Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/onlyagirlaroman00wistgoog
2. This was published also in England under the title "Ernestine: A Novel", translated by S. Baring Gould.

ONLY A GIRL:

OR

A PHYSICIAN FOR THE SOUL.

A ROMANCE

FROM THE GERMAN

OF

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

BY

MRS. A. L. WISTER.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1871.

Entered, according to act of Congress, In the year 1870, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I.	["Only a Girl"]
II.	[The Story of the Ugly Duckling]
III.	[Atonement]
IV.	[The Sad Survivors]
V.	[Undeceived]
VI.	[Soul-Murder]
VII.	[Departure]
[PART II.]
I.	["Only a Woman"]
II.	[The Swan]
III.	[The Village School]
IV.	[The Guardian]
V.	[Fruitless Pretensions]
VI.	[Emancipation of the Flesh]
VII.	[Emancipation of the Spirit]
VIII.	["When Women hold the Reins"]
IX.	[Vox Populi, Vox Dei]
X.	[Nowhere at Home]
XI.	[Inharmonious Contrasts]
[PART III.]
I.	[The Strength of Weakness]
II.	[The Weakness of Strength]
III.	[Silver-armed Käthchen]
IV.	[Battle]
V.	[Science and Faith]
VI.	[Sentenced]
VII.	[The Orphan]
VIII.	[Blossoms on the Border of the Grave]
IX.	[It is Morning again]
X.	[Return]
XI.	["Give us this Day Our Daily Bread"]
XII.	[The Third Power]

ONLY A GIRL;

OR

A PHYSICIAN FOR THE SOUL.

[CHAPTER I.]

"ONLY A GIRL."

In a level, well-wooded country in Northern Germany, not far from an insignificant village, stood a distillery, such as is frequently to be found upon the estates of the North German nobility, and in connection with it an extensive manufactory,--the estate comprising, besides, a kitchen-garden overgrown with weeds, a few fruit-trees overshadowing the decaying remains of rustic seats long fallen to ruin, and a dwelling-house, well built, indeed, but as neglected and dirty as its guardian the lean, hungry mastiff, whose empty plate and dusty jug testified to the length of time since the poor creature had had any refreshment in the oppressive heat of this July day. No one who looked upon this picture could doubt that the interior of the house must correspond with its cheerless outside, and that the gentle, beneficent hand was wanting there that keeps a house neat and orderly, cares for the garden, and attends to the wants of even a dumb brute. Where such a hand is wanting, there is neither order nor culture, no love of the beautiful, nor sometimes even of the good,--too often, indeed, no joy, no happiness. There was no one in the court-yard or garden; nothing was stirring but a couple of cheeping chickens that were peeping around the corner of the dog's kennel, in hopes of stray crumbs from his last meal. They came on cautiously, their little heads turning curiously from side to side, in fear lest the dog should make his appearance; but he kept in his kennel, his head resting upon his paws, and his bloodshot eyes blinking over the distant landscape. The hungry fowls, grown bolder, pecked and scratched around his plate, but vainly: there was nothing to be found but dry sand.

Beside the well stood a churn, and a bench upon which lay a roll of fresh butter, which, neglected and forgotten, was melting beneath the sun's hot rays, and dripping down upon the weeds around. Perhaps the starving dog was suddenly struck by the thought how grateful this waste would be to him were it only within his domain; for he started up and ran out as far as he could from his kennel, dragging his rattling chain behind him, as if to prove its length, then stood still, and finally bethought himself and crept back with drooping head beneath his roof. Outside of a window, upon the ground floor, stood a couple of dried cactus-plants, and several bottles of distilled herbs; the cork of one of them was gone, and its contents filled with flies and beetles. Everything, far and near, betrayed neglect and dirt; but the excuse of poverty was evidently wanting. The extensive stables and accommodations for cattle, the huge out-houses and far-stretching fields of grain testified to the wealth of the proprietor of the estate. A comfortable rolling-chair standing in the court-yard, its leathern cushions rotting in the sun, seemed to indicate the presence of an invalid or a cripple. Only the lowest and uppermost stories of the house appeared to be inhabited; the windows of the middle floor were all closed, and so thickly festooned with cobwebs that they could not have been opened for a long time. It seemed as if the swallows wee the only creatures who could find comfort in such an inhospitable mansion; their nests were everywhere to be seen. The chickens looked enviously up at them, and hopped upon the low window-ledges of the lower story, as if to remind the inmates of their existence and necessities. Suddenly they fluttered down to the ground again, for from one of the open windows there came a child's scream, so piteous and shrill that the large dog pricked his ears and once more restlessly measured the length of his chain.

In a low room, the atmosphere of which was almost stifling from the heat of an ironing-stove and the steam from dampened linen, that two robust maid-servants were engaged in ironing, a little girl, about twelve years of age, was standing before an old wardrobe. She was half undressed, and the garments falling off her shoulders disclosed a little body so wasted and delicate that at sight of it a mother's eyes would have filled with tears. But there was no mother near, only an old housekeeper, whose bony fingers had apparently just been laid violently upon the child, who was crying aloud and covering one thin shoulder with her hand, while she refused to put on a dress that the woman was holding towards her.

"What is the matter now?" an angry voice called from the adjoining room. The child started in alarm. The old woman went to the door, and replied, "Ernestine is so naughty again that there is no doing anything with her. She has torn her best dress, because she says she has outgrown it, and it hurts her; but it isn't true: it fits her very well."

"How can the miserable creature have outgrown any dress?" rejoined the rough voice from within. "Put it on this moment, and go!"

The child leaned against the wardrobe, and looked obstinate and defiant.

"She won't do it, sir; she does not want to go to the children's party!" said the unfeeling attendant.

"I ordered you to go," cried the father. "When a lady like the Frau Staatsräthin does you the honour to invite you, you are to accept her invitation gratefully. I will not have it said that I make a Cinderella of my daughter!"

Little Ernestine made no reply, but looked at the housekeeper with such an expression in her large, sunken eyes, that the woman was transported with rage; it seemed scarcely possible that so much contempt and hate should find place in the bosom of a child. The housekeeper clasped her hands. "No, you bad, naughty child! You ought to see how she is looking at me now, Herr von Hartwich!"

With these words she tried again to throw the dress over Ernestine's head; but the girl tore it away, threw it on the ground and trampled upon it, crying in a transport of rage, interrupted by bursts of tears, "I will not put it on, and I will not go among strangers! I will not be treated so! You are a bad, wicked woman! I will not mind you!"

"Oh, goodness gracious! was ever such a naughty child seen!" exclaimed the housekeeper, looking with a secret sensation of fear at the little fury who stood before her with dishevelled hair and heaving chest.

"When are you going to stop that noise out there?" roared the father. "Must I, wretched man that I am, hear nothing, all day long, but children's and servants' squabbles? Ernestine, come in here to me!"

At this command, the little girl began to tremble violently; she knew what was in store for her, and moved slowly towards the door. "Are you coming?" called the invalid.

Ernestine entered the room, and stood as far as possible from the bed where he was lying. "Now, come here!" he cried, beckoning her towards him with his right hand,--his left was crippled,--and continuing, as Ernestine hesitated: "You good-for-nothing, obstinate child! you have never caused a throb of pleasure to any one since you came into the world; not even to your mother, for your birth cost her her life. In you God has heaped upon me all the sorrows but none of the joys that a son might afford his father; you have the waywardness and self-will of a boy, with the frail, puny body of a girl! What is to be done with such a wretched creature, that can do nothing but scream and cry?"

At these words the child burst into a fresh flood of tears, and was hurrying out, when she was recalled by a thundering "Stop! you have not had your punishment yet!"

Ernestine knew then what was coming, and begged hard. "Do not strike me, father! Oh, do not strike me again!" But her entreaties were of no avail.

With lips tightly compressed, and her little hands convulsively clasped together, she approached the bed. The sick man raised his broad hard hand, and a heavy blow fell upon the transparent cheek of the child, who staggered and fell on the floor. "Now will you obey, or have you not had enough yet?" the father asked.

"I will obey," sobbed the little girl, as she rose from the floor.

"But first ask Frau Gedike's pardon!" ordered the angry man.

"No!" cried Ernestine firmly. "That I will not do!"

"How! is your obstinacy not yet conquered? Disobey at your peril!"

"Though you should kill me, I will not do it," answered the child, with a strange gleam in her eyes, as her father, endeavouring to raise himself in his bed, stretched put his hand towards her.

"Oh, fie! are you crazy?" suddenly said a melodious voice, just behind Ernestine. "Is that the way for a man of sense to reason with a naughty child,--playing lion-tamer with a sick kitten!"

Then the speaker turned to the little girl and said kindly, "Go, my child, and be dressed; you will enjoy yourself with all those pretty little girls."

Ernestine's long black eyelashes fell, and she obeyed silently.

The strange intercessor for the tormented child was a tall, slender, almost handsome man, with delicate features and a certain air of repose which might rather be called impassibility, but which was so refined in its expression that it could not but produce a favourable impression. His tone of voice was soft, melodious, and grave; his pronunciation faultlessly pure. An atmosphere of culture which seemed to surround him gave him an air of superiority. His dress was simple, but in good taste, his step light, his manner and bearing supple and insinuating. It would have struck the common observer as condescending, but the closer student of human nature would have found it ironical and treacherous.

In moments of passion such human reptiles exercise a soothing influence upon heated minds, and check their violent outbreaks, as ice-bandages will arrest a flow of blood. Upon his entrance the invalid became quiet, almost submissive; the room seemed to him suddenly to become cooler; he was, he thought, conscious of a pleasant draught of air as the tall figure approached the bed and sank into the arm-chair beside his pillow.

"It would be no wonder if I did become crazy!" Herr von Hartwich excused himself. "The child exasperates me. When a man suffers tortures for months at a time, and is crippled and confined to bed, how can he help being irritable? He cannot be as patient as a man in full health, who can get out of the way of such provoking scenes whenever he pleases!"

"You could easily do that if you chose, by keeping the child in the rooms above, which have been empty for years. Then you might be quiet, and people would not be able to say that the rich Hartwich's delicate child had to sit in the ironing-room in such hot weather,--it is worse than unjust; I think it unwise!"

"What!" Hartwich suddenly interrupted him, "shall I leave the child and the servants to their own devices above-stairs, whilst I lie here alone and neglected? Or shall I hire an expensive nurse, and make every one think I am dying, and let the factory-hands suppose themselves without a master?"

"That last cannot happen, for they long ago ceased to regard you as their master; they know that I am the ruling spirit of the whole business. As for your talk about the expense of a nurse, such folly can only be explained on the score of your incredibly avarice, which has become a mania with you of late. For whom are you hoarding your wealth? Not for your child; you will leave her no more than what the law compels you to leave her; still less for me, for you have always been a genuine step-brother, and have bequeathed me your property only because I would not communicate to you the secrets of my discoveries without remuneration; and you would rather give away all your wealth at your death than any part of it during your lifetime. And I assure you that if I am to be your heir, which perhaps may never be, I would far rather go without a few thousand thalers than witness such outrageous neglect of a child's education!"

The invalid listened earnestly. "You are talking very frankly to me to-day, and are, it seems to me, reckoning very confidently upon my not altering my last will and testament," he said, in an irritated tone of menace.

Without a change of feature, the other continued: "With all your faults and eccentricities, you are too upright in character to punish my candour in the way at which you hint. You know well that I mean kindly by you, and that I am an honest man. I might have required large sums of money from you. Upon the strength of the increase of income accruing from my exertions, I might have insisted upon your constituting me your partner, and much else besides; but I have contented myself with the modest position of superintendent, and with the certainty that by your will (God grant you length of days!) a brilliant future may be prepared for my child when I am no more. These proofs of disinterestedness, I think, give me a right to speak frankly to you!"

"What is all this circumlocution to lead to?" asked Hartwich, who had grown strikingly languid, while his speech was becoming thick. "Be quick, for I am sleepy."

"Simply to this,--that you either remove Ernestine to the upper story, or, what would be better still, away from the house."

"Away from the house! Where to?"

"Why, to some institution where she may be so educated that it need be no disgrace hereafter to have to own her as a relative. The child will be ruined with no society but that of servant-maids, grooms, and village children."

"Bah!" growled the invalid, "what does it matter?"

"If you are indifferent as to what becomes of your daughter, I am by no means indifferent as to my niece, or as to the influence that, if she lives, she may exercise upon my own daughter. As Ernestine now is, the thought that in a year or two she may be my child's playmate gives me great anxiety. Should she remain here, I must send my little girl from home, or she will be ruined also. But, setting all this aside, I wish her sent away for your sake. You cannot control yourself towards the obstinate, neglected child; and, as long as she is with you, such scenes as have just occurred are unavoidable. And I have learned to-day that the whole village resounds with your 'cruel treatment' of your own child. This throws rather a bad light upon your character, just when you wish our new neighbours to think well of you."

"That's all nonsense; if they think the factory worth fifty thousand thalers, they'll buy it, whether they think me a rogue or an honest man," said Hartwich.

"Think the factory worth--yes, that's just it," the silken-smooth man continued; "but that they may think it worth so much, much may be necessary,--among other things, some degree of confidence in the present proprietor."

"And you have the sale very near at heart, because you would far rather put the fifteen thousand thalers profit, that I have insured to you, into your pocket than win your bread by honest labour," said the invalid with sarcasm. "'Tis a fine gift for me to throw into your lap!"

"A gift?" his brother asked--"an indemnification for the loss of income that the sale of the factory will occasion me, and without which indemnification I shall certainly prevent any such sale. You are always representing our business transactions as generous on your part. I require no generosity at your hands. You pay me for my services: I serve you because you pay me. Why pretend to a feeling that would be unnatural between us?--we are step-brothers; it would be preposterous sentimentality to try to love each other."

"Most certainly you take no pains to attach me to you," the invalid remarked.

"Why should I?" his brother replied with a smile. "There must be some reason for everything in the world--there would be none in that. You would not give me a farthing for my amiability; whatever I get from you must be earned by services very different from brotherly affection."

"You are a downright fiend, that no man, made of flesh and blood, could possibly love! You always were so from a child: how you tormented my poor mother! You know nothing of human feeling. In the warmest weather your hands are always damp and cold, and your heart, too, is never warm. I am cross and irritable, but I am not as utterly heartless as you are, God forbid! You are one of those beings at discord with all natural laws, who cast no shadow in the sunshine." The sick man closed his eyes, exhausted, and large drops of moisture stood upon his brow.

His brother took a handkerchief and carefully wiped them away. "Only see how you excite yourself, and all for nothing!" he said in the gentlest, kindliest voice. "Because I have no sympathy with fictitious sentiment and exaggerated outbursts, you call me unfeeling. Because I am quiet by nature, not easily aroused, you picture me in your feverish dreams as a vampire. I will leave you now, or I shall excite you. Lay to heart what I have said about the child; for if the present course is persevered in, it will bring disgrace upon us, and that would be to me unendurable!"

Hartwich made no reply; he had turned his face to the wall, and did not look around until his brother had noiselessly left the room.

During this conversation little Ernestine had allowed her dress to be put on. When this was done, the housekeeper left the room, and the child busied herself with lacing upon her feet an old pair of boots that were really too small for her.

"That's right, Ernestine," one of the maid-servants whispered. "Frau Gedike is a bad woman: none of us can bear her--it is good for her to be vexed, and we are glad of it!"

"I do not want to vex her, but I hate her--and my father, too--he is cruel to me," said the child, with the bitterness with which a defenceless human being, when ill used, seeks to revenge itself.

"Indeed he is a dreadful father," Rieka, the elder of the maids, whispered softly to her companion, but Ernestine heard all that she said perfectly well. "He always wanted a son, and talked forever of what he would do for his boy when he had one. And when the child was born, and was not a boy after all, he was quite beside himself, and cried furiously, 'Only a girl! only a girl!' and rushed out of the house, banging the door after him so that the whole house shook. The young mother--she was a delicate lady--fell into convulsions with sorrow and fright, and took the fever, and died on the third day. Then he was sorry enough, and raved and tore his hair over the corpse, but he could not bring her to life again. He has been well punished since he had his stroke, and perhaps it was to punish him that Ernestine has grown so ugly; but he ought at least to show his repentance for what he did, by kindness to the sickly little thing, instead of abusing her. It isn't the child's fault that she's not a boy."

Ernestine listened to all this with a beating heart, and now slipped out gently that the maid might not know she had overheard her. Outside she stopped to stroke the dog, but the poor thirsty brute growled at her. She saw that he had no water, and took his can to the well and filled it. When she saw the water gushing so sparkling from the pipe, she could not resist the temptation to let it run upon her burning head.

"Ernestine, what mischief are you about now?" the housekeeper screamed from the window; but the water was already dripping down from the child's long hair upon her shoulders, breast, and back.

"The sun will dry it before I get to the Frau Staatsräthin's, she thought, and carried the dog his drink; but when she attempted to pat him, he growled again, because he did not wish to be disturbed while drinking.

"Even the dog does not like me," she thought, and crept away. "Only a girl! And my father is so cross to me because I am not a boy." And as she went on she repeated the phrase to herself, and her step kept time to it as to a tune, "Only a girl--only a girl!"

From the window of the upper story her uncle and his wife looked after her. The wife presented an utter contrast to her husband. She was uncommonly stout, and her jolly face was so flushed that if her husband had really been a vampire she might have afforded him nourishment for a long term of ghostly existence. But he was no such monster, although his meagre body seemed to bask in his wife's warm fulness of life as some puny, starving wretch does in the heat of a huge stove. Any more poetical comparison is impossible in connection with Frau Leuthold; for, in spite of her massive beauty, her thick bushy eyebrows, her sparkling black eyes, her thick waves of dark hair, the whole expression of her large face, with its double chin and pouting mouth, was coarsely sensual. Yet there was something in this expression that showed that, however great the dissimilarity between the husband and wife in mind and body, there was still one thing in which they were alike: it was the heart,--in his case ossified, in hers overgrown with fat.

There are some persons whose mental organization can be excellently well described by the medical term "fat-hearted." They are no longer capable of any healthy moral activity, because an indolent sensuality has taken possession of them, crippling their energies like fat accumulating around the heart. Although the natures of husband and wife were radically dissimilar, still in the results of their modes of thought there was enough similarity to produce that sort of harmony which is maintained between the receiver and the thief. The stout brunette was a worthy accomplice of her slender, fair husband; and that she possessed the art of sweetening existence for him after a fashion, to which no one possessing nerves of taste and smell is altogether insensible, a table, upon which were delicious fruits, biscuits, and a bowl of iced sherbet, bore ample testimony. Thus the refined thinker endured the narrowness and coarseness of his better half for the sake of material qualifications, and of the ease with which she entered into his projects for selfish aggrandizement. As a cook she possessed his entire approbation, and the union between these utterly different natures was universally considered a happy one.

"She's an ugly thing, that Ernestine," said the affectionate aunt, looking after her pale little niece, who was walking slowly along with drooping head. "Kind as I may be to her, she will have nothing to say to me. They say dogs and children always know who likes them and who does not; so I suppose the child knows I can't abide her."

"Whether you like her or not is not the question," replied her husband. "You have not attached her to you, and that is a mistake; for it makes us sharers in the common report of Hartwich's cruelty to the child. She is considered in the village as the victim of unfeeling treatment. The pastor thinks her a martyr, whose cause he is bound to adopt; the schoolmaster talks about her clear head; and who can tell that all this nonsense may not waken the conscience of my fool of a brother, and induce him at the eleventh hour to make, Heaven only knows what changes for her advantage! That would be a blow--such people easily fall from one extreme into the other. Therefore the child must be separated from him. If I cannot succeed in having her sent away, we must manage somehow to attach her to us, and so stop people's mouths." An involuntary sigh from his wife interrupted him. "I know it is troublesome, up-hill work; but, Heaven willing, it cannot last long. Hartwich is failing. He may live a year; but, if he should have another stroke, he may go off at any moment; then, for all I care, you may be rid of the disagreeable duty at once, and send Ernestine to boarding-school. Still, appearances must be kept up, my dear. You know how much I would sacrifice for the sake of my reputation. I cannot bear a shabby dress or to dine off a soiled table-cloth; and just so I cannot endure a stain upon my name."

While speaking, he had seated himself at the table and filled a goblet of sherbet from the fragrant bowl. As he was sipping it delicately, with his lips almost closed, his wife threw herself down upon the sofa by his side with such clumsy violence that the springs creaked, and her husband was so jolted that he lost his balance, and the contents of his glass were spilled upon his immaculate shirt-front. Much annoyed, he carefully dried his dripping garment with his napkin. "Now I shall have to dress again," he said in a tone of vexation.

"To spill your glass over you just in the midst of such a conversation as this means no good," said his superstitious wife.

"It means that you never will learn to conduct yourself like a lady," was the quiet reply.

"Indeed!" she cried with a laugh. "So I must learn aristocratic manners that I may do more credit to your brother, who has drunk himself into an apoplexy! A fine aristocrat he is!"

"Just because he disgraces his standing I will respect mine; and you should assist me to do so, instead of laughing. And when his estate is ours, I will show the world that it is not necessary to be born in an aristocratic cradle in order to be an aristocrat. The dismissed Marburg professor will yet play a part among the élite of the scientific and fashionable world that a prince might envy him. Wealth is all-powerful; and where there is wealth with brains, men are caught like flies upon a limed twig."

"Ah, how fine it will be!" cried his wife, excited by this view of the subject; and she hastily filled a glass from the bowl and drank it greedily.

"It is indeed such good fortune that a man less self-controlled than myself might well-nigh lose his senses at the thought of it!" her husband rejoined. And there was a dreamy look in his light-blue eyes.

"Then we can keep a carriage, and I shall drive out shopping, with footmen to attend me, and Gretchen shall have a French bonne, and shall be always dressed in white and sky-blue. We will live in the capital, and you, Leuthold, need never do another day's work,--you can amuse yourself in any way that pleases you."

And the wife tossed her head proudly, as though already lolling upon the soft cushions of her carriage.

"Do you suppose I could ever be a robber of time?" he asked her with a sharp glance. "No, most certainly not. If I had made the ten commandments, the seventh should have been, 'Thou shalt not steal a day from the Lord.' He who steals a day seems to me the most contemptible of all thieves."

Ills wife laughed and displayed a double row of fine white teeth, whose strength she was just proving by cracking hazel-nuts.

"Do you suppose," continued Leuthold, "that I should ever be content with the reputation of a merely wealthy man? No; I long for other honours. As soon as the means are in my power, I will resume my old scientific labours, and will soon distance the miserable drudges who daily lecture in our schools. I will have such a chemical and physiological laboratory as few universities can boast. Ah! when I am once free from all the hated servitude, the miserable toil day after day, in that detestable factory, I will bathe in the clear, fresh stream of science, and make a name for myself that shall rank among the first of our time."

"Is that all the happiness you propose to yourself?" asked his wife with a sneer.

"There is no greater happiness than to play a great part in the world through one's own ability; and if my poverty has hitherto prevented my doing so, my wealth, in making me independent, shall help me to my goal. Make a man independent, and he has free play for the exercise of his talents; while the hard necessity of earning his daily bread has crushed many a budding genius before his powers were fully developed. It is glorious to be able to work at what we love!--as glorious as it is miserable to be forced to work at what we hate." He smoothed with his hand his thin, glossy hair, and murmured with a sigh, "No wonder it is growing gray; I wonder it is not snow-white, since for ten years this miserable fate has been mine. It is enough to destroy the very marrow in one's bones, and dry up the blood in the veins."

His wife stared at him with surprise. "Why, Leuthold, think what good dinners I have always cooked for you!"

Leuthold looked up as if awakening from a dream, and then, with the ironical expression which his unsuspicious fellow-men interpreted as pure benevolence, he said, "You are right, Bertha! Your first principle is 'eat and drink;' mine is 'think and work.' That yours is much the more practical can be mathematically proved!" He glanced with a smile at his wife's portly figure.

"Only wait until we are settled in the capital, and see what I will do for you. Then you shall have dinners indeed!" said Bertha.

"Your skill will be needed, for we shall have plenty of guests. Men are like dogs: they gather where there is a chance of a good dinner, and the host is sure of many friends devoted to him through their palates. 'Tis true, such friends last only as long as the fine dinners last; we can have them while we need them, and throw them overboard, like useless ballast, when they can no longer serve our turn."

"Yes, you are right; what a knowing fellow you are!" cried Bertha. "Heavens!" she added, clapping her hands with childlike naïveté, "if he would only die soon!"

Her husband looked at her sternly. "I trust that in case of the event, which will be as welcome to me as to you, no human eye will be able to discern anything but grief in your countenance. Should you be too awkward to simulate sorrow, I must invent some method for making you really feel it; for appearances must be preserved at all costs! Remember that!"

Bertha clasped her hands in dismay. "Mercy on me! I really believe you would do anything to torment me into seeming sorry. It would be just like you; for what people say of you,--or 'appearances,' as you call it, are dearer to you than wife or child, or anything else in the world."

She sprang up, and her breath came quick and angrily. Leuthold contemplated her with a kind of satisfaction as she stood before him with flashing eyes and curling lip. She displayed some emotion,--only the emotion of anger, 'tis true; but as enthusiasm is always passionate, so passion will sometimes seem enthusiasm, and lend a kind of nimbus to insignificance.

"I like to see you so!" said Leuthold, drawing her down beside him and laying his cool hand upon her shoulder.

Just then the cry of a child was heard in the adjoining apartment. "Gretchen is awake," cried Bertha, forgetting her anger, and leaving the room so quickly that the boards creaked beneath her heavy tread, and the sofa upon which her husband was seated shook. She soon returned, with a pretty child of three years of age in her arms. After tossing it, notwithstanding its size and strength, up and down like an india-rubber ball, she threw it with maternal pride into her husband's lap. He caressed the little thing tenderly, and a ray shot from his eyes like the gleam of a wintry san across a snowy landscape. For, though there was no genuine paternal love in his heart, there was at least in its place,--what is hardly to be distinguished from it,--fatherly pride.

"How strange to think," said the mother, "that that should be your child!"

"Why?" asked Leuthold with surprise.

"It is so odd that such a slim, delicate-looking man as you are should have such a healthy, chubby little daughter. It is just as if a wheat-stalk should bear penny rolls instead of wheat-ears." She laughed immoderately at the idea, without perceiving that her husband was far from flattered by the comparison. "They say," she continued, "'long waited for is good at last,' and we waited long for the little thing, and she is good." And she put up the child's plump little hand to her mouth as though she would bite it. The little girl shouted with glee, and the sound so sweet to maternal ears did not fail to awaken a return. Bertha shouted too, until her husband's ears tingled. "If Ernestine had only been a boy, she could have married Gretchen, and our child would have been all provided for," she said, after a pause.

"Do not talk such nonsense," said Leuthold. "Hartwich would have loved a son as thoroughly as he detests his daughter, and would have bequeathed to him all his property. We owe our inheritance there to the happy chance that made his child a girl. But even supposing that she were a boy, with the inheritance still ours, do you think I would mate her so unworthily? No! our Gretchen, lovely and rich as she will be, can never marry a simple Herr von Hartwich. She will one day make me father-in-law to some great statesman, some illustrious scholar, or, at least, to some count!"

"And me mother to a countess!" cried his wife with glee.

[CHAPTER II.]

THE STORY OF THE UGLY DUCKLING.

In the mean time Ernestine had pursued her way. She walked slowly on through the extensive fields in the glare of the four-o'clock sun, whose rays were broken by no friendly tree or shrub. The waist of the dress which she had outgrown was so tight that she was frequently obliged to stand still and recover her breath. The perspiration rolled down her poor worn little face. The sunbeams felt like dagger-points upon her weary head; but she could not go back: fear of her father was more powerful than the torments she was enduring. Better to be pierced by the sun's rays than struck by her father's hard hand. Still, she could not help weeping bitterly that every one seemed so unkind to her. What had she done, that her father should hate her so? It was not her fault that she was so ugly and not a boy. "Ah, why am I a girl?" she sobbed, and sat down upon the hard, sun-baked clods of earth among the brown, dried potato-plants. She clasped her knees with her arms, and pondered why boys were better than girls, wondering whether she could not learn to do all that boys could. The schoolmaster had often told her that she had more sense and learned her lessons better than the boys. What was it that she needed, then? Strength, boldness, courage! Yes, that was a good deal, to be sure; but could she not make them hers in time? She thought and thought. She would exercise her strength. She had once read of a man who carried a calf about in his arms daily, and was so accustomed to his burden that he never noticed how the calf increased in size and weight, until at last he bore a huge ox in his arms. She would do so too; she would accustom herself at first to the weight of little burdens, and go on increasing them until at last she could carry the very heaviest. And she could be bold too, if she only dared, and if her shyness would only wear off. Then, she hoped, her father would be quite content with her. She sprang to her feet comforted and walked on. Her mind was made up. She would be just like a boy.

At the end of an hour Ernestine reached a beautiful and extensive grove, through which she passed, and entered a garden, at the end of which stood a charming country-house. Upon the wide lawn in front, a merry throng of children were running and leaping hither and thither, and from the fresh green a sparkling fountain tossed into the air a crystal ball. At the open doors of a room leading out into the garden sat a company of elegantly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and servants in rich liveries were handing around refreshments upon silver salvers. Ernestine stood as if dazzled by all this pomp and splendour. She dared not approach. How could she? To whom could she turn? No one came towards her; no one spoke to her. Her embarrassment was indescribable, when suddenly the beautiful, gaily-dressed children on the lawn broke off their play and looked towards her with astonishment. Ernestine saw how the little girls nudged each other and pointed at her. She distinctly heard some say to the others, "What does she want?" She was almost on the point of turning round to run away, when she was observed by the group of ladies and gentlemen, and a servant was dispatched to ask whom she was looking for. Everything swam before her eyes as the tall man with such a distinguished air stepped up to her and asked sharply, "What do you want here?"

"Nothing," replied Ernestine; "I would not have come if I had known!"

"Who are you, then?" asked the servant

"I am Ernestine Hartwich."

"Ah, indeed!" he said, with a slight bow; "that's another affair; you are invited. Permit me." With these words he conducted the passive child to the ladies, and announced, "Fräulein von Hartwich!"

The looks that were now fastened upon Ernestine were more piercing and burning, she thought, than the sun's rays. Those people never dreamed that the quiet little creature standing before them was possessed of a goal so delicate in its organization, so finely strung, that every breath of contempt that swept across it created a shrill discord, a painful confusion; they only looked with the careless disapproval, which would have been all very well with ordinary children, at the straight, black, dishevelled hair, the sunken cheeks, the wizened, sharp features of the pale face, the deep dark eyes, with their shy, uncertain glances, the lips tightly closed in embarrassment, and last, the emaciated figure in its faded short dress, and the long, narrow feet and hands. In the minds of most, an ugly exterior excites more disgust than sympathy; and, to excuse this feeling to one's self, one is apt to declare that the child or person in question has an "unpleasant expression," thus hinting at moral responsibility in the matter of the exterior, as if it were the result of an ugliness of soul which would, in a measure, excuse one's disgust. This was the case with all who were now looking at this strange child. It seemed as though they were drinking in with their eyes the poison that had wasted Ernestine's little body,--the poison of hatred which her being had imbibed from her father and her unnatural surroundings, and as if this poison reacted from them upon herself. The little girl felt this instinctively without comprehending it, and as she met, one after another, those loveless glances, it was as though a wound in her flesh were ruthlessly probed. She could not understand what the ladies whispered to each other in French, but their tones intimated displeasure and contempt. She suddenly saw herself as in a mirror through their eyes, and she saw, what she had never seen before, that she was very ugly and awkward,--that she was meanly dressed; and shame for her poor innocent self flushed her cheeks crimson. In that single minute she ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,--that fruit which has driven thousands, sooner or later, from the Eden of childlike unconsciousness. She had entered upon that stage of life where a human being is self-accused for being unloved, unsought,--despises herself because others despise her,--finds herself ugly because she gives pleasure to none. Hitherto, whatever she had suffered, she had been at peace with herself; now she was at enmity with herself and the world. She felt suffocated; everything swam before her sight, and hot tears gushed from her eyes. Just then a tall, stately woman came out of the drawing-room. "Frau Staatsräthin," one of the ladies called to her in a tone of contempt, "a new guest has arrived!"

