"Do not curse," said her husband gloomily,--"it's sinful on a holiday. God will one day," and he pointed to Käthchen, "demand this life at her hands. She will not escape punishment." "May it soon overtake her!" sobbed the woman. The priest now approached from the church, with all the consolation that the occasion required of him, and the schoolmaster humbly followed. "See, see, reverend father, what they have done to my child," the mother cried, when she saw them. "And Herr Leonhardt too,--ah, she was his pet. What is to be done?" "What a piteous sight!" said Herr Leonhardt, stooping over his little favourite, while the tears dropped from his poor eyes, and all the women wailed in chorus. But the priest felt called to utter a few solemn words of consolation in season. "Give thanks, my dear Frau Keller," he said, raising his hands,--"give thanks for the abundant grace of our blessed mother Mary, in that she has so distinguished you above others as to call your dear child to be a holy angel in a better world, upon the very day of her own most blessed Assumption." "Reverend father," said Johannes, "this gratitude is not necessary, thank God, as yet, for the child lives, and will live,--I will answer for it." "Ah!" wailed the mother in despair, "you do not know what it is to bring such a child into the world, to love it and work for it night and day until it grows big, to go without many a bit yourself that it may have enough, and, when it has got to be a joy and pleasure to you, to pick it up here all crushed and broken! God punish her! God punish her!" With these words the woman hurried away, her husband supporting her trembling arms, that were scarcely able to sustain the child's weight, and yet would not resign it. The pastor and the schoolmaster went with her. "Here," called the Worronska after the retreating parents, "take this for the present. You shall have more by-and-by." She held out a heavy, well-filled purse. "Keep your money, we do not want it," said the husband with sullen rage, and went on without turning his eyes from his child. The countess looked down, pale and agitated. "He is right, we do not want money, but justice," shouted the mob, and pressed so close around the carriage that Johannes reached it with difficulty. He hastily kicked away the stones from beneath the wheels, and cried out to the Worronska, "Drive on, in Heaven's name! Would you expose yourself to useless insults?" "Don't let her go," was the cry. "Take out the horses! Go for the burgomaster!" "If one of us drives over a cat, he is carried off to the lock-up,--let the great folks fare the same."