It was in February that Effi wrote these words and now it was almost May.  The “Plantation” was beginning to take on new life again and one could hear the song of the finches.  During this same week the storks returned, and one of them soared slowly over her house and alighted upon a barn near Utpatel’s mill, its old resting place.  Effi, who now wrote to her mother more frequently than heretofore, reported this happening, and at the conclusion of her letter said:  “I had almost forgotten one thing, my dear mama, viz., the new district commander of the landwehr, who has been here now for almost four weeks.  But shall we really have him?  That is the question, and a question of importance, too, much as my statement will make you laugh, because you do not know how we are suffering here from social famine.  At least I am, for I am at a loss to know what to make of the nobility here.  My fault, perhaps, but that is immaterial.  The fact remains, there has been a famine, and for this reason I have looked forward, through all the winter months, to the new district commander as a bringer of comfort and deliverance.  His predecessor was an abominable combination of bad manners and still worse morals and, as though that were not enough, was always in financial straits.  We have suffered under him all this time, Innstetten more than I, and when we heard early in April that Major von Crampas was here—­for that is the name of the new man—­we rushed into each other’s arms, as though no further harm could befall us in our dear Kessin.  But, as already mentioned, it seems as though there will be nothing going on, now that he is here.  He is married, has two children, one eight, the other ten years old, and his wife is a year older than he—­say, forty-five.  That of itself would make little difference, and why shouldn’t I find a motherly friend delightfully entertaining?  Miss Trippelli was nearly thirty, and I got along with her quite well.  But Mrs. Crampas, who by the way was not a von, is impossible.  She is always out of sorts, almost melancholy, much like our Mrs. Kruse, of whom she reminds me not a little, and it all comes from jealousy.  Crampas himself is said to be a man of many ‘relations,’ a ladies’ man, which always sounds ridiculous to me and would in this case, if he had not had a duel with a comrade on account of just such a thing.  His left arm was shattered just below the shoulder and it is noticeable at first sight, in spite of the operation, which was heralded abroad as a masterpiece of surgical art.  It was performed by Wilms and I believe they call it resection.