"Why, yes, I said Brahm, Herr Kreisphysikus. And what she doesn't know, besides! And quite a housekeeper, too; she learned cooking. No, not a soul can find a thing to say against Miss Edith--Edith, a pretty name, Herr Kreisphysikus, Edith." He was silent for a moment. I was on the point of telling him that all this had very little interest for me, and that he should come to the real object of his visit; but he continued to impress me as a man of the better classes, with fairly decent manners, calling for a certain amount of consideration. So I maintained my attitude of expectancy, and listened to his digressions and discourses on this theme and that. In the course of his remarks he exclaimed: "It's really a shame that you don't visit at Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich's, though I can imagine you haven't very much time. And now you must be having a good deal of annoyance with that affair in Raudnitz. A terrible misfortune, terrible. That Herr Schlochauer must have had a fearful temper; because it isn't so easy to throw a man out of your place and kill him outright. It must be very trying to his wife; she is an educated woman, daughter of the teacher Weiss, in Beuthen. She never thought she would marry a thoroughly uneducated saloon-keeper. But he got along very well, and you never heard any talk about her not living happily with him. She always had what she needed, and much more. She could help her own family and give her two daughters a good education--very different from what would have happened if she'd gotten her painter. What a sad picture they'd have made, she and her picture-maker." He laughed complacently at his pun, and I meditated over the ideal Jewish marriage. Then I was made acquainted with the story of Frau Rosalie Schlochauer's youthful love. "But that he should have gone and taken his life! It's really awful to bring about a misfortune so deliberately. However, a sister-in-law of Frau Schlochauer, a cousin of my wife, married to the book-dealer Grosser, told me that the widow is remarkably calm. Frau Grosser herself is half dead from the excitement, and she can't possibly comprehend how Frau Schlochauer can be so collected. The idea of hanging himself in prison! Absurd! If he had waited, for all we know he might have been set free. At any rate he would not have gotten more than three or four years. In no circumstances would he have been put into the penitentiary. Herr Rechtsanwalt Cassirer told me yesterday that the jury would certainly have agreed on _dolus eventualiter_." Of course, what Herr Jonas Goldstuecker wanted to say was _dolus eventualis_. But a little thing like that didn't matter to him, and I continued to wonder how he came to know everybody and associate with the best families. He was evidently on a most intimate footing with the heads of the community.