Alick had received a cut on the nose, because he had very foolishly parried a blow with his face instead of with his sword. The cut did him no harm although it did not add to his beauty, for Mr. von so and so's pretty daughter heard of what had happened, and after she had put two and two together, and had guessed that their rivalry was the true cause of their disagreement, who could blame the girl for being even kinder to Alick than before. Now I could tell you the whole of Alick and Frida's love story if I chose to do so, and then everyone would say that I had chosen a hero and heroine such as are not to be met with every day, a lieutenant in a cavalry-regiment and a nobleman's daughter. But I will refrain. In the first place because I never give myself more to do than I can help, and who is to oblige me to give the tradesman's young daughters who may possibly read this book private lessons in the way a cavalry-officer makes love, or to show young men without position how to make love to a nobleman's daughter.--And who will guarantee its not having that effect?--Secondly, I wish to say once for all that I am not writing for the young, but for the old who take a book to fan away the flies, and to make them forget their worries as they lie on the sofa in the afternoon.--Thirdly, I have still three girls to marry before the end of my book, and just let who ever wants to know what _that_ is, ask the mother of three unmarried daughters. Louisa Hawermann must of course be married, and would it not be a shame to make the twins old maids and leave them to get through the world as best they can?--Fourthly and lastly, I do not feel myself capable of describing the love-making of a lieutenant in a cavalry-regiment. Such a thing is beyond me and beyond Joseph; it would require a Shakespeare or a Mühlbach to do it justice, and indeed who knows whether Shakespeare would have succeeded either, for as far as I know he never even attempted it.--The short and the long of it is that they were married at Whitsun-tide in the year 1843, and Mr. von so and so having no other dowry to give his daughter on that momentous occasion, gave her--his blessing. Now that he is our Alick's father-in-law we will call him by his right name, Mr. von Satrop of Seelsdorf, but it is as well to mention at the same time that Seelsdorf was far more deeply mortgaged than Pümpelhagen.