Then he returned home with the remainder of the Swiss hosts, and because of his intrepidity and the ability shown by him during the campaign he was by the town authorities made provisional chief forester, and was given the house that had been his home for so long as his new abode and to supervise the assistants. With the death of his dear old patron his household had been dissolved. His savings and accumulated wealth had vanished during the last few years preceding his death, owing to careless management, and now Kuengolt had nothing left in the world save her own self and the care of Dietegen, provided he was able to give it, for he himself was but poor. She sat day after day at her stove, leaning her cheeks against its tiles representing, in four or five groups that recurred around the whole surface, the loss of Paradise, the creation of Adam and of Eve, the Tree of Knowledge, and the expulsion at last from their blessed abode. When the girl's face ached from the rough imprint of these raised images, she shifted it by turning to the next series, always and always contemplating them, and between the intervals shedding tears over her lot. But even then she could sometimes not help laughing outright when her glance traveled to that scene showing the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. For by reason of the potter's inadvertence this picture had been so modelled as to give to Adam instead of a real navel on his abdomen, a round little button and this protuberance repeating itself twentyfold on the surface of the stove excited unfailingly her playful humor, though it also heightened her discomfort when leaning against it. In the midst of her fit of laughter, however, at this harmless blunder poor Kuengolt was invariably overcome by the weight of her misery, which would constrict heart and throat alike, and this conflict of thought and impressions produced a keen physical pain, so that her eyes grew wet and her face would look like that of a person wanting to sneeze yet unable to. So that at last she avoided looking at all at this particular group. Meanwhile the great battle of Murten had also been fought, and at the same time Kuengolt's term of imprisonment was ended. Dietegen had given instructions for herself and Violande to keep house provisionally at the forestry lodge. Violande of late had become rather modest, contrite and well-behaved, for to her feminine sense of pride it had been a great gratification that the late forester, although he had postponed the wedding indefinitely and perhaps unduly, yet had wooed her and proposed marriage. But Dietegen himself did not remain at home. On the contrary, he drifted back and forth at the various scenes of the great war that had not yet ended.