Two winters and two summers have passed since the evening when the honeymoon happiness of the newly united pair was so deeply shadowed. The blow, however, left very different traces on each. While Edwin, after the first sudden pang, almost felt a satisfaction in knowing that the sad confusion of this noble life was ended by a heroic death, Leah was assailed by a strange melancholy, which caused her constantly to reflect whether she herself was not partly to blame for this terrible death. If she had not stood between them, if, in that first and only interview, she had treated the well known stranger differently,--! And again, even if the living woman would have had no further power over Edwin's heart, how the image of this wonderful creature, who had turned away from a lost life with such calm dignity now transfigured by death, must haunt his memory and overshadow every bodily form. Then a secret pride rebelled against the thought, that this voluntary departure might have been a favor bestowed upon, a sacrifice made for her; as if the generous Toinette had said to herself: "so long as I breathe, this woman cannot be sure of her happiness and peace; one of us must step aside."

She carefully concealed this restless succession of thoughts from Edwin, and as his profession and the now steady labor on his book gave him enough to do, he did not continually watch Leah, and attributed certain dark moods, which did not wholly escape his notice, to her changed condition and the anxiety natural to one about for the first time to become a mother. In fact, the fulfilment of this most ardent wish appeared to instantly transform her nature, and when the child lay in its cradle, all shadows of the past seemed driven from the house by perpetual sunlight. Thus a second year passed away.

When we again meet our friends it is once more vacation; but this time we do not find them among mountains and valleys, or within the cosy precincts of their new home. Leah, with pardonable maternal pride, unable to resist her own desires and the pressing invitation of her parents, has taken her rosy little girl, "who is already so sensible and gives no trouble at all," with her to Berlin. They arrived yesterday evening at the pretty little house in the Thiergarten suburb, where papa KÖnig, since he left the lagune, has built his modest but comfortable nest. Here, amid the green trees and under the care of his faithful companion, the old gentleman has fairly blossomed again, and the pleasure of embracing his daughter and grandchild has even made him strip off the chains, with which in the shape of cloths, bandages, and felt shoes, the gout usually makes his feet helpless. He came running up to the carriage, far in advance of his much more active and still charming wife, and would not be prevented from carrying the sleeping infant, with all its pillows and wrappings through the garden into the house, and then the rest of the day ran up and down stairs unweariedly, to ask for the hundredth time if the children were comfortable and wanted nothing, though his clever wife had provided every thing in the most loving manner. "Oh! it is so pleasant to come home again," Leah exclaimed, her eyes full of tears, and with grateful affection threw herself into the arms of the new mother, whom she had secretly dreaded to meet.

Edwin was also very gay. Meeting with these excellent people had done him good. But in the depths of his soul there still lingered a gentle melancholy, a quiet depression, which even the following morning, with all its sunlight and the twittering of the birds before the windows, could not dispel. Leah instantly understood his feelings, when, without waiting for the early breakfast, he prepared to go out.

"Go, dearest," she said. "It must be done. I would accompany you, but the baby is not yet dressed. Remember me to all."

She kissed him and waving her hand, looked after him as he walked through the garden into the park. She knew that he would have no rest, until he had revisited the places around which his dearest memories clustered. He did not, however, as she anticipated, first turn his steps toward the cemetery where Balder reposed. He had not even taken any special interest in adorning the grave or providing a headstone, and when long ago Leah had asked him about the inscription--her father had quietly attended to every thing else--he had looked at her with an almost bewildered expression, and merely replied: "whatever you think best will suit me entirely," and then he had not gone there again. He confessed that his dead never seemed farther from him, than when he was near their graves, where he had never seen them while alive, and that the beloved images there paled to shadows among other shadows. But now, when in the quiet morning sunlight, he wandered across the deserted Thiergarten, it suddenly seemed even in broad daylight, as if a glorified spirit, that wore Balder's features, were walking close beside him, till he closed his eyes in order not to destroy the waking dream. All the events of the past, all the love and pleasure of their young lives together crowded upon his mind, and as he involuntarily stretched out his hand, for one moment he actually again experienced the feeling he had had in former days, when he had gently stroked his brother's soft hair.

