"Who's that?"
"The Foolish Student."
"What does he do all day long in the woods?"
And then they all began to talk about the half-wit, without ill-feeling but with some indignation and a jeering attitude. How foolish his clothes looked, and the umbrella he carried as a sun-shade, his cotton trousers and gloves like a woman's. His spectacles were like an old man's, and when he read he put on two pairs, one on top the other. He had even patched up a hut in the woods Hardt, near the Althäusli, where he could idle away his time with books and pads and all sorts of foolishness. People once came upon him on the Falcon's Rock with his head down and looking at the view between his legs. He said the colours came out brighter that way!
"Let the Foolish Student alone. He doesn't do you any harm," said Theresa.
"He hates ordinary men, he despises common people, and he never has a kind word for any one. His father, the Statthalter, always says how d'ye do to any one who goes by, and he asks how the crops are; … but the Foolish Student, my goodness, he doesn't know the rye from the oats."
"It isn't proved that the best friends the people are the ones who smile at every one and flatter them," said Theresa.
"Well, all the same, he is a queer one, and he's lucky to have such a fine popular man for a father."
"The St. Cecilia Society down Niedereulenbach got after him all right."
"What for?"
"He had the nerve to make fun of the 'Rose of Tannen-
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