There was great contentment in Joseph Nüssler's house, and much looking forward to a golden future of the ideal sort, such as poets mean when they try to describe the "golden glory of the dawn," not that they think the brilliance of gold an exact representation of that wonderful light in the eastern sky, but because they know nothing more beautiful, they so seldom get a glimpse of it. Godfrey gradually got rid of his long hair, and began to look upon the world with other eyes than before. He no longer used the mental blue spectacles they had provided him with at Erlangen or elsewhere, and much to Bräsig's delight he even went so far as to play at Boston, though it must be confessed that he did it very badly; on another occasion he had got on horse-back, and had managed to fall off without hurting himself, and he had appeared at Joseph Nüssler's Harvest Home. He did not dance, that is to say before all the rest, but he enjoyed a quiet turn with Lina in the next room, and at the end of the evening he sang "Vivallera!" clearly but wretchedly ill. And Rudolph? It is sufficient to repeat what Hilgendorf said to Bräsig about him: "He'll do, Bräsig. He's just such another youngster as I was myself; there's no tiring him; he's as strong as a horse. He has only to glance at a thing, and he knows how to do it at once, and it was just the same with me. And as for books? He never opens one! And that's like me again."--Mrs. Nüssler rejoiced in her children's happiness; and young Joseph and young Bolster sat quietly by the hour together, gazing straight before them, and saying nothing, they were thinking of the time when they would each have a new heir to their dignities, young Joseph in Rudolph, and young Bolster in young Bolster the seventh. Theirs could not be called a looking forward to a golden dawn, but to contented natures like Joseph and Bolster the evening-sky has likewise its golden light.