Absorbed in these thoughts, he reached the neighborhood where the park stopped and where new streets and houses, which had sprung from the ground as if by magic, reminded him how many years he had been away. He knew that Marquard lived here, nay he even fancied that at one of the lofty windows, supported by caryatides, he recognized a face which reminded him of AdÈle.

He turned away, that he might not be recognized. He did not desire to meet old acquaintances this first morning. He soon reached the bank of the Spree, turned to the right, and walked down along the quay, watching the sparkling water. He thought how strange it was, that the only thing in which he perceived no alteration, was that which was constantly moving. While the firm brick and mortar had not resisted the inroads of time, and house after house seemed to have been renovated, the old Spree, on the contrary, showed the same face, the floating houses on it had kept the form and color, and their occupants the costume and customs they had had on the day, when with the little artist, he first made his Canaletto studies.

He knew that he would find new buildings erected over the lagune and on the site of the Venetian palace, and yet something attracted him first to this part of the Schiffbauerdamm. But when he approached the spot and saw every trace of the old scene effaced, a wide gateway in place of the canal, and on the timber yard a tall, sombre building with glittering windows, he stood still, overpowered by a sudden emotion of sadness, and feeling as if he had found, on visiting the spot where he had buried a treasure only a heap of valueless stones. Then he could not help smiling at the vehemence of his feeling. "So it is that we cling to tangible things!" he said to himself. "We may fancy ourselves ever so secure in our idealism, the senses demand their share. What was this wretched old barrack to me! And now, since I can no longer see it with my bodily eyes, I feel as if barbarians had ransacked a temple which contained the most beautiful images and where I had often been disposed to devotion."

He slowly turned toward Friedrichstrasse, intending to go to the house in Dorotheenstrasse, look around the old "tun," and then deliver the messages Reginchen and Franzelius had sent to their mother. They could send no remembrances to the father; the worthy shoemaker was no longer among the living. The last autumn had torn this modest leaf from the tree of humanity, before it showed any signs of withering. The latter part of his life, in which, following Heinrich Mohr's counsel, he had eagerly striven for progress in his own sphere of action and studied the questions relating to the culture of humanity in the closest proximity, had been the most enjoyable and richest of his life. To be sure, he was at first very angry that "mother" could not be induced to accompany him on his journeys of discovery through Berlin. But by degrees he seemed to become reconciled to this obstinacy, nay he confessed to his friends in the society, that the full depths of certain abysses of modern civilization can be measured only when men venture into them "without ladies." As he talked continually about these "abysses," certain wags endeavored to persuade him to deliver a lecture upon them. For a long time he modestly refused, but at last consented, and to the great astonishment of his faithful wife, who saw her husband become an author in his old age, he spent many weeks in filling a few sheets with extremely strange, extraordinarily worded sentences, in which he forgot eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, and even his workshop, but was as happy as a student composing his first love song in honor of a lady, to whom he had never spoken a word. When he delivered this wonderful composition, under the title of "studies of social abysses," before one of the informal meetings, as a sort of rehearsal, he was rewarded for his trouble by great and universal merriment, a form of applause, which as he had scattered through it the spice of a few puns and anecdotes, seemed very flattering. To be sure, the president, for very plausible reasons, did not think the subject of the lecture judicious for a large audience, but thanked the assiduous shoe-maker in the warmest manner for the interesting communication, so that the old man, in an exalted mood which he had never experienced before, ordered champagne, and broke the neck of more than one bottle to the welfare of progress and the education of the people.

The following morning he was found dead in his bed from a stroke of apoplexy, a triumphant smile still resting on his lips, which seemed to ask the survivors whether his being so suddenly snatched away, when a wider influence seemed about to be allotted to him, might not perhaps have been destined to show that he possessed more than mediocre ability.

