what a difficult thing it is to make a speech, and yet you wanted to meddle with a thing that even I cannot manage."--"Ah, Bräsig, but ...."--"Hold your tongue, Joseph, I know what you're going to say." He then went to the window, opened it, and said: "You can all go back to your work now, there won't be any speech to day."--"All right," said Kalsow, "but the master ...."--"Has thought better of it," interrupted Bräsig, "he thinks that spring is rather too early in the year for such a thing, but he hopes to make you a stunning good speech in autumn after the harvest is secured."--"Very well," answered Kalsow, "perhaps that'll be the best time for it. Come away then," and so he and the labourers all went back to their work. Now that the coast was clear, Bräsig turned to Joseph, addressed him with all the dignity he could command, and used all the influence he had gained over him in the course of many years: "How? You were said to be mad! You are no more mad than either Bolster or I; you are only _stupid_. What ever induced your dear--I mean to say--late--I mean to say--confounded parents to bring you into the world? Was it that you might make speeches and distress your good wife who has tended you for five and twenty years as anxiously and carefully as if you had been a little new born child? Come away at once, and beg her pardon, and promise that you'll never do it again." Joseph was quite willing to do as he was bid, but he was saved going out in search of his wife by Mrs. Nüssler coming into the parlour: "Josy, Josy," she said, "how very miserable you have made me!"--"Ah mother ...."--"Josy you'll bring me with sorrow to the grave!"--"And that with confoundedly imposing language," interposed Bräsig.--"Mother, I won't ...."--"Ah Joseph, I don't believe you'll ever give it up now that you've once begun." But Joseph assured her that he had had enough of it. "God grant that it maybe so," said Mrs. Nüssler, "and that you may see that I also can give way, Rudolph may marry to-morrow if you like."--"Ah," said Bräsig, "that's good, there's peace in the house again, and you'd better seal it with a kiss--now another, Joseph, that the left side of your mouth mayn't have short measure." As soon as that was settled, uncle Bräsig made the best of his way to Gürlitz to visit his little god-child, and tell her of her happy prospects. He went by the short cut, by the very foot-path in which Muchel had put up the fence alleging that it belonged to him, but Godfrey had been egged on by Bräsig to go to law about it, and having won his suit, the fence was now cleared away and the road was once more open to the public.