Now, Jans in his efforts at amassing riches had neglected no honest means of success. Consequently, when their two children had both married well and gone to live in distant cities, and he found himself with a spare room in his house, he looked about for a tenant. Then mein herr (as he was called for brevity’s sake) presented himself, and, as his testimonials for respectability and prompt pay were satisfactory, he was soon established in the pretty little chamber with its white curtains, its patchwork bedspread, and a floor so well scrubbed you might have eaten off of it. He somewhat marred the beauty of the spot by an importation of certain odd things which he professed to consider indispensable. There was a regiment of ragged-looking old leather books, and some well-worn coats and dingy dressing-gowns, not to mention an assortment of pipes and tobacco jars and old boots, and a few warlike weapons which stuck out in a protecting way from the top of his book-shelves. Mein herr was just now direct from the _Collegienhaus_[21] of the famous University at Königsberg, where he had been giving short lectures and receiving long pay, and being, therefore, on good terms with himself and the world in general, he resolved to rusticate in some secluded spot for the summer, and renovate his faculties for the next winter’s campaign. No place could be more quiet or better suited for his purpose than his present abode. Here he could spin all kinds of cobweb theories hour after hour, with not a sound to ripple the air and demolish them, for neither Jans nor his wife ever intruded into his apartment. It was only in the soft summer evening twilight that he made his descent to the garden, and indulged in a brief social intercourse with his host and hostess. Indeed, he came almost as regularly as the sun set. His tall, straight figure enveloped in a long black sort of ecclesiastical gown, a jaunty cap on his head, with its tassel hanging down behind, a meerschaum in hand which he was bound to finish before he should retire, behold Mein Herr von Heine!--the embodiment of profound and extended erudition out for a little recreation. Mein herr was always welcome. Pleasant enough was the discourse they all held as he slowly walked up and down the gravel-walk, or took a seat beside them, especially when the subject was farm-matters; and mutually profitable was the exchange between theory and practice; many a pleasant laugh they had, too; and as to the _gute Frau_, she listened and smiled, and occasionally put in a modest little word, this being, according to her best belief, the extent of “woman’s rights.” They were sitting thus one June evening, when Jans laid aside his pipe, and said, in his usual deliberate way: “I think I’ll buy a horse, or a donkey, or a dog-cart, or something, to take all these cabbages to market.”