"Is that little Ernestine Hartwich?" asked the hostess, evidently endeavouring to conceal behind a kindly tone and manner her amazement at the child's appearance. She held out her hand: "Good day, my child; I am glad you have come. Will you not take some refreshment? You seem heated. You have not walked all the way? Yes? Oh, that is too much in such hot weather! Such a delicate child!" she said with a look of sympathy. She sprinkled sugar over some strawberries and placed Ernestine on a seat where she could eat them, but the rest all stared at her so she could not move a finger; she could scarcely hold the plate. How could she eat while all these people were looking on? She trembled so that she could not carry the spoon to her lips.

She choked down the rising tears as well as she could, for she was ashamed to cry, and said softly, "I would like to go home!"

"To go home?" cried the Staatsräthin. "Oh, no, my child; you have had no time to rest, and you are so tired! Come, my dear little girl, I will take you to a cool room, where you can take a little nap before you play with the other children." She took Ernestine by the hand and led her into the house and through several elegant rooms to a smaller apartment, with half-closed shutters and green damask furniture and hangings, where it was as quiet, fresh, and cool as in a grove. The air was fragrant, too; for there was a basket of magnificent roses upon the table.

Ernestine was speechless with admiration at all the beauty around her here. She had never seen such a beautiful room in her life, never breathed within-doors so pure an atmosphere. The Staatsräthin told her to lie down upon a green damask couch, which she hesitated to do, until at last she took off her dusty boots, heedless that she thereby exposed stockings full of holes, and when the Staatsräthin, with a kindly "Take a good nap, my child," left her, and she was alone, a flood of novel sensations overpowered her. The pain of the last few moments, gratitude for the kindness of the Staatsräthin, the enchantment that wealth and splendour cast around, every childish imagination,--all combined to confuse her thoughts. But the solitude of the cool room soon had a soothing effect upon her. The green twilight was good for her eyes, weary with weeping and the glare of the sun; she felt so far away from those mocking, prying glances; everything was so calm and quiet here that she seemed to hear the flowing of her own blood through her veins. She thought of the ironing-room and her father's gloomy chamber at home. What a difference there was! Oh, if she could only stay here forever! How can people ever be unkind who have such a lovely home! How can they laugh at a poor child who has nothing of all this!

But the Frau Staatsräthin, whose room this was, was kind. Ah, how kind! Yet so different from every one at home--so--what? So distinguished! Yes, every one at home seemed common compared with her, and Ernestine herself was common, although the lady had not treated her as if she were; she felt it herself; and was ashamed. What if the lady could have seen how naughty she had been to-day, how she had torn off her dress and stamped upon it, and scolded Frau Gedike?

She blushed at these thoughts, and resolved never again to conduct herself so that she should be ashamed to have the Frau Staatsräthin see her. A new sense was suddenly awakened in the child; but it fluttered hither and thither like a timid bird, terrified by her late surroundings, and not yet accustomed to all that was so novel about her.

The child never dreamed of the innate refinement that distinguished her from thousands of ordinary children; she was only crushed as she compared herself with the gentle lady and the gaily-dressed children upon the lawn; and this very feeling of shame, this disgust at herself, was a proof how foreign to her youthful mind was the absence of beauty in her exterior. In the midst of all these new, confusing thoughts, sleep overpowered her; she stretched herself out comfortably upon the soft couch. The beating of her heart, the painful pressure upon her brain, and the singing in her ears, grew fainter and weaker, and soothed her to slumber like a cradle-song.

On the lawn, in the mean time, nothing was talked of but the child, and her family. It was thought inconceivable that a Freiherr von Hartwich should allow his daughter to be so neglected. But then he had never been a genuine aristocrat; for his mother was of low extraction, as was proved by her return to her own rank of life after the death of her husband Von Hartwich. She soon after married the widower Gleissert, thus giving her son a master-manufacturer for a father, then purchased her husband's heavily encumbered factory, which she had bequeathed to her son with the condition that he should continue to keep it up,--a condition most distasteful to the heir. Gleissert had a son by his first marriage, named Leuthold, who had studied, but had not been much of a credit to his brother, with whom he was living at present.

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of an elderly gentleman, who drove up in a very elegant but very dusty carriage. The number of orders upon his breast testified to his high position, and the haste with which the hostess went forward to receive him, and the trembling of the hand which she extended towards him, showed of what importance his arrival was to her.

"Vivat!" he cried out to her. "Your Johannes takes the first rank--a splendid examination--there has not been such another for ten years!"

"Thank God!" said the Staatsräthin, with a long sigh of relief.

"Yes, yes!" the kindly voice continued. "A superb fellow! I congratulate you upon such a son--not a question missed--not one! And answered with such ease and confidence, yet without the slightest particle of conceit. Deuce take it!--I wish I had married and had such a son. Come," he said, turning to a boy of about fourteen years of age, who had arrived with him, "perhaps you may one day be such another,--keep your eyes steadily upon Johannes. Permit me, dear madam, to present to you the son of my late friend, Ferdinand Hilsborn. He lost his mother a few months ago, and is now my adopted son."

The Staatsräthin held out her hand to the boy, and said with emotion, "Although I never knew your mother, it pains me deeply to know that she left this world before she could enjoy such a moment as your adopted father has just given me by his tidings."

The gentle boy's eyes filled with tears as she spoke.

"Only think, my dear friends," said the Staatsräthin, turning to the company, "Johannes never told me that this was his examination-day, that he might surprise me. I only learned it this afternoon from a few thoughtless words of my brother's. Our kind Geheimrath Heim has just brought me the tidings of his promotion."

The guests, with sympathy and congratulations, crowded around the proud mother, whose heart was too full to do anything but reply mechanically to their kind speeches.

"But, dear Frau Möllner," a Frau Landräthin remarked maliciously, "was it not a little strange that your Johannes should not have told you of his examination-day?--certainly a mother has a sacred right to share such hours with her son."

"When a mother's claims are held as sacred as are mine by my son," replied the Staatsräthin, with dignified composure, "he may well be left to do as seems to him best in such a matter. He wished to spare me hours of anxiety; and I thank him."

"The woman is blindly devoted to her son," the Landräthin whispered to a friend.

"She is growing perfectly childish with maternal vanity," remarked another.

"But how can any one as wealthy as the Staatsräthin allow her son to study?" said the Landräthin.

"Yes, yes!" several others joined in, "he certainly need never earn his living in such a way. Why did she not buy him a commission? 'Tis too bad for such a handsome young man!"

"Yes, yes!" the old Geheimrath called out to the ladies, as if he had heard only their last words, "Johannes is a man,--a man, although hardly twenty years old! Only such a mother could have such a son!" And he laid his hand kindly upon the Staatsräthin's arm.

"I wish every woman, left alone in the world, had such a friend as you are," she said, holding out her hand to him gratefully. "You are the best legacy left me by my dear husband. But where is Johannes? Why did he not come with you?"

"He sent me before to announce his arrival in the evening," replied the old gentleman. "He was obliged to make a few visits this afternoon. Ah," he sighed, as the Staatsräthin handed him some refreshments, "it is a hot journey hither from town,--and a tedious one too,--but it is all the cooler and more delightful when you get here." He wiped his forehead and looked around the circle with the kindly, penetrating glance of a man who sees through the weaknesses of his fellow-men, but judges them with the gentleness of a superior nature. "Well, ladies," he asked good-humouredly, "did the old doctor interrupt a most interesting conversation? I cannot believe that sitting here so silent and serious is your normal condition. What were you talking of when I arrived?"

"Of nothing very pleasant, Herr Geheimrath," said the Landräthin venomously; "we were only speaking of Herr von Hartwich and of his brother, who went wrong some years ago,--we don't know exactly how."

"I can tell you all about it, ladies," said the Geheimrath.

All instantly entreated him, "Oh, tell us; pray tell us!"

The Geheimrath began: "I was professor of medicine at Marburg when that strange occurrence took place. It was about ten years ago. Gleissert was then Extraordinarius in the university, and a young man of great ability. By his diligence and insinuating manners, he had won for himself the good-will of every one; and one of my colleagues, Hilsborn, the father of the boy whom I brought with me to-day, was his intimate friend. Their spécialité was the same, and Hilsborn filled the professorial chair which was the object of Gleissert's desire. Both were physiologists, but Hilsborn had the chair of special physiology, and Gleissert, as Extraordinarius, was occupied only with physiological chemistry. One day Hilsborn confided to me that he was upon the track of a new discovery. It would be of great importance to science if he could only succeed in carrying it out and establishing it upon a firm foundation. The difficulty in doing so lay principally in the procuring of the necessary material for his experiments,--a species of fish found only at Trieste, and which he could not procure alive. Hilsborn, a poor widow's son, lamented his want of means to travel thither and prove his hypothesis. I promised to obtain for him from my friend the minister, by the next vacation, a sufficient sum to meet his expenses, and I did so; but there was the same delay in the matter that is usual in such cases, and the necessary sum came so late that the journey had to be postponed until the following vacation, Hilsborn comforting himself with the thought that, although he must wait another six months, nothing but time would be lost. Suddenly Herr Gleissert married the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper, and begged for leave of absence for his wedding-trip. It was granted, and he was absent for four weeks. Strangely enough, his friend never heard from him during all that time; and, when he returned, we all noticed that he was unwilling to let us know where he had been. We thought he had private grounds for such unwillingness, and did not question him further. The term was over at last, and Hilsborn set off for Trieste. There he worked night and day with superhuman diligence. The result of his investigations was perfectly satisfactory, and he came back with the materials for a work which was sure to establish his fame and fortune. One day--I shall never forget it--he was in my room when the publisher sent me several new scientific papers. Hilsborn was looking through them carelessly, when suddenly he grew ashy pale. Among the pamphlets was one by Gleissert, embodying Hilsborn's idea. I was as shocked and astounded as he was. It could not be chance which led two men at the same time to so novel an idea, especially as Gleissert's course of study could not have directed him to such investigations as Hilsborn's. After a long and evident struggle with himself, Hilsborn confessed to me that he had communicated his ideas to Gleissert, and had frequently from the beginning discussed the matter thoroughly with him, without Gleissert's ever hinting even that the subject had occurred to him before. On the contrary, he was at work upon a paper upon a chemical subject, a paper which had never appeared. Difficult as it was for my high-minded friend to bring himself to it, the conviction was unavoidable that his friend had basely deceived him; for we discovered, upon close inquiry, that Gleissert's wedding-trip had been to Trieste, where he had pursued the investigations proposed by Hilsborn, and hurried on the printing of their results with the greatest haste. All outside proof of his contemptible treachery was perfect, and we were all morally convinced that he had stolen Hilsborn's idea. As pro-rector, I called him to a strict account. His defence was cunning, but not convincing. He did not attempt to deny the principal accusation brought forward, namely, the suspicious fact that he had induced Hilsborn to promise him not to impart his discovery to any one else, 'lest it should be used to his disadvantage.' He wished to be the sole depositary of the secret, that there might be no witnesses to Hilsborn's proprietorship of the stolen idea. I ask this worthy assemblage," the old gentleman here interrupted himself with indignation, "if there can be any doubt of the baseness of the man in the matter?"

"No, most certainly not, Herr Geheimrath, most certainly not," was the unanimous reply.

"Well," the narrator continued, "so we thought. We, one and all, determined to avenge poor Hilsborn, thus deprived of all his fair hopes. It is true we had no legal weapon at our disposal. Our stupid laws punish forgers and counterfeiters, but they cannot recognize the theft of the coinage of the brain. There are jails for the hungry beggar who steals a loaf; but the rogue who robs a man of his thought, the painfully-begotten fruit of his mind after years of labour, goes free. We professors undertook to do what the law does not. We published the matter far and wide in the scientific periodicals, and all handed in our resignations to the government, stating that we held it inconsistent with our honour to remain the colleagues of such a man. Of course Gleissert was instantly dismissed in disgrace, and an academic career closed to him forever. I was called away from Marburg soon after; and, since I have lived in the capital as royal physician, I have lost sight of my former colleagues. Hilsborn died after some years, and his son is now my adopted child. What became of Gleissert I do not know."

"I can tell you," said a fine-looking man, whose resemblance to the Staatsräthin declared him her brother. "I have informed myself about matters here, because I propose to purchase Hartwich's factories for my son. According to the schoolmaster, the fellow is playing a double part here also. It cannot be denied that under his guidance, and owing to his chemical discoveries, the factories have doubled in value since his arrival, for Hartwich is a very narrow-minded man, incapable, from his wretched avarice, of venturing upon any important speculation; but the way in which his brother contrives to be paid for his services is, to say the least, striking. For five years he contented himself with the salary of an overseer and free lodging--he bided his time. It came at last. One day Herr von Hartwich had a paralytic stroke, and the physicians declared that he had but few years to live. Gleissert made use of this time of helplessness, and threatened to leave the factory immediately and dispose of his discoveries elsewhere if Hartwich did not appoint him his heir. Hartwich, who of course stood more in need of him than ever, accepted his conditions, set aside that poor little girl as far as the law would allow it, and made a will in Gleissert's favour."

"He's a thorough scoundrel, that Gleissert,--a legacy-hunter, then, besides. I should like to know what the fellow holds sacred?"

"Let us ask the child about him," cried one of the ladies.

"Yes, yes," joined in several others. "It would be so interesting. Pray, dear Staatsräthin, bring the little girl here."

The Staatsräthin looked at her watch, and, finding that Ernestine had slept nearly an hour, went to fetch her. She soon returned with her, and again the child had to run the gauntlet of those piercing glances. But her rest had refreshed her, and she was not so timid.

She heard the old Geheimrath whisper to his next neighbour, "How did that stupid Hartwich ever come to have such a clever child? Look--what a remarkable head. Pity the little thing is not a boy! something might be made of her!"

His words struck to her very soul. Again she heard the same phrase,--this time from a perfect stranger, "Pity she's not a boy!"

She straightened herself, as though she had suddenly grown an inch taller, and looked up at the thoughtless speaker as if to say, "Something shall be made of me!" Then she glanced wistfully at the children who were playing ball; if she were only among them now, she would show that she could be like a boy. The Landräthin took her hand and said, "Well, my dear child, tell us something of your father. How is he now?"

Ernestine seemed surprised at the question.--"I did not ask him."

The ladies looked significantly at each other.

"Have you not seen him to-day?"

"Yes," she answered briefly.

"Do you not love your father very dearly?" the Landräthin asked further.

Ernestine paused, and then said quietly and firmly, "No!"

Her interrogator dropped the child's hand as if stung by an insect. "An affectionate daughter!" she sneered, while the rest shook their heads. "Whom do you love, then?--your uncle?"

"I love no one at home; but I like my uncle better than my father--he never strikes me!" Ernestine answered.

"Like likes like, as it seems," one of the ladies observed; the rest nodded assent, and all turned away from Ernestine.

"She is an unfortunate child," said the Staatsräthin; and arose to lead her to the children. "Angelika, here is Ernestine von Hartwich," she cried to her own little daughter, who was about nine years old; "take good care of her,--remember you are hostess!"

The children, towards whom the Staatsräthin led her protégé, scattered like a flock of birds at the approach of a paper kite. Collecting then in single groups, they whispered together, and stared at the stranger. Ernestine found herself alone, avoided by all the gay crowd which she had just so fervently admired. She played the part of a scarecrow, but with the melancholy superiority that she was conscious that she was one. She knew that she had scattered the gay circle, that she had chased away the children, that they all avoided her; and again she felt as if she should sink into the ground, her feeble limbs trembled beneath the burden of derision and contempt that she was forced to bear. The Staatsräthin cast a stern glance--which Ernestine noticed--at little Angelika, and said, "Give your hand to your new friend!"

Two of the larger girls giggled, and Ernestine heard them whisper, "A lovely friend!"

Angelika now approached Ernestine, and held out her soft little hand, but instantly withdrew it, stood mute before her for a moment, looking at the old brown straw hat that Ernestine held in her hand, then ventured one look into her eyes, and nestled confused and shy against her mother, who spoke seriously but kindly to the pretty child. She spoke in French, and Angelika answered in the same language. Ernestine was amazed. The little girl understood a strange tongue, and yet she was smaller than herself! She, who wanted to be as clever as a boy, did not even know as much as the little girl. And she had to endure their speaking before her as if she were not present; there she stupidly stood, well knowing that they were saying nothing good of her or they would have said it in German. She was weighed down by a double disgrace, that of her ignorance, and of knowing that they were speaking of her as if she were not there.

"Frau Staatsräthin," she said in a quivering voice, "I will not stay here; the children do not like me; I am too bad for them!" She turned away, and would really have gone, but little Angelika's good heart conquered.

She ran after her and held her fast: "No, no, dear Ernestine; you are not too bad for us; you are only odd--different from the rest of us. Come, we will play with you!"

Then the Staatsräthin took Angelika in her arms, and kissed her, saying, "That's right; now you are my little Angelika again, my good sweet child."

Ernestine looked on at this caress with amazement, and hot tears rose to her eyes. No one had ever been so kind to her. What happiness it must be to be so embraced and kissed! But it could never happen to her. Why not? Why did no one love her? Angelika, too, was only a girl: why was she not blamed for it? But she was so lovely, so beautiful; who could help loving her? Then her heart gave a throb as though it had been stabbed with a knife. "So beautiful," she repeated: "that is why every one pets and fondles her. It is not only that I am a girl; I am an ugly girl,--that is why no one loves me."

"Come," said Angelika. "Why do you look so? Come to the others." She led her to the fountain, around which the little company had gathered meanwhile. The children were amusing themselves with throwing stones at the ball of glass which the water tossed up and down. No girl or boy could hit it; the ball could only be struck while it was dancing on the top of the spray, and always fell before it was reached. The children laughed merrily at each other, and even the parents and grown people were interested and drew near. Ernestine looked on after her usual brooding fashion. She soon divined where the mistake lay. The stone was longer in reaching its aim than the ball lingered in the air. She quickly concluded that if a stone were aimed at the top of the fountain while the ball was still below, the latter in ascending would strike the stone. Hilsborn, the boy fourteen years old, had just declared that he could not understand why they could not strike it. Ambition took possession of her,--if she was ugly, she would show them that she was clever,--if she was only a girl, she would show them that she had force and skill. Involuntarily she looked across to the old Geheimrath, to ascertain if he saw her, and, as this seemed to be the case, she stooped down and hastily picked up a larger stone than the others, to insure success,--took the attitude which she had often observed in the village boys, and, with her feet planted firmly wide apart, swung her arm round three times to take sure aim, and hurled the stone with all her force towards the point in the air which the fountain reached in its leaping. Fate was cruel enough to favour her; the stone met the ascending ball, and so exactly that the latter was hurled out of the column of water, and, flying over the heads of the nearest by-standers, fell upon the head of a child, and the thin glass was shivered in pieces. The child screamed, more from fright than pain,--a commotion ensued,--the mother of the sufferer rushed towards her darling with frantic gestures,--the "wound" was examined, embroidered handkerchiefs were dipped in the basin of the fountain and bound around the head, while like a dark cloud there hovered over the sympathetic crowd a fear lest "some fragment of glass should have penetrated the skull." Ernestine stood there like a culprit; she felt convicted of murder, and when she heard from all sides, "What unfeminine conduct! How savage and rude! How can they bring up the girl to be such a tom-boy?" she was utterly confounded. She had been like a boy, and it was all wrong,--what should she do to please people and make them like her a little? Then the old Geheimrath approached her and unclasped the hands which she was silently but convulsively wringing. "Be comforted, you pale little girl,--there is no great harm done. In future you must leave such exploits to boys." Then he left her and examined the wound, and declared laughingly that he needed a microscope to see it. The mothers of the party, however, showed all the more sympathy and anxiety in the matter that they were chagrined that Ernestine had displayed more skill than their own children.

Ernestine's delicate instinct surmised all this. She looked at the buzzing throng of her enemies with aversion, as at a swarm of wasps that she had disturbed. She listened to the noise that was made about the slight accident with infinite bitterness, and thought how at home, when her father's blows had bruised her, no one cared anything about it. When a few days before she had fallen and cut her forehead, she had had to wash it herself at the brook. And even the old gentleman had said that she should leave such exploits to boys. Then must she not contend even with boys if she could? Why not? Why were they so superior? It was unjust! She clenched her little fists. When she grew up she would show people how great the injustice was! That she was resolved upon.

Then little Angelika came running up, calling the children together for a game. "Come, Ernestine," she cried. "You did not mean to do it,--come, play blindman's buff with us."

Ernestine did not venture to make any objection; she was so cowed that she did just as they told her, and let them make her "blind man," and tie the handkerchief over her eyes. She never complained, although when they were tying on the bandage they pulled her hair so that she ground her teeth with pain. And then they all began to tease her. One pulled at one of her long locks; another terrified her by putting beetles and caterpillars upon her neck,--the usual tricks of the game, that are easily borne when they are understood among little friends, but enough to drive a shy child, that does not know how to defend herself, to despair. No one would be caught by the ugly stranger, who had only been admitted to the game at the express desire of the hostess, and all felt themselves justified in playing all manner of tricks upon her. Ernestine caught no one, and ran hither and thither in vain. She was too conscientious to raise the handkerchief a little that she might see where she was,--that would have been acting a falsehood, and she never told falsehoods. Suddenly a hand seized her straw hat, and the worn old brim gave way, and fell upon her shoulders like a collar, to the great delight of the rest. It was a terrible loss for the poor child; for she knew that she should get no other hat at home, but would be punished for her carelessness. She grasped after her tormentor, and seized her by the skirt; but she was one of the larger girls, and tore herself away, leaving a piece of her elegant summer dress in Ernestine's hands, which had clutched it tightly. She could not see how the girl ran to her mother, bewailing the injury to her dress; the bandage over her eyes beneficently shielded her from perceiving the angry looks of the ladies, and absorbed the tears which she was silently shedding for her straw hat. She stood motionless in the middle of the lawn, and did not know what to do,--for no children seemed to be near,--the game appeared to be interrupted. Suddenly she received a sound box on the ear. The younger brother of the aggrieved young lady had stolen up and avenged his sister. Then the tormented child was filled with indignation and rage that almost deprived her of reason. She seized the boy as he tried to pass her, and began to straggle with him. He forced her backwards, step by step. She could not free her hands to untie the bandage; she did not know where she was; she would not let go her enemy, for her sufferings had filled her little heart with hate and fury. There was a scream, and at the same instant she stumbled over something and fell; she kept her hold of her foe, but she felt that she was up to her knees in water,--she had stumbled into the basin of the fountain. The guests hurried up. First seizing the boy, who was still in Ernestine's grasp, they placed him in safety, and then they helped out the trembling child, who stood there with torn, dripping clothes, an object of terror and disgust to herself and to everybody else.

What mischief the horrible creature had done! She had almost fractured one child's skull, she had torn the expensive dress of another, and had tried to drown a third!

"Pray, my dear Staatsräthin, have my carriage ordered," said one of the injured mothers; "one's life is not safe here!"

"Supper is ready," replied the Staatsräthin. "Let me entreat you all to go into the house. I will answer for the lives of your children as long as they are my guests," she added with a slight smile.

The ladies all called their sons and daughters to them, to protect them from the little monster, who still stood there, bewildered and crushed, upon the lawn, looking on with a bleeding heart, as the children, laughing and joking, clung to their parents, whom they kissed and caressed with affectionate freedom. Every child there had a mother or a father who fondled it. She--she alone was thrust out and forsaken,--no one remembered that she was tired and wet through,--no one cared for her. The charming little Angelika was everywhere in requisition, and could not come to her,--the Staatsräthin was entreating her guests to pardon her for inviting a child whom she did not know; how could she possibly suppose that Herr von Hartwich had a daughter so neglected? Ernestine heard it all. She could no longer stand,--she fell upon her knees, and, sobbing violently, hid her face in her hands. The Staatsräthin was now free to come to her, and hastily approached.

"Oh, you poor little thing, you are wet through, and no one has thought of you," she cried kindly, at sight of Ernestine. "Go into the house quickly, and put on a pair of my little girl's shoes and stockings; my room is just to the right of the drawing-room. Go immediately,--do you hear? I cannot stay away from my guests."

"Forgive me,--it is not my fault!" stammered Ernestine.

"Indeed it is not, my dear child," said the Staatsräthin gravely. "I only pity you,--I am not angry with you! But hurry now and take off your dress,--I will send you your supper to my room. I know you would rather eat it alone."

And she hastened away to her guests just as a vehicle drove up and a strikingly handsome young man about twenty years old sprang out and hurried up to her. "My dear boy," she cried, "is it you? I did not expect you yet!"

The youth kissed her hand and bowed courteously to the rest. The Staatsräthin's eyes rested upon him with the pride with which a woman during her life regards two men only,--a lover and a darling son. The guests surrounded him with congratulations upon the day's success; Angelika danced around him, and the other children all wanted a hand or a kiss. There was quite a little uproar of delight.

Suddenly the Staatsräthin cried out in a startled tone, "Little Ernestine has gone! Heavens, that poor child wet through in the cool evening air! I cannot allow it! Johannes, my dear son, run quickly, bring her back."

"Who,--what?" he asked in amazement.

"But, my dearest Staatsräthin," said the mother of the boy whom Ernestine's shot had wounded, "how can you worry yourself about the little witch? she is tougher than our children."

The Staatsräthin glanced at her contemptuously, and, turning to Johannes, continued: "She is a pale, meanly-clad little girl, eleven or twelve years of age; you cannot miss her if you take the path to Hartwich's estate; she is his daughter. Hasten, Johannes, hasten!" He obeyed, while she conducted her guests to their sumptuous repast.

Meanwhile Ernestine ran through the grove as quickly as she could, and began to breathe freely as she lost sight of the house where she had undergone so much. But her strength soon failed her. Her wet shoes and stockings clung like heavy lumps of lead to her weary feet and impeded her steps; she was conscious of gnawing hunger, and the first care for the future that she had yet felt in her short life assailed her,--she was afraid that it would be too late for her to get anything to eat when she reached home; it was growing dark, and it would be ten o'clock; Frau Gedike would be in bed. And that was not the worst that she had to look forward to; the straw hat, whose brim was still having around her neck,--the heavy, torn straw hat, would certainly bring her a severe chastisement. She sat down upon a mound on the borders of the grove, and took off the brim to see if she could contrive some way of fastening it to the crown, which she carried in her hand. The tree above her shook its boughs compassionately and threw down its leaves upon her dishevelled locks. She never heeded them,--the conviction lay heavy upon her childish heart that she could not possibly mend the hat before Frau Gedike would see it. Tear after tear dropped upon the fragments, and her large, swimming eyes glimmered in the moonlight from out her pale face like glow-worms in a lily-cup. Suddenly she started violently, for some one stood before her, and she recognized the young man whose arrival had just enabled her to make her escape. He looked at her silently for a while, and then said, "Are you the little girl who came to us to-day, and then ran away secretly?"

"Yes," stammered Ernestine.

"Why have you done so?" he asked further.

Ernestine made no reply. She was more ashamed before Johannes than before all the rest of the company. He was very different from every one else there,--so proud and strong,--he would despise her more than the others had done, for he was much handsomer and finer than they, and worth more than all of them. She did not venture to look up at him; she was afraid of meeting another of those glances that had so tortured her. Then the young man took her hand and said kindly, "Well, you pale little dryad, can you not speak? Will you go with me, or would you rather spend the night in your tree?"

"I want to go home!" said Ernestine.

"I cannot let you go home. I must take you to my mother. She is afraid you will take cold. Come!"

Ernestine shrunk back. "I cannot go there any more!"

"Why not? What have they done to you?"

"They laughed at me, and jeered me," cried the irritated child; "they despised me; and I will not be despised! I will not!"

The young man looked at her thoughtfully.

"Even if I am ugly," she continued, "and poor, and badly taught, and awkward, I will not be treated like a dog!" There was a tone of despair in her voice, her chest panted within her narrow dress, her teeth chattered with cold and excitement.

"Poor child!" said Johannes; "they must have used you ill,--but my mother was surely kind to you?"

"Yes, she was kind, but she was vexed with me at last; I heard her blaming me to the others. And I do not want to see her again,--not until I am grown up and can be as dignified and gentle as she is."

"Are you so certain, then, that you will one day be as gentle and dignified?" asked Johannes smiling.

"Yes, the schoolmaster says, and the old gentleman said too, that if I were a boy something might be made of me. Oh, something shall be made of me,--if I am only a girl. I will not always have boys held up to me; when I am grown up, they shall see that a girl is as good as a boy; all these bad, unkind people shall respect me; if they do not, I would rather die!"

"You queer child!" laughed Johannes, "it would be hard to tame you. But see, if you stay any longer here with me in the night air, you will take cold, and then you may die before you have carried out all your resolutions; think how bad that will be!"

With these words he attempted to lead the child away with him, but she snatched her hand from him and clung to the tree beneath which she had been sitting. "No, no," she breathlessly entreated, "dear sir, let me go--do not take me back again--please, please, not there!"

"Obstinate little thing, you must come," laughed Johannes. "Do you suppose I can go back without you, after having been sent to find you like a stray lamb? My mother would shut me up for three days upon bread and water if I did not bring you back; you would not like that, would you?"

"Ah, you are laughing at me. I will not go back with you, I will not," sobbed Ernestine.

"Will not? What is the use of such words from a weak little girl who can be easily carried in arms?" With these words Johannes good-humouredly lifted Ernestine from the ground and placed her on his shoulder to take her back to the castle. But she succeeded in grasping an overhanging branch of the oak-tree just above her, and, before Johannes could prevent it, she had swung herself up by it, and was clambering like a squirrel from bough to bough.

"This is delightful!" cried Johannes, much amused; "you are really, then, a dryad in disguise? Such a prize must not escape; to be sure, I never dreamed to-day, when I passed my examination, that the new Herr Doctor's first feat would be to climb a tree after a wayward little girl; but the episode is much more poetic than marching up and down stairs, making my best bow to my old examiners." Daring this soliloquy be had taken off his coat and climbed into the tree.

