The door was opened, and I hastily entered. Scarcely had the light of the candle which Jette was holding up in her hand, fallen upon my face, when she gave a loud scream, dropped candlestick and all, and ran off as hard as she could, while the cook followed her example, at least so far as screaming and running went. The cook, who was an elderly female, ought to have had more sense; but still she only knew me by sight, and for a long time had heard nothing but horrors about me, so I cannot blame her. But the conduct of the pretty Jette admitted of no defence. I had always been very friendly to her, partly on her mistress's account, and partly on her own; and she had always freely acknowledged it, coquettishly smiling whenever I met her, saluting me with her deepest curtsey whenever I entered the house, and now--but I had now something else to think of than the ingratitude of a housemaid. I passed through the dark hall, ascended the stair I knew so well, and knocked at the door of the justizrath's study, which adjoined the sitting-room, and to which he had doubtless betaken himself to receive his late visitor. "Come in!" said the justizrath, and I entered. There he stood, just as I expected to find him, a tall, broad-shouldered figure, wrapped in his loose flowered dressing-gown, his long pipe in his hand, his low, narrow forehead wrinkled into deep folds as he fixed his little stupid eyes with a look of curiosity upon me at my entrance. "Well, my friend, and what do you bring?" he asked. "Myself," I answered, in a low but resolute voice, stepping up nearer to him. My presentiment that he would let his pipe go out was fulfilled by his simply letting it drop upon the floor; and without saying a word he caught up the skirts of his flowered dressing-gown in both hands, and fled into the family-room. There I stood by the broken pipe, and trampled out the glowing ashes which had fallen upon the little carpet by the writing-table. While engaged in this certainly not criminal occupation, I was startled by a cry for the watch from the adjacent window that opened on the market-place. It was the voice of the justizrath, but it had a very hoarse and lamentable sound, as if some one had him by the throat. I stepped to the door of the sitting-room and knocked. "Herr Justizrath!" No answer. "Frau Justizrath!" All silent. "Fräulein Emilie!" A pause, and then a frightened little voice that I had so often heard laughing, and with which I had sung so many a duet in parties by land and water, piped feebly out: "What do you want?" "Tell your father, Fräulein Emilie, that if he does not at once stop calling the watch, and does not immediately come into his study, I shall go away and not come back."