o
pretentious for so youthful a woman, while others looked upon it as
too little suited to a lady of social position. Everything about her,
they said, betrayed the Berlin school,--sense in external matters and
a remarkable degree of uncertainty and embarrassment in the discussion
of great problems. At the Borckes', and also at the homes in Morgnitz
and Dabergotz, she had been declared "infected with rationalism," but
at the Grasenabbs' she was pronounced point-blank an "atheist." To be
sure, the elderly Mrs. Grasenabb, _nee_ Stiefel, of Stiefelstein in
South Germany, had made a weak attempt to save Effi at least for
deism. But Sidonie von Grasenabb, an old maid of forty-three, had
gruffly interjected the remark: "I tell you, mother, simply an
atheist, and nothing short of an atheist, and that settles it." After
this outburst the old woman, who was afraid of her own daughter, had
observed discreet silence.

The whole round had taken just about two weeks, and at a late hour on
the second day of December the Innstettens were returning home from
their last visit. At the Gueldenklees' Innstetten had met with the
inevitable fate of having to argue politics with old Mr. Gueldenklee.
"Yes, dearest district councillor, when I consider how times have
changed! A generation ago today, or about that long, there was, you
know, another second of December, and good Louis, the nephew of
Napoleon--_if_ he was his nephew, and not in reality of entirely
different extraction--was firing grape and canister at the Parisian
mob. Oh well, let him be forgiven for that; he was just the man to do
it, and I hold to the theory that every man fares exactly as well and
as ill as he deserves. But when he later lost all appreciation and in
the year seventy, without any provocation, was determined to have a
bout with us, you see, Baron, that was--well, what shall I say?--that
was a piece of insolence. But he was repaid for it in his own coin.
Our Ancient of Days up there is not to be trifled with and He is on
our side."

"Yes," said Innstetten, who was wise enough to appear to be entering
seriously into such Philistine discussions, "the hero and conqueror of
Saarbruecken did not know what he was doing. But you must not be too
strict in your judgment of him personally. After all, who is master in
his own house? Nobody. I myself am already making preparations to put
the reins of government into other hands, and Louis Napoleon, you
know, was simply a pie