

E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.



LINDA TRESSEL

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

First published anonymously in serial form October, 1867,
through May, 1868, in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and in book form
in 1868. Trollope's authorship was acknowledged when the book
was re-published a decade later.







CHAPTER I


The troubles and sorrows of Linda Tressel, who is the heroine of the
little story now about to be told, arose from the too rigid virtue
of her nearest and most loving friend,--as troubles will sometimes
come from rigid virtue when rigid virtue is not accompanied by sound
sense, and especially when it knows little or nothing of the softness
of mercy.

The nearest and dearest friend of Linda Tressel was her aunt, the
widow Staubach--Madame Charlotte Staubach, as she had come to be
called in the little town of Nuremberg where she lived. In Nuremberg
all houses are picturesque, but you shall go through the entire city
and find no more picturesque abode than the small red house with the
three gables close down by the river-side in the Schuett island--the
little island made by the river Pegnitz in the middle of the town.
They who have seen the widow Staubach's house will have remembered
it, not only because of its bright colour and its sharp gables,
but also because of the garden which runs between the house and
the water's edge. And yet the garden was no bigger than may often
nowadays be seen in the balconies of the mansions of Paris and of
London. Here Linda Tressel lived with her aunt, and here also Linda
had been born.

Linda was the orphan of Herr Tressel, who had for many years been
what we may call town-clerk to the magistrates of Nuremberg. Chance
in middle life had taken him to Cologne--a German city indeed, as was
his own, but a city so far away from Nuremberg that its people and
its manners were as strange to him as though he had gone beyond the
reach of his own mother-tongue. But here he had married, and from
Cologne had brought home his bride to the picturesque, red, gabled
house by the water's side in his own city. His wife's only sister had
also married, in her own town; and that sister was the virtuous but
rigid aunt Charlotte, to live with whom had been the fate in life of
Linda Tressel.

It need not be more than told in the fewest words that the town-clerk
and the town-clerk's wife both died when Linda was but an infant, and
that the husband of her aunt Charlotte died also. In Nuremberg there
is no possession so much coveted and so dearly loved as that of the
house in which the family lives. Herr Tressel had owned the house
with the three gables, and so had his father before him, and to the
father it had come from an uncle whose name had been different,--and
to him from some other relative. But it was an old family property,
and, like other houses in Nuremberg, was to be kept in the hands of
the family while the family might remain, unless some terrible ruin
should supervene.

When Linda was but six years old, her aunt, the widow, came to
Nuremberg to inhabit the house which the Tressels had left as an only
legacy to their daughter; but it was understood when she did so that
a right of living in the house for the remainder of her days was to
belong to Madame Staubach because of the surrender she thus made
of whatever of a home was then left to her in Cologne. There was
probably no deed executed to this effect; nor would it have been
thought that any deed was necessary. Should Linda Tressel, when
years had rolled on, be taken as a wife, and should the husband
live in the red house, there would still be room for Linda's aunt.
And by no husband in Nuremberg, who should be told that such an
arrangement had been anticipated, would such an arrangement be
opposed. Mothers-in-law, aunts, maiden sisters, and dependent female
relatives, in all degrees, are endured with greater patience and
treated with a gentler hand in patient Bavaria than in some lands
farther west where life is faster, and in which men's shoulders
are more easily galled by slight burdens. And as poor little Linda
Tressel had no other possession but the house, as all other income,
slight as it might be, was to be brought with her by aunt Charlotte,
aunt Charlotte had at least a right to the free use of the roof over
her head. It is necessary that so much should be told; but Linda's
troubles did not come from the divided right which she had