But when he tried to seize Ernestine, she retreated to the extremity of the bough upon, which she was sitting, and was quite out of his reach; he could not follow her, for the slender branch creaked and drooped so, even beneath the child's light weight, that he momentarily expected it to break. The jest had become earnest indeed: if the little girl fell, she would fall a double distance,--the height of the tree and of the hill which the tree crowned. Quick as thought the young man swung himself down to the ground, and took his station where he might, if possible, receive Ernestine in his arms if she fell. For the first time he now saw how high she was perched, and a cloud before the moon just at the moment prevented his perceiving the exact direction that she must take in falling. His anxiety was intense. The responsibility of a human life was suddenly thrust upon him. If he did not succeed in catching the falling child, she would shortly lie before him, if not a corpse, at least with broken limbs. The steep hill, too, made it almost impossible for him to maintain a firm footing; wherever he planted his feet, they slipped continually. The blood rushed to his face; his heart beat audibly; with outstretched arms he gazed up at the child, who sat above him, all unconscious of her danger.

"Little one," he cried breathlessly, "the branch where you are sitting will not bear you! scramble back again, or you will fall!"

"I will not come down until you promise me not to carry me back! I shall not fall," she panted, and snatched at a stronger bough above her, but it sprang back from her grasp, leaving only a few twigs in her hand.

"I will promise anything that you want," cried Johannes in deadly terror, "only go back quickly to the trunk--quickly--quickly!"

The bough cracked, just as the child swung herself towards the trunk, and it fell to the ground,--leaving her clinging to the stump where it grew from the trunk; and when Johannes climbed up to her and she could at last reach his shoulder, she was trembling so with fright that she willingly clasped her thin arms around his neck. With difficulty he reached the ground again with his burden, his hands scratched and bleeding and his shirt-sleeve torn. He put down Ernestine, and, stepping back a pace or two, regarded her gravely; then, after wiping the moisture from his brow, he began in a serious tone of voice, "Do you know what I would do if I were your father?"

Ernestine looked up at him inquiringly.

"I would give you a taste of the rod, that you might learn not to frighten people so just for your own wayward whims!"

These words, prompted by the young man's irritation at the anxiety to which he had been subjected, had a fearful effect upon the child. She gave a piercing cry, and threw herself upon the ground. "Oh, nothing but blows, blows--he too, he too! Who will not strike me and abuse me? who is there to take pity upon me?" and she sobbed uncontrollably.

"Good heavens," said Johannes, half compassionately and half annoyed, "was there ever such a child! First you climb into a tree at peril of your life, just that you may gratify your self-will, and then a single word of blame crushes you to the earth. I never saw anything like it!" Saying this, he lifted her up and held her out before him in the moonlight, regarding her as one would some rare animal or natural curiosity.

"Here is a thing," he said, more to himself than to Ernestine, "so frail and delicate that you could crush it in your grasp, but there is such strength of will in the little frame that one is forced to yield to it, and such a wildly throbbing heart in the little breast that one is carried away by it in spite of one's self. I should like to know what odd combinations have produced this strange piece of humanity. Do not cry any more, little one; I will not harm you--what eyes the creature has! You are a remarkable child, but I would not like to have the charge of you--you would puzzle one well, and force and blows would have no effect upon you!"

With these words he put her down upon the ground again and picked up his coat to put it on. As he did so, he felt something hard in the pocket; he looked to see what it was, and drew out a book in a splendid binding.

"Ah," he cried gaily, "I had forgotten this. Can you read?"

Ernestine nodded. She was glad that she had not to say no; how ashamed she would have been!

"Come, that's right!" said the young man; and Ernestine was very proud of those first words of commendation, and determined instantly to be doubly diligent, that she might some time hear just such another "That's right!"

Johannes put the book into her hand. "There, you shall have that, that you may carry something pleasant home with you after such a dreary day. The stories are charming. I brought it out for my little sister Angelika, but I could not give it to her because I had to run after you. Now I am glad that I have it still and can give it to you."

"Yes--but Angelika?" Ernestine asked hesitatingly.

"She shall have another to-morrow. Take it, and read the story of the Ugly Duckling; that will comfort you when people are cross to you. Take it--why do you hesitate?"

The child took the book as carefully and timidly as if it were in reality a fairy book and would vanish at her touch. When she had it in her hands and it did not disappear, and she could really believe in her happiness in receiving such a present, she uttered a scarcely audible "Thank you very much!" but the look that accompanied the words touched Johannes.

"You do not often have presents?" he asked.

"Never!"

"Oh! you seem not to be very affectionately treated. Does not your mother ever give you anything?"

"I have no mother. She died because I was not a boy."

"A most remarkable cause of death," observed Johannes, half dryly, half compassionately.

"Ah, if I had a mother, everything would be different." And the large tears rolled down over her cheeks.

"Listen, little one," said Johannes kindly, after a pause. "I have a dear mother, and I will share her with you--half a mother's heart is better than none at all. Come home with me. You shall be my little sister, and you will be gentle enough when you know us better."

Ernestine shook her head decidedly. The thought of returning to the castle again filled her with dismay. "No, no, never!" she cried in terror. "Your mother would not love me--she could not! You promised me a minute ago not to force me to anything, and if you think now that I ought to do as you please, because you have given me the book, I would rather not have it. There, take it--I will not have it!"

Johannes rejected the offered book with some vexation. "Keep it," he said. "I gave it to you unconditionally. I only thought that my kindness had made you gentler and more docile, but I was wrong. You are not to be moved by kindness either. Sad to see a heart so early hardened!"

Ernestine stood motionless, with downcast eyes--she scarcely breathed; the emotions that agitated her were so novel, so different from anything she had hitherto experienced, that she struggled in vain to give utterance to them; her childish lips had no words to express them. She was pained, and yet her pain, although deeper than any she had already suffered, had no bitterness in it. She did not hate him who had caused it--she could have kissed his hand, and, falling at his feet, begged him to forgive her--but she did not dare to do so.

"Well," he asked, after a moment's silence, "shall I go home with you?"

Ernestine shook her head.

"Not that, either? Will you go alone?" he asked impatiently.

Ernestine nodded.

"Well, I have promised to do as you pleased, and I shall keep my promise, although I do not think it right to leave you to go home alone so late at night. Let me at least go with you across the fields? Are you grown dumb?"

Ernestine lifted to his her large melancholy eyes so beseechingly that he lost his composure. "You are enough to drive one insane, you enigmatical little creature! Who taught you that look--the look of an angel imprisoned by some evil magician in the body of a kobold? God knows what will become of you! You will not let me come, then? No? Are you not afraid? Nothing to be got out of you but a shake of the head! Well, go! I cannot force you. Good-night, then!" He held out his hand; she seized it, pressed it with passionate energy, and then ran across the fields as fast as her feet could carry her. Johannes let her run for some minutes, and then followed her at a distance; he could not allow the helpless child to go home without watching over her safety. She ran as if she had wings, without once looking round; but Johannes noticed that she kissed the book several times, and pressed it to her heart, as if it had been some living thing. When at last he came in sight of Ernestine's home, he stopped. "Heaven be merciful to the man who will one day take her for a wife!" he thought, and slowly turned away.

Ernestine entered the garden of her dreary home with a throbbing heart. A grumbling maid-servant opened the door for her. "You are late," she scolded. "That is just like you--first you wouldn't go, and then you don't want to come home. You always want to do something else than what you should."

Ernestine made no reply. "Can I have something to eat?" she asked briefly.

"To eat! Likely, indeed! Am I to go to the stable at ten o'clock at night and milk a cow for you? for there is nothing else that I can get. You know well enough that I have no keys!"

"Is Frau Gedike in bed, then?"

"If you were not so stupid, you might know that!"

"But I am hungry!"

"That serves you right; you should have eaten enough at the party. Of course they gave you something to eat?"

Ernestine was silent, and followed the maid into the room, where she hastily concealed her torn hat in the wardrobe. "My feet are wet," she said, shivering. "Give me some dry stockings."

"Of course you have been dragging through all the puddles, and then want dry stockings at this hour of the night! Get into bed as soon as you can; you will have no other stockings to-night. Good-night--I am going to bed myself." And the servant left the room, taking with her the dim tallow candle that she had in her hand, and Ernestine was left alone in the apartment, into which the moon shone brightly. Suppressed rage at the servant's coarse harshness burrowed and gnawed in the child's heart like a hidden mole. Everything that had lately happened vanished at this rude contact. Her soul had expanded at the first touch of a large, kindly nature, like a bud in the air of spring--the frost that now fell upon it was doubly painful. She was again the same forsaken, abused child whose vital energies were consumed by impotent hate of her tormentors. Had she really lived the last hour! Had any one really spoken so kindly to her--one, too, better and handsomer than all the others?

She caught up her book as if it were a talisman; it was real; it had not vanished; it was all true, then. And yet she had been so self-willed and cross to the kind, kind gentleman, and had not even told him how grateful she was; how he must despise her! He could not do otherwise. She understood now how different she must be before she could hope to win the liking of such a man as Johannes. How should she do it? She could not tell; but something stirred within her that exalted her above herself. She looked up to heaven in childlike entreaty, and prayed, "Dear God, make me good!" Then she pressed the book to her heart; it was her most precious possession, her first friend; and the desire took hold of her to see now what this friend would tell her. But she could not read by moonlight, and she dared not get a candle, for she slept next to Frau Gedike, who allowed no reading at night. She stood hesitating and looked sorrowfully at the beautiful binding, with its gay arabesques. Suddenly it occurred to her that there was always a night-lamp burning in her father's room; it was a happy thought. She drew off her wet boots with difficulty, and crept softly into Hartwich's apartment. The invalid was lying upon his back, sound asleep. He breathed and snored so loudly that the child was almost terrified; but she was determined to proceed, and slipped past the bed. She seated herself cautiously, opened the book in a state of feverish expectation, and of course turned to the story that Johannes had mentioned to her. The book contained the charming, touching tales of Hans Andersen. Ernestine, greatly moved, read the story of the Ugly Duckling. She read how it was abused and maltreated by all because it was so different from the other ducks, and how at last it came to be a magnificent swan, far finer and more beautiful than the insignificant fowls who had despised it. The impression made upon her by this story is not to be described. The poor duckling's woes were hers also, and as if upon swan's pinions the promise of a fair future hovered above her from the page that she was reading. "Shall I ever be such a swan?" she asked again and again. Her heart overflowed with new emotions of joy and pain, she covered her eyes with her thin hands and sobbed as if she would, as the saying is, "cry her soul out." Then her father awoke, and called out, "Who is there?" Ernestine hastened to him and fell on her knees at his bedside. She seized his hand and would have kissed it; he snatched it angrily away, but the tears that she had shed had melted her very heart. "Father, dear father!" she cried, "I have been very naughty and self-willed. Forgive, and love me only a little, and I will love you dearly!"

Hartwich turned his face to the wall, and growled, "Why did you wake me? Where's the use of slipping in here at this hour? Do you think I had rather listen to your stupid whining than sleep?"

"Father," cried Ernestine, taking his lame hand that he could not withdraw from her. "Father, do not send me away from you. I will be good,--help me to be so. I cannot be good if you are always harsh to me. I saw to-day how all the children have parents who love them. I only am disliked by every one, and yet I have a heart too, and would love to see kind looks and hear kind words. I will not cry ever any more, if you will not make me cry, and I will try my best to be just like a boy, that you may not be sorry any more that I am a girl. Ah, father, it seems to-day as if the dear God in heaven had told me what I long for. Love, father, love,--ah, give me some, and take pity upon your poor ugly child!"

The invalid had turned towards the child again, and was staring at her in amazement, with lack-lustre eyes; it seemed as if some unbidden feeling were struggling for utterance from the depths of his moral and physical degradation; his breath came quick, he tried to speak. Ernestine did not venture to look at him; a strong odour of brandy told her that her father's face was near her own, but this odour was so utterly disgusting to her that she involuntarily recoiled, and thus avoided the lips that would perhaps have bestowed upon her the first kiss that she had ever in her life received from them. The invalid must have known this, for he turned away again, muttering something unintelligible. After a long pause, he felt for a tumbler that stood on a table beside his bed, but it was empty. "I'm thirsty!" he said peevishly. "Shall I bring you some water, father?" asked Ernestine. The sick man made a gesture of disgust "No! but you can go up to your uncle and tell him to send me that medicine that he spoke of; he will know what I want. But ask him only,--do you hear?--him only. And tell no one that I sent you, or you shall suffer for it, I promise you. And now go quickly: I'm tortured with thirst!"

Ernestine arose from her knees, and looked at her father with the grief that we feel when we have lavished our best, our most sacred emotions upon an unworthy object. Hitherto she had required nothing of him; to-day, for the first time, as she looked around for some one to whose love, in her loneliness, she possessed a right, it had occurred to her that she had a father. She had turned to him with an overflowing heart, and had found a drunkard, who had resigned all claims to respect, both as a man and a father. Mute and crushed alike physically and mentally, she slipped out and up the stairs to her uncle. She was to bring brandy to the sick man, although she remembered that the physician had forbidden all heating drinks; but she must fulfil her father's commands, or receive the cruellest treatment at his hands. She entered her uncle's room, slowly and timidly; she was afraid of his wife. But Bertha had gone to bed; there was no one in the room but Leuthold, who was standing by the open window, to the frame of which he had screwed a long tube.

"Ah, little Ernestine, have you come so late to see your uncle?" he said kindly.

"Uncle, what is that?" asked Ernestine, forgetting her errand in her wonder at the strange instrument.

"That is a telescope," her uncle informed her.

"What are you doing with it?" she asked further.

"I am looking into the moon, my child."

"Ah! can you do that?" she cried, in the greatest amazement.

"Certainly I can. Would you like to look through it?"

"Ah, yes; if I only might!" whispered Ernestine, enchanted at the offer.

Leuthold lifted her upon the window-sill and adjusted the telescope for her. She was half frightened when she suddenly found the shining sphere, which she had always seen hovering so far above her in the sky, brought so near to her eyes. Her breast expanded to receive such an inconceivable miracle. She gazed and gazed, looking, breathless with the desire of knowledge, at the mountains, valleys, and jagged craters that were so magically revealed. The warm night air fanned her burning brow. Everything around her faded and was forgotten as the tired heart of the child throbbed with fervent longing for the peace of that new, distant world.

[CHAPTER III.]

ATONEMENT.

The day began slowly to dawn, for a dim, cloudy sky usurped the throne of departing night. Drops of rain fell here and there,--it was a cheerless morning. Not a cock crowed--not a bird was stirring. The dog remained hidden in his kennel.

Now and then an early labourer, with his spade upon his shoulder, would pass along the fence encircling Hartwich's estate, and would look over it with surprise at the strange bustle prevailing in house and court-yard. Doors were opened and shut; servant-maids, with eyes heavy with sleep, were running hither and thither; water was brought from the well; no questions or answers were exchanged. It was as if every one avoided speaking of what had occurred. A groom brought a saddled horse from the stable, mounted, and galloped furiously in the direction of the estate of the Staatsräthin. "Is there a fire anywhere?" a couple of peasants shouted after him, but he made no reply. Without a word, he galloped across field and moor, never drawing rein until he reached the garden of the Staatsräthin. He tugged violently at the bell until a sleepy servant came to the door and asked him angrily what he wanted.

"Wake up the Geheimrath Heim, he is here on a visit. The village doctor sent me,--a human life is at stake!"

The servant opened his eyes wide, and stared inquiringly at the groom.

"Yes, yes; quick, be quick! Hartwich has beaten his child so, we think she is dying. The barber says perhaps the Geheimrath can save her."

"Good gracious, that is terrible!" cried the horrified servant, and ran to call the old gentleman.

The Geheimrath was up in a moment; without losing time by a single word, he dressed himself, mounted the groom's horse, and rushed off to the scene of the disaster.

Before the door of the house, awaiting his arrival, stood the village barber-surgeon, who received him with the deepest reverence. "Herr Geheimrath, I pray you to excuse me,--but, as I knew you were in the neighbourhood, I conceived it my duty to entreat your assistance before sending for the physician, who lives three leagues off. The case seems to me a serious one."

"Never excuse yourself," said Heim, taking off his hat and coat in the hall; "it is my duty to aid wherever I can. But, in Heaven's name, how did it happen? Where is the child injured?"

"She has a wound in her head, and I fear the skull is fractured," replied the barber, opening the door of the room leading to Hartwich's apartment. The Geheimrath heard a loud sobbing as soon as the door was opened. He entered, and before him lay the invalid, weeping and wailing like a maniac, with the child stretched out stiff and corpse-like upon the bed; her eyes were closed and deep-sunk in their large sockets; her pale lips were slightly parted,--it was a sorry sight. Hartwich supported her bandaged head upon his arm, and, weeping loudly, pressed kiss after kiss upon her white brow.

"Ah, Herr Geheimrath!" he shrieked, "come here! I am a wicked, miserable father. I have killed my child! I am a man given over to the worst of all vices,--drunkenness; it is my only excuse. Accuse me; have me sent, crippled as I am, to jail,--I care not; but bring my child to life, or the sting of conscience will drive me mad!"

The Geheimrath took the passive hand of the child and felt the pulse. "It is greatly to be regretted that your conscience was not as active before the deed as it appears to be now that it is committed," he said coldly and sternly, as he removed the bandage from the child's head.

"Oh, oh," wailed Hartwich, shutting his eyes, "do not do that here! I cannot see the blood; I cannot see the wound; it will kill me!"

"What! you could make the wound and cannot look at it!" said the Geheimrath inexorably, beginning to probe the wound. "It is a most serious case," he said. "Has the child moved at all?"

"Yes, yes; oh, heavens, yes; until she grew so rigid!" gasped Hartwich, seizing Ernestine's hand to kiss it. Then he looked up at the physician in mortal terror. "How is it? must she--oh, Christ! must she die?" And again he broke out into the loud childish weeping peculiar to persons unnerved by sickness or drink.

"Control yourself," ordered the Geheimrath. "I cannot come to any decision yet. The injury to the skull is not fatal; what the effect of the concussion will be, I cannot tell. But, with the child's delicate constitution----" He shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, you give me no hope," moaned Hartwich. "Ernestine, wake up! only look once at your father, your cruel, wicked father! Ah, Herr Geheimrath, I disliked the child because she was so weak and ugly. If she had only been a fine, healthy girl, I might perhaps have been reconciled to having no son; but I was ashamed of her, and silenced the voice of my heart. Oh, these hands, poor little hands, and these pale, thin cheeks!--how could I ever strike them! God be merciful to me, miserable sinner that I am!" And he beat his breast fiercely.

The Geheimrath looked at him and shook his head. "Do not excite yourself so. It does your daughter no good, and only injures yourself."

"My daughter! my daughter!" repeated Hartwich. "Oh, I have never treated her as such. She seemed to me a changeling, left in her cradle by some spiteful witch in place of the boy I so coveted. Now, when I am in danger of losing her, I feel that she is my child indeed."

"The truth is as old as the world, that nature avenges the transgression of the least of her laws," replied the physician. "You have sinned grievously against the mighty law of paternal affection, and now it demands its rights with resistless authority. Let me entreat you to testify your repentance by the tenderest care of the sick child, and permit me to call some one to put her to bed,--it should have been done long ago."

"Ah, must she be separated from me?" moaned Hartwich. "I long to beg her forgiveness when she comes to herself."

"You will hardly be able to do that very soon," said the Geheimrath, ringing the bell.

Frau Gedike made her appearance, as gentle and submissive as she had previously been harsh and overbearing to Ernestine.

"Assist me in carrying this child to her bed," said Heim, carefully placing his arm beneath the rigid little body to raise it up.

"Oh, I beg of you, Herr Geheimrath, do not trouble yourself," cried Frau Gedike, evidently greatly humbled. "I can carry the poor child without help."

Heim glanced at her keenly, and then quietly directed her to show him the way.

Frau Gedike ran as quickly as she could across the hall to the door of a back room. "Permit me," she said, and tried to slip past the Geheimrath into the apartment. "Excuse me for one moment, that I may put things a little to rights. Everything is in disorder, I rose so early this morning."

But Heim said authoritatively, "Follow me!" and stepped past her into the chamber, carrying his silent burden. Here he stood still in astonishment. It was a kind of wash-room,--at least there was a huge pile of soiled linen in one corner. Broken furniture and household utensils were scattered about; there were no curtains to the windows; hundreds of flies were buzzing about the dirty panes; the air of the close room was stifling. In one corner stood a child's crib, which must have dated from Ernestine's fifth or sixth year. It contained an old straw bed, a dirty pillow, and a heavy, tawdry coverlet. Frau Gedike bustled about, endeavouring to conceal us well as she could the miserable condition of the room from the penetrating eye of the Geheimrath, but in vain.

"Am I to lay the wounded child in this bed? Is she to be nursed in this hole?" he asked in a tone which boded no good to the housekeeper.

"Gracious me!--we have no other room and no other bed. I have often pitied the dear child, but Herr Hartwich is so saving--he never buys anything new," she declared.

The Geheimrath went towards a half-open door leading into another and larger apartment. Here the air was pure, the furniture decent, and there was a comfortable bed in the corner.

"Is this your room?" asked the Geheimrath sharply.

"It is, Herr Geheimrath. It is just as my predecessor left it."

"Make up the bed instantly with clean linen."

Frau Gedike stared in surprise.

"Instantly!" repeated the Geheimrath, in a way that admitted of no remonstrance, and seated himself, that he might more conveniently hold his poor little charge. Frau Gedike brought clean sheets and made up the bed.

"Where shall I sleep?" she asked with suppressed rage: "there is no other sleeping-room in the whole house!"

"You can try Ernestine's bed, and see what it is to lie cramped up upon a rack!" replied the old gentleman dryly. Then he wrinkled his bushy brows sternly, and continued: "I doubt whether you will need a bed here, for I will do my best to have you leave this house before night."

"Oh, Lord, have mercy on me! Herr Geheimrath, what have I done? What fault can you find with me?" whined Frau Gedike as she smoothed the pillows.

Heim arose, and, as he laid the lifeless little body carefully upon the bed, said quietly, "Look at the room which you have allowed this frail child to occupy, the bed in which you have cramped her poor little limbs, and then say whether anybody of the least humanity could fail to condemn you!" He then left her, and called the barber-surgeon that he might take the necessary steps for providing careful attendance for the child.

Frau Gedike ran out crying, and the Geheimrath continued to provide for his patient's comfort with the quiet decision of an experienced physician and the gentleness of a tender-hearted man.

After half an hour, Ernestine began to show signs of life; but she did not return to consciousness. She cast a vague, wandering glance around, then closed her eyes and muttered broken, unintelligible words. At last she sank anew into a state of stupor resembling slumber. The Geheimrath left the surgeon with her and went to Hartwich, who, in the mean while, had been visited by Leuthold. Leuthold had been wakened at last by the unwonted bustle in the house, and had stolen from his bed to see if his brother were perhaps dying,--a piece of news which would have been a grateful morning greeting to his wife. He was disappointed. The only comfort was that all this excitement would inevitably accelerate Hartwich's death; Ernestine's fate was a matter of perfect indifference to him, but he was greatly disturbed by the intelligence that Heim had been called in. He could not bear the man, whose presence brought out clear and distinct, as with some chemical preparation, the stains upon his name that had apparently faded away. He therefore determined to leave home for a few days, in order to avoid a meeting with the witness of his disgrace; but he would leave his wife on guard in the lower story, under the pretence of helping to nurse Ernestine. Her presence would naturally hinder the physician from saying anything to Hartwich to his, Leuthold's, detriment. He slipped up-stairs to bid his wife arise quickly; but the indolent woman was too long about it for his wishes or his plans.

Scarcely had he left Hartwich when Heim entered the room. "What news do you bring me?" Hartwich cried out.

"Nothing hopeful as yet. She showed signs of life when we applied ice-bandages; but the lethargy into which she fell immediately is alarming. I cannot give you any hope before the end of three days."

Hartwich struck his damp forehead in despair. "It will kill me! it will kill me!"

The Geheimrath seated himself by his bedside, took a pinch of snuff from a golden box adorned with a miniature of the king, and calmly regarded the unhappy man. "Now tell me, Herr von Hartwich, how it all occurred. I should like to know. Besides the wound on the head, the child has bruises on her shoulders and arms that are by no means fresh. She seems to have been most cruelly treated!"

The invalid was silent for awhile, and then said, "Yes,--ah, yes, we have all abused her; but God knows I never intended this last! I was sound asleep yesterday evening when Ernestine came home and crept in to me here and waked me with her sobs."

"Poor child! she had cause to weep," the Geheimrath interrupted him.

"Yes, yes,--but I did not understand that yesterday. When I awoke, I was thirsty, and sent her up to my brother to bring me a little--a little--a few drops----"

"To bring you liquor," the Geheimrath completed the sentence.

"Yes, I confess it," Hartwich continued; "but in her uncle's room there was a telescope, and she looked through it and forgot her father's errand. I waited and waited, with my throat on fire, but she did not come. I grew more and more impatient; and when, at the end of a full half-hour, she came down without what I had sent her for, I seized hold of her to beat her; she clung to my lame arm so that the pain made me wild,--and in my senseless rage I flung her off and hurled her away with my healthy arm;--may it be crippled forever! She fell backward, and struck the back of her head first against the marble top of my wash-stand,--you can see the blood there still,--and then upon the floor, where she lay like one dead. Everything grew black before my eyes, as it did when I had the stroke. I rang for my people; no one came. I could not move,--could not leave my bed to go to the child. I saw her blood flow, I heard her gasp as if in the death-agony, and I lay here a miserable cripple, thinking that I had killed my child. Oh, Herr Geheimrath, at such a time our inmost selves are revealed to as; in such agony one learns to pray. At last, after repeated ringing and calling, my good-for-nothing servants made their appearance. Herr Geheimrath, I cannot tell you how I felt when they laid the child upon my bed,--my poor, beaten child. As the little bleeding head lay on my arm, it seemed as if my heart opened wide with the gaping wound, and, for the first time, real, warm, paternal affection gushed from it. Before, when I chastised the child, she was all defiance and stubbornness; then I did not care if I hurt her; but now, as she lay mute and crushed before me, she spoke to me in a language that recalled me to myself. And, Herr Geheimrath, I have not been myself,--I have drunk myself down to the level of a brute; and the poor victim of my fury has recalled me from my degradation."

The Geheimrath listened to the speaker with growing sympathy. When he had finished, he took his hand. "You are right, Herr von Hartwich, to be frank with me. Men who are not evil by nature can best excuse their evil deeds by frankness, for their intentions are seldom as bad as their actions. Compose yourself,--your condition is indeed worthy of compassion. If the physician might be allowed to usurp in a measure the confessor's chair at such a time as the present, I would say for your consolation, in the event of the worst termination to the child's illness, that your irresponsible condition, which rendered you incapable of appreciating the consequences of your act, and which would excuse you before an earthly tribunal, should have some weight with your inward judge. Besides, you have certainly acted paternally towards the child in one respect," he added with significance. "You have accumulated a fine property for her. That will enable her to occupy such a position in the world as will make her life, if it is spared, a happy one."

Hartwich seized Heim's hand and whispered quickly and anxiously "Ah, my dear sir, I have not done this; it now lies heavy on my soul that I have not been a father to the child in any way!"

"What do you mean?" cried Heim with apparent surprise. "You have not set Ernestine aside in favour of another?"

Hartwich looked anxiously towards the door. The Geheimrath understood his look, and opened it,--no listener was near. Hartwich then confessed all to the Geheimrath that the latter already knew. Heim shook his head. "It is incredible that a father should do so by his own child; but, now that your sense of duty is aroused, you will of course atone for your injustice?"

"Ah, Herr Geheimrath, if I only could, how gladly would I do so! If my poor Ernestine recovers, I would gladly make over to her the whole estate during my lifetime. Tell me, how shall I begin to make amends? how shall I begin to atone to the child for all the misery I have caused her? I will do anything, everything, if I only can. Assist me, advise me!"

"I think," began the Geheimrath with quiet decision, "that the case is very simple. You can make a new will and declare the other void. If Ernestine recovers, it is very doubtful whether she will be anything more than a poor, sickly invalid during her entire lifetime. Such an unfortunate being needs money,--a great deal of money; for sickness is an expensive affair. The child was naturally healthy. She has been weakened by neglect and harsh treatment. You left her to a worthless housekeeper, who denied her everything that a child should have in order to be strong, and in her weakened condition you have dealt her a death-blow from which she can hardly recover. You must be conscious that, since you have almost destroyed Ernestine's life, you ought at least to provide her with the means of making her invalid existence as endurable as possible, and indemnify her for a neglected childhood by every enjoyment that wealth can procure."

Again Hartwich broke out into loud lamentations. "Yes, yes, you are right,--you are a man of honour, Herr Geheimrath. But how can I set aside my will without encountering Leuthold's bitterest hate? Ah, you do not know what a dangerous enemy he is."

"I know, I know," Heim interrupted him, nodding his head; "he is a bad fellow; but tell me, Herr von Hartwich, what do you fear from him? Will not the curse of your unfortunate child, if she lives, be harder to bear than the hate of such a miserable wretch as your step-brother?"

Hartwich writhed and turned in his bed. "If I had only sold the factory! If he should learn that I had disinherited him, he is quite capable of preventing the sale out of sheer revenge, ruining the whole business for me, and then the poor child would be deprived of half of her property!"

The Geheimrath held his snuff-box in one hand, clasped the other over it, and looked at Hartwich with a smile.

"If that is why you hesitate, there is no cause for fear. The factory is as good as sold; for Herr Neuenstein, the brother of the Staatsräthin Möllner, is most anxious to purchase it for his son, who is a chemist;--he knows your brother, and would easily see through his wiles. Besides, Gleissert need know nothing about it for the present. Make the will secretly. I will give you pen and ink when I have written a prescription for Ernestine. Send your housekeeper off immediately, that we may have no spies about; for I believe her to be capable of any treachery, and Ernestine must not be left in her charge. This afternoon I shall come again, and you can put the document into my hands, where it will be safe. Well--how does the plan please you?"

"Yes, yes," cried Hartwich passionately. "That is right. That I can do. Ah, it is all that is left for me to do for my child, and it shall be done. Send Gedike away;--get me pen, ink, and paper,--it must not be delayed an hour longer than is necessary. I feel I may die at any moment. Remove this burden from my soul, and I shall die more peacefully!"

Heim went instantly to procure writing-materials, for he knew better than the invalid himself that there must be no delay in the matter. The servants brought him what he wanted, and he looked in upon Ernestine for a moment, while the surgeon went for more ice for the bandages. She was lying there moaning and groaning restlessly. He looked at her lovingly, and said to himself, "Poor child! There are better days in store for you." Then he repaired to Frau Gedike, whom he informed of her dismissal, and appointed Rieka, the elder of the maid-servants,--a girl whose face pleased him,--Ernestine's attendant.

When he returned to Hartwich, he found him in a state of great excitement. His face was purple, the veins greatly swollen.

"Where have you been so long?" he cried out as the Geheimrath entered. "I was in agony for fear I should have another stroke. I felt just as I did before! There, give me the writing-materials--it would be terrible if I were to die now, before I had atoned for my crime. Pray help me up, Herr Geheimrath,--but do not touch my lame arm,--oh, this pain! There, there,--thank you. Now the pen. I have thought it all over while you were away. I will arrange it so that he cannot say I broke my word to him, and he cannot harm Ernestine if I should die shortly. Ah, air!--Herr Geheimrath,--open a window! After I have written--I shall be easier. Then my mind will be relieved."

He spoke in breathless haste, while the perspiration stood in beads upon his forehead.

"Be calm, be calm!" said the Geheimrath soothingly. "You are not going to die now, but you will make yourself ill with this excitement."

"Ah, you are kind,--you wish to console me;--but I feel that last night will be my death--there is no time to lose!"

