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to take another way. [...] When we returned home we had dancing almost every night in Rottweil at one inn or another. Weddings were nearly always held at ours, to please Markoni. He would give presents to all the brides and take a turn with them in the dance. And all this was a banquet for me too.

I had, it is true, firmly resolved to remain faithful to Ännchen, and in truth I kept my word, nevertheless it did not trouble my conscience if I flirted with a pretty girl now and then, and moreover the creatures were usually far from displeased when I did so. But my master, he was the complete lover of all the fair sex, enough to frighten you, and any cook-maid was good enough for him at a pinch. May God prevent me, I often thought, from thus degrading a poor and hitherto virtuous girl, and then a day or two later going off and leaving her in the lurch. One of the two cook-maids of the inn, Mariane, aroused my compassion. She loved me very much and would give me or do for me anything that she saw me wish for. I on the other hand never showed myself as taking this seriously, but she did not let that trouble her, and her manner towards me was always the same. She was no beauty, but very kindhearted. The other cook-maid, Hanne, made more of an impression on me. She was extremely pretty, and probably because of this I was for a while mortally in love with her. If she had been more willing to accept my attentions I would very likely have made a fool of myself over her. But I soon saw that she was high in Markoni's favour. I noticed that every morning she slipped upstairs to his chamber. In this she did me double service: in the first place my love turned to loathing, secondly my master no longer rose so early as before, so I in my turn could sleep that much longer. Sometimes he would come into my room already booted and spurred, and find me still in bed, and he would not scold me, for he perceived that I knew how the land lay. Nonetheless he, like all such gentlemen, often warned me very earnestly against the failings that were his own. "Ollrich", he would say, "listen to me, you mustn't meddle too far with the girls, it could bring you serious trouble!"

For the rest, my manner of life with him and in his service was much the same as at the outset: plenty of good living with little work and a master who was nearly always as good-humoured as one could wish; this except for two occasions: once when I could not immediately lay hands on the key which fastened the collar of his poodle, and another time when he thought I had broken a looking-glass. On both occasions I was innocent. But that would not have helped me much, and it was only by remaining meekly silent that I escaped the whip that was lifted to me on the occasion of my losing the key. Little episodes of this kind, indeed all the rough and the smooth that came my way (save for my little affairs of the heart), I carefully recounted in my letters home, and took the occasion to preach whole litanies to my brothers and sisters, telling them that they should never answer back to father and mother and others set over them, even when they thought themselves unfairly treated, but to hold their tongues in proper subjection, so that they would not be obliged to learn this lesson from strangers later on. I allowed my master to read all my letters, and very often he would clap me on the shoulder as he read and say "Bravo, bravo!" Then he would stamp them with his seal, and also allowed me to receive free of charge all the letters that came to me.

42. More of the same:

How I love to recall those happy days! Even today I write of them with so much inward pleasure, and I am even now well content with the man I was then, so inclined to justify everything that in those days I did or left undone. Not indeed before Thee, Thou who knowest all! But before men I may say it, that at that time I was a good lad without guile, perhaps even too honest for this wicked world. [...] In all my letters to my parents I wrote that although they should indeed pray for me, they should not trouble their minds on my account, for Heaven and my good master were caring for me. [...] Judging from his present kindness to me, what more will he do for me in the future? Why should he lay out so much on me now, coarse unpolished lout that I am, if he did not have great things in mind for me? Could he not have had me sent like the other recruits straight to Berlin, if he had meant to make a soldier of me, as some evil tongues would once have had me believe? No! Such a thing won't happen, I would stake my life on it.

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