"He sticks to common sense," said Bräsig, as he came out of the church, and he patted Lining's cheek, and gave Mining a kiss. "The pietists often become very reasonable people; but they think too much of the devil. I have a very good pietist acquaintance, that is the Pastor Mehlsack, a really clever man, but he is so taken up with the devil that he says scarcely anything about the Lord; and there is the pastor in the beautiful Krakow region, who has paddagraphically discovered that there are three hundred, three and thirty thousand different devils running about the world, not counting the regular devil and his grandmother. And you see, Lining, what an inconvenience it is for us: you sit down in Rahnstadt with your good friends around a punch bowl, and you drink to this one, and to that one, and then to another, and at your side sits a gentleman in a brown dress-coat,--for the devil always wears a brown dress-coat, he must, that is his uniform,--and he talks, the whole evening, very friendly things to you, and when you wake up next morning there he stands before you, and says, 'Good morning! you signed yourself to me last evening,' and then he shows you his cloven foot, and if he is polite he takes out his tail, and slaps you over the ears with it, and there you are, his rightful property. So it is with the honest Pietists, the others are a great deal worse." And so Gottlieb and Lining were settled in the pastor's house, and Mining was naturally much with them, and it often happened that good old Gottlieb embraced Mining, in the twilight, and gave her a kiss, instead of Lining; but it was all in friendship, he had no other design. But Pomuchelskopp had a design, when he came with his wife and Malchen and Salchen to make their first call on the young Herr Pastor. And this design was the pastor's acre, and the blue dress-coat with the gilt buttons said to the black coat he would take the field, and offered him just half the sum which the Herr von Rambow had given, and our old Häuning stood up and said, that was all it was worth, and it could not be otherwise disposed of, for Jochen Nüssler had declined it, and old Gottlieb stood there bowing to the blue dress-coat, and was going to say "yes," when Lining sprang up like a ball, out of the sofa-corner, and said, "Hold! In this business, I have a word to say. We must consult other people," and she called, from the door, "uncle Bräsig, will you come in, a moment?" And he came, placing himself audaciously in a linen frock, before the blue dress-coat, and asked, "How so?" And Lining sprang towards him saying, "Uncle Bräsig, the field shall not be rented. It will be my chief pleasure." "So it shall not, my dear Frau Pastorin Lining," and he bent down, and gave her a kiss, "I will farm it for you my personal self." "I am not obliged to allow an under-pächter," cried Pomuchelskopp. "Nor shall you, nor shall you, Herr Zamel! I will merely manage it as inspector for the Herr Pastor himself."