He dipped the pen in the ink, and looked towards the door. "If only Leuthold does not come,--all is lost if he does. Bolt it, I pray, that he may not surprise us. Tell me, will it not be best to make him Ernestine's heir? Then I shall not be quite false to my promise,--it is, alas, alas, more likely that the poor little lamb will die than that she will recover; then all will be as it was, and the property will be his,--and, if she lives, he must have a good legacy."

"Yes, yes," said the Geheimrath good-humouredly, "give the fellow what you think you owe him. But remember that he inherits from Ernestine only in case of her dying unmarried; for if it be God's will that she lives, marries, and has children, you must not deprive those children of the property. That might make her very unhappy."

"Yes, you are right,--I will insert that clause. But the guardianship,--what do you think? I must make Leuthold her guardian, or he will be terribly angry!"

The Geheimrath shook his head. "I would not do that!"

"Oh, yes, Herr Geheimrath. It would look too ugly, and the child will be in no kind of danger. He always liked Ernestine, and stood up for her; and he will be afraid, too, not to fill his post of guardian conscientiously, for he will be under the supervision of the orphans' court."

"Then make her minority as short as possible. For my satisfaction, have it expressly stated that she shall be of age at eighteen. Such precaution is necessary with men of Gleissert's stamp. According to our laws, a father can declare his child of age at eighteen. Her property can remain in the orphans' court until then, when it can be placed at her own disposal."

"Yes, yes, I agree to all that,--then it is all settled! God be thanked!" Hartwich drew a long sigh of relief, and dipped the pen in the ink. But scarcely had he attempted the first stroke when he dropped the pen in despair and cried out, "Merciful Heaven! I cannot form a letter!"

The startled Geheimrath looked at the paper. The letters were entirely illegible.

For one moment the old gentleman lost all hope,--while Hartwich sobbed and groaned like a child. Was he to fail thus, just when the goal was reached? The Geheimrath regarded the invalid thoughtfully, pondering how long a delay his condition would permit. Then he made up his mind, and said with composure, "I will arrange it all; do not be at all anxious. I will drive to the nearest town and procure the services of a couple of lawyers, and you shall dictate your will. I will be back again in two hours. Tell me when Leuthold is used to be away from home, that he may know nothing of our plans."

"At the time of your return he will be at the factory. If you go on foot as far as the corner of the wood, he will not see you. Herr Geheimrath, you are a true man,--my child's benefactor and mine. How shall I ever thank you?"

"There is no need of thanks,--no need at all! I am only doing my duty as a man and a Christian." And the prudent old physician concealed the writing-materials and hurried out.

Hartwich cast his blood-shot eyes upward and prayed, "Let me live until it is complete, O God,--only until then!" These words he repeated again and again, while his heart beat more wildly and irregularly, and his veins grew blue and swollen. It was the mortal agony of a doomed wretch who feels that a short time will bring him to the bar of an inexorable judge, and who longs to throw off at least a part of his burden of guilt. Of course such anguish would hasten his death.

Frau Bertha came down soon after the Geheimrath's departure, and would have stayed in Hartwich's room, but his state terrified her. She saw that the end was near, and she had not the courage to look on at the death-agony. In her heart she felt herself a murderess, because she had so ardently desired his death. Indeed, fate often makes us by our silent desires accomplices in its severity, and we are stricken with vain remorse when our secret hostility to another suddenly takes form and shape in events. Who has not at some time in his life secretly nourished a selfish desire, and, after it has been crushed down, fervently thanked Heaven for not cursing him with a granted prayer? Or, if the evil has been permitted, who has not in his remorse half believed that his secret desire helped to work the mischief that has been done? Frau Bertha's perceptions were not very delicate. She wished for Hartwich's death that she might enjoy his wealth, and thanked Heaven that it would shortly be hers; but she was too much of a woman not to shudder at the moment of the fulfilment of her evil desires and see an avenging demon in Hartwich's dying form. She resolved, therefore, to disobey her lord and master, and avoid the death-bed. The cogent reasons that Leuthold had for enjoining constant watchfulness she could not comprehend; and therefore, as soon as Leuthold left for the factory, she betook herself to her apartments again.

Hartwich was now left upon his burning couch, devoured by anxiety. The minutes crept slowly on; every quarter of an hour, news of Ernestine was brought him; there was no change for an hour, and then Rieka came in suddenly and cried, "Ah, sir, Ernestine is awake and wants some book; we cannot understand what one, or what she means, she speaks so indistinctly, and whatever we get her is wrong. What is to be done?"

"Send a servant into town to buy every child's-book that is to be had,--let her want for nothing,--do you hear? for nothing! Has she not mentioned me?"

"Oh, no," replied the servant; "she is not herself,--she is continually moaning for her book!"

"Then get her what she wants, as quickly as possible,--only be quick!"

The servant left the room, and the sick man was left to his brooding thoughts again. It worried and tormented him that Ernestine would have to wait several hours for what she wanted. In a few moments he rang again for the maid, who reiterated that the child was still asking for her book. The invalid grew still more restless, and at last sent for the surgeon, who was still with Ernestine.

"Lederer," he called out upon his entrance, "bleed me! Don't you remember how much good it did me?"

"Not for worlds, sir!" said Lederer. "I could not do it without a physician's orders. There seems no reason at all at present for such an extreme remedy!"

"What do you know about it?" cried Hartwich angrily. "I tell you I know I need it. There is a perfect hammering going on inside my head. You must bleed me, or I shall have another stroke!"

"Ah, sir, believe me, you are needlessly alarmed," said the barber. "Have some compassion upon a poor man like myself, who cannot take upon himself such a responsibility with a patient of your importance. I would gladly do it if I could! Have patience, I pray you, until the Geheimrath comes back!"

"You are a miserable coward!" screamed Hartwich, foaming with rage.

"For Heaven's sake compose yourself, sir," the terrified surgeon interrupted him; "I will obey you, but I must first go home and fetch my bandages. Perhaps by the time I get back the Geheimrath will be here!"

"Then go," muttered Hartwich, who already repented his violence, which he feared might prove an injury to him. "But first lift me up a little. Ah! if I could only put my feet out of bed I should certainly feel easier. Try if you cannot lift them out; take out the lame leg first--so--that's right--oh, it's hard. 'Tis better to have wooden legs--they can be unstrapped and taken off--but to have to drag about everywhere a dead, useless limb is horrible! 'tis a dog's life, and I care not how soon it is over, but not just yet--I must do my duty first. Now go, Lederer, and come back soon."

The barber had helped him so that he was sitting upright in bed, with his lame foot upon a cushion. He looked around the room, and noticed Ernestine's book upon the table. "What is that?" he asked. Lederer handed it to him. He turned over the leaves, and his face suddenly brightened. "That must be the book that Ernestine is asking for--some one must have given it to her yesterday at the party. Good heavens! now I understand why the poor little thing crept in here so late last night; she wanted to read by my lamp! Ah, how dearly she paid for her innocent pleasure! Go, my good Lederer, and take the book to the child. Tell Rieka to come and let me know what she says to it, and then you will get the bandages--will you not?"

"Most certainly, sir, as soon as possible!" said Lederer, and hurried away with the book.

A clock struck nine. Hartwich sighed profoundly. "Only nine. Heim cannot come for an hour yet. The lawyers will need time for preparation. O God--Thou wilt not punish that poor, innocent child so severely as to let me die before her rights are secured--Thou wilt not!" He tried in vain to fold his hands, and at last dropped them wearily upon his crippled knees.

Suddenly he imagined that his right hand also was stiffening. His incapacity to write could not have resulted merely from want of habit. He moved his arm up and down to try it--whether in imagination or reality, it certainly felt heavier. It was not the effect of gout, as was the case with his left hand; this could only proceed from an effusion of blood upon the brain. Cold drops of moisture stood upon his forehead; he tried to wipe them away with his right hand; in vain, he could not lift it so high. Thus he sat helpless and alone, every limb crippled. He thought of his child's thin, white hands; how blest he should be if they could now supply the place of his own to him, wipe his damp brow and hand him refreshing drink! He thought how forsaken and alone he sat there awaiting death, and that it was all his own fault; and again he sobbed convulsively. Then Rieka entered.

"Well, was that the right one?" asked Hartwich.

"Oh, yes, sir."

"Thank Heaven! Did she not mention me?"

"No, sir; she said nothing. She only took the book and kissed it, then folded it in her arms and went to sleep again."

"If the child does not forgive me before I die, I shall have no rest in my grave!" moaned Hartwich. "Rieka, I am losing the use of my right arm too. Look at me. Am I not altered?"

"Oh, no, you always look just as purple!" said Rieka consolingly.

"Give me a mirror and let me see myself!"

Rieka handed him a mirror, and he looked at himself long and anxiously. "I look fearfully. Can you not hear how indistinct my speech is?"

Rieka put away the mirror. "Oh, your tongue is always heavy when you have been drinking. Don't be worried about that."

"I have not drank a drop to-day, you insolent girl!" stammered Hartwich irritated. "Go back instantly, and take good care of the child, or----"

"Yes, sir, I shall do my duty without threats, but I can't mend the mischief that you have done!" And she slammed the door behind her.

"And I must bear this from an ignorant peasant!" wailed Hartwich. "How they will abuse me to my child, if she recovers! Oh, oh, I deserve it all; 'tis wretched,--wretched! But I must be calm. I must not be excited." Thus he murmured, with trembling lips, exerting all his energy to repress his excitement, and to force the breath regularly from his laboring breast.

Again the clock struck--ten this time.

"They must soon be here now!" thought Hartwich. "If I can only keep my head clear!"

The wretched man in his anguish now exercised his mental faculties in every way that he could devise, repeating the formula which he had composed for his will a hundred times, that it might be so stamped upon his mind as to be forthcoming even in his last moments.

At last steps were heard in the hall.

"It is Lederer with the bandages," he thought, suddenly remembering his desire to be bled. But there were several people there. It must be the lawyers. The door opened. "Ah, thank God! thank God!" Hartwich stammered, and fainted.

"I thought so!" cried the Geheimrath. "If you had only bled him, or at least remained with him!" he continued to the terrified barber, who entered at the same time. "Be quick now; give me that case; bring me some ice from the child's room," he ordered; and, while he spoke the lancet had done its work, and the dark blood was flowing from the arm.

"Pray be ready, gentlemen," he said as he was bandaging the arm; "I believe the sick man will come to himself in a few moments. You will find writing-materials there in the corner."

The gentlemen took their seats, and arranged a table for writing from the sick man's dictation. The surgeon brought the ice; it was laid upon Hartwich's head, and, as the Geheimrath had prophesied, he soon came to himself. He looked around him with astonishment "Am I still living?" he feebly asked.

"Certainly, certainly," said the Geheimrath, cheerfully; "it was only a slight attack."

"God of mercy," gasped Hartwich, "Thou art all compassion! My memory is still perfect. Are the lawyers here?"

One of them arose, and approached the bed.

"We are here, Herr von Hartwich, and await your directions."

"I am still of sound mind,--indeed I am," Hartwich insisted with childlike eagerness.

"The intention with which you have summoned us would certainly not indicate the contrary," said the lawyer gravely, signing to his companion to prepare to write.

"And I declare that this last decision of mine is entirely my own," Hartwich continued.

"I am convinced that it is so. I should far rather suppose that your previous will was a forced one," the official rejoined.

"Will it impair the authenticity of this document that I am unable to sign it? I cannot, unfortunately, move my hand."

"Not at all," said the lawyer. "These two gentlemen, Herr Geheimrath Heim and the surgeon Lederer, will have the kindness to affix their signatures as witnesses, and the instrument will be legally correct. If you are strong enough to dictate your will, there is nothing now to prevent your doing so."

"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" gasped Hartwich, as the Geheimrath supported him; "every moment is precious."

The preliminary sentences were written at Hartwich's request. The Geheimrath closed the door, and the dying man began to dictate in such feverish haste that the lawyer was obliged to entreat him to speak more slowly. Some irregularities in the formula were arranged, and the will was completed before the glimmering spark of life in the testator was extinguished. Little Ernestine was made heir to a property of ninety thousand thalers. The document was read aloud to Hartwich, and the Geheimrath and Lederer affixed their signatures instead of his own.

"Now I can die!" said the sick man, with the air of a released captive; and instantly his mental and physical powers failed him.

"Geheimrath!" he faltered, and a strange smile transfigured his countenance, "lay the will upon my child's bed, as her--father's--last--farewell--thanks--thanks." And his eyelids closed, he muttered unintelligibly, and relapsed into unconsciousness.

The Geheimrath nodded to the lawyers, and said, "It was high time!"

[CHAPTER IV.]

THE SAD SURVIVORS.

The next day, at about the same hour, Frau Bertha was in her kitchen, beating whites of eggs for a cake, her round cheeks shaking merrily with the exercise. She had sent her maid into the garden with Gretchen, and was supplying the maid's place. She turned the bowl upside down, to convince herself that the eggs were sufficiently beaten; not a drop fell,--they were all right. She set them aside with an air of great satisfaction, and turned to a bag beneath the table, whence issued a melancholy flapping and cooing. A white dove poked its head out of the mouth of the bag, and Bertha thrust it back again, securing the opening more tightly. A pot of water on the fire boiled over with a loud hissing, and she hastened to roll up her sleeves over her large, well-formed arms, and lift the heavy vessel from the glowing coals. She was a beautiful sight, as the glare from the fire illuminated her massive proportions; as she moved hither and thither, now arranging her various cooking-utensils, now opening the door beneath the oven, to thrust in huge pieces of wood, hastily picking up and tossing back the bits of burning coal that fell out, she might have been Frau Venus, the coarse Frau Venus of the popular German imagination, fresh from the infernal regions in the Hörselberg, who, clad in a kitchen apron, was here in the likeness of a cook-maid to seduce the calm, cold-blooded Dr. Gleissert by the magic charms of her cookery. She tossed a net full of crabs into a pot of cold water, and looked thoughtlessly on at their slow death over the fire. She never dreamed that just at that moment a human life was leaving its mortal tenement beneath her roof, and when, a few minutes later, she was pounding ingredients in her huge mortar, that the noise she was making was the death-knell of a departing soul. She did not hear her husband's approach until he stood before her, and seizing her by the arm, said breathlessly, "Wife, this is our last day of torment!"

Frau Bertha looked at him with surprise, that was only half joy, painted upon her heated face. "I have never seen you so delighted before, except when you were examining those odd fishes at Trieste; what has happened?"

"Can you not guess?" asked Leuthold.

"Is he dead?"

"He is; he has been dying for the last twenty-four hours."

"Thank Heaven!" said Frau Bertha, folding her plump hands.

"And if I believed in Heaven I should say so too," rejoined Leuthold, throwing himself upon a kitchen chair. "Only conceive of the joy! We are wealthy,--independent,--delivered from our ten years' servitude,--delivered--ah!" He fanned himself with the pocket-handkerchief that he had just used at the bedside of Hartwich's corpse to dry the tears that he did not shed.

In spite of her good fortune, Frau Bertha looked uncomfortable. "I am almost sorry he has gone," she said timidly. "It seems to me a sin to rejoice so at any one's death,--he might appear to us."

"Don't talk such nonsense; you know I cannot endure it," said Leuthold angrily. "You behave as if we had killed him. Wishes are neither poison nor steel; and we are not rejoicing at his death, but at our inheritance. It is but human."

"Yes, yes," said Bertha, comforted, "you are quite right. If we could have had the money while he lived, we should not have wanted him to die; he might have lived for a hundred years for all I would have cared. It was his own fault that we wished him dead. Why did he keep us so pinched?"

Leuthold nodded approvingly. "I see you are willing to listen to reason; now have the kindness to come downstairs with me and pay the proper respect to the body."

"What must I do that for?" asked Bertha, alarmed.

"Because it is becoming! I have instructed you sufficiently upon this point; you know my wishes--come!"

These words, that cut like a knife in their utterance, made opposition useless. Bertha took her casseroles from the fire, looked after the doves in the bag, and followed her husband down stairs. On the way she asked him, "What shall I say when we get there?"

"Not much," said Leuthold dryly. "There is not much to be said in such stiff, silent society,--a couple of oh's and ah's will suffice; it is very graceful in a woman to fall upon her knees by the bedside; but if you should attempt it, pray restrain your usual impetuosity, or the repose even of the dead might be disturbed."

"You are a fearful man," whispered Bertha. "I am actually afraid of you. Will you make such joking speeches when I die?"

"I shall not outlive you, my good Bertha," said Leuthold, plaintively. "If I should, be assured I will mourn for you as the nurseling for his nurse!"

Frau Bertha looked doubtfully at her husband. She scarcely knew what to make of this tender asseveration, and she said nothing. They had reached the door of Hartwich's apartment.

"Where is your handkerchief--your pocket-handkerchief?" Leuthold asked softly. Bertha sought it in vain; she had forgotten it. "How thoughtless," whispered Leuthold, "to forget your handkerchief under such circumstances!"

"Then give me yours," said Bertha.

"You fool! I want it for myself. Take your apron; put that up to your eyes--so!" With these words he opened the door and entered slowly, pushing Bertha before him. Hartwich lay extended upon the bed, his face so changed that Bertha was glad to be able to hide her eyes in her apron. Leuthold stood beside her, a picture of dignified manly grief; his bearing impressed the bystanders; the surgeon, the men- and maid-servants, who were all present, were convinced that Herr Gleissert had really loved his step-brother, and that it was rank injustice to accuse him of heartlessness. After a few moments, he laid his hand gently upon his wife's shoulder, but its stern pressure reminded her that she was to fall upon her knees. She sank down as carefully as she could, and with her broad back and bending head was a beautiful and moving image of woe. After awhile he bent over her and said gently, "Come, my child, do not be so agitated; our tears cannot bring him back to life--come!" Then he raised her, leaned her head upon his breast to conceal her face, and conducted her from the room. The others looked after them with amazement.

"I cannot understand it," said the surgeon. "Every one knows that the woman never could endure Herr von Hartwich, and yet now she seems almost dead with grief!"

"She isn't really sorry," growled a groom; "it's all sham!"

"Yes, yes," Rieka added, "she didn't shed a tear,--not a single tear, for all she rubbed her eyes so with her apron!"

"That's true,--she is right," murmured the group; "neither he nor she shed a single tear. Well, there's a pair of them. Do they suppose we are so stupid as not to see how glad they are that the master is dead? 'Tis a pity that the money will not fall into better hands."

Then they separated, and went indifferently about their work.

"That was not so bad," said Leuthold, when he had reached his own room with Bertha; "but still you certainly have no genius for the stage."

"You ought to be glad that I can never play a part before you," she said, shaking herself as if to shake off the disagreeable impression of what she had seen like dust from her clothes.

In the mean time the maid had brought the child in from the garden, and had laid the table.

"We will have some champagne to-day," said Leuthold, taking down the keys of the cellar. "We need something to support us under such exciting circumstances. Send Lena for some ice." And he left the room.

Frau Bertha sent the girl for ice, and said to herself with complacency, "That ice-house was the best thing I ever planned."

The little girl, who was too fat and chubby to move very steadily, had crept under the table, and now, catching hold of the corner of the table-cloth, tried to lift herself by it, thereby pulling down a couple of plates and knives upon the floor. Bertha caught up the screaming child, gave it two or three hard slaps, saying, "Now you know what you are crying for," and then carried it to and fro to quiet it, well knowing that her strict husband would not endure any noise. Gretchen ceased crying just as her father entered with the champagne. Lena brought the ice, and the bottles were arranged in it. When the husband and wife were seated at table, Bertha had the fragments of the broken plates cleared away. "Oh, heavens!" she muttered, "nothing but bad signs. If our fortune should be destroyed like that china!"

"You unmitigated fool!" scolded her husband; "if everything that we desire were only as secure as our legally devised inheritance, Gretchen's future husband would be now tumbling about in a royal nursery, and there would be a French cook in our kitchen."

"Oh, then," Bertha interrupted him with irritation, "you are not satisfied with my cooking,--you want a Frenchman."

"Only a Frenchman could supply your place," replied her husband, quite ready to practise himself in the delicate flattery which he intended to make use of in future towards ladies in aristocratic circles. He kissed her hand and said, "I would not have these rosy fingers any longer degraded by contact with the rude utensils of cookery. Let all that be left to the hard, rough hands of some skilful gastronome."

Frau Bertha stared at him in surprise.

"Why, can gastronomes cook?"

"Most certainly,--what else should they do?"

"I thought they looked at the stars through glasses!"

Leuthold clasped his hands in dismay, and cast a look towards heaven. "Good heavens! when I think of your making such a speech among our future friends, I am so profoundly humiliated that I could almost determine to make over my property to some religious institution--some monastery--and enroll myself among its members. Woman, woman, must I teach you the difference between gastronomy, the science of cookery, and astronomy, the science of the stars?"

"Gastronomy or astronomy!" said Bertha pettishly, as she ladled out the soup, "it is a great deal better for me to understand cooking than the long names you call it. Would you have liked, during all the ten years that you were too poor to keep a regular cook, to have a wife who could talk Latin with you, but whose dinners a dog could not have eaten?"

"No, no, indeed, my dear Bertha!" said her husband with a shudder; "but the two can be united if you try. I do not ask you either to study Greek and Latin, or to resign your masterly supervision of our kitchen department; but you have hitherto performed many little household offices, that could as well have been left to the servant, because you had no pleasanter way of occupying your time. This must be otherwise now; hitherto you have had the excuse of our straitened circumstances that have compelled you sometimes to discharge a servant's duties. Now there will be no such excuse; for you will have a suitable household in town, and time to cultivate your mind and render yourself a worthy member of the society to which I shall introduce you."

Bertha in her impatience let her spoon fall into the soup-plate, and then wreaked her irritation upon the soup, which she poured hastily back into the tureen.

"If you should do such a thing as that before strangers," said her husband angrily, "you would stamp yourself as a person of no refinement, and I should be disgraced."

Bertha brought her hand down upon the table so heavily that the glasses rang again. "This is really too much! Can I no longer eat as I please? As long as you were poor, and I spent my little all in procuring delicacies for you, you found me all very well, and had plenty of fine words for me; but now, that you are rich and I have nothing left, I am not good enough for you, and you take quite another tone with me. Heaven help me! There is no more pleasure in store for me. I really believe you would send me out of the house if I should not succeed in pleasing you. Oh, if I had only known!"

She was silent, because Lena appeared with the roast; but a couple of large tears dropped into the soup-plate which she handed to the servant.

"What exaggerated nonsense!" said Leuthold at last. "Be good enough to carve the meat,--I am hungry. You know I am a respectable man,--slow to adopt harsh measures if they can be avoided. I hope you will not force me to them by stubborn conduct. You will recognize and fulfil the duties which our wealth imposes upon us."

"Duties, duties? I thought that when I was rich I could begin really to enjoy life and do as I pleased; but instead of that I must wear a double face and worry about everything. It is just as if you gave me a new sofa in the place of the old one, but forbade me to lie down upon it for fear of injuring the cover. Of course I should long for the old one, upon which I could stretch myself in comfort whenever I chose."

Leuthold smiled. "You are not forbidden to lie down upon the new sofa. I only ask you to take off your muddy boots when you do so. Do you understand?"

Bertha was so far consoled that she applied herself to devouring the food upon her plate in silence. Her husband regarded her with a strange mixture of humour and discontent.

"You must at least learn to hold your fork in your left hand," he said at last.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Bertha again. "What matter is it about such a trifle?"

"A great deal of matter, my dear. Such trifles show refinement, just as the mercury in the thermometer shows the degree of heat and cold. If you lay your knife aside and clutch your fork in your right hand like a pitchfork, every one of any culture will say, 'That woman is a person of no refinement. She has not been used to good society.' I grant it is insignificant in itself and ridiculous to every thinking man; but it serves a certain purpose. Such forms are marks of distinction between cultivated and uncultivated people. Just because they are so insignificant the uninitiated never pay any heed to them. But, although clad in purple and fine linen, ignorance of such trifles betrays the parvenu. Those who desire, like yourself, to enter circles to which they do not belong by birth, must find out all their conventional secrets, in order not to be disgraced."

"Oh, what a moral discourse!" sighed Bertha. "I have had enough for to-day. You are a thoroughly heartless man, and were kind to me only as long as you needed me. I must bear what comes, for I am poor and helpless since I broke with my father,--but you have tired me out, I assure you."

"And if this fatigue were an overpowering sensation, you would separate yourself from me; but since you are fond of the rest that I can provide you, there will be an enduring bond between us. I shall magnanimously treat you as my wife as long as you give me no legal ground for divorce; therefore, be composed; your future lot is a thousand times more brilliant than you had any right to expect."

Bertha arose, and was about to reply, but her husband commanded silence by so imperious a gesture that she swallowed down her anger and hastened from the room, sobbing violently. In the kitchen the maid was just taking the cake that she had made from the oven. It was successful--it was most beautiful! The servant placed it near the open window to cool. Bertha contemplated it mournfully. How much pains she had taken! how stiff the eggs had been beaten! how well it had risen! and no one cared anything about it! Did her cross husband deserve that she should prepare such a delicacy for him? Should he devour this masterpiece? Yet there it was,--so round and high, so brown and fragrant, that she gradually dried her tears, and was filled with more agreeable sensations and a pardonable pride. No one except herself possessed the receipt for this cake. No one else could make it. She thought with rapture of the delight of those who should in future partake of it at her table,--of the consideration that she should enjoy on account of it; and, thinking thus, her good humour returned, and she determined not to hide her light under a bushel, and punish her husband by withholding the cake from him, but to parade it before him; he should see what a woman he had treated so unkindly could do. When he tasted this cake he would repent his harshness! She took the plate and carried it on high into the dining-room, where she placed it before her husband with exultation.

"Yes, that is really beautiful," he said approvingly, looking first at the round, beautiful cake, and then at the plump, pretty baker; and his approbation exalted Bertha to the highest pitch of satisfaction, so that she felt morally justified in asking for a glass of champagne. Her husband removed the cork without allowing it to snap and disturb the decorum of the house of mourning, and then poured out a sparkling bumper for her.

"Come," she said, "we will clink glasses, and drink to the welfare of the good Hartwich, who has made us rich!"

"Yes, now that he is dead, may he live forever," said Leuthold smiling, and gently touching his wife's glass with his own,--"live forever in that heaven where I trust he may experience all the delight that his wealth will afford us here on earth."

They emptied their glasses, and Bertha ran into the adjoining room, where Gretchen was taking her noonday nap. She snatched the sleeping child from the bed, shook it, and cried, "Come, wake up, and you shall have some cake!"

The little thing, interrupted in its nap, was frightened and began to scream, refusing to be quieted until her father filled her mouth with the promised delicacy and dandled her in his arms.

"You do not even understand how to take care of your own child," murmured Leuthold. "What will you do when our niece comes to us?"

"What!" cried Bertha, "must I have the care of the disagreeable creature?"

"She will come to me--yes."

"But we will send her to boarding-school--you promised me!"

"If Ernestine recovers, as she may do under old Heim's care, she will be too weak for months to be sent among strangers without incurring the reproach of the world. You will be obliged, therefore, to submit to having her with us until such time as we can be rid of her decently. I assure you she shall stay no longer than is absolutely necessary. And now pray be quiet, and do not embitter this day by complaints."

Frau Bertha looked utterly discomfited. She determined that, at all events, Ernestine should never partake of the delicacies which she alone knew how to prepare. Coarse natures always seek for a scape-goat upon whom to wreak their irritation; and, as she did not dare to make her husband serve this purpose, her choice fell upon Ernestine.

Leuthold, who was not used to see his wife lost in a reverie, softly touched her shoulder. "Come; it really looks almost as if you were thinking of something," he said dryly.

"Yes; I am thinking of something," she replied significantly. "I am thinking of the dog's life I shall lead as long as that sickly, ailing brat is under our roof, and no one will reward me for my pains."

She stopped, for Gretchen had grown restless, and required all her attention, and Leuthold evidently refused to give any heed to her complaints, but, as dinner was over, folded his napkin and rose from the table. "I must write the notice of his death--it is high time it were attended to," he said, while he washed his hands in the adjoining room. "Sew a piece of crape around my hat." He re-entered the room, and sat down at his writing-table. Bertha placed a candle and a cup of café noir upon it. He lighted a cigar, which he smoked as he wrote, sipping his coffee comfortably from time to time. The servant removed the dinner-table; Gretchen amused herself on the floor with some paper, which she tore into a thousand fragments, to make a mimic snow-storm; and Bertha tried on before the mirror several articles of mourning-apparel, which she had had in readiness for some time. She was delighted, for black was very becoming to her.

Peace and comfort reigned in the apartment. Leuthold emptied his cup and laid aside his pen. "There--that is most touching and suitable. Read it." He handed Bertha what he had, written, and she read:

"It has pleased Almighty God to release our beloved father, brother, and brother-in-law, Herr Carl Emil von Hartwich, landholder and manufacturer, from his protracted sufferings, and to transport him to a better world. He died this day, at twelve M. Those who were acquainted with the deceased, and with his active benevolence, will know how profound must be our sorrow, and accord us their sympathy.

"The Sad Survivors.

"Unkenbeim, 24 July, 18--."

[CHAPTER V.]

UNDECEIVED.

Ernestine was still lying motionless in Frau Gedike's huge bed, and by her side sat a little nurse scarcely three feet high, swinging her short legs, and thinking how charming it must be to lie in such a great big bed, just like a grown person, and what a pity it was that poor Ernestine slept so much, that she could not enjoy the pleasure. Now and then she turned her fair head round towards the window behind her, through the white curtains of which she could see a dark procession moving away from the house towards the village. When it had disappeared from sight, she gave a little sigh, and swung her feet rather more violently than before,--although she sat very upright, with great dignity of demeanour, for she was entirely conscious of the weighty responsibility of her post. She had been intrusted with the charge of watching Ernestine while the servants were attending the funeral services performed over Bartwich's corpse. When they were concluded, and the funeral procession had left the house, Rieka had begged the little child to keep her place until the gentlemen returned from the church-yard, in order that the maid might perform certain necessary household duties. Angelika--for she it was--undertook the charge with delight. She had given her uncle Neuenstein, who had determined to pay the last honours to Hartwich's remains, no peace until he consented to take her to Ernestine. True, she soon acknowledged to herself that she had never, in her whole long life of eight years, seen any place so tiresome as this quiet room, where nothing was heard but the buzzing of a couple of flies around a spoon in which a drop or two of Ernestine's medicine had been left; but she was not discontented; she sat as still as a mouse, so that she might not disturb the invalid, and did not even venture to look at her, for she had heard that sleepers could be awakened by a look. Only now and then she cast a wistful glance at the pretty book that was clasped tight in Ernestine's embrace. Suddenly the sick child muttered, "I am lying turned round the wrong way in bed." Angelika scrambled down in alarm from her high seat, and ran to the door and cried, "Rieka, Ernestine is saying something!"

The maid hurried in, and Ernestine moved uneasily, and insisted that she was lying with her head towards the foot of the bed. At last Rieka remembered that Ernestine's crib had been placed against the opposite wall, and suspected that she missed the old position. Rightly judging this to be a favourable sign, she quickly and carefully turned the child around in the bed; and when Ernestine stretched out her hand and encountered the wall, where she had been accustomed to find it, she seemed satisfied, and apparently fell asleep again. Then Rieka left the room to finish her work; but, after a few moments, Ernestine opened her eyes, in which for the first time shone the light of intelligence, and looked around. "Angelika!" she said in amazement, and then stared around the room. "Why, this is Frau Gedike's room! and what a large, soft bed!"

