"In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, on
various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt Andreas Futteral
and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now
verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even
regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the
halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little
Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without
dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties
came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he
smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked
to neighbors that would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz
the Only (_der Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him,
had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the
pass-word, '_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!' before any of his
staff-adjutants could answer. '_Das nenn' ich mir einen Konig_, There is
what I call a King,' would Andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of Kunersdorf
was still smarting his eyes.'

"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the
looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military
subordination; for, as Andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_wer
kann die Weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved him both
for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's
Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you see, yet
cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed
a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood
Busching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for
dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her
fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true
house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so