Читать книгу Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul - Wilhelmine von Hillern - Страница 4

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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.