Chapter Three
As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:
Hans Warsow received an invitation for a trial sermon at the St. Nicolaus church in Rodenburg. The church attendance in Rodenburg was not up to scratch. Even this time, the great church was not filled in all its parts but still saw a bigger and more considerable gathering than on other Sundays. In the patron seat sat the first mayor with his wife, the [Dezernent] for school and church and a few other town councilors. Even Edith, who in these days had come to Rodenburg in order to speak with the doctor about her father, had turned up there and smuggled in Fritz.
One waited for the new preacher even at the liturgy. But he didn't come. Deacon Brettschneider, the much-loved second priest at St. Nicolaus', held it to the old tradition. That heightened the tension. Finally the liturgy was over. The well-schooled church choir sang its motet: "Alles, was Odem hat," the principle tune came in, the last verse was sung, Hans Warsow ascended to the pulpit.
The pale, fine-featured face with the serious, almost severe features and the dark, dreaming eyes, which no one in the large congregation saw but which lookt completely inwards, immediately made an impression on the people. Now he read the text; now he began his sermon.
He spoke with a rather rough but very clear voice in short, concise sentences, each carefully filed and of firm structure. Like
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well-hewn stones were they, that he piled up into a tightly ordered construction. Visibly, he rose upwards in front of the listeners; everywhere, one noticed the keen thinker. Eloquent like his mouth, his hand spoke: a long, almost overly-slender hand with fine, cerebral lines; they alone explained his gestures. But even they only with quiet, interpreting movements.
"How did you like his sermon?" asked Frau Lisa, who had invited Hans Warsow and his brother to lunch with a few other guests. She had done it out of consideration for her relationship with the Reckenstein family and was now occupied with the arrangement of the table, with which Edith was helping her.
The Stoltzmanns lived in a newly built villa outside of the city, which architecturally was built with taste and was very spacious in the interior. The city had made it for its mayor as a public gift, as he had unceremoniously refused the invitation of a big city in the west to take on - at a close vote - the vacant lord mayor position there.
Edith was silent a moment. "As you know, I've never had much sense for sermons," she said then, "but I admit, it was rather suitable in this. Sometimes it struck me more like a lecture; then again, it seemed to me as if it would please even the simpler people. I haven't yet seen such a devotion at St. Nicolaus."
"Yes, you too have had little opportunity for that, my soul," Frau Lisa threw down a little derisively, and while she put out the glasses: "He must lead me. It will not go differently. Although I'm even less cut out for the sermon
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And while she wrote a few place setting cards with a quick quill on a small side table: "But what hands the man has! Such hands I have never seen before. I hardly listened to his words; I always lookt at his hands, and I understood everything."
"Yes, he really lives only in the intellect; his face, his whole body says it." And after she spread a few dark roses, which Frau Lisa handed her, over the table: "Would such men have well grown of the idea of a big act? Whether she would manage Hans Warsow if she one day would have demanded of him? She can still approach him every day in such a large congregation."
"See, how philosophical the man has made you! I never come by such thoughts. I find them rather useless, and they usually meant nothing for you either. Come on, you'd better help me get the fruit bowl ready. I can't leave something like that to the girl."
Frau Lisa was a very efficient lady of the house; everything went fast and surely from her hands, her housekeeping was of exemplary order, and her guests felt comfortable at her place.
Just as she had put down the last fruit, her husband stept into the room in order to set up the wine that he himself had fetched from out of the cellar.
"Were you satisfied?" she askt him.
"On the whole, yes, as far as a sermon is altogether capable of captivating me. I must always think of Schiller, who's supposed to have said it would not be for an educated person."
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"I thought he spoke just for the educated."
"Surely, it is a lot of little things, which bothers me. Certainly, he had no pulpit emotionalism, nor the usual meaningless phrases. But already the manner of address, that unavoidable constraint in dogmatic forms and religious boundaries - as I said, it is nothing for me. I could do well without it."
"He has a distinctly modern style, both in that which he says and in his whole demeanour," now commented Edith, who put the written place cards of her friend on the glasses - "I beside Fritz, you have really practiced self-denial, Lisa! - earlier I had the doubt whether he is the right man for a city like Rodenburg and for the St. Nicolaus congregation."
"But, but!" replied Stoltzmann with resoluteness. "We have a very competent priest, but one who is capable is all we need to satisfy higher spiritual interests even beyond the church. Therefore I would like him to pull together a few lectures; it was always my notion that we need something like that in Rodenburg. He's just the person I want for that."
Frau Lisa was only half listening. She lookt over the table with an examining gaze and counted the glasses.
"Are you ready with everything?" askt Stoltzmann. "It's almost time!"
The bell, which announced the arrival of the first guests, proved him right. Hans Warsow and his brother appeared punctually on time; the others followed soon afterwards.
