I--" Just at that moment she caught sight of the letter she held between her fingers, when she recollected all at once the news she had received, of which she had been for the time oblivious.
"Ah, poor Fritz!" she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of weeping.

"My son, my firstborn, I shall never see him more!" "Why, what have you heard, gracious lady ?" said Burgher Jans, abandoning his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room.
"No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr ?" "Read," said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him; "read for yourself and see." His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to know what the missive contained--and which he had been all along burning with curiosity to find out.
Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.
"There, just see that!" she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to snatch the letter away from him--when, perhaps, she would have expressed her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher's beaming face: "there, I wouldn't have let him see it if he had gone down on his bended knees for it--no, not if I had died first!" The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter, as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word--he took so long over it.
"Ah, it is bad, gracious lady," he said at length; "but, still, not so bad as it might otherwise be." Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him stop speaking.
The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his full height--just five feet one inch! "The letter only says, most worthy and gracious lady,--and you, dearest maiden," he proceeded--with a special bow to Lorischen, which the latter, sad to relate, only received with a grimace from her tightly drawn spinster lips--"that the young and well-born Herr is merely grievously wounded, and not, thanks be to Providence, that he is--he is--he is--" "Why don't you say `dead' at once, and not beat about the bush in that stupid way ?" interposed the old nurse, who detested the little man's hemming and hawing over matters which she was in the habit of blurting out roughly without demur.
"No, I like not the ugly word," suavely expostulated the Burgher.

"The great-to-come-for-all-of-us can be better expressed than that! But, to resume my argument, dearest maiden and most gracious lady, this document does not state that the dear son of the house has shaken off this mortal coil entirely as yet." "I'd like to shake off yours, and you with it!" said Lorischen angrily, under her breath--"for a word-weaving, pedantic little fool!" "You mean that there is hope ?" asked Madame Dort, looking a bit less tearful, her grief having nearly exhausted itself.
"Most decidedly, dear lady," said the Burgher.

"Does not the letter say so in plain and very-much-nicely-written characters ?" "But, all such painful communications are generally worded, if the writers have a tender heart, so as to break bad news as gently as possible," answered the widow, wishing to have the faint sanguine suspicion of hope that was stealing over her confirmed by the other's opinion.
"Just so," said Burgher Jans authoritatively.

"You have reason in your statement; still, dear lady, by what I can gather from this letter, I should think that the Frau or Fraulein Vogelstein who signs it wishes to prepare you for the worst, but yet intimates at the same time that there is room to hope for the best." "Ah, I'm glad you say so," exclaimed the widow joyfully.