it shows an absolute lack of consideration for Hulda.
Luckily, Niemeyer has only the one daughter, and for this reason the
comparison really falls to the ground. In one regard, to be sure, he
was only too right, viz., in each and every thing that he said about
'Lot's wife,' our good pastor's better half, who again this year, as
was to be expected, simply ruined our Sedan celebration by her folly
and presumption. By the by it just occurs to me that we were
inte