"appearances,"--and that both of these peculiarities of his were always at their fellest pitch at a time of domestic difficulty like the present. Perhaps she would have told her ghostly counsellor and adviser nothing about the matter, but contented herself with having a good cry when he came, if she had had her way (and her dress); but, having sacrificed both, she needed compensation and revenge. At first she had merely reckoned up difficulties in indeterminate quantities to him; but when he pressed her more closely, her bursting heart overflowed and _all_ her woes streamed forth. Stiefel, contrarily to the laws of equity (and of several universities), always held the complainant in any case to be in the right, simply because he spoke _first_: most men think impartiality of heart is impartiality of head. Stiefel swore that he would tell her husband what he ought to be told, and that the calico should be back in the house that very afternoon. So this father-confessor began to jingle his bunch of binding-and-loosing keys in the advocate's face, and reported to him his wife's general confession and the pawning of the dress. When there are two diverse actions of a person to be given account of--a vexatious and an agreeable one--the effect depends on which is spoken of the first; it is the first narrated one which gives the ground-tint to the listener's mind, and the one subsequently portrayed only takes rank as a subdued accessory figure. Firmian should have heard that Lenette pawned the dress _first_, while he was still out of doors, and of her tale-bearing not till afterwards. But you see how the devil brought it about, as it really did all happen. "What!" (Siebenkæs _felt_, if not exactly _thought_) "What! She makes my rival her confidant and my judge! I bring her home a heart all kindness and reconciliation, and she makes a fresh cut in it at once, distressing and annoying me in this way, on the very last day of the year, with her confounded chattering and tale-telling." By this last expression he meant something which the reader does not yet quite understand; for I have not yet told him that Lenette had the bad habit of being--rather ill-bred; wherefore she made common people of her own sex, such as the bookbinder's wife, the recipients of her secret thoughts--the electric discharging-rods of her little atmospheric disturbances; while, at the same time, she took it ill of her husband that, though he did not, indeed, admit serving-men and maids and "the vulgar" into his own mysteries, he yet accompanied them into theirs.