"Yes, indeed," Angelika delightedly replied. "Isn't it comfortable? Ah, you poor dear Ernestine, are you beginning to grow a little better? Is your head mended again?"

Ernestine put up her hand to her bandaged head. "What is this?"

"You broke your head. Oh, it was terrible, I know from my dolls,--although it doesn't hurt them, and you can put on new heads; but they couldn't do that for you, and they said you must die; but you haven't died!"

"Oh, yes," said Ernestine, recollecting herself; "now I remember; last night my father struck me and threw me down. Yes, it hurt very much!"

"It was not last night, it was several days ago; but you slept the whole time, and didn't you know that they cut off your hair?" asked Angelika, running to the wardrobe and producing a thick bunch of long black hair. "Look, here it is,--there is some blood on it still, but, if you will only give it to me, I will wash it and make my large walking doll a splendid wig of it. Do, do give it to me, you can't make it grow on your head again."

"I'll give it to you willingly," said Ernestine; "but first ask Frau Gedike whether you may keep it."

"Oh, she is not here any more,--Uncle Heim sent her away!" replied Angelika, drawing the dark strands slowly through her fingers.

"Then ask my father."

This answer utterly discomfited Angelika. "I cannot ask your father," she said in a disappointed tone, putting the hair away regretfully. "He is dead! They put him in the hearse a little while ago,--I saw them."

"Oh," said Ernestine, startled, "is he dead? Why, why did he die just now?"

"I think because he was so angry with you," said Angelika with an air of great wisdom. "Don't you know when I am naughty mamma shuts me up in a dark room? and, because your father was a great deal naughtier than I, God has shut him up in a dark hole in the ground, and he must stay there always."

"Ah, for my sake, the dear God should not have done that, for my sake!" said Ernestine, bursting into tears. "Now I have no father any more; I have nobody; I am all alone in the world! My poor father! it is all my fault that he is put into the narrow grave, where the worms will eat him and there will be nothing left of him but bones. Oh, how horrible! how horrible! I saw a skeleton once in a picture, and my poor, poor father will look just like that!" And she wrung her thin hands and writhed about in the bed, moaning loudly.

Angelika was in despair at the mischief she had done. She had quite forgotten that she had been forbidden, if Ernestine should awake, to speak to her of her father. In the greatest distress she walked to and fro beside the high bed, and at last brought a tall stool, from which, when she had mounted it, she could reach Ernestine. She kissed her, she stroked her cheeks, and laid her chubby hand upon her mouth to silence her, but in vain. At last she hit upon the idea of showing her the book that lay beside her. She opened it at a picture and held it up before her, saying, "Look, dear Ernestine, only look at your beautiful book!" The sick child instantly brushed the tears from her eyes when she saw the picture.

"The swan!" she cried, "the swan! that is the story of the Ugly Duckling!" She hastily took the book out of Angelika's hands and turned over the leaves. Gradually the fairy figures of the snow-queen, the little mermaid, and the rest, obliterated the horrible image of her dead father, and his narrow grave faded away to give place to the shining garden of Paradise, and the clear, broad sea with the fairy palaces beneath its crystal waves. Her sobs grew fainter and fainter, and at last a smile played around her lips when she came to the story of the dryad "Elder Blossom."

"Now I know what a dryad is," she said. "I am glad, I am very glad!"

"What is it that makes you so glad?"

"That a dryad is nothing bad, for--don't you know?--he called me that. I thought it was to mock me, and it hurt me, but it was not so."

"He? who?"

"I don't know his name, your brother, who gave me the book."

"Johannes?" laughed Angelika. "Do you like him?"

"Yes, oh, yes, he is so handsome and good, just like the prince in the Little Mermaid." With these words a light shone in the child's dark eyes. "I would far rather have turned into foam than done anything to hurt him, if I had been the mermaid."

"That is charming! that is splendid!" Angelika declared with delight; "we both love him! He is such a dear brother. It is a pity he has gone away. If he were at home he would come and play with you; oh, he plays so finely!"

"Has he gone away?" asked Ernestine sadly.

"Yes, he has gone to Paris to get me a wax doll; only think!--one that can call 'Papa' and 'Mamma.'"

"Oh, there cannot be such dolls!" said Ernestine with a troubled look.

"Indeed there are, and when she comes I will show her to you. Remember the doll in 'Ole Luckoie;' she could speak, and had a fine wedding."

"But that isn't a true story," said Ernestine wisely, putting her hand to her head, which was beginning to ache badly.

"Only think what a charming thing it is to have a wedding," Angelika ran on. "I once went to a real wedding, and it was almost finer than the one in the story. Oh, the bride has a lovely time! Why, she sits just in the middle of the table, and in front of her is a great, tall cake, with a little house on top of it and a little man inside, a little bit of a man, with a bow and arrows, but no clothes on at all. She has the biggest piece of cake, and they put the dear little man upon her plate, and she is helped first to everything. I was really vexed with my cousin for eating hardly anything. And only think, last of all came ice-cream doves sitting in a nest made of sugar, upon eggs of marchpane! They looked so natural that I was too sorry when my cousin cut off one of their heads; I could have cried, and I determined not to eat any of it, but by the time it came to me, every one could see that it was not a real dove, for it was all melting away, and you had to eat it with a spoon. And there were quantities of champagne, and all the gentlemen made long speeches to the bride, and you had to sit perfectly still and not rattle your spoon at all while they were talking, but when they had done you could scream as loud as you pleased, and clatter your glasses, and the more noise you made the better; and all were pleased and kissed one another; only my cousin sat there so stupidly and cried. I wouldn't have cried when everything was done to please me. And I'll tell you what, when my brother comes back he must bring you a boy doll with a hat and waistcoat, and then he shall marry my doll. He will come in six months, but that must be a long time; for mamma cried when he went away. Perhaps we shall be grown up by then, and can make our dolls' clothes ourselves. That would be lovely."

"But we shall not be grown up in six months," said Ernestine. "First winter must come, and then summer again, and then winter and summer again, before we are grown up!"

"That is terribly long," cried Angelika. "I don't see how we can wait so long."

"And when we are grown up we cannot play with dolls. Then I shall buy myself a telescope like Uncle Leuthold's, and always be looking into the moon, for I like it better than anything."

"Into the moon? Have you ever looked into the moon?" asked Angelika in amazement.

"Indeed I have."

"How does it look there?"

"Oh, beautiful, most beautiful! It shines and gleams so silvery, and it is so calm and quiet, and there are mountains and valleys there just like ours, only they are not coloured, they are just pure light!"

"Did you see the man in the moon?"

"No, I didn't see him; Uncle Leuthold said there are no people in the moon; but I don't believe him. They are only so far off that we can't see them. And they must be much happier and better than we are here; I'm sure they never beat children; and who knows whether perhaps the dear God himself does not live there? If I could fly, I would fly up there!" And she gazed upward with beaming eyes, and a long sigh escaped from her little breast.

"No, dear Ernestine, you must not fly away; no one can tell that the moon is as lovely near to, as it is so far off. And it is very nice here, too, for when you grow up you can be either a mamma or an aunt, and then no one can do anything to you. No one ever strikes my aunt or my mamma--no one!"

But Ernestine was no longer conscious of the child's prattle; her eyes closed, her beloved book dropped from her hands; Ole Luckoie, the gentle Northern god of slumber, had arisen from its pages. He had poured balm into her painful wound, and extended his canopy, with its thousands of gay pictures, over her soul.

Angelika looked at her for awhile, and then asked, "Are you asleep again?" and, upon receiving no answer, she was quite content, and got softly down from the high stool, and seated herself again upon her chair with the grave air of a sentinel. At last Heim, with Herr Neuenstein, came home from the funeral, and the two gentlemen entered the apartment together.

"She has been talking with me," Angelika announced.

"What! has she come to herself?" asked the Geheimrath in pleased surprise.

"Oh, yes,--we talked about a great many things--and then she went to sleep again."

The Geheimrath rubbed his hands.--"That's good! Did she seem to be perfectly sensible?"

"Oh, yes; she was perfectly sensible," Angelika assured him.

"What a pity that I was not here! Now I hope we shall bring her through," said the Geheimrath to Herr Neuenstein; but the latter stood looking at the corpse-like figure of the sleeping child, and shook his head.

"I see," continued the physician, "that it seems impossible to you, and yet I believe she will recover. Who that sees such a faded blossom lying there would suspect the wonderful recuperative energy hidden within it? And I tell you this child possesses an immense amount of vitality, or she would have succumbed to such brutal treatment as she has received. She will recover; believe me, she will recover."

"I should rejoice indeed to think that your exertions will not prove in vain. And you really wish to take her with you?"

"Yes, if her hypocritical uncle will let her go, I will deliver her from his claws, and educate her as is best for her health and becoming to her position as an heiress."

"You are a genuine philanthropist, Geheimrath."

"Yes, I am a philanthropist; but there is small merit in that. Some people love puppies and kittens, others cultivate flowers with enthusiasm,--I love to educate and train human beings. Whenever a pair of melancholy eyes stare out at me from a child's face, I want to stick the child in my herbarium like a rare flower. Yes, if it only cost as little to cultivate children as plants, I should have had a human hot-house long ago. But the taste is so confoundedly expensive."

"Yes, we all know that you spend your whole income in such good works. You might have been a millionaire long ago, if it had not been for your lavish generosity."

"What would you have? One man wastes his money upon one whim, and another on another. This happens to be my whim, and I spend just as much upon it as I can conscientiously in the interest of my adopted son, who stands nearest my heart. But now do me the kindness to leave the room, for our talk is disturbing the child's sleep. I will stay here for an hour and watch her."

"Come, Angelika," said Neuenstein: "Uncle Heim is very cross to-day,--let us go home." He took the child's hand, and nodded affectionately to Heim. "Shall I send the carriage for you?"

"No, I thank you; I must return to the capital; the king has commanded my attendance this afternoon. But I shall be here again to-morrow."

"Adieu, dear uncle," said little Angelika, standing on tiptoe, and holding up her rosy lips to be kissed. "You won't be cross to me, will you?" she asked, nestling her fair curls among his gray locks as he bent down to her; "I have been so good!" And then she went softly out with Herr Neuenstein.

When Heim was alone, he sat down by the bedside, and silently contemplated the sleeping child. "I'll wager," he thought, "that she will be very beautiful one of these days. Her face is older than her years, and that is always ugly in a child, but when her age accords with the earnestness of that brow, and her features lose their sharpness under more kindly treatment, it will be a magnificent head. To think of having such a child and beating it half to death! Such a child!"

Something like a tear glistened in the old man's eyes, and he softly took a pinch of snuff to compose himself, for these thoughts filled him with the pain of an old wound, and well-nigh overcame him. But the pinch was of no avail. He gazed upon the treasure before him, which had fallen to one utterly unworthy such a gift, who had neglected and despised it, and he thought what joy its possession would have given him. And he remembered that such joy might have been his, had his heart not clung unalterably to one who was not destined for him. Now it was too late; and the past, in which he might have sown the harvest of love that he longed to reap, was irrevocable. The passion that had so long filled his heart was conquered and dead; but the longing for affection, that is stronger than passion, still lived on in the old man's breast. "When a man's wife dies and leaves him," he thought, "she lives again in her children; but he who has neither wife nor child is doubly poor." He had watched over many human lives, but not one could he call his own; he had preserved the lives of many, he had given life to none. He had seen the bitterest woes soothed by affection, and he should die without leaving one child behind to mourn his loss. And, lost in such thoughts, it seemed to him that he was actually lying upon his death-bed, and that he felt a soft arm stealing around his neck, and heard a sweet, caressing voice sob out, "Father."

It was Ole Luckoie who had granted him this bitter-sweet dream by Ernestine's bedside; it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and left nothing behind but a tear on the old man's furrowed cheek.

Then the latch of the door began to tremble, as though a carriage were driving by, and the heavy footsteps that caused the noise approached the apartment. Before the Geheimrath could prevent it, the door was flung open, and Bertha's colossal figure appeared upon the threshold. She was dressed in a new shining black silk, and the stiff cambric lining rustled so loudly as she approached the bed that the child started up frightened, and the Geheimrath could not suppress an exclamation.

"Good-morning, Herr Geheimrath; good-morning, Tina," she said with a nod. "So, Tina, you're alive still, I see. There was no need of such a great fuss about you, after all."

Ernestine, at this rude greeting, flung herself to the farther side of the bed, and cried, "Oh, send my aunt away!--I do not want to see her. I will not!"

The Geheimrath politely offered his arm to the intruder and conducted her from the room without a word. Bertha, amazed, asked, "Why, what have I done? Can't I see my niece?"

"If you yourself do not understand, madam, that this frail life needs to be treated with the greatest possible tenderness, I, a physician, must tell you that it will be your fault if my care of the child should prove of no avail and she should die in spite of it. I must therefore entreat you either to discontinue your visits to the child, or to address her more gently."

"Why, goodness gracious!" cried Bertha, "I was only in jest. Mercy on me! you may wrap her up in cotton-wool, for all I care."

The Geheimrath gave an involuntary sigh. "Poor child," he thought, "to be in danger of falling into such hands!"

Suddenly the hall-door was opened, and a face appeared, so ashy pale, so livid, that Bertha started in terror. It was Leuthold; but he was hardly to be recognized. When he perceived the Geheimrath, he saluted him with his usual courtesy, then, extending his hand to Bertha, said in a low voice, "My dear Bertha, be kind enough to come up-stairs with me."

She followed him in the greatest trepidation, for she had never before beheld him thus; and on the joyful day of Hartwich's funeral, too! What could have happened? He took her hand and conducted her up the staircase, his fingers were as cold and clammy as those of a corpse. She almost shuddered as they walked along together in such solemn silence.

They reached the door of their own apartment. Leuthold entered, dragged his wife in after him, closed the door, and, before she was aware of what he was doing, she felt the icy hand around her throat like an iron band.

"Shall I strangle you?" he gasped, with eyes like a serpent's when it is wound around its victim.

"Merciful Heaven!" shrieked Bertha, falling upon her knees to extricate herself. The cold hand grasped her throat still more tightly.

"Utter one sound that the servants can hear, and I will throttle you!" hissed Leuthold. "Be quiet! or----" Bertha ceased struggling, and almost lost her consciousness. He then released her and pushed her down upon the sofa, where she sat utterly astounded.

He put his hand to his head, and then whispered, almost inaudibly, as though speaking with the greatest difficulty, "On the day of Ernestine's fall, when Heim came to the house, do you remember that I strictly enjoined it upon you to observe narrowly whatever occurred in the house?"

"Yes," stammered the frightened woman.

"Did you do it?"

No answer.

"You did not do it."

"I was so afraid of Hartwich that I went up-stairs again," Bertha confessed with hesitation.

"And so,--" Leuthold's chest heaved, his breath came heavily, and he clenched his hands convulsively, "and so it is your fault that Hartwich has disinherited us and left all his property to Ernestine." His face grew still paler, his slender figure tottered, he grasped at a chair for support, and fell fainting upon the ground.

"Good God!" shrieked Bertha, shaking the prostrate man violently, "the whole property? tell me, the whole property? Oh, you miserable man, what folly to fall into such spasms! Speak, and tell me whether we have nothing at all, or what we have!"

Leuthold slowly raised his head. Bertha carried, more than supported, him to the sofa. She brought some eau-de-cologne and poured it over his head so that it ran into his eyes. He uttered an exclamation of pain, and tried to wipe away the burning fluid from his eyes. "Are you trying to deprive me of my eyesight?" he groaned, and, when the pain was relieved, he sat in a dejected attitude, staring into vacancy.

"For mercy's sake, speak!" cried Bertha. "You can, at least, open your mouth. No legacy? Not an annuity?"

Leuthold looked at his unfeeling wife with an expression that, in spite of herself, drove the blood to her cheeks. There was something indescribable in the look,--a mixture of the pity and contempt with which one contemplates the body of a suicide.

"An annuity of six hundred thalers," he murmured, and covered his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out everything around him while he collected his scattered senses.

"Too much to die upon, and too little to live upon!" moaned Bertha, and, bursting into tears, she threw herself upon a chair in the farthest corner of the room. Leuthold sat motionless for a long time, his face hidden in his hands; he scarcely seemed to breathe. He appeared to need all his physical strength to assist him to endure the mental agony which was overpowering him,--to have no strength left to stir a limb. The man of feeling tries to master his unhappiness by raging and lamenting,--he combats his agony by physical exertion,--he rushes hither and thither, beats his head against the wall, wrings his hands, and lessens his woe in a degree by a certain amount of muscular activity. The man of intellect struggles mentally, and stands in need of entire physical repose. Such a man as Leuthold could only for a moment be excited to violence against the hated cause of his misfortune; he soon regained his exterior composure, and his misery became an intellectual labour, which might produce loss of reason, and was never-ceasing.

He sat lost in a profound reverie. Now and then, like lightning across a cloud, some idea of help in his misery flashed across his brain, but it vanished as soon as it appeared, leaving each time a blacker night in his soul.

"The sacrifice of ten long years gone for nothing!" he said at last in stifled accents. "My hair is bleached before its time with the slavery to which I have submitted with this goal in view, and now the prize is snatched from me just as it seemed within my reach. Again I must bow my neck to the yoke, and, with a mind fitted to appropriate to itself the most precious treasures of science, toil for my bread! I have wasted the best years of my life, that I may now begin all over again--an old man. It was indeed a losing game! When my powers began to fail me, I comforted myself with hopes of a near release; but now what can sustain me when that hope has deserted me? No release in future,--nothing but a never-ending struggle for daily sustenance! Oh----!"

With a long-drawn sigh of mortal agony, the tortured roan buried his face in the cushion of the sofa, and another long silence ensued, broken only by Bertha's loud sobbing.

At last she could endure the silence no longer. "What is to be done now?" she asked half sorrowfully, half defiantly.

"Let me alone," said Leuthold. "Leave me--you see how I am suffering and struggling!"

"How did you know about the matter?" she insisted.

"That fellow Lederer whispered it to me on returning from the funeral. He signed the will as a witness. We were separated in the crowd, and I could not even ask him whether I was left guardian or not. If I were only guardian----" He ceased, and sunk again into a profound reverie.

There was a slight noise in the adjoining room, and a lovely, smiling child's face looked in, and a clear, musical voice cried, "Peep!" At the sound Leuthold turned his head and looked with strange emotion towards the place where his daughter was standing. The little girl planted herself firmly upon her feet, and, after a couple of futile attempts, managed, to her own great delight, to cross the high threshold. This difficulty surmounted, she tripped gleefully across to her mother, who sat nearest the door; but upon receiving a rude repulse from her--a repulse that almost threw her down--she determined to pursue her journey as far as her father. To insure her swifter progress, she betook herself to all fours, and, when she reached her goal, climbed up by her father's knees and smiled into his face. Leuthold gazed for a few moments into her round, innocent eyes; his own grew dim; he took the child in his arms and whispered, as he clasped her to his breast, "Poor child!" His breath came quick--he clasped her tighter and tighter in his arms, until suddenly a burst of tears relieved his overburdened soul. The father's heart was filled for once with pure human emotion.

Gretchen tried to wipe his eyes with her little apron, and patted his cheeks with her chubby hands.

There is a wonderful power in the touch of a child's soft, pure hand, soothing a wildly-beating heart and strengthening a soul sickened by hope deferred. It seemed to Leuthold as if the wounds that had tormented him were healed by that gentle touch. He kissed the rosy little palms again and again. He would labour with all his might for this child--she should have a brilliant future at any cost. He arose, and, putting her gently down on the carpet, walked slowly to and fro with folded arms, revolving in his busy brain a thousand plans for the future. His thoughts were rudely disturbed by Bertha, who, for want of any other object, wreaked her ill humour upon Gretchen. The child had got hold of an embroidered footstool, and was engaged in the delightful occupation of picking off the bugles and pearls fastened upon the fringe. Bertha snatched it away, and was slapping the little hands violently, when suddenly Leuthold seized her arm and held it in a firm grasp, while anger flashed in his eyes; and his words, his bearing, his whole manner, filled her with terror as he began: "Your nature is so coarse that you cannot even appreciate the promptings of maternal instinct. Had you possessed one atom of feminine feeling, you would have seen what a comfort the child is to me, and would have lavished tenderness upon her, instead of maltreating her. But of what consequence are my sorrows to you? When I staggered and fell to the ground beneath the weight of my misery, you thought only of yourself; your gentlest word to me was 'miserable man.' Let me tell you, however, that the weakness of an ailing man is not so repulsive as the rude strength of a coarse woman. Therefore, be kind enough to moderate the exhibition of your strength, at least towards this angel, who shall never suffer for an hour as long as I draw breath."

Bertha put Gretchen on the ground, and stood with arms akimbo. "Oh!" she began, trembling with rage, "is this the tone you begin to take--talking in this way to me just when you ought to be grateful to me for consenting to share your wretched lot?"

"My wretched lot?" repeated Leuthold, while his face grew deadly white again. "Who has made my lot a wretched one?--who other than yourself? Do you dare to increase its misery? Is not your disobedience, your folly, the cause of the whole misfortune? If you had obeyed my commands, and kept watch upon what was going on in the house, the arrival of the lawyers would not have escaped you. You might have informed me and I could, even at the last moment, have prevented the making of that will. You, and you alone, have ruined my child's and my own future; and, instead of falling at my feet and begging for forgiveness, you dare to reproach me! It would be ridiculous, if it were not so deplorable!"

"Of course." said Bertha, "it is all my fault. I expected that. Why didn't you stay at home yourself and watch? Because you suspected nothing, no more than I did, and because you wanted to get out of the way of Heim, who knew all about your former disgrace. Is it my fault that you have conducted yourself so in the past that you have to avoid all your old acquaintances?"

Leuthold swelled with indignation. "Silence, wretched woman! Would you drive me to extremities?"

"Yes," continued Bertha more angrily than ever,--"yes, I don't care now what you do. The only satisfaction I can have now is speaking out the truth to you for once. I will be reconciled to my father while there is time. Perhaps he will make over the business to me. I understand how to conduct it, and can make it pay. I shall have a better chance there, at any rate, than in staying here to starve with you. My honest old father was right when he warned me against you. Heaven only knows what infatuated me so with your hatchet face. I saw from the first what you were,--a heap of learning and mind, and a perfect icicle, with whom I never could be happy. We had only been married two months, when there was all that disgraceful fuss with Hilsborn; my father wanted me to be separated from you then; but you stuffed my ears with stories of your brother here, who would make you rich; and I believed you, and gave up my old father, and came here to this hole to live with you. What did I get by it? The little property that I inherited from my mother has been frittered away in household expenses, that you might seem disinterested to your brother. I gave up every things--concerts, theatres, parties,--and willingly; for I depended upon a brilliant future. I have waited patiently and obediently until your brother should kill himself with the drink of which he was so fond; and, now that he is dead, what have I got in exchange for time, youth, money, and all? And now I am to make a grateful courtesy, and say, 'My dear husband, 'tis true that you have robbed me of everything, you have attempted to strangle me; but I will nevertheless take the liberty of remaining with you, that you may continue to enjoy the pleasure of calling me rough, coarse, and good for nothing, and that you may instruct me with which hand I am to put in my mouth the potatoes that are all we shall have to live upon.' This is what I am to say, is it not? Yes----"

Leuthold had been listening attentively, and, in the course of this long speech, had regained his former composure. He now interrupted her with, "That is, in other words, that you contemplate adding to my misfortunes the withdrawal of your amiable presence, leaving me to bear my heavy lot alone. Your intention demands my gratitude; if you wish for a divorce, I am entirely agreed to it, only pray furnish the ground for it yourself, that my good name may not be compromised. We have lived together hitherto in such outward harmony, it might be difficult to convince a court of the impossibility of a longer union. There must, therefore, be some legal ground for a divorce, and you can arrange all that to suit yourself."

"What!" cried Bertha, "am I to conduct myself disgracefully that people may despise me and pity you,--wolf in sheep's clothing that you are? No, no; I'm not quite so stupid as that. And then my father would not receive me, and there would be nothing left for me in this world."

Leuthold walked thoughtfully to and fro. "It was the mistake of my life that ten years ago I married you to get money to make that journey to Trieste. I thought you more harmless than you are. For ten long years I have endured the annoyance of your coarseness and narrow-mindedness. Such a wife as you are is a perpetual thorn in the side of such a man as myself; my nerves have suffered terribly. And now I find you are not even capable of maternal affection,--you cannot treat your child as you should. If it were not for Gretchen, I would never see you again,--but now----"

Bertha started. "Why, yes,--I never thought of Gretchen."

"You can easily understand that I shall not give up my child," Leuthold went on, looking fondly at the lovely little creature, who was sitting on the carpet prattling softly and unintelligibly to herself. "She is all that is left to me of my shattered existence;--my last hopes in life are centred in her--I will never give her up! The law gives her to you if I should furnish grounds for a divorce: so, you see, I cannot take the initiative. If, however, you consent to a separation, and will leave Gretchen to me, you are free to leave my house whenever you please. Consider what I say."

Bertha knelt down upon the carpet, and said in a complaining tone, "Gretel, shall mamma go far away?"

The child, in whose mind the remembrance of the slaps that had made its little hands so red was still very lively, avoided her caress, and crept away as fast as it could to its father's feet.

"Its choice is made," said Leuthold, taking it in his arms.

"Of course you are quite capable of setting my own flesh and blood against me," whined Bertha. "What shall I do! I cannot leave the child, and I will not stay with you. What shall I do!"

She walked heavily up and down the room, wringing her hands. Leuthold had carried Gretchen to the window, and was looking down into the court-yard, where the broad, stalwart figure of Heim was just leaving the house. He shot one glance of deadly hatred at his enemy, but it did no harm; and with a profound sigh Leuthold leaned his cold forehead against the window-frame and looked on whilst Heim stepped into his carriage and took a pinch of snuff with a most cheerful air. The driver clambered clumsily upon the box, and gathered up his whip and reins, the horses started off, the chickens flew in all directions, their old friend the watch-dog came barking out of his kennel, and the old-fashioned coach, belonging to the Hartwich establishment, rattled away.

As, after seasons of intense emotion, the exhausted mind slavishly follows the lead of the ever-active senses, Leuthold, in his misery, thus minutely observed every particular of Heim's departure.

"He is happy!" he thought; and then his eyes rested upon the fowls devouring the remains of the oats that had been brought for the horses. "Happy he to whom has been given the faculty of making himself beloved! mankind follow him as those fowls follow in the track of Heim's carriage. Is it any merit of his that wins him the hearts of all? Bah, nonsense! it is a talent,--and the most profitable one for its possessor. These benefactors of mankind, as they are called, thrive upon it: who would not do likewise if he only could? But those who have not the gift cannot do it. One man comes into the world with qualities that make him useful and pleasing to his fellow-men; another with propensities that make him an object of fear to his kind. Is the lapdog to be commended because his agreeable characteristics qualify him to spend his life luxuriously on a silken cushion? And is the fox to be blamed because he does not understand how to ingratiate himself with mankind, but must eke out his miserable existence by theft? Each after his kind, and we human beings have senses in common with the brutes,--and why not the peculiarities also of their several species? Yes, there are lapdogs among us, and foxes, and wolves, cats, and tigers! Struggle against it as we may, with all our babble of free will, temperament is everything. How can I help it if I belong among the foxes? Only a fool would look for moral causes in all this chaos of chances. The activity of nature is shown in eternal creation, destruction, and re-creation from destruction,--plants, brutes, and men are the blind tools of her secret forces, creative and destructive, or, as the moralist calls them, good and evil! But what do we call good? What pleases us. What evil? That which harms us. And we are to judge the world by this narrow egotistic scale of morals? Oh, what folly! Creative and destructive forces--are they not alike necessary agents in nature's great workshop? And if they work so steadily in unconscious matter, are they dead in mankind, the embodiment of conscious nature? Is our poor, patched-up code of morals strong enough to tear asunder the chains that keep us bound fast to the order of the universe? No,--it is miserable arrogance to maintain such a theory. Nature has never created a species without producing another hostile to it; the rule holds good in the world of humanity as well as among plants and brutes. The parasite that preys upon its supporting plant, the insect depositing its eggs in the body of the caterpillar, the falcon pursuing the innocent dove, the tiger rending the mild-eyed antelope, and, lastly, the man who preserves his own existence by preying upon his fellow-men,--all are only the exponents of those hostile forces that are indispensable to the economy of nature. Who can venture to talk of good and evil? There is only one idea that we owe to our advanced culture,--only one varnish that bedaubs and conceals the beast in us,--regard for appearances! This is the corner-stone of our ethics, the only thoroughly practicable discipline for the human race. Let a due regard for appearances be observed, and we are distinguished, lauded, and beloved among men,--the only reward of our virtue is the recognition of it by our excellent contemporaries; their judgment decides the degree of our morality; everything else is the exaggeration of fancy."

He was aroused from this reverie by Bertha, who suddenly shook him by the shoulder with an impatient "Well?"

Leuthold looked at her like a man awakened from a dream. "What is it?" he inquired.

"I want to know what is to be done?" she replied angrily.

Leuthold laid the child, who had fallen asleep upon his shoulder, on the sofa.

"Oh, yes, with regard to our separation."

"I suppose you had entirely forgotten it."

"I confess that I was thinking of something else at the moment; but the matter is very simple. Go to your father and effect a reconciliation with him. Gretchen will stay with me. You are free to go and come as you please. If you find that you cannot do without the child, in a few weeks you can return, if you choose. It would, at all events, be better for you to be away for awhile until I have rearranged my miserable affairs. I am going now to hear the will read. If I am appointed Ernestine's guardian, my life will be connected for the future with that of my ward." He suddenly gazed into vacancy, as if struck by a new idea, then started and seized his hat. "Yes, yes, I must go. Perhaps I am guardian!" And he turned away.

Bertha called after him, "Then I may get ready to go?"

"Do just as you please," he replied, turning upon the threshold with all the old courtesy, and then disappeared. Bertha went to her wardrobe and began to collect her possessions. "I am rightly paid for leaving a good head-waiter in the lurch for the sake of a fine doctor. If I had married Fritz, I should now have been the landlady of a hotel, while, the wife of a doctor, I don't know where to lay my head!" She looked across the room at the sleeping child. "If I only had not that child, I should be easier! But, then, it is his child. She loves him far better than me. It will be just like him one day, and a sorrow to me," she muttered. Then, as if the last thought were repented of as soon as conceived, she hastened up to Gretchen, and, weeping, kissed her pure white forehead. "No, no, you cannot help me!" she sobbed, and snatched the child to her broad breast.

[CHAPTER VI.]

SOUL-MURDER.

