softened a rock; but the enraged candle-dealer misinterpreted his honest
emotion, and he certainly would not have been allowed to go on so far had
not rage and amazement kept her silent. But Frau Vorkler never lost the
use of her tongue long, and what a flood of abuse of the degenerate
children of the time, who forgot the respect and gratitude due to their
own mother, she began to pour forth! But when faithful Endres, who had
grown grey in the Ortlieb service, and under whose orders Ortel was
placed to help in unpacking, commanded her to be silent or leave the
house, and told her son, instead of following her, to stay with his old
employer, Frau Vorkler proceeded to lament over the corruption of the
whole world, and did not fail to deal a few side-thrusts at the two
daughters of the house.

But here also she made little progress, for the abbess led Eva up the
stairs, and the two old family servants, Martsche representing the
guiding mind and Endres the rude strength, made common cause. The latter
upheld Ortel in his refusal to leave the house, and the former declared
that Metz must remain the usual time after giving notice. She would not
help Frau Vorkler to force the poor child into an unequal, miserable
marriage with the old miser to whom she wanted to give her.

This remark was aimed at the master-tailor Seubolt, the guardian of the
Vorkler children, who, though forty years her senior, wanted to make
pretty Metz his wife, and who had also promised the widow to obtain for
his future brother-in-law Ortel an excellent place in the stables of the
German order of military monks. Not outraged morality, but the guardian
and suitor in one person, had induced the candle-dealer to take her
children from their good places in the Ortlieb household. The widow's
fear of having her real motive detected spared the necessity of using
force. But whilst slowly retiring backwards, crab fashion, she shrieked