Whoever maintains that he has a right to hate another man, must be content to be hated in his turn, and no one was so hated on that day as uncle Bräsig himself.
When the Pomuchelskopps were at home again, Henny began to stroke the quiet father of the family and Mecklenburg law-giver the wrong way, and stung him with her sharp words as though with thorns and nettles. She continually taunted him in the words of her favourite proverb: "Ah, yes, Kopp," she would say, "you're as wise as the Danish horse which always came home three days before it began to rain!"--At last the much enduring man could bear it no longer, he sprang to his feet, exclaiming: "Mally, have I not always been a kind father to you?"--But Mally was too deeply ingrossed in the Rostock paper to be able to answer.--"Sally," he cried, "can I help the world being so wicked?"--But Sally stitched and sewed the body of a little cupid in her worsted work so diligently that she could only sigh and look as if she were sorry her father was not like the cupid in her work that she might run her needle into him after her mother's example. Gustavus then came in clattering a slate against a board, as if he had been sent for to play an accompaniment to the family drama.
But when things get to a certain pass they become unbearable! Human nature cannot deny the argument of a stick, and our old friend was now determined to show his rebellious family that he was master in his own house; having thus asserted himself he rushed out of doors and left them alone. He hastened into the garden, and up to the sundial, but he found no comfort there. He had certainly showed his own flesh and blood that he would not be bullied, but that did not make him happier, for there before his very eyes lay the glebe, the beautiful glebe. And beyond that was Pümpelhagen. Both of these were his by rights, for had he not paid three hundred pounds for the glebe, and how much more to Slus'uhr, to David and to that wretch Mr. von Rambow! He could not bear the sight, and turning round, gazed up into the blue sky, and asked himself if there was any justice on the face of the earth. At that moment Phil came to him, and pulled him by the tail of his blue coat--for in putting Henny down, he had for the time being put an end to all order in the house--and told him that Mr. von Rambow was there, and wanted to speak to him.