They had returned to their friendly home, and Martin with the others were waiting for them. "It is really abominable," began dame Barbara, "that the Camelsarts have become so impious, that this year no processions can go to the village, which lies only six leagues from hence. One may pass over the mountain in three hours, and I have never before spent a year in the neglect of edifying things." "There is no church festival then now a-days?" enquired Dubois. "Well no wonder; nay, even the great annual markets have been abolished." "The turkish great sultan and the heathenish Marrelburgh must have negociated an alliance with the rebels, that we completely fall into miserere, for one cannot know what the political conjunctive may produce to us in this year: All indicatives, said our pastor only yesterday, promise no particular property, and we may indeed be stuck fast in the mud by the new year." "Pray, spare us Gossip," said Dubois smiling, "the learned words, in which indeed you have ever contrary wind, and you do not rightly understand the tacking about (Laviren)." "By, expressing myself thus," rejoined Barbara impatiently, "do I then in any way squander your capital interest? I merely add thereto my own, and whenever I may require mesicaments, there stands my old man, and you need not offer me any strange Laxirung. "Such phrases and notions are indeed not at all proper. What must my honoured cousin think? he certainly imagines we live quite freely with each other as if we had been married together. It remains a constant truth, that whoever has been once a virtoso, can never again become a simple-minded man, he is for ever lost to pomology, kindheartedness, or hormanity." "Do not become warm about it gossip," said the musician, "I have never dreamed of offending you." "No more," said she angrily, "to me of dreams and dreampeter stories; for they are just as unsufferable to me as your sonneteering on my table there. It too has not once dreamed, that in its old age it would serve as a finger board.-- "Peace," said Godfred, "you do not understand all that, Barbara, for the people over there are assembling: What is the matter then. Let our gossip play the harpsichord, he uses his own fingers for it and not yours, but something new must have occurred, I should like to hear, we must question our neighbours." Thus throwing unconsciously the different conversations together, because he was curious, and yet he also wished to answer, he now demanded of one that was running by, why the neighbourhood seemed thus in an uproar. Now smart firing was heard close by. "There must be great confusion on all sides in the valley," said a country woman. All quitted the garden, and the firing of small guns was distinctly heard as it was borne on the air. "Ugh!" sighed Dubois, who could now climb the mountain. "One must hear it much more distinctly up there."