"Frau, Frau! there is mischief going on. The doctor has been stroking
her over her face, and now she is asleep, and talking in her sleep. She
told me I had a lover."
"God bless me!" cried Bräsig, who happened to be there, "what sort of
business is the woman carrying on?" and he went up-stairs with Frau
Nüssler. After a while he came down, and asked, "Now, what do you say
to, it young Jochen?"
Jochen reflected awhile, and then said, "Yes, that doesn't help the
matter, Bräsig."
"Jochen," said Bräsig, going up and down the room with great strides,
"I said to you before, 'send her away;' now I say, don't send her away.
I asked her if it would rain to-morrow, and she said to me, in her
somnambulic state, that it would rain torrents. If it rains torrents
to-morrow, then take down your barometer from the wall,--barometers are
of no use, and yours has stood there two years, always at fair
weather,--and hang her up there; you can benefit yourself and the whole
region."
Young Jochen said nothing, but when next morning it rained torrents, he
was silent indeed, and his astonishment kept him dumb for three days.
The rumor spread in the neighborhood, that young Jochen had a
fortune-teller at his house, and that she had prophesied the great rain
on Saturday, and also that Corlin Kräuger and Inspector Bräsig would be
married within a year. Dr. Strump naturally did his share toward
setting this interesting case in a clear light, and it was not long
before Frau Nüssler's quiet house became a kind of pilgrim's shrine, to
which resorted all who were curious, or scientific, or interested in
physical science; and, because Frau Nüssler would have nothing to do
with it, and Jochen was incapable, Zachary Bräsig undertook the
business, when the doctor was not there, and ushered troops of visitors
into the mamselle's room, and explained her somnambulic condition; and
before the bed, by the mamselle, sat Christian the coachman, who was
not afraid of the devil himself, for Corlin and Fika would no longer
watch by her, even in the day time, having taken it into their heads
that she was not respectable; because they translated Bräsig's
expression, "sonnenbuhlerisch" (somnambulic), into Platt-Deutsch, and
said the mamselle was "sünnenbuhlerisch" (no better than she should
be).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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