Whoever saw her felt glad, for it seemed to him as if he had met with a
piece of good fortune, but no one sought to make her acquaintance,
although the doctor had not omitted to take her, soon after their
arrival, to call upon his relatives and the dignitaries of the city.
People had asked them at first to dine, but as Melchior always refused
because of his wife's delicate health, they did not press the matter;
for no one could talk with her as she understood no German, while all who
heard her light cough felt that the doctor was right to guard his fragile
treasure so carefully.

When the few matrons who visited her called upon her, instead of finding
her in the kitchen or the cellar, they found her lying upon the sofa with
a book or her guitar in her hands, or perhaps playing with her little
boy, and the amiable ones among them explained it by her pale face and
delicate air, but the severer ones said that such idleness was the
Italian custom and they pitied the doctor.

What the feminine relatives of the doctor chiefly resented was the fact
that the young couple seemed to get on so perfectly well without them.
Happiness indeed shone in their eyes, and the silent doctor seemed to
find his tongue when he walked in the woods and fields with his beloved
wife. The notary Anselmus Winckler was also loud in his praises of both
of them. He was the only person who ever joined them in their walks
through the woods, and as he had been for several years Melchior's
companion at school in Bologna, and had there learned to speak the
sweet Italian tongue, he could talk with Frau Blanca like one of her
own countrymen. He was a convivial person, and when he was in the
tavern, or dining with a friend, he would expatiate on how learned the
doctor was in all the secrets of nature and how well Dr. Vitali, Frau