A fresh autumnal breeze was shaking the heavy boughs of the fruit-trees in the Hartwich kitchen-garden. Beneath a spreading apple-tree a new bench, painted green, had recently been placed. Some white garments, hanging upon a line to dry, fluttered like triumphal pennons in the direction from which a number of persons was slowly approaching the apple-tree. Rieka was carefully pushing along the rolling-chair, which, after so long affording shelter to the cats and chickens, had lately been recushioned and repaired. By its side walked good old Heim and Leuthold. Ernestine's frail little figure, with head still bandaged and hands gently folded, reclined in the chair; and if her large, dark eyes had not been riveted with an expression of utter enjoyment upon the distant landscape, she might have been thought smiling in death, so ashy pale was her emaciated countenance, so bloodless were the lips which were slightly open to inhale the pure morning air. The signs of returning and departing life are as wonderfully alike as morning and evening twilight. The child lying there, silent and motionless, might to all appearance be bidding farewell to the world, instead of greeting it anew after her dangerous illness. For to-day Ernestine was, as it were, celebrating her resurrection to life. It was the first time that she had been permitted to breathe the pure, open air of heaven; and her delight was so profound that she could only fold her little hands and pray silently. She had not the strength even to turn herself upon her cushions; but her youthful soul was preening its wings and soaring with the birds into the blue autumn skies.

"How are you now, my child?" Leuthold asked in a tone of tender sympathy.

"Oh, so well, dear uncle!" the little girl whispered with a long-drawn sigh. "I think I could run about, if I might."

"Ah, you could not yet, even if you might," said Heim, looking not without anxiety into the child's face, transfigured by an almost unearthly expression. And he laid his finger upon her pulse, now scarcely perceptible.

"Her spirit, as she recovers, is in advance of her body," he said, lingering behind with Leuthold. "Physically such a child is soon conquered and destroyed, but the heart is a wonderful thing in its power of endurance. I never see an expression of real suffering upon a child's face without the deepest sympathy. For when should we be really gay and happy in this life, if not while we are children?"

"You are right," said Leuthold. "That melancholy mouth, shaping itself now to an unaccustomed smile, those bright eyes, around which the traces of tears are scarcely yet obliterated, touch me deeply."

Heim glanced keenly at the speaker expressing himself apparently with emotion.

"Oh, what a pretty new bench!" said Ernestine in a weak voice, as they reached the apple-tree. "And the boughs droop around it like an arbour."

Her gaze roved hither and thither; the fluttering linen on the line pleased her; the white butterflies, with spotted wings, hovering about the beds, enchanted her; she thought the far stretch of country, with its distant border of forest, magnificent,--everything was so new that she seemed to see it for the first time, and admired it all with intense delight. The long rows of irregular bean-poles opened mysterious, attractive paths to her imagination. Even the tall asparagus and the heads of cabbage, upon which large beads of morning dew were still lying, seemed to her master-pieces of nature.

"Oh, how lovely the world is!" she said to the two gentlemen. "And no one to punish me! You are so kind, Herr Geheimrath, and you, Uncle Leuthold, and you too, Rieka, are so good to me! I thank you all so much!" And she took and kissed the hands of Leuthold and Heim as they stood beside her, while tears filled her eyes.

"You strange child, what Snakes you cry now?" asked Leuthold.

"I cannot tell; I am so happy!" sobbed Ernestine. "If I only had a father or a mother!"

"But if your father were alive he would beat you again," said Rieka, taking a strictly practical view of the matter. "You ought to be glad that he is no longer here; it is much happier for you."

Ernestine's head drooped. "Oh, I am not longing for my father who is dead; I want a father to love me."

"You have an uncle who loves you fondly, my child," said Leuthold.

"Uncle," the little girl began again after a short pause, "how did the first people get here? Every one has a father and mother; but the first men could not have had any. Where did they come from?"

Leuthold and Heim exchanged glances of surprise.

"Ah, now you are going to the very root of the matter, prying into the deepest mysteries of creation!" said her uncle with a smile.

"There is stuff for a scholar in the child," said Heim; "she must be educated."

"Most certainly!" cried Leuthold with unwonted vivacity; "something must be made of her. In two years she will read Darwin." And he became lost in reverie.

Heim plucked two pansies that were growing among the weeds, and handed them to Ernestine. "Don't trouble your little brain with such thoughts," he said with an attempt to laugh. "When you are grown up you can learn all you wish to know. How few flowers you have here! Not enough for a nosegay!"

"No matter for that, Herr Heim," said Ernestine gaily. "Although there are so few flowers here, it seems to me as lovely as Paradise."

"The child is imaginative," Heim observed to Leuthold. "She finds Paradise in a neglected kitchen-garden; there is poetry there." And he pointed to her head and heart.

Leuthold took the child's hand. "If you wish for flowers, my darling, you shall have them. You are now"--and a spasmodic smile hovered upon his lips--"so rich that you need deny yourself nothing."

"I am rich!" Ernestine repeated, as though she could not grasp the idea. "Does the chair in which I am sitting belong to me?"

"Most certainly."

"And this garden, and the fields?"

"Everything that you see."

"Oh, how delightful! But, uncle, have I money enough to buy me a telescope like yours?"

Leuthold looked surprised at this question "Is that the end and aim of your desires? Well, then, you shall have a far better one than mine. You shall have an observatory, whence you can search the heavens far and wide, and, if you choose, I will be your teacher. Would you like that?"

"Oh, uncle!" sighed Ernestine, "God is so kind to me--how shall I thank him for all he is giving me?"

An ugly smile appeared on Leuthold's face; she looked up at him in surprise, and so fixedly that he involuntarily turned aside.

It was strange! Why had her uncle smiled at those words. Was what she had said so stupid, then? Was he laughing at her, or at--what? Suddenly there was an alloy in her happiness, as if she had found an ugly worm in a fragrant rose or discovered a flaw in a clear mirror. A pang shot through her heart. Yes, little Kay in the story-book must have felt just so when a splinter of the evil mirror got into his eye and heart and nothing seemed perfect or stainless to him any more. Instinctively she looked up into the sky, as if to see the demon flying there with the mysterious mirror that cast scorn and contempt upon the works of the good God; and when she glanced again at her uncle, who had just smiled so disagreeably, he seemed to her to look as she had fancied an evil spirit must look, and she shrank from him in a way that she could not herself comprehend. She leaned back in her chair exhausted, to rest after all these wearisome thoughts that had chased one another through her brain, and Heim, observing this, took Leuthold aside; she heard him say, "Come, we will leave the child to take a little sleep."

Rieka sat down quietly upon the bench beside her. Ernestine nestled comfortably among the yielding cushions, and the fragrant breeze stroked her cheek like a gentle, caressing hand. The birds were softly twittering in the boughs overhead. All nature breathed in her ear: "Sleep, sleep on the tender breast of the youthful day. Rest! you are not yet rested, after all that you have suffered!" And she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she could not. Why had her uncle smiled when she spoke of God? This question kept her awake, and scared away rest from her trusting, childish soul.

Meanwhile Helm and Leuthold walked on through the garden. "Herr Professor," the former began to his companion, who was lost in thought, "I must speak with you about the future of our protégé. I have plans for her, depending upon you for their fulfilment." Leuthold looked at him attentively. "I had a desire," Heim continued, "the first time I saw this strange child, to adopt her for my own; and this desire has become stronger since chance has brought me into such intimate association with her. My request of you now is: Abdicate--not your rights, but--your duties as her guardian in my favour, and let me take her to the capital with me, and have her educated and trained so that full justice may be done to her physical and mental capacities."

Leuthold was silent for a few moments, and then said with some hesitation, as he drew a long strip of grass through his slender white fingers, "That looks, Herr Geheimrath, as if you did not give me credit for the ability or the will to educate my ward suitably."

Heim shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "There shall be no wire-drawing between us, Herr Gleissert; we both know what we think of each other, and a physician has no time to waste in complimental speeches. Be kind enough to signify to me, as briefly and decidedly as possible, your acceptance or refusal of my proposal."

"Well, then," Leuthold replied with a keen glance, "I must reply to you with a brief and decided 'No!'"

"Indeed!" was all that Heim in his chagrin rejoined.

"Look you, Herr Geheimrath," Leuthold began after some moments of reflection; "I will be frank with you. You know the dark stain that sullies my past, and the fault of my nature,--ambition. But, for all that, Herr Geheimrath, I am not heartless! In my childhood I was repelled on all sides, just as Ernestine has been. I was always cast in the shade by Hartwich, the son of my wealthy step-mother. You, as a student of human nature, well know what power there is in early surroundings to mould a man's future,--perhaps this may make you more lenient to my faults. Neither affection nor interest was shown me, and so kindly feelings faded away within me,--I could not give what I never received. Thus, Herr Geheimrath, I grew up an embittered, hardened man. The severity and sternness with which I was treated caused me to cultivate a sort of plausibility that won me friends, although I had no qualities to enable me to retain them. Therefore I was accounted a flatterer and a hypocrite. But the worst of all was, I was never taught the nice distinction between honours and honour, and thus it was that, in my blind grasp after honours, I sacrificed my honour!" He covered his eyes with his hand and paused for a moment. Old Heim shook his huge head, vexed with himself for the emotion of sympathy that he could not suppress.

"My step-mother," Leuthold continued, "was an imperious, masculine woman, who tyrannized over her husband and made him as unhappy as her son and step-son. You have seen the effect of her training upon Hartwich,--he became a drunkard, sinning in the flesh; I, of a less sensual nature, sinned in spirit!"

"Forgive me for interrupting you," Heim interposed here; "but I am constrained to observe that if you had sinned no further than in robbing poor Hilsborn of his discovery, you would indeed have coveted only spiritual things, and there might have been some excuse for you; but you longed for earthly possessions,--you even grasped after the property of the poor child who has been left to your care. Judge for yourself whether such a helpless little creature can be confided without anxiety to the charge of a guardian who has not scrupled to endeavour to possess himself of her inheritance!"

Leuthold stood confronting Heim, without betraying, by a single change of feature, the emotions of his mind. "Herr Geheimrath," he said with dignity, "I understand perfectly how all that must appear to a stranger entirely unacquainted with the circumstances of the case, and I cannot wonder that you think your accusation of me well founded. So be it. I did endeavour to possess myself of Hartwich's property, for two-thirds of it were mine by right. Are you aware, Herr Geheimrath, that when I first took my place in the factory here, Hartwich was on the brink of bankruptcy? Are you aware that entirely through my exertions the business is now free from debt, and that the income which in the course of ten years made Hartwich a wealthy man was the result solely of my improvements? He contributed nothing but the raw material, which my efforts converted into a means of wealth. Had I not a sacred right to the fruits of my exertions?"

Again the Geheimrath shrugged his shoulders and did not speak.

"Time is money," Leuthold continued; "and I frankly admit that I do not belong to the class of men who give without any hope of a return. I am a poor man, compelled to depend upon myself. I receive nothing gratuitously; why should I give anything? Hartwich owed me for the time I sacrificed to him. I do not claim too much when I aver that, with my capacity, I could have earned three thousand thalers yearly as the superintendent of any other extensive manufactory, while I received from Hartwich the small salary of a mere overseer. And three thousand thalers yearly amount in ten years to thirty thousand thalers, without counting the interest. There you have one-third of the property that I 'coveted.'"

Heim assented with an expression of surprise.

Leuthold continued more fluently: "Now for the remaining third. The man who is capable of introducing inventions and improvements into the establishment, producing in ten years a dear profit of ninety thousand thalers, can easily dispose of such inventions for twenty thousand thalers; and if I add the accumulated interest of ten years, it amounts to exactly thirty thousand thalers again. If my step-brother had paid me this sum, he would still have possessed thirty thousand thalers clear, which would have belonged of right to his daughter. I might have offered my services elsewhere, but it seemed to me more fitting that I should serve my brother than a stranger; I might have insisted upon payment, but I knew well my brother's avarice, and that it would be impossible to extort money from him except at the risk of such excitement on his part as might cost him his life. Therefore! thought it best, as I foresaw that he could not live long, to suspend my claims and allow him to devise to me by will what was really my due. How utterly I have been the loser by my--I do not scruple to say--magnanimous conduct, you well know; and now pray point out wherein I have unjustly claimed a single groschen!"

Heim, his hands crossed behind him and his head sunk upon his breast, walked slowly along by the side of Leuthold, whose slender figure had recovered all its former elasticity as he easily wound his way among the tangled bushes and weeds in the neglected path.

"I cannot tell how a lawyer would designate your conduct," the old man said meditatively. "I should not call it magnanimous; but you may be able to justify it from your point of view. Still, one never knows what to expect of such long-headed, calculating people."

"Yes, Herr Geheimrath, it is the destiny of those who depend upon themselves alone for whatever of good life may bring them, to be regarded as covetous,--they must grasp after what falls unsought for into the lap of others. In this matter I not only did what I could for myself, but for the future also. Herr Geheimrath, I am a father!"

"Yes, yes; but you were not a father at the time that you arranged with Hartwich his testamentary dispositions," Heim briefly interposed.

"Only two months afterwards my wife gave birth to a dead son. From the first moment when I dreamed of one day possessing a child for whom I could prepare a future, I cherished a determination to hold fast to whatever was mine by right. I think you cannot refuse to bear witness that I have endured the destruction of all my hopes with fortitude. My wife has left me, refusing to share with me my cheerless future. I stand alone with my helpless child. You have heard no word of complaint from my lips. Examine yourself, and your upright nature will compel you to acknowledge that I do not deserve your distrust. And now, as regards the last and weightiest consideration,--my relation to my ward,--ask any one whom you may please to interrogate here, whether I have not always been Ernestine's advocate and protector. Every servant in the house--the child herself--will tell you that it has been so. Upon this point my conscience cannot accuse me. For, look you, Herr Geheimrath, this child is the only living being in this world, besides my own daughter, whom I have to love. There is one spot in my nature, hardened as it is by the rough usage of life, that has always remained soft,--the memory of my unhappy childhood. In Ernestine I am reminded of my own early youth, and there is a tender satisfaction in providing her with so much that at her age I was obliged to deny myself. Leave me this child, Herr Geheimrath; I am a poor, unhappy, disappointed man. Do not take from me the last thing that stirs the better nature within me,--it would be too hard!"

Heim stood still for an instant, and seemed about to speak. He bethought himself and walked on a few steps, then paused again: "The case is not psychologically improbable. You may feel as you say, and you may invent it all. What guarantee have I for its truth?"

"I am sorry to say, none, if you do not find it in the honesty of my confession. But, Herr Geheimrath, by what right--pardon me--do you require such a guarantee from me?"

"My anxiety for the child's welfare, I should suppose, would be allowed to give me such a right,--a right that, if you are not dead to human feeling, you would respect even although it has no legal grounds."

"Oh, certainly, certainly,--I do respect it, and thank you for your interest in the child. But I cannot deny that your persistent distrust of me surprises me exceedingly, and prompts me to force you by my conduct to a better opinion of me."

"That is, you will let me have the child?" Heim asked quickly.

"That is, I am more determined than ever to undertake the charge of her education myself, that I may one day convince you of the injustice that you are doing me."

Heim regarded the smiling speaker with a penetrating glance. "You rely upon the fact that I can legally urge nothing against you. Well, then, I can do no more. I confide the fate of this strange child, who has become so dear to me, to a loving Providence, that will watch over her and over you, sir, however you may contrive to withdraw yourself and your designs from the eye of human scrutiny."

As Heim spoke these words, the two gentlemen reached Ernestine's chair. The little girl sat perfectly still, lost in thought. Her uncle laid his hand upon her white forehead, and said to himself, "I will keep you!"

On the evening of the same day, Leuthold sat before his writing-table at the open windows. The cool night air made the flame of the lamp flicker behind its green shade. From the adjoining room came the low sound of the plaintive air with which the nursemaid was soothing little Gretchen to sleep. A cricket upon the window-sill chirped continually, and a singed moth would now and then fall upon the white, unwritten sheet that lay on the table before Leuthold. It was a calm, mild, autumn night,--a night when darkness hides the yellow leaves and one can dream that it is still summer. And yet the solitary man sat there gazing into vacancy, with as little sympathy with nature as though he had been banished utterly from her communion. In the corner of the window-frame there fluttered a large cobweb, and its proprietor was lying in wait for the insects that were attracted by the lamp. But the man's brain was weaving still finer webs in the stillness of night, and in the midst of them lurked the ugly spider of greed of gold, also lying in wait for prey. Ernestine must be ensnared; but she had protectors who were upon the watch. No human being must suspect that her guardian was her worst enemy.

The will had been opened, and two clauses in it had given Leuthold renewed life and hope. He was Ernestine's guardian,--and her heir in case of her dying unmarried. By the time that his light began to fade, he had laid all his plans, and arose from his seat with the feeling of satisfaction experienced by an author who has just thought out successfully the plot of a new work. Ernestine was no more to him than a character in a novel is to its author,--a character which is indispensable to the plot, and which the author treats with care as a necessary evil, but never with affection. Thus he had planned with great precision the child's future; and, unless he utterly failed in his designs, the figure that now hovered before his imagination would greatly conduce to the successful conclusion of the romance for his child and himself.

The lamp died down. Leuthold slipped out upon tiptoe, and, undressing in the next room in the dark, lay down in the bed beside which stood Gretchen's crib. Soon after the child awoke, and stretched out her hands towards her father. He drew her towards him, and laid her head upon his breast, that was chilled as though from the influence of his own icy heart. She nestled up to him, and put her little arms around his neck. He listened to her quiet breathing as she fell calmly asleep again, and gradually his own heart grew warm beside hers, beating there so peacefully. He scarcely ventured to breathe himself, for fear of wakening her. It was a happy moment for him. Upon the breath of the slumbering child an ineffable delight was wafted into his soul. He held in his arms the only being whom he loved and who really loved him,--his child, his own flesh and blood! Suddenly there was a loud knocking at his door, and Rieka's shrill voice cried, "Herr Doctor! Herr Doctor! pray get up quickly and come to Ernestine!"

Leuthold started up and gently laid the child in her crib again. Every nerve in his body vibrated, his heart beat wildly, and his hands trembled as he dressed himself hurriedly. Something extraordinary must have occurred: was Ernestine worse?--perhaps dying? Was fate to atone so soon for Hartwich's injustice? Were his hopes to be--the thought made him giddy, breathless, and, almost tottering, he reached the door where Rieka was waiting to light him down the stairs.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Oh, Herr Doctor, it is our fault," Rieka began: "Theresa and I were sitting by Ernestine's bedside and talking; we thought she was sound asleep, we were talking about master who is dead; and we told about the dairy-maid's refusing to sleep in the barn-loft any more, because she says he walks. And we spoke of his death, how he called for his child, and declared that he could not find rest in his grave if Ernestine did not forgive him. And we said we were sure that he would appear to her some day, for when any one dies with such a burden on his soul, there is no rest for him until he has the forgiveness that he craves. Then Ernestine suddenly began to cry, and we saw that she had heard everything. We tried to quiet her, but she grew worse and worse, and nothing would content her but that she must be taken this very night to the church-yard, to her father's grave, that she might forgive him. We can do nothing with her; she insists upon it; she is almost in convulsions with crying and obstinacy!"

They entered Ernestine's room, where Theresa, the other maid, was trying to keep the struggling, desperate child in bed. Leuthold went softly up to her, and laid his cool, delicate hand upon her burning forehead. His touch soothed her; she became quiet, and looked up at her uncle with a piteous entreaty in her large eyes.

"Leave me alone with her," he said to the servants, who obeyed with a mutter of discontent. He then trimmed the night-lamp so that it burned brightly, and seated himself beside Ernestine's couch. "My child," he began, in his low, melodious voice, "you are quite clever enough to understand what I am going to say to you, but you must promise me that you will never repeat it to any human being. Do you promise?"

"Oh, I will promise, uncle," sobbed Ernestine, "if you will only help me to let my poor father know that I forgive him,--oh, with all my heart!--and that my head is well again, and does not hurt me any more! Oh, my poor, poor father,--your little Ernestine wants so to tell you that she is not angry with you; but she cannot!"

"You are a good child, Ernestine, but you are only a child!" Leuthold continued, while the same strange smile that had so troubled Ernestine in the morning again played around his mouth. She looked up in surprise. Was what she had said so foolish again?

"You are too clever, young as you are, to be allowed to fall into the vulgar belief shared by the maids; and therefore I must tell you what it would not be best for them to know,--that the dead do not live in any form whatever."

Ernestine started, and gazed at her uncle.--"What?"

"Yes, yes; I tell you truly, whoever is dead is dead; that means, he has ceased to be; he neither feels nor thinks; a few bones are all that there is of him; and they are good for nothing but to convert into lime or manure for the fields."

Ernestine hearkened breathless to his words. "But where then are the spirits, uncle?"

"There are no spirits."

"Then shall we never go to heaven?"

"Of course not; those are all fables, invented to induce common people to be good. They must believe in rewards and punishments after death, to enable them to bear the trials and deprivations of their lot in life. They would rebel against all control, and be in perpetual mutiny, without the prospect of compensation after death. So there are wise philosophers in every country, composing what is called the Christian Church, who have invented many beautiful legends,--which you call the Bible. Superstition is founded upon the weakness and folly of mankind, upon ignorance of the true laws of nature; and the churches of every age and clime have used it as the stuff of which they have made leading-strings for the people. But the educated man, breathing only a pure, intellectual atmosphere, is free from such fetters. Science leads him with a loving hand to heights whence she points out to him the natural laws of the universe, and, in place of the prop of which she deprives him, gives him strength to stand alone."

Ernestine was ashy pale; her lips moved, but no sound issued from them; she clenched her hands, and felt as if crushed by some terrible, unheard-of mystery. She could hardly bear to listen to what her uncle was saying, and yet she caught greedily at every word; she could not bear to believe him, and yet she could not but distrust, now, what the pastor had taught her. She was ashamed not to be as clever as her uncle had called her: the poison that he had instilled into her mind worked quickly.

"But, uncle, can what so many people believe be all false? Old people and children, kings and emperors, beggars and rich men, all go to church:--is there any one except you who does not go?"

Leuthold laughed louder than was his wont. "It is easy enough to answer you, dear child. In the first place, there are multitudes of men besides myself who belong to no church. In the second place, the number of people who profess to believe a creed is no proof of its truth, but only of the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of those professing such belief. Millions of men have been pantheists, and counted all those who did not share their faith criminal. Every religion condemns all others as erroneous. Which is right? As long as all were ignorant of the causes of the mighty and glorious operations of nature, these were ascribed to supernatural agencies and regarded as revelations of the divine. Thunder and lightning, light and air, all were governed, according to the ancients, as among savages at the present day, by their own several deities; every natural event was ascribed to some being, half man, half god; and thus heaven and earth were peopled with good and evil spirits, friendly or hostile to mankind. This superstition fled at the approach of science, or at least it became weakened,--etherialized. With increasing knowledge of natural laws, the sensual gods of Greece and Rome lost form and substance, and finally vanished, to be replaced by a true appreciation of the elements as such, and a faith in a central Providence ruling all things wisely and well. This is a great improvement; but it is not enough. We still have a Trinity,--a Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; we still have angels, demons, and saints,--a multitude of good and evil deities, who have followed us down from old pagan times, and who, although more respectably apparelled, are still prepared to work all kinds of miracles. The more fully the laws of matter are laid bare to our searching eyes, the dimmer grows our religious belief,--as the shadow, which in the darkness we have taken for the substance itself, fades before the first ray of sunlight, which reveals the substance distinctly. The various gods of all ages and climes were only the shadows cast by the operation of natural laws; as soon as the light of science fell upon them, they vanished. Thus, religious fancy was driven away from this physical world, as the laws ruling it were discovered, and obliged to seek a more abstract domain; but even there it is not secure; for scientific inquiry, climbing from height to height, and gaining in vigour with every fresh advance, long ago began to follow it thither; and it must consent to still greater concessions, if it would not be driven from its last foothold,--its self-created heaven!"

Leuthold paused. Ernestine's vague look of wonder reminded him that his habit of speech had carried him too far for the comprehension of a child. Nevertheless, it excited him to hear his own voice speaking thus once more, and his gray eyes glittered strangely as he observed the effect of his words, only half understood as they were, upon Ernestine.

"Has the pastor told me falsehoods, then?" she asked at last.

"He did not lie intentionally. He is a very narrow-minded man, and knows no better. He is not one of the deceivers, but of the deceived."

"But he is the wisest man in the village," Ernestine objected.

"In the village, yes! But do you think him wiser than your uncle?"

"No, certainly not!" she whispered almost inaudibly. It seemed to her a crime to think a common man wiser than the pastor.

"Well, then, let me tell you that he is not nearly as clever as you are!"

"Uncle!" exclaimed Ernestine alarmed.

"I tell you the truth, my child. You are now very young; but, when you are as old as the pastor, you will know much more than he does, and take a very different view of things."

"Are you in earnest, uncle?" Ernestine asked eagerly, for this first flattery had not failed in its effect. "Do you think I can ever be as clever as a man?"

"Most certainly! Unless I greatly err, you will be something distinguished, one of these days!"

Ernestine sat bolt upright in bed, looking at her uncle with sparkling eyes. Her pale face flushed, her breath came quick. Ambition kindled in her childish nature to a burning flame. The fuel had been gathering there since her first contact with those who had treated her with contempt. Now the spark had fallen, and she was all aglow with the insidious fire which gradually consumes the whole being unless some terrible misfortune bursts open the floodgates of tears to quench the unhallowed flame.

Leuthold gazed, not without secret admiration and delight, at the illuminated and inspired countenance of the child. Thus, thus he would have her look! He leaned towards her, and held out his hand. She grasped it fervently.

"Uncle," she said with childish emphasis, "will you help me to be as clever and to learn as much as a man? Will you teach me the sciences which you said would make men so strong?"

"Yes," replied Leuthold with seeming enthusiasm, "I will, indeed."

"Promise me, dear uncle."

"I promise you with all my heart that I will teach you as no woman has ever been taught before,--that I will guide and direct you until you have soared far above the rest of your sex. But you must be diligent, and discard all desires but the desire of knowledge."

"Oh, I will, dearest uncle. Why should I not? What else can I wish for? I do not want to play with other children,--they laugh at me. I am too ugly and grave for them. I will live alone, and learn with you; and one day, when I know more than they, I will shame them. Oh, that will be fine!"

"But I hope, my child, that you will remember your promise, and not tell any one what I have said to you to-night."

"Not any one? not even Herr Heim?"

"Not for the world. If I should find that you cannot hold your tongue, I will teach you nothing, and you will be as ignorant as those who laugh at you."

"No, uncle, I will never tell anything; I will not, indeed!" Ernestine cried, "But tell me one thing,--are there really no angels, then?"

"Angels!" and her uncle smiled. "Of what use has been all that I have just said to you, if you can seriously ask such a question?"

"Then I have no guardian angel!" said the child, and her eyes filled with tears. "And I loved my guardian angel so dearly!"

"My child," replied Leuthold, "you are your own guardian angel. Your own strong mind will shield you from all danger far better than any such imaginary creature with wings."

Ernestine was silent. She must take care of herself, then. But she felt so weak and broken; how should she be supported unless she could lean upon some higher power? No guardian angel, no father, no mother, not even their spirits! It seemed to her that she was suddenly standing alone, without prop or stay, upon a rocky peak, with a yawning abyss just at her feet. The moment would come when she must fall headlong. Then there arose before her the last hope of the soul in utter misery,--God! He was all in all,--Father and guardian spirit; He was love; He would not forsake her. Though all else that she had believed in crumbled to dust, He still remained; she would cling to Him with redoubled fervour. She looked up at her uncle; should she tell him her thoughts? No! She could not speak that sacred name before Leuthold; she dreaded the smile she had seen in the morning,--she could not tell why.

Her uncle then spoke, and the last drop of poison fell into her soul. "We have in ourselves everything that modern religion has created outside of ourselves," he began. "Angels, devils, God--" Ernestine started and shrank,--"these are all only personifications of our good and evil qualities. It is only the boundless self-conceit of mankind that imagines that the grain of reason that distinguishes them from the brutes is something entirely beyond the power of nature to produce,--something supernatural, immortal, divine,--and that there must be, enthroned somewhere above the universe, an omnipotent being, who is in direct communication with us and has nothing to do but to busy himself with our very important personal affairs! This belief in God, with all its apparent humility and submission, is the veriest offspring of the vanity and arrogance of mankind, and all worship of God, my child, is, in fact, only worship of self. True humility is to acknowledge that we are no 'emanation from the Divine Essence,' as theosophists phrase it, but only nature's masterpieces, and that we can claim no higher destiny than that common to the myriad forms of being that bear their part in the universal whole."

Ernestine had sunk back among her pillows,--she felt annihilated; there was no longer any God for her!

Her uncle arose, for two o'clock had just been tolled from the belfry of the village church. He did not fail to observe the terrible impression that his words had made upon Ernestine. He took her hand; she withdrew it from his grasp. He smiled. "You are sorry, are you not, to give up everything that your childish mind has believed in so firmly? I can easily understand it. But, Ernestine, your powers of mind are too great to allow you to find consolation for any length of time in such delusions. Be sure that sooner or later you would have extricated yourself from such bondage, as the expanding flower throws off the confining hull. You have been ill, and your physical weakness has depressed your mental energy; but, when you are well and strong again, you will rejoice proudly in the consciousness that you are a free, irresponsible being, not dependent upon the will and the doubtful justice of a fancied Jehovah. Study yourself, my child; in yourself lies your future. Believe in yourself, and plant your hopes deeply in your faith in yourself. I will leave you now to sleep; and I am sure that to-morrow I shall find you a little philosopher."

Long after her uncle had left the room and Rieka had retired upon tiptoe to bed in the adjoining apartment, fully convinced that her charge was sleeping, Ernestine was wide awake. She lay perfectly motionless, as if shattered in every limb. She stirred for the first time when Rieka had extinguished the light, so that no ray came through the open door. Then the child drew a deep breath, and stretched her arms out into the darkness as if to clasp the forms of her vanished faith; but her arms encountered only the empty air. There was no more pitiable creature upon earth than she at that moment. What is left for a child without father or mother, who has lost her guardian angel and her God? She is a bird fallen from the nest, stripped by cruelty of its wings and left living on the ground. The child's foreboding soul, precociously matured by misfortune, felt the entire weight of her desolation; and she hid her face in the pillow, that Rieka might not hear the convulsive sobs wrung from the depths of her misery. The tears which she poured forth for her vanished God were all that her uncle had left her,--the only prayer that she was capable of. She longed to pray--but could not in words. "He does not hear me! He does not live!" she cried to herself; and the hot tears burst forth again, and she wept in agony. And, as she wept, her heart grew soft and tender, and as the Crucified, after he had been laid in the tomb, was present invisibly among his disciples, so the God who had just been buried away from her mind came to life again in her heart; she did not hear nor see him, but she felt his presence, and it gave her strength to pray. She kneeled in her bed, folded her hands, and cried inwardly: "Dear God, let me keep my belief in Thee--if Thou art and canst hear me--" --that terrible "if" intruded. She paused to ponder upon it. And then there was an end to her fervent prayer, and God vanished again.

Thus the struggle between faith and doubt continued feverishly, and her soul thirsted for love as did her parched lips for water. Where was there a kind, gentle hand to offer her a cooling draught, and with it the kiss that should refresh her thirsty soul,--such a hand as only a mother has? Ernestine gazed out into the darkness. Her breath came in gasps, her heart beat audibly, but no more kindly tears came to her burning eyes. "O God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" was the last moan of her tortured heart; and then she sank into a feverish slumber.

[CHAPTER VII.]

DEPARTURE.

