I advanced nearer and nearer to the heart-central-fire of the woman; and at last they mildly broke forth in censure of the Parson; the best wives will complain of their husbands to a stranger, without in the smallest liking them the less on that account. The mother and the wife, during dinner, accused him of buying lots at every book-auction; and, in truth, in such places, he does strive and bid, not so much for good or for bad books--or old ones--or new ones--or such as he likes to read--or any sort of favorite books--but simply for books. The mother blamed especially his squandering so much on copperplates; yet some hours after, when the Schultheis, or Mayor, who wrote a beautiful hand, came in to subscribe for the steeple-ball, she pointed out to him how finely her son could engrave, and said that it was well worth while to spend a groschen or two on such capitals as these.
They then handed me--for when once women are in the way of a full, open-hearted effusion, they like (only you must not turn the stop-cock of inquiry) to pour out the whole--a ring-case, in which he kept a Chamberlain's key that he had found, and asked me if I knew who had lost it. Who could know such a thing, when there are almost more Chamberlains than picklocks among us?--
At last I took heart, and asked after the little toy-press of the drowned son, which hitherto I had sought for in vain over all the house. Fixlein himself had inquired for it, with as little success. Thiennette gave the old mother a persuading look full of love; and the latter led me up-stairs to an outstretched hoop-petticoat, covering the poor press as with a dome. On the way thither, the mother told me she kept it hid from her son because the recollection of his brother would pain him. When this deposit-chest of Time (the lock had fallen off) was laid open to me, and I had looked into the little charnel-house, with its wrecks of a childlike, sportful Past, I, without saying a word, determined, some time ere I went away, to unpack these playthings of the lost boy before his surviving brother. Can there be aught finer than to look at these ash-buried, deep-sunk, Herculanean ruins of childhood, now dug up and in the open air?