now and then to invite certain friends to dine with him, and these guests
had praised her cooking, but later, and more especially after the death
of his cousin and colleague, Blumentrost, who had also been his master,
he had asked no one into his well-appointed house.

This retirement of the dignified and hospitable burgher was undoubtedly
caused by the absence of his son, but in a very different way to what
people supposed; for although the old man longed for his only child, he
was very far from resenting his absence; indeed the widow Vorkel herself
knew that it was the father who had dissuaded the son from returning from
Italy until he had reached the goal for which he was striving with
unwearied energy.

She also knew that Melchior gave the old man precise information of his
progress in every letter, and that when her master turned over the care
of the shop to Schimmel, the dispenser, it was only because he had
arranged a laboratory for himself on the first floor, where, following
the directions received in his son's letters, he worked with his
crucibles and retorts, pots and tubes, early and late before the fire.
Yet despite this, the housekeeper saw that the longing for his son was
gnawing at the old man's heart, and had she been able to write she would
have let Melchior know how things stood and begged him to return to
Leipsic. "But there ought to be no need to tell him," she would reflect
in her leisure moments, "he must know it himself," and for this reason
she would force herself as well as she could to be angry with him.

Thus the years passed. Nevertheless, her anger flew to the winds when
one day a messenger arrived bringing a little package from Italy and the
master called her into the laboratory. Then the old withered love
suddenly came to life once more and put forth new leaves and buds, for