"Dame Care," she was called.

But his mother had grown thoughtful, and was not to be moved to tell the
end of the fairy tale. Neither would she in later times, however urgently
he might plead.

He had only a vague remembrance of his father in those days: a man with
high Wellington boots, who scolded his mother and whipped his brothers,
while he overlooked him altogether. Only at rare times he got a look
askance, which did not seem to bode any good. Sometimes, especially when
his father had been in the town, his face was dark red in color, like an
overheated kettle, and his steps swayed from side to side when he crossed
the room. Then the same thing was always enacted over again.

First he fondled the twins, whom he seemed to be particularly fond of, and
rocked them in his arms, while his mother stood close beside him,
following each of his movements with anxious looks. Then he sat down to
eat, turned over what was in the dishes, pushed them aside, calling them
poor and unsavory food, only fit for beasts. Occasionally he would hit Max
or Gottfried with the rod, was angry with their mother, and finally went
out to pick a quarrel with the servants. His bullying voice resounded in
the yard, so that even Caro, chained up, hid his tail between his legs,
and retired to the farthest corner of the kennel. If after a while he
returned to the room, his humor had generally changed from anger to
despair. He wrung his hands, lamented the misery in which he had to live
there, talked to himself of all sorts of great things which he would have
undertaken if one thing or another had not prevented him, and if heaven
and earth had not conspired together to ruin him. Then he would often go
to the window, and shake his fist at the White House yonder, which looked
so attractive in the distance.