arents have given me good training, I think."

"In that respect? In everything, my sweet Effi."

"You say that just because we are still on our honeymoon,--why no, we
are past that already. For heaven's sake, Geert, I hadn't given it a
single thought, and--why, we have been married for over six weeks, six
weeks and a day. Yes, that alters the case. So I shall not take it as
flattery, I shall take it as the truth."

At this moment Frederick came in and brought the coffee. The breakfast
table stood across the corner of the sitting room in front of a sofa
made just in the right shape and size to fill that corner. They both
sat down upon the sofa.

"The coffee is simply delicious," said Effi, as she looked at the
room and its furnishings. "This is as good as hotel coffee or that we
had at Bottegone's--you remember, don't you, in Florence, with the
view of the cathedral? I must write mama about it. We don't have such
coffee in Hohen-Cremmen. On the whole, Geert, I am just beginning to
realize what a distinguished husband I married. In our home everything
was just barely passable."

"Nonsense, Effi. I never saw better house-keeping than in your home."

"And then how well your house is furnished. When papa had bought his
new weapon cabinet and hung above his writing desk the head of a
buffalo, and beneath that a picture of old general Wrangel, under whom
he had once served as an adjutant, he was very proud of what he had
done. But when I see these things here, all our Hohen-Cremmen elegance
seems by the side of them merely commonplace and meagre. I don't know
what to compare them with. Even last night, when I took but a cursory
look at them, a world of ideas occurred to me."

"And what were they, if I may ask?"

"What they were? Certainly. But you must not laugh at them. I once had
a picture book, in which a Persian or Indian prince (for he wore a
turban) sat with his feet under him on a silk cushion, and at his back
there was a great red silk bolster, which could be seen bulging out to
the right and left of him, and the wall behind the Indian prince
bristled with swords and daggers and panther skins and shields and
long Turkish guns. And see, it looks just like that here in your
house, and if you will cross your legs and sit down on them the
similarity will be complete."

"Effi, you are a charming, dear creature. You don't know how deeply I
feel that and how much I should like to show you every moment that I
do fee