Here it was Lent season--a holiday in Lent, and Lorenzo Von Tisch knew nothing about the matter, and Rebecca Abednego, and her father, were absolutely come to breakfast with him!
But though Lorenzo had forgotten Lent, the citizens of Krähwinkel had not, and especially one Herr Bürcke, the court butcher, to whom Tisch had just despatched Spitz for a dollar's worth of sausage-meat.
The visits of Tisch to the Jew's house had indeed caused not a little scandal. The student's odd, lonely ways, his neglect of church, his queer little dog that ran of errands for him, had all been talked of by the town's-people, who had come at last to believe that Lorenzo was no less than a magician, and his dog, as he himself said in joke, his familiar spirit. Poor Spitz!--no familiar spirit wert thou; only a little, faithful, ugly dog--a little dog that Tisch's aunt Konisgunda gave to him, who was equally fond of it and him.
Those who know Krähwinkel (and who, I should like to know, is not acquainted with that famous city?) are aware that Mr. Bürcke, the court butcher, has his handsome shop in the Schnapps-Gasse, only a very few doors from Abednego's banking-house. Mrs. Bürcke is, or used to be, a lady that was very fond of knowing the doings of her neighbours, and passed many hours staring out of her windows, of which the front row gave her a command of the whole of that beautiful street, the Schnapps-Gasse, while from the back the eye ranged over the gardens and summer-houses without the gates of the town, and the great road that goes to Bolkum. Herr Lorenzo's cottage was on this road; and it was by the Bolkum-gate that little Spitz the dog entered with his basket, when he went on his master's errands.
Now, on this day in Lent, it happened that Frau Bürcke was looking out of her windows instead of listening at church to Father Windbeutel, and she saw at eleven o'clock Mr. Israel Löwe, Herr Abednego's valet, porter, coachman, gardener, and cashier, bring round a certain chaise that the banker had taken for a bad debt, into which he stepped in his best snuff-coloured coat, and silk stockings, handing in Miss Rachael in a neat dress of yellow silk, a blue hat and pink feathers, and a pair of red morocco slippers that set off her beautiful ankle to advantage.