"Well, then let them have a little confidence in me now, and believe that a thing may be good, even if it does not look so at first sight. I have a right to ask that much of them. The way Amrei and I came together was out of the usual order, to be sure, and the affair has gone on in its own way from the very beginning. But it wasn't a bad way. Why, it's like a miracle, if we look at it rightly. And what is it to us if people refuse to believe in miracles nowadays, and prefer to find all sorts of badness in these things? One must have courage and not ask the world's opinion in everything. The clergyman at Hirlingen once said: 'If a prophet were to rise today, he would first have to pass the government examination and show that what he wanted was in the regular order.' Now, mother, when one knows for oneself that something is right, then it is best to go forward in a straight line and push aside, right and left, whatever stands in one's way. Let people stare and wonder for a while--they will think better of it in time." The mother very likely felt that a thing might be accepted as a miracle if it came in the form of a sudden, happy event, but that even the most unusual things later on must gradually conform to the laws of tradition and of strong, established custom. The wedding might appear as a miracle, but the marriage, which involved a continuance, would not. She therefore said: "With all these people, whom you now look at with proud indifference, because you know that you are doing right--with all these people you'll have to live, and you'll expect them, not to look at you askance, but to give you due respect. Now if they are to do that, you must give and allow them what they are accustomed to demand. You cannot force them to make an exception in your case, and you can't run after each one separately and say: 'If you knew how it all came about, you would say that I was quite right in doing it.'" But John rejoined: "You shall see that nobody will have anything to say against my Amrei, when he or she has known her a single hour!" And he resorted to a good way, not only of pacifying his mother, but also of causing her to rejoice in her innermost soul. He reported to her how all the warnings she had given him, and all the ways of testing a girl she had enumerated, had found exact correspondence in Amrei, as if she had been made to order. And she could not help laughing, when he concluded: "You must have had the last in your head upon which the shoes up above are made; for they fit her who is to run about in them as if they were made for her." The mother let herself be quieted. On the Saturday morning previous to the family gathering, Damie made his appearance; but he was immediately dispatched back to Haldenbrunn to procure all the necessary papers from the magistrate in the town-hall.