"I believe you. I have paid dear enough for it, however; I would much rather be like you. It is no treat to know men as they really are. There are some, however, who----" "I suppose you consider yourself one of the good." "Not altogether; but I expected that you would fly out at me. I must bear it. Abuse me, do with me what you will, hack off my hand; I will beg my bread, and at least know that I have saved a friend. Give up Annele! I implore you to do so! You have not yet made your proposals to the Landlord of the 'Lion;' you are not yet bound." "These are your worldly subterfuges! I am not so clever as you, and I have never mixed with the world like you, but I know what is right. I betrothed myself to Annele in her mother's presence, and I will keep my word. God grant I may get her from her father! And, now I say to you for the last time, I did not ask your advice, and I know well what I am doing." "Hear me, Lenz. I shall only be too glad if I have been in error: but, no! My dear Lenz, for God's sake listen to me; it is still time. You cannot say that I ever tried to dissuade you from marrying." "No, you never did." "You are just the man to be a good husband, but I was a fool not to say to you sooner, that you ought to marry one of the Doctor's daughters." "Do you think I would have gone to them and said:--'My guardian, Pilgrim, desires his compliments, and bids me say that he thinks I ought to marry one of you: Amanda, if possible.' No, no; these young ladies are too high and refined for me." "They are, indeed, refined; while Annele only pretends to be so. The fact is, you were shy with the Doctor's daughters, but not with Annele; you could go into the 'Lion,' without anyone asking you why you came there. Oh! I see it all! Annele talked to you about your sorrow, for she can talk on any subject, and that softened your heart. Annele wears a leather pocket in every one of her gowns, and her heart is nothing but leather, where she has always small coin ready to give every guest his change in full." "You are committing a sin, a great sin!" said Lenz, his lip quivering from anger and grief; and to prove to Pilgrim how cruelly unjust he was towards Annele, he related to him how kindly and touchingly Annele had spoken to him, both about the death of his mother, and at the time when he sent away his clock; he had cherished every word like a revelation. "My own money! my own coin!" cried Pilgrim. "She has plundered a beggar! What a confounded, stupid idiot I have been! Every syllable she said to you she picked up from my lips. I was such a fool as to say these very words before her, from time to time. I well deserve it all! but how could I possibly guess that she was to entrap you with my words? Oh! my poor coins!"