The autumnal gales had stripped the leaves from the trees; the tall firs in the forest, bordering the spacious brown fields of the Hartwich estate, were the only green on the landscape. Over the cheerless desert plain wandered a lonely little figure, pale and sad as Heine's Last Fairy. Ernestine had so far recovered that she was once more able to brave the autumn wind. She extended her arms, and could not help imagining that they might become wings, that would bear her far, far aloft. She knew it could never really be so; but the thought was so delightful! Up, up, far away from the earth,--it was so sad upon the earth. She was a stranger here, and she felt that her home must be elsewhere. In heaven? Oh, there was no heaven; but in the air--at least, in the air. And she ran on--ran as fast as she could--and her heart throbbed with excitement as the wind whistled in her ears and tossed her clothes about, and her hair.

An insatiable yearning--she knew not for what--had driven her out of the house--she knew not whither. There was nothing for her to crave for, and yet she could not help it. She thought she should die of longing! She wished she could dissolve into foam, like the little mermaid, that the daughters of the air might bear her aloft into endless space! And she stood still and gazed up into the gray clouds, and took a long breath. There was no longer anything there for her to aspire to, and she had not yet learned to look within. One vast void around and above her, and forth into this immense void she was driven!

At last she reached the woods, and stood beneath the dark firs, in whose boughs the wind was wildly roaring. It was the last time that she should stand thus among these familiar scenes, for on the following day she was to set out with her uncle for the south, that she might escape the northern winter. She was sorry, for she clung to her home, bleak as it had been. She must have something to cling to! She had looked forward with pleasure to the ice and snow; the glittering form of the snow-queen in the fairy book--the creature of Andersen's Northern fancy--had transfigured winter for her. Like little Kay, she had lost all delight in life, and, like him, she was perplexed in spirit at the word "eternity." But she could not help loving the winter and the solitude of her retired home. She walked on fearlessly, beneath the whistling of the wind, deeper and deeper into the forest, until, without knowing how, she emerged on the other side, and stood under the oak where she had first seen Johannes. The bough, now entirely dead, which had broken beneath her when she was trying to escape from him, still hung there. There, too, was the spot where he had given her the book--the wonderful book--that had peopled her fancy with such lovely forms. And yet that interview with Johannes seemed in her memory far more like enchantment than any fairy-tale, and she stood still, sunk in a reverie, until a furious blast of wind tore at the boughs of the majestic tree as if it longed to tear it down and scatter its fragments through the forest. With a crash, the broken bough, only attached hitherto to the trunk by a slender hold, was hurled to the ground, and the wind wailed on through the bare branches in the forest depths. Ernestine looked up startled. The boughs rustled and creaked, and the scared ravens flew croaking hither and thither. Again the blast swept howling across the plain, slowly, but with a mighty swell in its roar, towards the wood, and again it stormed and raved in its first fury about the isolated oak, which trembled and shook to its centre. But Ernestine was startled only for an instant; she was used to the blasts of a northern October, and she took delight in this wild might of nature. It was almost as if she herself were shaking the tree, and splitting its branches with her own hands. The exultation of a Titan in the breast of a creature woven as it were out of moonlight and lily-leaves! Only a divinely-related spirit could have had such thoughts in so delicate a form,--a spirit that fraternized with the elements, and, in an intoxication of delight, forgot the frail casket in which it was confined.

Singing strange, wild songs, the child, with her wonted agility, climbed the tree that had grown so dear to her, and cradled herself exultingly amid its tossing branches. She ascended to the topmost boughs, and gazed far over forest and plain; and the more the creaking branches were tossed to and fro as she clung to them, the wilder grew her delight. It was almost flying--to hover, thus hidden, above the earth! She kissed the bough by which she held, and as she saw the young branches breaking here and there beneath her, and the hurricane raged so that it almost took away her breath, she looked up with inspired eyes, and whispered involuntarily, "It is the breath of God!" Suddenly she distinguished a sound as of human footsteps, and a shout came up through the roar of the blast. She thought of the handsome stranger youth! Could it be he--come to take her down from the tree? An inexplicable mixture of joy and dread took possession of her. Was it he? Would he stretch out his arms to her again? But it was not he. A chill struck to her heart, and a shade gathered over the landscape. It was her uncle! "Ernestine," he called to her, "thoughtless child! How you terrify me! Running to the woods and climbing trees in such a storm! You might kill yourself! Come down, I entreat you!"

"Let me stay here, uncle; I like it so much!" Ernestine begged.

"I must seriously desire you to come with me. What would people say if I allowed you to be out in such weather? Be good enough to do as I tell you."

Ernestine cast one more silent glance over her beloved forest, and then, with a saddened face, began to descend. When she reached the spot where the bough had been broken, and whence Johannes had rescued her, she broke off a couple of withered leaves, hid them in her dress, and slipped down the trunk lightly as a shadow. She turned to her uncle. All her delight had vanished; she was upon the earth once more, and her uncle's cold, keen eye disenchanted her utterly. Her look was downcast; she felt almost ashamed. If he knew that she had just been thinking of God, he would despise her. But why could she believe in God again while she was up there, and not when she was down here with her uncle?

She walked on without a word by Leuthold's side, glancing neither to the right nor the left, never heeding how the wind was well-nigh tearing her dress from her back. She did not want to fly any more,--she longed for nothing;--when her uncle was by, she was ashamed of every emotion. When she came to the place where the path leading to her home diverged from the road to the village, she asked permission of Leuthold to go and say farewell at the parsonage. After some hesitation, he granted it, and went on alone. Ernestine hurried along the well-known road. The village children shouted after her, "Halloo, there goes Hartwich's Tina,--proud Tina, with the whey face!" She paid no heed to them,--she felt herself above the jeers of such creatures. With a beating heart she reached the parsonage; then she suddenly stood still. What did she want here? To bid good-by to the pastor and his wife! But if the good old man should admonish her to love and fear God, as he was so apt to do? Or if he should ask her if she believed in God? What should she,--what could she answer him? Could she, doubter, apostate that she was, enter the presence of the servant of God without placing herself at the bar of judgment, or without lying? She stood like a penitent, not daring to enter the door which had been so often flung open to her. Twice she put her hand upon the bell-handle and did not pull it. She knew that the old man would be grieved if she went away without bidding him farewell; but she also knew that he would be still more deeply pained could he guess at her present state of mind. Perhaps he might despise her then; she could not bear that; and, just as she was ashamed of her faith when her uncle was with her, she was now ashamed of her doubts. How often had the pastor told her it was a sin to doubt! she had committed--nay, was now committing--this sin. No, her guilty conscience would not let her meet his eye, or kiss the soft, gently folded hands of his wife. She slipped past the house, so that no one could see her, and went into the grave-yard, where it was quiet and lonely and she could hide her guilty little heart upon her parents' graves. She knelt down beside them, and longed for tears to relieve her; but no blessing arose from the graves over which no spirits hovered, but which covered, as her uncle Leuthold had told her, nothing but bones. And yet she so longed to do penance for all her doubts. "If I could only have faith again this minute, and pray God to forgive me, I could go in and see the pastor," she thought. She looked around her, not knowing what to do;--there was the church, and the doors were open. She would go into the house of God; perhaps in that sacred place she might find again what she had lost. In profound self-abasement the child entered, threw herself upon her knees before the altar, and closed her eyes. "Now, now I can pray!" she thought; but, just as upon that terrible night when she was robbed of her religion and peace of mind, devotion seemed near her, but to be eluding her clasp. There lay the guiltless little penitent, her soul full of piety, but unable to pray,--her heart full of tears, but unable to weep. She sprang up in despair. God was not here either. She had thought she heard him in the tempest, and that the wind was his breath,--but on the way home her uncle had explained to her that it was nothing but a current of air occasioned by the change of temperature on the earth's surface, or by violent showers of rain, and she was convinced that she had been wrong and that her uncle knew very much more than the pastor. But if she believed her uncle, she could not believe in God; it was not her fault, and yet this doubt weighed upon her as the first crime of her life. Her trusting soul was like the iron that glows long after the fire in which it was heated is quenched; her faith was extinguished, but the influence that her faith had exerted upon her endured and became her punishment. It began to grow dark; yet still she stood with head bowed and downcast eyes beside the wooden crucifix upon the tomb of her parents. The Christ who had been nailed to the cross for the sake of what her uncle called an illusion, seemed to regard her so reproachfully that she did not dare to look up at him; he had shed his precious blood for the faith which she denied; she almost thought he would tear away the hand nailed to the cross and extend it in menace towards her. An inexplicable shudder ran through her; again she fell upon her knees.

"Forgive, forgive!" she cried; and the tears burst forth and relieved the icy pressure upon her heart.

Then something grasped her shoulder and raised her from the ground. Was it her uncle, or the foul fiend, who was standing beside her?

"You are here, then," he sneered, "in the dark, kneeling and weeping. Aha! I came to look for my quiet little philosopher, and I find a whimpering child praying to a wooden doll! Can you tell me where Ernestine Hartwich is?"

"Uncle," cried Ernestine, driven to defiance in her despair, "why do you persecute me so continually to-day? Can I not be alone for one hour? and must I give an account of every thought and word? You have taken from me everything in which I confided,--you have come between myself and God, so that I dare not go to the pastor, but must slip round his house as if I were a thief. Do you think all this does not pain me, and that I feel no remorse? Whatever you may teach me, I shall never be happy again. Why did you tell me there were no spirits, no angels, no God? I did not wish to know it. I loved God, and, however wretched I was, I could always hope that he would be kind and merciful to me; if no human being loved me, I could always think that he did. And now I must bear everything that happens to me, hoping nothing and loving nothing,--no one,--not even you!"

Leuthold smiled, and stroked Ernestine's curls.

"I see now that I was wrong in treating a girl twelve years old like a boy of twenty. Too strong nourishment will not strengthen an invalid,--he cannot bear it; I ought to have thought of that, and not burdened your girlish brain with so much. I can understand your dislike of me as the innocent cause of your mental indigestion, and forgive you for it. Pardon me for overestimating your intellect,--it is my only injustice towards you."

Ernestine stood gloomily beside him, without a word; he could not guess what was passing in her mind.

"I will leave you here, my dear child. Pray on,--you need fear no further disturbance. Go, kiss the feet of your Christ,--it will relieve your heart. Go, Ernestine; or are you embarrassed by my presence? Shall I walk away? Well!"

He turned as if to go; but Ernestine held fast to his arm.

"I will go with you," she said sullenly. "I could not pray now if I tried. And I am not so stupid as you think me. I understood everything that you have taught me, and I do not believe any longer in--in--the other. What else do you require? One can cry without being thought silly; and I tell you I shall cry far oftener than I shall laugh. Oh, I shall cry all my life long!"

And she covered her face with her hands and sobbed aloud.

"You are nervous, my child. These tears come from mere bodily weakness. In a few years you will smile at what causes them now. Do not be troubled that you cannot love any one,--not even me. All such childish things are left behind in the nursery. Whoever will be truly free must begin by standing alone. Every tie that links our heart to others, however lovable they may be, is a fetter. Whoever will be strong must cease to lean on others. Love knowledge alone,--all living things can be taken from you, and your love for them is a source of pain. Science is always yours,--an inexhaustible source of delight. Men are unjust. They will estimate you not according to your mental powers, but your exterior advantages, and these are too trivial to gain their homage. Science gives you your deserts,--she measures her gifts according to your diligence. Women will envy you; for your intellect will far outsoar theirs. Men will slight you; for you are not, and never will be, beautiful, and they require beauty beyond all else in a woman. You will meet with nothing but disappointment among your kind, if you are not resolved to expect nothing from them. If you would avoid every grief that they can cause you, learn early not to depend upon them; and to this end, science, the culture of the mind, alone can lead you. Intellect will indemnify us for all the woes and necessities of humanity,--through it we can rise to the true dignity of our nature. Therefore, my child, seek out the true nourishment for the intellect, and the blind instincts of your heart will soon die in the clear light of the mind. You long for peace; trust me, it is to be found only in your mind, not in love."

Ernestine walked silently beside her uncle. Her eyes gleamed strangely in the twilight as she looked up at him. She did not understand all that he said. But there came an icy chill from his words, and it was owing to him that her feverish excitement of mind was allayed. Soft and gently as falling snow in the night, his words had fallen into her mind, and, without her knowledge, hidden the last blossoms of faith there under a thick, cold pall. Beneath it her young heart grew torpid; and she took this quiet, painless sleep for peace.

When they reached home, they found the Staatsräthin's carriage before the door.

"Uncle," said Ernestine alarmed and disturbed, "go in and see if it is the Frau Staatsräthin herself,--if it is, I would rather stay outside."

At this moment little Angelika looked out of the window, and called Ernestine by name in a tone of delight. There was no help for it. Ernestine had to go in and encounter, to her distress, the majestic figure of the Staatsräthin. The great lady acknowledged Leuthold's low bow by a slight inclination of her head, and held out her hand to Ernestine.

"You have avoided me hitherto, my child. Have I, without intending it, done anything to pain you?"

Ernestine stood silent in confusion. She could not have told, even had she wished to do so, what the kind Staatsräthin had done to her, for she did not know herself what it was. She could not understand, in her childish inexperience, that it was her sense of shame at her own insufficiency that embarrassed her in the Frau Staatsräthin's presence.

The lady's eyes rested kindly upon the shadowy little figure. She stroked the child's thick, short curls, and then turned to Leuthold, while Angelika, who had a large doll in her arms, drew Ernestine away to a deep window-seat.

"My object here to-day, Herr Doctor, is to arrange a pressing matter of business with you as speedily as possible."

"Madam," said Leuthold bowing, "I feel much honoured. May I offer you one of these clumsy chairs? or will you have the kindness to go up with me to my own apartments, where I can receive you in a more fitting manner?"

The Staatsräthin glanced towards the children.

"I would like to speak to you alone for a few moments, Herr Doctor."

"Then, madam, let me request you to accompany me." With these words Leuthold opened the door.

"Angelika," the Staatsräthin said to the child, "stay with Ernestine until I come back."

She went upstairs with Leuthold; and, when seated upon the couch in his study, she could not but observe the comfortable, cosy arrangement of the room, the delicate cleanliness and order reigning in it; while upon the table before her lay several exercise-books labelled "Ernestine von Hartwich." Involuntarily she was inspired with a kind of confidence in the grave, elegant man who had received her with so much grace. She inspected him with the experienced eyes of a woman of the world. His bearing was blameless, and his regular features bore an unmistakably intellectual stamp. Far-sighted and clever as the Staatsräthin was, she was too much of a woman not to be impressed by the good taste in Leuthold's appearance and manner, and she was inclined to think Heim's estimate of him as somewhat unjust. She did not belong to the class of women ready to be imposed upon by a small hand with filbert-shaped, carefully-kept nails; but the refinement of Leuthold's person and surroundings was very agreeable in her eyes.

"The neatness and order that I see here surprise me, Herr Doctor," she began, as Leuthold seated himself opposite her; "for I hear that your wife is not with you at present."

"No, madam, I am alone; but I have an acute sense of fitness in exterior arrangements, and probably pay more attention to such things than is quite becoming in a man."

"Will your wife's absence be of long duration?" asked the Staatsräthin with interest.

A shadow passed over Leuthold's countenance. "I fear, yes, madam. My wife, unfortunately, had not sufficient affection for our child and myself to endure the deprivations to which the disappointment of our hopes of an inheritance from my brother subjected us. She returned to her father for an indefinite time, and, as she has succeeded in keeping away now from her little daughter for two months, I have great doubts of her return."

"But that is very sad for you, Herr Doctor," remarked the Staatsräthin.

Leuthold passed his hand across his eyes. "It is sad indeed, madam, that I should have made such a choice,--that I should have expended years of love and pains in the attempt to cultivate and train a nature incapable of culture. Mine is the same pain which is experienced by the sculptor who finds a serious flaw in the marble upon which he has spent years of labour. He exhausts himself in the endeavour to shape it according to his ideal, and, just when he hopes for its completion, a dark vein is laid bare by his chisel,--his work is worthless,--he has hoped and laboured in vain!"

The Staatsräthin looked at him with interest, "That is rather coldly put, and yet poetically conceived, sir."

"An artist would not call it cold, madam, for he would know how great the suffering is to which I have ventured to compare my own."

The Staatsräthin assented. Leuthold's manner pleased her more and more. Just then Lena entered, leading Gretchen by the hand, and carrying a brightly burnished lighted lamp, which she placed upon the table.

"Oh, what a charming child!" exclaimed the Staatsräthin in unfeigned surprise.

Her keenly observant eye noticed with pleasure the ray of delight that illumined Leuthold's countenance. "Is she not lovely, madam?" he said, actually glowing with gratified vanity. "You do indeed delight the heart of a father who has seen his child forsaken by her own mother. Yes, she is a treasure. She has the personal beauty that once so attracted me in her mother, and will, I hope, develop a beauty of soul which I failed to find in her mother. She will, in the future, repair all that I have lost. While I have this daughter, I ask of life nothing beside."

The large-hearted Staatsräthin was completely won by a declaration so full of affection. "The man that idolizes his child thus cannot be worthless," she thought.

Leuthold motioned to Lena to take Gretchen away again, and as she did so the Staatsräthin remarked, as if casually, "There cannot be much room in your heart, filled as it is with love for such an angel, for poor, pale little Ernestine."

Leuthold looked steadily at her. "Madam, a lady like yourself, whose loving heart finds room for so many, can hardly say that in earnest."

"You are right," said the Staatsräthin; "I ought to know how many one can love without defrauding any of their due measure of affection. But I am a woman, whose vocation it is to love; a man, and a scholar, like yourself, is apt to confine his regard to what is nearest to him."

"It is natural; and I do not deny that my daughter is dearer to me than my niece: nevertheless, I think I have sufficient affection for the latter to satisfy her demands and to enable me to fulfil all my duties as guardian. You can have no idea, madam, what anxious care the extraordinarily precocious intellect of that child requires, and what a weighty responsibility the training of such an uncommon nature involves."

"I can easily believe you; and I am convinced that she could not possibly be in better hands than your own. But Ernestine's physical education must weigh heavily upon you just at this time, when you are alone. I should very much like to relieve you somewhat in future of your arduous duties. You leave to-morrow for the south, and I cannot but rejoice, for the sake of Ernestine's health, that it is so. But I hear that you intend returning hither at the end of six mouths, to settle in this part of the country. If this be so, let me entreat you to intrust your ward to me every year for some weeks or months,--you will need some rest,--when you can give your undivided time to your daughter. Will you not allow me to take this part in Ernestine's education?"

Leuthold bowed. "Madam, you are one of those who scatter blessings wherever they appear. Your sympathy does me too much honour; I am unworthy of it. Therefore let me thank you, not for myself, but for my niece. There is another name, also, in which I must offer you grateful acknowledgments,--that of the unfortunate mother of the child. If she could speak to you from the other world, she would repay your kindness with far better thanks than my weak words can convey."

The Staatsräthin's eyes filled with tears; she thought, what would become of her little Angelika without her mother, and, touched to her heart, she grew still more reconciled to the strange man whose manner contrasted so strongly with all she had heard of him.

"Then you consent to my plan?" she asked.

"I give you my word, madam, that, when I return with Ernestine, she shall stay with you as long as you desire."

"I thank you," said the Staatsräthin, surprised at this ready assent. She was now firmly convinced that Heim had done this singular man great injustice.

"We have agreed so quickly in this matter," the Staatsräthin began again, "that I cannot but hope that I shall be equally successful in regard to the other affair that brings me here. I have come, in fact, for the purpose of learning whether you will dispose of the Hartwich estate."

A delicate flush overspread Leuthold's face.

"Indeed, madam, you take me greatly by surprise."

"You are aware that my brother Neuenstein has long been desirous of possessing the factory; but serious losses in another direction rendered it impossible for him to command the sum required for the purchase. When I found how his heart was set upon giving his son a position as possessor and head of the factory, I determined, with the consent of my son Johannes and his guardians, to furnish him with the necessary funds. Johannes' answer to my proposal has just arrived from Paris. He entirely approves of my plan, and would willingly even run the risk of a loss for his uncle's sake."

"I really cannot tell which to admire most, madam,--your determination and energy, or your generous spirit! Happy the man who has such a sister!"

"Oh, I pray you do not flatter me," said the Staatsräthin, as a shade of embarrassment flitted across her face. "Such things are not worth mentioning. I wish to keep my brother and my nephew near me; and I could not do so if they were to buy property in another part of the country. It is most fortunate that my country-seat is just where it is. My motive is purely selfish. As you depart early to-morrow morning, we had better arrange matters upon the spot. Then I can lay the deed of purchase upon my brother's plate at tea this evening."

"A princely surprise," rejoined Leuthold, hastening to his writing-table to make out the necessary agreement. The transaction met his desires perfectly, for he wished above all things to be able to reside in the south with Ernestine, that he might carry out his plans with regard to her education, far from the scrutiny of her present friends; and, by the disposal of this property, the last reason for ever returning to the scenes of her childhood vanished.

In the mean time, Angelika and Ernestine were sitting in the window-seat of what was formerly the laundry, engaged in earnest conversation. Angelika had received that very day from her brother the crying doll that she had thought he meant to bring her upon his return. She was beside herself with delight, and could not imagine how Ernestine could be so unmoved by the sight of such a miracle of mechanism. She had made it say "papa" and "mamma," and open and shut its eyes, repeatedly. Ernestine was entirely composed and cold. She declared that the words "papa" and "mamma" were not very distinct, and that the eyelids made altogether too much noise in opening and shutting.

Angelika was not at all troubled by Ernestine's budding misanthropy, for she did not observe it. But that her friend should not care for dolls, was a bitter grief to the little girl. "You will never take any pleasure in dolls if you do not like this one," she said.

"Why should I take any pleasure in them?" Ernestine said in a tone of contempt.

"What? Why, don't you know? I suppose you think the poor things do not feel it when you are unkind to them. But mamma says they feel it all, and don't like it, although they don't show it."

"Do you believe all that your mother says?" asked Ernestine, shaking her head.

"Certainly; of course. Mamma always tells the truth."

"How do you know that?"

Angelika stared at Ernestine. "How? Why, because I do."

"Yes, but who told you so?"

"No one; I know it myself."

Ernestine looked down and said nothing.

"I know it myself," she repeated thoughtfully, not comprehending why the words struck her so oddly. "But suppose she should tell you what you could not believe?"

"Oh, a child must always believe what her mother says."

"How if she cannot do it?"

"But she must!" cried Angelika angrily.

"She must? How can we believe anything because we must? It is not possible," said Ernestine, and she thought Angelika very silly. Suddenly it occurred to her that the pastor was no wiser when he said that we must have faith and that it was a sin not to believe. What if you could not,--what was the use of that must?

"Ernestine, don't stare so at nothing," said Angelika, interrupting her reverie. "Just look how straight my doll can sit, all alone, without anything to lean against! Oh, just give her one kiss; she is your namesake--I christened her Ernestine."

"No, I don't want to,--it is nothing but a lump of leather, it cannot feel, and I will not kiss anything that is not alive and does not feel!"

"Oh, Ernestine, don't say that. She is not alive now, but perhaps she may get alive. Mamma told me once of a man in Greece, called Pygmalion, who made a marble doll for himself, and loved it so dearly that it grew warm and came to life. And I believe that if I should love my doll dearly she might get alive; and I am sure I shall love her very dearly! She can say 'papa' and 'mamma' already, which Herr Pygmalion's doll could not do at all; and in time I shall perhaps bring her on, just as he did his!"

And she clasped the "lump of leather" to her little heart, gazed tenderly and hopefully into its blue glass eyes, and was quite content.

Ernestine looked at her with mournful wonder; she understood now that "Faith gives peace," and she envied the child her happiness.

"Would you not rather have a puppy or a kitten?" she asked gently. "It could eat and drink, and you could feed it, and it would understand what was said to it, and run after you, and love you? Would not that be nicer?"

A shade of sorrow passed over Angelika's rosy face, like a cloud over the sun. "Oh," she sighed, "we have a little dog; but I cannot feed it; it does not eat nor drink!"

"Why not? Is it sick?"

"No; it is stuffed."

Ernestine smiled in spite of herself. "Then you have no dog!"

"Oh, yes, we have! he is called Assor. He only died, and mamma had him stuffed, so that he lies perfectly quiet near the fire, and never stirs. Mamma says he will not come to life again. Oh, Ernestine, it is very sad,--when I stroke him, he never licks my hand any more! I call him hundreds of times, and he used to turn his pretty black head round towards me, but he does not do it now; he cannot see nor hear me, and he used to love me so much."

The little girl covered her eyes with her hand and began to cry.

Ernestine tried to soothe her. "Your mother ought to have had the dog buried. Then you would have forgotten him and not grieved after him."

"No! oh, no! I could not have borne that. What! have the faithful old dog hidden in the ground! It would have been too hard! He was so faithful; he never left our side; and when he could hardly walk, he used to creep out of his basket to welcome us when we came into the room, and when he was dying in my lap, he looked up at me so mournfully, as if to say, 'I must leave you now.' And could I hide him away and forget him? That would be dreadful. No, no! he shall lie by the fire in the drawing-room; it is far more comfortable there than in the cold ground, and I will always think how good he was. And I'll tell you what,--when mamma dies she shall not be buried either. I will put her dressing gown on her and let her lie in her soft bed. Then I will pretend she is sick, and I will sit by her every day and talk to her, and, even if she does not answer me, I shall know what she would say if she could speak. And if she cannot kiss me, I will kiss her all the more. That will be a great deal better than to have nothing left of her; will it not?"

Ernestine shook her head. "That can't be done, Angelika; you can't keep dead bodies; they decay. How can you think of such a thing?"

"Oh, you say, 'That can't be done,'--you say, 'That's nothing,' to everything, and spoil all my pleasure; I tell you it is very unkind of you!"

Ernestine felt ashamed. She had been treating Angelika as her uncle Leuthold treated herself. The child was pained and unhappy when her dolls were treated with contempt, and her childish fancies not encouraged; and was she, Ernestine, to endure without a moan the utter overthrow of the hopes of her entire existence, when her uncle dragged down into the dust all that she had held most sacred? She leaned her forehead, heavy with the weight of her thoughts, against the window-pane, and looked up into the gray, storm-lashed clouds, through which there beamed no star, not a ray of moonlight. The children had not noticed the gathering darkness in the room, and Rieka almost startled them when she entered with a light.

"Is not mamma coming soon?" asked Angelika with a sigh. "Pray tell her that I want to go home."

"I will tell her," replied Rieka, and left the room.

"You are tired of being with me," Ernestine whispered sadly. "You cannot love me either, can you?"

Angelika was confused, and did not answer. Ernestine looked disappointed and bitter. "Very well, then--I need not like you either. Uncle Leuthold would only scold me if I did."

"What for?" Angelika asked amazed.

"Because it is silly to love anything except science, and because nobody loves me--nobody!"

As she was speaking, a carriage drove up, and old Heim alighted from it. Ernestine was startled; she felt as if the pastor, whom she had shunned, were coming. The door opened, and he entered the room.

"Well, here you both are!" he cried after his hearty fashion. "I wanted to say good-by to you, my little Ernestine, before you leave us for so long. But what is the matter? Have you been quarrelling about the doll? Why, what a lovely creature she is!" He took the doll, seated himself in a chair, and dandled it upon his knee; the machinery of the toy was set in motion, and the doll screamed "mamma" and "papa" loudly. "Good gracious, how frightened I am!" laughed the old gentleman. "But she is very naughty,--you must train her better, Angelika. She ought not to scream so at strangers."

Angelika clapped her hands with delight. "Oh, I knew that you would like her, Uncle Heim. You will love her just as you do the rest of my dolls, won't you?"

"Of course; she is really such a lovely creature, that I must bring her some bonbons the next time I come."

"Oh, yes--do, uncle, do!" cried Angelika.

"But be careful not to let her eat too many, or she will have to be put to bed like your old Selma, and I shall have to play doll's-doctor again."

"Oh, no, uncle; I will eat some with her myself; bring them soon, pray do."

Meanwhile Heim had been observing Ernestine, who stood mute at a little distance.

"Well, what does our little Ernestine say to this wonderful new child?"

"Oh, uncle," Angelika complained, "she called it a lump of leather."

Heim looked gravely at Ernestine. "So young, and already such a skeptic! Only twelve years old, and take no pleasure in dolls? Poor child!"

Ernestine was silent. The words "Poor child" fell like molten lead into an open wound. Heim gave back the doll to Angelika. "Come here, Ernestine." She approached him shyly.

"What have you been doing? you look as if you had a guilty conscience?"

"Well, she has, Uncle Heim," Angelika interposed; "for she said, a little while ago, that it was silly to love any one; and that is very wrong!"

"Did you say that?" asked Heim astonished.

Ernestine felt as though she should sink into the ground. She clasped her hands in entreaty. "Oh, forgive me! I have all kinds of thoughts!--I do not know what I say or do! I only know that I am a wretched, wretched child!"

Heim shook his head, and drew the trembling child towards him. "My darling, tell me about it: is your uncle severe with you? does he treat you unkindly?"

"No, oh, no! he is very kind,--he is never cross to me--it is not that,--not that."

"I understand. In spite of his kindness, you feel that he is not near to you; you have no father nor mother, and you need warmth and sunshine, you poor frail little flower. Only be patient! when you get to the lovely, sunny south, with its flowers and birds, you will be better, and your heart will be lighter. I would have liked to keep you with me, I would have brought you up lovingly, and would have tried to fill a father's place to you. But it could not be,--God best knows why,--and I am sure it is better for you, mind and body, to leave this northern climate for a time."

These kind words melted Ernestine's very heart. She pressed Heim's hands to her lips. She wanted to confess all to him. "Oh, do not speak so to me!" she cried with streaming eyes,--"not so kindly!--I do not deserve it."

"My poor innocent child, what can you have done, not to deserve kindness? Ernestine, what is it? What disturbs you so?"

"Oh, if you knew--" cried Ernestine, and just then the door opened, and Leuthold appeared, just in time to prevent what would have ruined all his plans.

"Ah, Herr Geheimrath,--then I was not mistaken. It was your carriage that drove up. The Frau Staatsräthin is with me upon business, and requests your presence at the signing of a paper."

"I will come immediately," Helm said briefly, and went up-stairs with Leuthold.

"Now uncle will drive home with us," cried Angelika delighted. "Isn't he kind, Ernestine?"

"Yes, oh, yes," sighed Ernestine, standing motionless beside the chair where Heim had been sitting. At last he returned with Leuthold and the Staatsräthin.

"Angelika," said the latter, "we must hurry, so that Uncle Neuenstein shall not wait for his tea. Good-by, my little Ernestine. Herr Gleissert will tell you what we intend to do when you come back. Get well and strong, my child, so that you may come back to us a healthy little girl."

Angelika kissed Ernestine hastily, and drew her mother towards the door.

Ernestine stood still with downcast eyes. Heim went up to her and clasped her in his arms. He only said, "God bless you!" but these words agitated her greatly, and, as he turned to go, she sank on the floor, sobbing aloud.

The visitors had gone,--the carriages had rolled away. Leuthold had been amusing himself for some time with Gretchen in his own room. But Ernestine was still on her knees in the cheerless room below-stairs, weeping over the grave of her childhood.

[PART II.]

[CHAPTER I.]

"ONLY A WOMAN."

Upon a bright, sunny day, at the house of Professor Möllner in N---- there were gathered the principal Professors of medicine and philosophy in the town. The table provided for the guests was loaded with everything that could rejoice the hearts of men who had spent the morning in delivering lectures. Lunch was not the only end for which this assemblage was gathered together. These learned gentlemen had taken this occasion to discuss a very ludicrous matter,--nothing less than an application from a lady for permission to attend the lectures and to graduate at the University of the place.

