- 163 -

had been since I had left her, how she would like to see me again, and speak with me once more, and if that were impossible, she proposed that we should at least write to one another. I kissed the paper, read it a hundred times, and carried it about in my pocket until it was all dirty and torn. And so - I flew in all haste to Herisau? No! I sent a reply then and there? No! Not even that, not a word. In short, I did not go and I did not write. Why? I remember that I had no money at the time, and I know some other cause prevented me, but the actual reason has slipped my memory."

Incredibly, twenty years later he had a sudden impulse to find out what had become of her, and found her married to an innkeeper, mother of ten children, ill-treated by her husband and slipping downhill into poverty.

"She did not recognise me. I asked her all sorts of questions about her origins, who her husband was, and so on. And in the end: whether she did not remember a certain UB, who twenty years ago had met her for several days together at The Swan. Here she looked me hard in the face - seized my hand: "Yes! It's you, it's you!" and great tears rolled down her pale cheeks. Now she left all her work and sat down beside me, and told me every circumstance of her present life, and I told her mine, until late in the evening. When it was time to go to bed, we could not restrain ourselves from renewing those blessed hours of the past by a few kisses, but beyond that no thought of wrongdoing entered my mind. Later on I visited her several times. She died about four years after this meeting, and it does me good to shed one more tear on the grave where she now dwells in peace with so many other good souls. And now to other matters."

Bräker goes on to discuss his marriage, saying that it was disillusionment in this, as much as the difficulties of his business, that caused him to neglect the latter in favour of reading and writing:

"And since my Dulcinea wanted to have the upper hand in all things and always laid the blame on me, so that in her opinion I could not do a single thing right my whole life long, I became all the more recalcitrant and thought: Eh! to the devil with it, do it yourself, then! [...] Had I only, I often used to think, a wife like my friend N's. For he is, between ourselves, a fool like myself, and would already have made hundreds and hundreds of stupid mistakes, if his clever Dorchen had not held him back in her loving manner - and that so cunningly, in such a roundabout way, without letting him see that he is not lord and master of all things. O how masterfully she exercises the art of directing his moods, of moderating the good and the bad (For in the better ones he is unrestrainedly merry, but in the bad ones he groans like an old drab or tries to smash everything in sight), so that I am often astonished how such a little thing as his wife has such invisible power over a man, and under the show of living only to please him, has him completely at her service."

He acknowledges that his wife's harsh virtues were what was needed to combat his own tendencies to over-optimism and extravagance and compel him to think before he acted.

"For she is the most honest and well-meaning wife in the world and far excels me in many respects, a very useful, loyal wife, with whom a husband who would dance to her piping would have done very well. As I said before, she has many good qualities that I lack. For example, she knows nothing of sensuality, and I on the other hand have been led into so many thousand foolish acts by mine. [...] In her loyalty and love towards me she also puts me to shame. My welfare in this world and the next is as dear to her heart as her own; she would like to drag me into heaven by the hair or drive me whip in hand, for my own good first and last - though also for the pleasure of making me thank her for it - and to able to be my master for ever. But seriously: her honest prayer to God must surely run like this: Grant that some day my husband and I shall meet again in heaven, never again to part! On the other hand - I will confess it - I may well (when I was in a bad humour) have prayed thus: Dear Father! In Thy house are many mansions [John 14, v 2] and surely Thou hast set aside a quiet corner for me. Arrange a pleasant spot for my wife also - but not too near to mine."

Contents