And the young mistress of Reifenstein was an angel. The village priest acknowledged that, although she was a heretic. No one in the village believed it when the doctor told them so until the Herr Pastor had confirmed it. At first the people shook their heads and declared that such a thing had never been heard of in the Tyrol,--that a heretic should be mistress of Reifenstein. But the Herr Pastor himself comforted them, and he had good reasons for doing so, for a golden time had come for the poor in Tausens with the new mistress's arrival. Before long the people had forgotten that madame was a heretic. Although she never went to mass or to confession, she used often to go to church to listen to the sermon, and no one there could be more devout than she. She never was haughty to any one, but had a kind word for the poorest. The only people she could not endure were the doctor and his wife. She made the first visit herself to the wife of the district judge, and begged her to come often to the castle, but although the doctor's wife went up to the castle the day after the bride arrived there, Madame von Heydeck could not have liked the former nurse from the first, for she never asked her to repeat her visit; and never as long as she lived did she set foot beneath the doctor's roof. She could not endure the doctor himself either. She told the judge's wife that she was afraid of his cunning gray eyes, but since there was no other physician in the country for miles round, she had to send for him whenever there was sickness at the castle. He never went there at other times, although they said he was still good friends with Herr von Heydeck, else how could he live as he did? He could hardly buy the wine that he drank with the couple of hundred guilders that he got from the peasants yearly; and certainly they would not have paid for the silk dresses and ornaments that his wife wore even on weekdays, not to speak of the show she made when she went to church on Sundays, or took a journey to Vienna, which she did two or three times every year. All the villagers loved the mistress, and the master perfectly idolized her; he had become another man. There never were again such doings at the castle as there had been during the first mistress's reign. Herr and Madame von Heydeck lived for the most part a very quiet retired life, but they were not entirely without society. The judge and the collector, with their wives, were often invited to the castle, and sometimes there were grand visitors from Germany, relatives of madame, who was a countess.