The _gnädige_ was by no means a person to whom I felt an especial inclination, and yet I sometimes felt a kind of pity when I saw how the unhappy victim twisted and writhed under the knife of her tormentor. How could she escape him? As a lady who piqued herself upon her culture, she could not well avoid a scientific conversation; as a guest of the house she owed consideration to a friend of the family; and in reality this topic, which she dreaded as a child dreads goblins, had for her a frightful fascination. She turned pale as often as Doctor Willibrod entered the room, and yet fixed her small round eyes upon him with the agonizing look of the bird that sees a serpent gazing into its nest; she could not resist the attraction, and in a minute she had beckoned the fearful man to her and asked him how far he had progressed with his essay. "It is enough to drive one mad," said Doctor Willibrod; "soon she will not be able to live without me and my tales of horror. I told her to-day of the case of a lady, exactly of her age, her mode of life, habit of body, and so forth, who, while conversing with her physician about congestions of the heart, was struck with one; she smiles upon me with pale lips, and is on the verge of fainting--I suppose she is going to ring for her carriage--and what is the result? 'You must tell me more about it to-morrow,' she says, and dismisses me with a gracious wave of her hand." "She is sword-and-bullet-proof, doctor," I said. "You will not be rid of her so easily." "But we _must_ be rid of her, rid of the whole pack," cried the doctor. "I am resolved upon it as man, as friend, as physician." I laughed, but in my heart I was entirely of the doctor's opinion. The presence of these people was a too intolerable burden for the family of the superintendent. How could I avoid seeing it, when I had so attached myself to these noble and good souls, that I had for everything that concerned them the piercing eyes of the deepest and most reverent affection? I saw how the superintendent's face wore every day a graver look; how he forced himself to answer the everlasting "Is it not so, dear brother?" or, "Is not that your opinion, dear brother?" I saw the painful contraction which passed over the beautiful pale face of the blind lady, when the harsh voice of her talkative sister-in-law smote upon her sensitive ear; I saw how Paula bore these, in addition to her other burdens, with silence and patience; but I also saw how heavy a task it was. I was sitting one day in the office, pondering all this in my indignant heart, as I cut up a quill under pretence of making a pen, when through the window which I had left half open to admit one of the rare sunbeams, my ear caught the hateful metallic voice of the born Kippenreiter.