This Month's Installment
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:
"Really, my visit is meant mainly for you, Miss von Barrnhoff," replied Hans when she apologized for her father with his illness. And to get to his real purpose immediately: "I wanted to ask you to enter into the managing committee of a deacon society that we want to establish after the occurrence of another also in our Nicolaus congregation."
---52---
"A deacon society - what's that? Excuse my ignorance in these things."
"A society in which a number of ladies join forces under the chairmanship of the priest in order to take over the care of the poor and the sick personally."
"And how does that happen? I mean, how do they do that?"
"Now, by visiting them in their apartments, checking their living conditions and their need through getting hold of food or guiding in an-other suitable way."
"They visit them in their apartments?"
"Yes, it's exactly on this personal work and interest that we place value. The poor and the sick should know that even one in the higher class has a heart for them. A bridge should be built to reconcile the conflict of the classes that our city fulfills too."
"To reconcile the conflict of the classes - " she repeated slowly, and a quiet smile lay on her lips. His eye rested on its appearance. Her slender shape with the harmony of her limbs and the soft, somewhat slow movements, the head with the sharply cut face and that distinct determination in it, that knows what it wants and doesn't need to ask, and over all of it, the crown of the wonderful hair, something distinctly German and at the same time rurally aristocratic spoke from her appearance and her face. He could not escape from the impression of her personality. She was the first women who exercised a certain power on him.
"I appreciate the faith that you place in my, Sir Priest," she replied after short consideration. But you may
---53---
charge me with it if I don't warrant it. Your choice has not fallen on the right one."
Grammatical Minuta
This isn't so much about the text itself, but I encountered the word
entschuldigte (third person singular past tense of
entschuldigen) and realized something about it. I translated it as
apologized, but because
ent- refers to removal and
Schuld and
schuldig mean
guilt and
guilty respectively,
entschuldigen literally means something along the lines of "to remove guilt."
