THE YOUNG VINTNER The Black Eagle (_Zum Schwartzen Adler_) in the Adlergasse was a prosperous tavern of the second rate.

The house was two hundred years old and had been in the Bauer family all that time.
Had Fraeu Bauer, or Fraeu-Wirtin, as she was familiarly called, been masculine, she would have been lightly dubbed Bauer VII.

She was a widow, and therefore uncrowned.

She had been a widow for many a day, for the novelty of being her own manager had not yet worn off.

She was thirty-eight, plump, pretty in a free-hand manner, and wise.