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Gottlieb already found himself involved in serious difficulties with the many customers who bought his lebkuchen; for with the departure of Hans he had been compelled to fall back upon his own resources, and with the most lamentable results. Great quantities of his first baking were returned to him, with comments in both High German and Low German of a very uncomplimentary sort. His second baking–saving the relatively inconsiderable quantities consumed by the omnivorous children of St. Bridget’s School–simply remained upon his hands unsold. And now, to make his humiliation the more complete, here was his discharged assistant setting up as his rival; and with every probability that the attempted rivalry would be crowned with success. Really there was something, perhaps, to be said in palliation of Gottlieb’s profanity after all.

When he told at home that evening of Hans Kuhn’s upstart pretensions, his statements were received with an ominous silence. Aunt Hedwig only coughed slightly, and continued her knitting with more than usual energy. Herr Sohnstein only moved a little in his chair and puffed a little harder than usual at his pipe. Minna, who was in her wire cage in the shop settling her cash, only bent more intently over her books. But when Gottlieb went a step further and said, looking very keenly at Herr Sohnstein as he said it, that some great rascal must have lent Hans the money to make his fine start, Aunt Hedwig at once bristled up and said with emphasis that rascals, neither great nor small, were in the habit of lending their money to deserving young men; and Herr Sohnstein, a little sheepishly perhaps, and mumbling a little in his gray mustache, ventured the statement that this was a free country already, and people living in it were at liberty to lend their money to whom they pleased; and Minna, looking up from her books–Gottlieb’s back was turned towards her–blew a most unfilial kiss from the tips of her chubby fingers to Herr Sohnstein right over her father’s shoulder. All of which goes to show that something very like open war had broken out in the Cafe Nuernberg, and that the once united family dwelling therein was fairly divided into rival camps.

Gottlieb’s dreary case was made a little less dreary when he found that the lebkuchen which Hans produced in his fine new bakery was distinctly an inferior article; not much better, in fact, than Gottlieb’s own. To any intelligent baker the reason for this was obvious: Hans was making his lebkuchen with new honey-cake. Thus made, even by the best of recipes, it could not be anything but a failure. Gottlieb gave a long sigh of relief as he realized this comforting fact, and at the same time thought of his own great store of honey-pots–there were hundreds of them now–all ready and waiting to his hand. But his feeling of satisfaction passed quickly to one of impotent rage as he recognized his own powerlessness, for all his wealth of honey-pots, to make lebkuchen which would be eaten by anybody but the tough-palated children from St. Bridget’s School. He was alone, smoking, in the little room back of the shop as this bitter thought came to him; in his rage he struck the table beside him a blow so sounding that the family cat, peacefully slumbering behind the stove, sprang up with a yell of terror and made but two jumps to the open door. Coming on top of all his other trials–the revolt of his own little Minna, the defection of Aunt Hedwig, and the almost open enmity of Herr Sohnstein–this compulsory surrender of all his hope of honest fame was indeed a deadly blow.

Gottlieb smoked on in sullen anger; his heart torn and tortured, and his mind filled with a confusion of bitter evil thoughts. And presently–for the devil is at every man’s elbow, ready to take advantage of any sudden weakness, or turn to his own purposes any too great strength–these thoughts grew more evil and more clear: until they fairly resolved themselves into the determination to steal from Hans the recipe for making lebkuchen, and so to crush completely his rival and at the same time to make certain his own fortune and fame.