"Frau Meister," said Mamsell Westphalen afterwards to the weaver's wife, "you know I've always been against Hanchen Besserdich's sharp tongue, but no angel could have helped me better at that moment than she with her chatter. Frau Meister, Man must not despise what, at times, is disagreeable to him; who knows of what use it may not be. And a sharp tongue is one of those things. That's what I say and that's what I hold to. And I shan't forget the girl." CHAPTER XII. Tells how the Amtshauptmann and the French Colonel nearly embraced each other; how my Mother pulled the Amtshauptmann by the tail of his coat; and how the Corsican dragon carried off my Father and my uncle Herse. When the Herr Amtshauptmann left the Court of Justice, he went straight across to the other side of the hall to a place where he had often been before and often came afterwards, namely my mother's room--for we lived in the Rathhaus. My mother sat knitting, and we children were playing about her; for what do children know of cares? But she was sad and anxious; she sat there silent and perhaps did not even hear the noise which we were making round her. She probably still knew nothing of the difficulty in which my father was, for it was not his custom to tell all his little troubles; but there is a curious fact about women--a man may see at once which way the wind blows, but a woman will have known a long time before that a change was at hand.--Well, the old Herr came into my mother's room and said,-- "Good morning, my dear friend. How are you? Much troubled with all these Frenchmen? What say you, eh?" My mother held out her hand to him. She was very fond of the fine old man who used to come and sit by her side for many an hour, pouring out, in his simple and open-hearted way, the experience of his grey hairs. Not but what he was merry and lively enough when he related the exploits of his Jena student-days, and what he and his brother, Adolph Diedrich,--"The Professor _juris utriusque_ at Rostock, my friend--" had done in their students-society, the "amici." My mother held out her hand to him, for she could not get up; she had become lame during a severe illness, and I never saw her otherwise than,--when she was at her best,--sitting on a chair knitting away as industriously as if her poor, weak hands were strong and well; or,--at her weaker times,--lying in bed, in pain, reading her books. What the books were which she read, I know no longer; but novels they were not; I only remember this much, that the Herr Amtshauptmann's Marcus Aurelius was sometimes amongst them, for I had to carry it backwards and forwards.