"You must excuse me," said Schnetz, when they had entered his room, where he offered his visitor a cigar--he himself smoked Algerian tobacco out of a short clay-pipe--"for not having introduced you to Madame Thersites. You would not have gained much by it, for the spirits of that good soul are not, unfortunately, the best in the world. She labors under the fixed delusion that she is the great misfortune of my life, because I quitted the service on her account; since which time I have had hard work to keep her from quitting life itself in some moment of depression. Yes, my dear fellow, there is a little example of the profound sense, wisdom, and morality of our social condition. This excellent woman, who has now borne the world with me for ten years, comes of a family of country schoolmasters. I became acquainted with her when I was visiting the lord of the manor; her old father had been pensioned, her mother was dead, and she, the eldest daughter, took entire charge of the household, educated her brothers and sisters, and yet found time enough to do something for herself and perfect her education. Of course she is a Protestant. Well, I began to respect her greatly; and so one thing followed another, until I discovered that I could not live without her. The fact that I could not give the bonds which a lieutenant must have in order to marry, did not seem to me at the time an insurmountable difficulty. My sweetheart thought just as I did, that we only need wait until her second sister was old enough to take her place in the household. As soon as this was possible, we could live in the city. An old aunt, whose heir I expected to be, had, as she said herself, long had her trunks packed for the journey to the other world, and then I could easily raise the necessary sum; while the fact that my marriage would be a _mésalliance_ especially delighted my heart on account of my family, with whom I had long before broken off all relations.