A calm smile rested on his lips and he looked at the crape on his white hat. The shoe-maker shrugged his shoulders. "The intention is good," said he, "but the idea is usually weak. For instance, there's my daughter Reginchen!--Well, I won't praise her, but Schopenhauer is right again in regard to her explosive effect. The Lord knows what ails her; her mother didn't make half so much fuss when she was young. But her imaginative power Herr König, is beyond any man's comprehension. You know she's betrothed to Herr Franzelius. Didn't she act at first as if she would die if she couldn't have him? Besides, he's a very respectable man and if he only gets rid of his radical nonsense, can make a good living; for it can't be denied that he has education and what's called character, and with the few groschen she'll bring him, he can settle in life and even start a printing office. Well, as I have only this one daughter--we're weak, Herr König, we men when we are fathers. But now, just think of this: ever since the young gentleman upstairs died, the silly thing has worn black as if he had been her brother, and all the betrothal gayety is over. When Herr Franzelius comes in the evening, they clasp each other's hands for ten minutes and hang their heads like a couple of weeping willows, and all the rest of the day she sits still and reads Schiller's poems, and if I ask how much of her wedding outfit is completed, she says: 'There's no hurry about that, father.' Yes, yes, Herr König, it's just as I say: the will is good, for she still means to marry him; but what notion she's taken into her head, to be suddenly absorbed in Schiller when she ought to be thinking of making up underclothes and bed-linen--if I've got the least idea, I'll never attempt to tell the difference between neat's leather and calf skin again. By the way, where's your daughter? It's an age since I've had the honor--"