The Black Eagle (_Zum Schwartzen Adler_) in the Adlergasse was a
prosperous tavern of the second rate. The house was two hundred years
old and had been in the Bauer family all that time.

Had Fräu Bauer, or Fräu-Wirtin, as she was familiarly called, been
masculine, she would have been lightly dubbed Bauer VII. She was a
widow, and therefore uncrowned. She had been a widow for many a day, for
the novelty of being her own manager had not yet worn off. She was
thirty-eight, plump, pretty in a free-hand manner, and wise. It was
useless to loll about the English bar where she kept the cash-drawer; it
was useless to whisper sweet nothings into her ear; it was more than
useless, it was foolish.

"Go along with you, Herr; I wouldn't marry the best man living. I can
add the accounts, I can manage. Why should I marry?"

"But marriage is the natural state!"

"Herr, I crossed the frontier long ago, but having recrossed it, never
again shall I go back. One crown-forty, if you please. Thank you."

This retort had become almost a habit with the Fräu-Wirtin; and when a
day went by without a proposal, she went to bed with the sense that the
day had not been wholly successful.

To-night the main room of the tavern swam in a blue haze of smoke, which
rose to the blackened rafters, hung with many and various sausages,
cheeses, and dried vegetables. Dishes clattered, there was a buzzing of
voices, a scraping of feet and chairs, a banging of tankards, altogether