dden, happy event, but that even the most
unusual things later on must gradually conform to the laws of tradition
and of strong, established custom. The wedding might appear as a
miracle, but the marriage, which involved a continuance, would not. She
therefore said:

"With all these people, whom you now look at with proud indifference,
because you know that you are doing right--with all these people you'll
have to live, and you'll expect them, not to look at you askance, but to
give you due respect. Now if they are to do that, you must give and
allow them what they are accustomed to demand. You cannot force them to
make an exception in your case, and you can't run after each one
separately and say: 'If you knew how it all came about, you would say
that I was quite right in doing it.'"

But John rejoined:

"You shall see that nobody will have anything to say against my Amrei,
when he or she has known her a single hour!"

And he resorted to a good way, not only of pacifying his mother, but
also of causing her to rejoice in her innermost soul. He reported to her
how all the warnings she had given him, and all the ways of testing a
girl she had enumerated, had found exact correspondence in Amrei, as if
she had been made to order. And she could not help laughing, when he
concluded:

"You must have had the last in your head upon which the shoes up above
are made; for they fit her who is to run about in them as if they were
made for her." The mother let herself be quieted.

On the Saturday morning previous to the family gathering, Damie made his
appearance; but he was immediately dispatched back to Haldenbrunn to
procure all the necessary papers from the magistrate in the town-hall.

The first Sunday was an anxious day at Farmer Landfried's. The old
people had accepted Amrei, but how would it be with the rest of the
family? It is no easy matter to enter a large family of that kind unless
the way is paved with horses and wagons, and all sorts of furniture and
money, and a number of relatives.

Many wagons arrived that Sunday at Farmer Landfried's from the uplands
and lowlands. There came driving up brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law,
and all their relations.

"John has a wife, and he brought her straight home without her parents,
without a clergyman, and without the authorities having had a word to
say in the matter. She must be a beauty that he found behind a hedge
somewhere!"

This is what all of them were saying