Möllner had invited these gentlemen to his house for the purpose of this discussion. There sat the physiologist Meibert, the anatomist Beck, and the philosophers Herbert and Taun, leaning back in comfortable arm-chairs,--their throats very dry,--regarding with longing eyes the various bottles that stood as yet uncorked, as if awaiting the magic word that should make them yield up their contents. Hector, too, Möllner's large dog, was devouring with his eyes, at a respectful distance, the delicacies upon the table, quite unable to understand how the gentlemen could refrain so long from falling to. He would have done very differently had he been a man.

The Staatsräthin entered the room, and with dignified repose and kindliness of manner greeted the guests, who rose as she appeared. "I have just learned that my son is not here to receive his friends," she said. "Allow me to act his part. You must need refreshment after the lectures."

"Thanks, thanks! you are most kind," was heard from all sides as the Staatsräthin filled the glasses. Herbert, the philosopher, was foremost in his acknowledgments; for he was a great favourite in society, and aspired to unite the solidity of the scholar with the grace of the man of the world. "We are greatly privileged in being allowed to kiss the hand whose tasteful care we have already admired in the charming, arrangement of this table."

"Professor Herbert's gallantry is well known," said the Staatsräthin dryly.

"It is true," he replied, "that I endeavour always to give expression to the sentiments of respect and admiration that I entertain for your sex, madam, in spite of the failure of my attempts."

"Good-morning, mamma,--good-morning, gentlemen," cried a clear, ringing voice, and there came tripping into the room a figure so full of life and bloom that its joyousness was instantly reflected upon every face.

"Angelika," said the Staatsräthin, embracing her, "have you come without your husband? What is the matter? You were not invited;--it was he. Is it a mistake?"

"Oh, Frau Staatsräthin, we are entirely satisfied with the exchange," laughed the professors; and, Herbert taking the lead,--they gathered about Angelika, enjoying the atmosphere of youth and grace that encompassed her everywhere.

"I know perfectly well, mamma, that only Moritz was invited, but I have come too. I so wanted to hear judgment passed in this august assembly upon my former playmate. I may stay, may I not?"

"If your husband is willing, and these gentlemen do not object," said the Staatsräthin.

"No, oh, no,--we certainly do not object," cried all the gentlemen, with the exception of Herbert, who remarked softly, with a thoughtful air, that he feared that their charming associate might hear some observations on this occasion not flattering to her sex.

"Oh, I cannot fear anything of the sort from you, the acknowledged champion of dames, the most gallant of men," laughed Angelika,--"and the other gentlemen will not be too bard upon us."

Herbert shrugged his shoulders.

"Besides," Angelika continued gaily, "I have been a little hardened in the matter by my stern lord and master, who has very little consideration for our sex."

"Scarcely to be wondered at in a practising physician," Herbert said in a low tone to his associates; then, turning with his sweetest expression to Angelika, "Could you not have taught him better long ago?"

"Oh, no," complained Angelika.

"He considers his wife an exception," interposed the Staatsräthin; "she seems to have left no room in his nature for sympathy with the rest of womankind. I have never seen a man so exclusive in his regard."

"Such a wife deserves it all," said Herbert, kissing Angelika's hand.

At this moment the door opened, and old Heim, his fine head crowned with locks of silvery whiteness, entered. All bowed low to this "Nestor of science," as he was called. After the death of his king he had accepted a call to N----, and had for eight years occupied the chair of pathology in the University there. He was followed by his adopted son, for whom he had created a professorship for the cure of diseases of the eye,--a fair, handsome young man, slender in figure and gentle in demeanour, with hands so small and well shaped that they seemed formed for the very purpose of handling such a delicate piece of mechanism as the eye. The Staatsräthin and Angelika greeted them both with all their old cordiality, and Professor Herbert said aloud, "How fresh and strong our revered associate looks! he must teach us how to retain our youth."

"Yes, indeed," said Meibert, "if Bock could see him he would recall his cruel assertion that man retains full possession of his mental powers only until the age of fifty!"

"He will soon recall that when he has passed fifty himself," said a deep, powerful voice. All turned to the new-comer.

"Ah, Möllner, have you been listening?"

"Oh, no; but I could not help hearing, as I came in, that you were making pretty speeches to one another,--just as if you had cups of tea before you, instead of glasses of good wine. Pray, what has made you so sentimental?"

"Your protracted absence, probably," said Angelika, relieving her brother of his hat and cane.

The strong, fine-looking man threw an affectionate glance at her. "Indeed! let me entreat forgiveness, then. One of my experiments was unsuccessful, and I was obliged to repeat it. That is why I am late!"

"I suppose, then, you have been torturing some unfortunate dog or rabbit," said Angelika in a tone of distress. "Poor thing!"

"For shame, Angelika!" said her brother. "Those are not words for the sister of a physiologist,--a woman who ought to understand the object of science."

Angelika made no reply, but observed, well pleased, how tenderly Johannes stroked Hector, who came to greet his master.

The door was flung violently open, and in rushed, in a great hurry, Angelika's husband, Moritz Kern, Clinical Professor and practising physician. His figure was not tall, but muscular,--his eyes were black and sparkling, his features sharply cut, and his stiff black hair close cropped around his head. "Morning, morning," he cried, quite out of breath, but in high good humour, as he threw his hat and gloves upon a table and himself into a chair. "Excuse me for my tardiness. Ah, my dear,--kiss your hand,--love me? Yes? Not seen you since morning. Walter with you? No? Was he good?"

"Yes, indeed," said Angelika, who stood beside her boisterous husband like a rose upon a thorny stem; "but he fell off his rocking-horse and has got a great bruise."

"Good, good,--harden him," he replied smiling. He looked for an instant into Angelika's blue eyes, and the fire of his glance must have penetrated her heart, for her fair brow flushed and her eyelids drooped like those of a girl upon the day of her betrothal.

"Come, Moritz, you can make love to your wife another time," cried Johannes; "it is late,--we must come to business. What detained you?"

"My dear friend, I couldn't help it. I had a girl at the clinic that gave me no end of trouble. Old trouble with the heart,--acute inflammation,--stoppage in the arteries of the left foot,--mortification,--the leg must come off to-day."

"A splendid case!" said Helm approvingly.

"Heavens! what savages you are, to call that a splendid case!" said Angelika horrified.

"My angel, if you choose to assist at a council of rude men, you must not start at such innocent technical terminology," said her husband, enjoying Angelika's pretty dismay.

"Yes, I too have been scolding her for sympathizing with the victims of my experiments," said Möllner.

"You were wrong to blame her. I like to have her compassionate. Continue to weep for the poor dogs, my child, and the yet more unfortunate frogs. What have you to do with the reasons for torturing them? I do not want you to imbibe any flavour of science from your husband or brother. I like you just as you are; you suit me precisely. I will not have you otherwise."

"For heaven's sake, mamma, carry Angelika away!" cried Johannes laughing. "As long as this fellow has his wife by his side, there is nothing to be done with him!"

"She shall stay!" said Moritz decidedly. "There is nothing of importance to be done. The Hartwich woman asks to attend our lectures; why waste any thought upon such a fool? Don't answer her request at all, and be done with it!"

"Softly, softly, my young friend," cried old Heim very gravely, while Moritz, with Angelika's hand in his, swallowed a glass of wine. "First read this paper, which the girl sent to me, and which so enchained Möllner's attention when I gave it to him to-day after lecture that--I must betray him--it was the cause of his tardiness. The experiments were over long before he made his appearance!"

A slight flush overspread Johannes' face as he handed Moritz the paper. The latter read the title aloud--"Reflex Motion in its Relation to Free Agency."

"By Jove! a good idea, if it is her own!"

"It is her own--that I'll vouch for!" cried Heim with warmth.

"That must be both philosophically and physiologically interesting," said the philosopher Taun to Herbert, who coldly shrugged his shoulders.

"Let us see whether the article corresponds to the title," muttered Moritz, turning over the leaves.

"Read us some of it aloud," said Heim; and Moritz selected, at random, and read: "According to my opinion, the want of external self-control proceeds from sluggishness of the inhibitory nerves in comparison with the activity of the motor nerves, for the effort to control one's self is certainly, in a degree, neither more nor less than a struggle for mastery between these two sets of nerves. If the irritation acting upon the one is stronger than the force of will which should excite the other to activity, the reflex motion will take place in spite of what is called 'best intentions,' whether the occasion be a start of alarm, a desire to yawn, laugh, or weep at unfitting times, a scream, an angry gesture, or even a blow bestowed upon the object whence proceeds the incitement to wrath."

Moritz paused, and said smiling, "She has forgotten a kiss, which is only a reflex motion under certain circumstances,--that is, when one does not wish to kiss, ought not to kiss, and yet cannot help it." And he drew his wife towards him, and kissed her. Angelika blushed deeply, and, rising, greatly embarrassed, joined her mother, who sat quietly at work by the window. The gentlemen laughed, and Moritz looked after her with eyes full of tenderness.

"It certainly is strange that while the Hartwich has made due mention of the reflex motion of terror--a start; of pain--tears; of fatigue--a yawn; of anger--a blow, it does not seem to have occurred to her that there are reflex motions of tenderness, also," remarked young Hilsborn.

"Probably," said Moritz laughing, "she has had no opportunity for observing any such. I suppose that, like all blue-stockings, she is so ugly that no one has ever bestowed any tenderness upon her."

"She is certainly not ugly," said Johannes with warmth. "She might have admirers enough if she chose."

Moritz turned hastily round to Johannes, who sat almost behind him, and stared as if a new idea had suddenly occurred to him. "What the deuce, Johannes! do you know her? Oho! indeed! now I understand the interest that you take in her. Well, you can teach her to make good her omissions."

"I should really like to be present at such an interesting lesson!" said Herbert.

"Laugh away," said Johannes calmly. "You may laugh at me as much as you please, but have the goodness, Moritz, to spare your jests as far as Fräulein Hartwich is concerned; and you too, friend Herbert. Pray heed what I say. We have nothing to do here with the personality of this girl; it is nothing to us. All we have to do is to pass judgment upon her intellectual capacity, and to accede or not to her request. Go on, Moritz!"

And Moritz read further: "Even the law, without knowing it, recognizes this physiological fact, for it punishes less severely a murder committed in the heat of passion than one that is premeditated. And what is a murder committed in the heat of passion, in reality, but a reflex motion in a broader sense? If this theory be correct, many a poor criminal may escape not only a violent death at the hangman's hands, but also the flames of the material hell to which bigoted moralists have consigned him. Let us endeavour, therefore, to discover what relation these facts sustain to Free Agency. All that we can do to attain the self-control which is the germ of all the virtues is, from earliest childhood, to exercise the inhibitory nerves in the discharge of their functions. It is an undoubted fact that, from the beginning of life, the mind must learn to use as its tools the various organs of the body. We cannot understand the use of a tool to which we are unaccustomed as we can one that we have frequently handled. Thus it is with the mind and the nerves. Every nerve that is often called into activity by the mind is strengthened by exercise. For example: the sense of touch grows remarkably keen with blind people, who depend upon it as a substitute for eyesight. By continual exercise of the nerves of sensation in his finger-tips, the blind man achieves the greatest perfection in his sense of touch. 'Practice makes perfect,' we often hear said with regard to arts and occupations difficult of mastery. And what is this practice but the custom of the mind to exercise this or that nerve, bringing into play the required muscular activity,--the exercise of certain nerve-fibres? Are the inhibitory nerves alone not to be thus controlled? Certainly not! The mind can make them also implicitly obedient to its will, if it neglects no opportunity for exercising them,--and why should it not apply itself to this task with the same zeal that is expended upon the attainment of an art or handicraft? I, for example, was in the habit of screaming at the unexpected discharge of a pistol. I had a pistol discharged daily in my hearing, without warning, and in a short time I was able to suppress the scream. It may be urged that I had gradually become accustomed to the noise, and was no longer startled. But this was not the case. I was as much startled as ever, but I had taught the appropriate inhibitory nerve to cut off the reflex motion upon the larynx. I know that a subjective experience of this kind proves nothing objectively; but such a simple inference, I think, needs no proof. Here we come again to the boundary-line separating the physiological from the psychological, where free agency results from a material law, just as fragrance comes from the chalice of a flower. Only let us be sure that our nerves are but a key-board upon which, if we strike the right keys correctly, we shall produce the harmonious accord of our whole being, and, if we do not learn to do so, we are to be pitied or despised, according to the school in which the lesson is needed."

"And so on," said Moritz, turning over the leaves. "The rest can be easily imagined. Here is a special treatise upon the motor nerves,--it seems pretty fair,--and rather a long essay upon nervous excitement, but I think we have done our duty and read enough of the testimony. How shall we decide? Shall we carry out the joke, and admit a student in petticoats to the lectures and the dissecting-room?"

"Why not?" said Professor Taun with some humour. "We admit so many stupid lads, why not one woman?"

"My dear friend," old Heim began, "I do not think we have ever had many pupils more gifted than Fräulein Hartwich. And is not a talented woman better than a stupid man?"

"That is a question," remarked Herbert, riveting his sharp eyes upon Heim's honest face. "I do not believe that the most talented woman can accomplish what is possible, with diligence and perseverance, for a man of common ability. What aid can a woman lend to us, or to science? The aid of her labour only, for no woman possesses creative force. And the feminine capacity for labour is so weak, that it is hardly worth while to commit an absurdity for the sake of making it ours."

"An absurdity?" asked Heim.

"Yes, I should call it absurd to admit a woman among our students, to degrade science to a mere doll to amuse silly girls withal, until, finally, there would be an Areopagus erected, before which we should be expected to make our most profound bow, in every feminine tea-party. There is competition enough already, without increasing it by the admission among us of the other sex."

"That sounds strange," said old Heim; "it looks almost as if you were afraid of the competition which you so thoroughly despise. Why speak of competition in science? Leave that narrow-minded word to trade, which is really confined within certain limits. In such a boundless and abstract domain as science, there is no place for personal envy and arrogance. Can there be any question of competition when we are labouring for a cause which is to benefit the world? Whoever asks for other rewards than are contained in knowledge itself, is no priest of science. The true student exists for science, not science for him,--he rejoices in every fresh advance, no matter by whom it is made, for the honour of the cause that he serves is his own, and we can say truthfully, Each for all, and all for each. If, therefore, we are offered the labour of a pair of hands willing to share our pains, let us not reject them because they are the delicate hands of a woman, but accept them, and offer them a modest place, where they can achieve all that lies in their power."

"But," cried Moritz, "let such hands do for us what we cannot do for ourselves,--knit stockings, for instance,--instead of trying to assist in what we can easily accomplish without them."

"My dear young friend," said Heim smiling, "the temple of science is large, very large. I think neither we nor our posterity, however numerous they may be, will be able to complete it."

"I think, gentlemen," said the philosopher Taun, in his gentle, refined way, "that there are only two points of view from which the matter is to be considered. Either we must base our decision upon the intellectual capacity of the lady, and, if so, subject the paper before us to conscientious criticism; or we must determine, once for all, that no woman is to be admitted to our University,--in which case there will be no question whatever of capacity or incapacity. Let us, then, come to an agreement upon these points."

"That is true,--Taun is right," cried Heim. "I vote for the admission of women of genius, like this one."

"And I against it," rejoined Herbert; "for I contend that there are no women of genius!"

"For my part," said Taun, "I am not decidedly opposed to the admission of a woman among our hearers, and, if I were, the originality of Fräulein Hartwich's paper would have shaken my decision. I cannot judge of the value of the physiological part of it,--I must leave that to our friend Möllner; but the philosophical idea that is its basis I think extremely suggestive, and that is more than can be expected from one of the laity."

"I oppose the emancipation of women," cried Moritz, "principally because I find the existing order of society quite rational, and will do nothing to disturb it."

"I vote for Fräulein Hartwich," said young Hilsborn. "It will not interfere with our social order to grant her request. She will not be followed by crowds of imitators, for the simple reason that her talent is extraordinary. I maintain that we have no right to deny any opportunity for development to such a talent because it is accidentally hidden in a woman's brain. A great mind requires strong nourishment, and it is cruel to withhold such from it out of mere envy, and condemn it to extinction among the commonplace occupations of women."

"Hilsborn is far from wrong," said Meibert; "but can such a mind quench its thirst for knowledge nowhere but in a University? The lady has certainly proved in the treatise before us that she has learned something outside of the walls of the lecture-room. What does she want of a degree? It must be vanity that suggests the want, and we are to blame if we lend ourselves to the gratification of such a folly."

"That is my opinion also," added Beck.

But Hilsborn was not silenced. "It seems very natural to me that a woman who feels herself possessed of the mental power of a man should aspire to manly dignities, and her desire to espouse science, not as an amusement, but as the occupation and end of her existence, is a proof of her deep conviction of its grave importance. There is certainly nothing here of the female vanity which resorts to bodily and mental adornment merely for the sake of pleasing."

"You are a brave champion, Hilsborn," said Möllner, holding out his hand to the young man.

"Then we are only three against four," said old Heim. "Möllner's vote alone is wanting,--and if he gives it in favour of the Hartwich, there will be a tie; so I propose that we give him the casting vote, especially as he, as a physiologist, is best capable of judging of the value of the essay before us."

"I should have thought," cried Moritz, "that any one of us could have passed judgment upon such a piece of dilettanteism; it is only the modern nonsense about the fibres. There is not much in it!"

All present looked eagerly towards Johannes, who was calmly leaning back in his arm-chair. "It is no piece of dilettanteism. I grant that it is hasty and one-sided to attempt to ascribe all self-control to the impediments of reflex motion; nevertheless, Fräulein Hartwich's essay evinces a comprehension of the physiology of the nervous system far beyond what is usual, and I cannot deny that such a self-dependent realization of scholarship is a proof of the most decided creative faculty." Here he looked at Herbert.

"Indeed?" said the latter pointedly.

"Yes!" said Möllner with warmth; "but, nevertheless, I give my vote against her admission; and of course that decides the matter,--we are now five to three!" The gentlemen looked at one another, some with surprise, some with annoyance.

"What do you mean?" cried Heim. "You were thoroughly delighted to-day with the girl's talent."

"We relied upon you," said Hilsborn reproachfully.

"This is the first injustice of which I have ever convicted my friend Möllner," said Taun, shaking his head.

Johannes looked at his dismayed associates with quiet amusement, and did not observe that Herbert extended his hand to him to thank him for his assistance.

"God be thanked," he muttered, "that you have given the fool her discharge!" And he swallowed the contents of his glass with evident satisfaction.

"Johannes! Johannes!" Hilsborn began again, "why have you treated the girl and ourselves in this manner?"

"Why?" asked Johannes,--and there was a glow in his face that quite transfigured it,--"because she is far more to me than to any of you."

"You have chosen a very odd method to show that it is so," Hilsborn remonstrated.

"Do you think so, short-sighted man?" asked Möllner gravely.

"What harm can it do you to make the Hartwich happy?" grumbled Hilsborn.

Möllner looked at him with a smile.--"When we take away from a child a knife with which it is playing, we do so, not because we are afraid it will harm us, but itself. True, the child will regard us as an enemy, but we act for its own sake."

"Well, is the Hartwich the child that you feel so bound to protect?"

"Yes, Hilsborn! Woman, of whatever age, is intrusted to the guardianship of man. It is ours to decide her future, to protect her; and we are responsible for her development. Which of you, my dear friends Heim, Taun, and Hilsborn, when I put it to your consciences, can deny that the Hartwich is treading a mistaken path,--that she is trespassing beyond the bounds that form the natural division-line between the sexes? I have nothing to urge in opposition to the mental activity of woman, provided it be exercised within the limits of her proper sphere; and these limits I set far beyond the place assigned her by our friend Herbert and my brother-in-law Moritz. But I have such a reverence for true womanhood that I will lend my aid to no project which can be carried out only at its expense."

"I think," said Moritz, "that the Hartwich must have already entirely renounced the womanhood of which you speak, or she never would have entertained such projects. There can't be much there to spoil."

"You judge hastily, Moritz, as you always do," said Johannes. "If you knew under what influences this girl has grown up, you would understand that it is not a want of delicacy, but lofty courage,--a passionate, sacred enthusiasm,--that prevents her from shuddering at the horrors of the study of physiology and enables her to look beyond the individual to the universe. A dazzling light, flaming before our eyes, blinds us to what lies nearest us. Thus was it with this gifted girl when the light of science arose for her, enveloping with its glory the world of reality around her."

Moritz's face, usually so gay in expression, suddenly grew grave: he looked at Möllner with manifest anxiety.--"Johannes, you talk as if you had a personal interest in this preposterous creature!"

"Why should I deny it?--Yes, I have!"

"Good heavens!" cried Moritz, "you are not going to stand in friend Hilsborn's way? He seems to have serious intentions with regard to her."

"Oh, you are wrong there, Moritz," said Hilsborn. "Her perilous struggle for emancipation inspires me with sympathy, it is true, but with no desire for a closer knowledge of her. I may surely like to have her for a pupil without wanting to marry her."

"And there, Hilsborn," said Johannes gaily, "lies the difference between us; for I should wish to have her not for a pupil, but for a wife!"

An exclamation of dismay burst from the lips of all present. "How did you come to know her?" "Where did he know her?" the gentlemen, with the exception of Heim and Hilsborn, inquired.

"How the idea of my danger seems to startle you!" said Johannes good-humouredly. "Is the girl an evil spirit,--a witch? No, she is only a woman. How can you be afraid of a woman? What makes her terrible to you makes her interesting to me; and where is the danger for me, even if I should try to lead her out of her crooked path? Yes, even if she should become my wife----"

"Heaven save you from such a wife!" the Staatsräthin interposed.

"Matters have not yet gone quite so far, mother; there is nothing in the affair yet but pure human sympathy. But suppose it were to go further,--what then? The husband who is made unhappy by his wife has only himself to blame; for woman is just what we make her."

"Oh, presumptuous man!" exclaimed the Staatsräthin, "there are women who would prove your error to you after a terrible fashion! This Hartwich girl was to me a most disagreeable child,--what must she be now?"

"A woman who seems strayed from another world,--an apparition once seen never forgotten!"

"Heavens!" said the Staatsräthin, really alarmed, "where and when have you met her? She vanished almost ten years ago; and if her rationalistic books had not appeared last winter, every one would have forgotten her."

"Did you know her before, then?" several gentlemen asked curiously.

"We were playmates for some time," said Angelika, "but in the end I could not endure her, she was so old-fashioned and despised my dolls."

The gentlemen laughed.

"She was the most strangely interesting child I ever saw in my life!" said old Heim.

"Indeed she was," said Möllner; "but there was something repellant about her, for she had been embittered by cruel treatment, which had developed her mind precociously, while it had stunted her body. Such incongruity is always disagreeable, and therefore every one shunned her, as she shunned every one. We soon forgot her, for she left our part of the country when she was twelve years old, and we heard nothing more either of her or of her guardian, who accompanied her. A year or more ago, however, a couple of brochures from her pen appeared, that excited a tempest of criticism, at least among women, on account of their rationalistic tendency. I did not think it worth while to read them, as the pale little Hartwich girl had almost faded from my memory. No one knew anything about her, and we took no pains to know, for my mother and sister had been deeply shocked by the child's atheism, and had given her up. A short time since I went to see my friend Hilsborn, and met him just as he was getting into his carriage to drive to the village of Hochstetten, two miles off. He had been sent for to see the village schoolmaster. Hilsborn asked me to go with him, and, as the day was fine, I consented. When we arrived at the small castle that lies in the outskirts of the village, we alighted. Hilsborn went to find the schoolmaster,--I remained behind, to await his return, and walked slowly past the large, neglected garden, that surrounds the castle. A fresh breeze stirred the waving wheat-fields, and the setting sun shone through the quivering air upon the distant landscape. Suddenly, painted upon the flaming horizon, like the picture of a saint of the Middle Ages upon a golden background, appeared the figure of a woman dressed in black,--a woman so beautiful and sad that she might have been Night's messenger commanding the sun to set. She stood with folded arms, motionless, upon a little eminence in the garden, looking full at the descending orb of light, while the breeze stirred the heavy folds of her dress. The evening-red cast a glow upon her grave face, white as marble, and the light in her large eyes seemed not to proceed from the sun which they mirrored, but from within. I stared like a boy at the beautiful, silent apparition, and forgot that my gaze might annoy her should she become aware of it. And so it proved. As she took up some coloured glasses lying beside her, I saw with surprise that she was trying some optical experiment, and just then her glance fell upon me. A shade of vexation passed over her face, now turned from the light, and lent it a cold, stern expression. Without honouring me with a second glance, she gathered together her optical instruments and walked quietly down the little hill. Just then the sun disappeared below the horizon, as if at her command, and gloomy twilight gathered above the silent garden, in whose paths she disappeared. I could not picture to myself a happy face among those rank, thick bushes behind that high wall. I could not imagine a happy heart in the breast of that lonely, gloomy figure. Night fell while I was still vainly looking after her. I hurried on to the schoolmaster's, upon the pretence of finding Hilsborn, and learned from him that my unknown was Ernestine Hartwich. She had, a short time before, rented the Haunted Castle, as it was called, and, as they were not very enlightened in the village, the beautiful girl was regarded with a sort of supernatural terror,--for certainly something must be wrong with one who lived so entirely cut off from intercourse with human beings, and who, worse than all, never went to church. There was some excuse to be found for her, to be sure, in the evil influence of a step-uncle and guardian, who had had charge of her since the early death of her parents, and who possessed entire authority over her. He is that famous, or rather infamous, Doctor Gleissert, of whom you have all heard."

"Oho! he!" murmured the gentlemen in a contemptuous tone, and old Heim bestowed upon him a hearty "Scoundrel!"

"Well," Johannes continued, "I am sure you will not imagine me such a fool as to have fallen in love at the first sight of a beautiful face, but the apparition that I have just described presented a combination of what is most attractive to a man,--'beauty, intellect, and virtue.'"

"Virtue!" Herbert repeated; "are you so sure of that?"

"Yes. If Fräulein Hartwich were not virtuous, she would not live in such strict retirement. Those who have tasted the cup of self-indulgence are too apt to return to it; the truly pure alone can find contentment in seclusion and loneliness, inspired only by a grand idea! I go still further, and, as a physiologist, upon the ground of the preservation of force, maintain that a woman engaged in such unusual and profound studies needs all her vital energy for her work, and is dead to all the pleasures of sense. Hence we so often find entire lack of sensibility in women accustomed to great mental activity,--because their supply of vital force is not sufficient for the double occupation of thinking and feeling. And therefore my only fear is that there is no warm heart throbbing within that exquisite form."

The professors looked significantly at one another, and the Staatsräthin exchanged anxious whispers with Angelika.

"Well," said Herbert, as he arose from his chair, "I propose that we leave our respected associate to his dreams, and wish for his sake that his pupil may not be as accomplished upon the subject of the nerves of sensation as upon the inhibitory nerves."

The gentlemen all arose.

Johannes looked fixedly at Herbert and said, "I am no dreamer, Doctor Herbert, although I believe in the virtue that requires no certificate of character. And, I repeat, I believe so firmly in this virtue, that I denounce as a slanderer the man who dares to assail it by a single word!"

"Sir!" cried Herbert with irritation, "your remark is insulting!"

"Only to him to whom it may apply!" said Johannes calmly.

Angelika ran to her brother and threw her arms around him. "Johannes! Johannes! consider who it is that you are defending. You do not even know her."

"Yes, yes, she is right!" added several of the gentlemen.

Johannes held up Ernestine's paper, and said with earnest gravity, "I do know her."

Herbert took his hat, and, with a silent bow, was about to leave the room, when the beadle of the University rushed in and handed Johannes a letter. "Herr Professor! Herr Professor! this comes in haste from his Honor, and concerns all the gentlemen."

Johannes opened the letter, and Herbert stood listening upon the threshold. After reading it, Johannes looked around the circle with a smile. "Gentlemen, we have been most strangely mystified. The prize essay upon the 'Capacity of the Eye for Stereoscopic Vision,' which we all attributed to Hilsborn, is by--Fräulein Hartwich!"

An exclamation of surprise greeted this announcement. All present crowded around Johannes to read the letter; even Herbert entered the room again, to make sure that what he had heard was true. There was no doubt of it,--the fact was indisputable that these gentlemen had accorded the prize offered for the best essay upon the 'Capacity of the Eye for Stereoscopic Vision' to Ernestine, to whom they had just denied admission to the University because she was a woman. It was a fact not exactly pleasant to contemplate, and the professors exchanged glances of chagrin.

"What is to be done?" asked some.

"This alters the case entirely," said Beck.

"Möllner," cried Meibert, "this is embarrassing enough. I think we shall have to reconsider our decision."

"We can scarcely withhold a diploma from a woman to whom we have awarded this prize," said Taun.

Heim nodded in high good humour, and growled, "Ah, yes, you sing a different tune now!"

"Gentlemen," said Johannes with emphasis, "I pray you do not mistake the point at issue. If the question had been of the capacity of the applicant, the essay that we have already read would have influenced our decision; but there is a social principle concerned, which we must not violate for the sake of an individual. Must I remind you of what you know so well?"

"Our colleague is still victorious," said Taun, offering his hand with kindly dignity to Johannes. "We cannot think you in the wrong."

"The prize awarded to a woman!" muttered Herbert, as he left the room. "It is enough to kill one with vexation!"

"It is a pity," said the others, when he had departed, "that our pleasant morning should have been so spoiled by Herbert."

"Do not be disturbed by it, dear friends," laughed Johannes; "it did me good to tell him the truth for once. He is one of those who sustain their mental existence by continual conflict. 'Destroy, that you may exist,' is their motto,--and of course they are the sworn enemies of all rising talent. They must be so, because they are not conscious of any power in themselves to soar above it; they need all the strength of their nature to enable them to avoid being extinguished by the wealth of vital force that is expended all around them. Those whose lot is cast beyond the sphere of such individuals can afford to pity them, but those who are within reach of their poisonous fangs must fear them as the arch-enemies of all creation and growth. Although I could not accede to Fräulein Hartwich's request, the envious malice with which he criticised her pained me excessively."

"That is very true," said the philosopher Taun. "It is sad enough when such embodied negations interfere with the free, joyous activity of art,--doubly so when they meddle with science!"

"Who would have thought it," cried Angelika, "of the gallant Professor Herbert, who is sure to propose 'the ladies' at every supper-party! I am amazed!"

"One who pays court to 'the ladies,' my fair colleague, may very possibly be no advocate for woman, since, according to my brother Schopenhauer, what constitutes the modern lady is not the strength, but the weakness, of her sex," replied Taun.

"True enough," said Johannes. "Such a man might show consideration for weakness,--he can only contend with strength."

Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul.

ONLY A GIRL:

OR

A PHYSICIAN FOR THE SOUL.

A ROMANCE

FROM THE GERMAN

OF

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

BY

MRS. A. L. WISTER.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1871.

CONTENTS.

ONLY A GIRL;

OR

A PHYSICIAN FOR THE SOUL.

"ONLY A GIRL."

THE STORY OF THE UGLY DUCKLING.

ATONEMENT.

THE SAD SURVIVORS.

UNDECEIVED.

SOUL-MURDER.

DEPARTURE.

"ONLY A WOMAN."