"This is to certify, that Mr. attorney Slus'uhr has had a thorough good thrashing as the marks on his back show beyond dispute, but it has done him no real harm.
"Does the fellow write that about me?" stormed the attorney, "'it has done me no harm' for sooth!--Just wait and I'll have something to say to you elsewhere!"--"But," cried David, "surely it's much better that the beating shouldn't have done you harm, than that you should have been maimed."--"You're an idiot! What's the good of lying here any longer though?" said Slus'uhr. "Pardon me, but I must get up, and repay Mr. Bräsig for his blows by sending him--a letter demanding damages."--"Don't forget, my friend, that you've to write to Pümpelhagen for me to day," said Pomuchelskopp. "Trust me to remember. I feel so savage, I'd like to write a good many more such letters. Hav'n't you anything for me to do in that line, David?"--"Whenever I have anything to write I do it myself, and when I have nothing to write, I leave it alone," said David, leaving the room with Pomuchelskopp.
The hours that had elapsed since Pomuchelskopp's visit had seemed to Mrs. von Rambow the slowest and dreariest she had ever known. Wearily had they passed over her, every new minute revealing new cares and anxieties. She had tried to tear out the weeds that threatened to choke the wheat in her field, but alas the busiest hand grows tired in time, and the bravest heart craves rest, the rest that comes when the day of toil is past. Her husband had not come home on the day he had promised; instead of his arrival, a letter came from Slus'uhr brought by a special messenger, who said that he had orders to wait until he could deliver it into Mr. von Rambow's own hands. She had a very good idea of what that meant. As it grew dusk that evening she seated herself in her room beside her child, folded her hands in her lap, and gazed out of the window at the sky over which heavy clouds were rising.
The day had been close and muggy, a day in which the blood courses slowly through the veins, instead of circulating rapidly, and giving the body a sense of lightness and vitality it cannot otherwise enjoy. On such an enervating day as this the blood flows languidly, like the black, almost stagnant water in a moorland ditch, and even as all nature groans and sighs for a storm to clear the air, the heart longs for the whirlwind of action, or the shock of fate to drive away "this stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief," wishes at any cost to shake off the deadly lethargy! Frida's feeling was much what I have described, she longed for anything that would clear the air around her, and make it possible for her to breathe once more; and she did not long in vain.