But Edwin was not thinking of this worthy friend, as he walked down the long street, and plucking up his courage, turned the corner. Here the narrow little house with the steep roof and bright flesh colored paint had formerly appeared at a distance. To-day--what has happened, that his eyes at first failed to distinguish it? Had it been unwilling to outlast its old master? No, it was still standing in its place, but its appearance was completely transformed. The cheerful pink paint, which contrasted too strongly with the feelings of its present owner, had disappeared under a gloomy stone grey, with black stripes, so that it seemed to be in mourning for its old master. The sign over the shop door had been altered also, for a melancholy change had taken place in the firm, whose name now read as follows: "Gottfried Feyertag's Widow & Co.," which appendix of course meant none other than George, the head journeyman.

All the windows on the first floor were wide open. In former days such a thing had never been known to happen even in midsummer. But the little old couple had left this peaceful dwelling several years ago, to occupy that still more quiet last lodging, where protected from every draught of air, we rest on our earthly laurels. Edwin had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with these fellow lodgers, yet he now felt as if they too had been a necessary part of his life, and that not to find them again would be a real sorrow.

He approached the house with hesitating feet, ascended the few door steps and went into the entry. Through the glass panes of the inner door he could look into the shop, where Madame Feyertag, completely attired in black with a large crÈpe cap, sat in the corner behind the show case, sewing. He could not make up his mind to enter and deliver Reginchen's message; an iron band seemed to compress his chest, he feared that he should be unable to control his words. He glided cautiously past with noiseless steps and opened the door leading into the courtyard. He had intended to go up to the tun, an uncontrollable longing drew him toward the old room. Every thing here was the same; the bare, grey back building, the arbor overgrown with bean vines, the shade loving plants, the acacia tree, which it is true was now wholly dead, and did not even put forth one puny leaf--but what was that lying among the dry branches like a little heap of last winter's snow? A cat? Was it she herself, Balder's old friend, sunning her weary limbs on this lofty perch, or was it a descendant, which bore such a striking resemblance to its ancestress? He could not decide, his eyes grew dim with tears and his feet seemed paralysed; in spite of his longing, he could not cross the courtyard and mount the steep stairs. So he stood leaning against the door post with closed eyes. Just at that moment voices became audible in the workshop, and starting as if he feared to be caught here like a thief, he tore himself away and with a beating heart fled back into the street.

For a long time he walked on like a drunken man. He took no heed of the people who passed by, the glittering shops, the throng of carriages, the motley stir and bustle of life around him. But by degrees the painful agitation of his soul subsided, isolated words recurred to his mind involuntarily blended together, before he remembered that they composed an old song of Balder's, which suddenly echoed from the depths of his memory and soothed him with its mysterious magic:

Murmuring the last words aloud just as he turned into the Unter den Linden, he suddenly felt his arm seized, and turning saw a face which had been far from his thoughts.

The old Livonian baron, the enthusiastic connoisseur and friend of art, who had formerly helped the worthy zaunkÖnig to his short-lived dignity of court painter, stood before him wearing an expression of the greatest delight.

"Well," he cried, shaking Edwin's hand with boyish impetuosity, "this is what I call 'talking of a wolf and seeing the tip of his tail.' Only yesterday evening I was speaking of you for at least two hours, first condemning and then defending you when others undertook to condemn; and to-day, my dear fellow, you appear before me just as I was considering whether I should go to your father-in-law, to get your address; you see I wanted to write to you. I don't know how the worthy Herr ZaunkÖnig feels toward me, since that stupid piece of business; for gloriously as he behaved in the matter, just as I expected him to do, I was at any rate mixed up in it, and the wager--"

"You ought to know him better, my dear Baron," said Edwin, interrupting the torrent of words. "True, he is by no means such a weak dove as not to have been very much enraged against your prince at the first moment of discovery, but it was less from offended personal dignity, than indignation at the cold blooded frivolity, with which such noble MÆcenas' treat an insignificant artist. But then he grew quiet and thoughtful, collected his studies and the few pictures he had finished, and spread them before him. When I asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I am disgusting myself with my work. Let us be just: these things have emanated from an aberration of the artistic instinct.' The next day they had disappeared, and as I afterwards learned, were nailed up in a chest, loaded with brick-bats, and sunk in the lagune."

"Oh! oh! oh!" said the old man, shaking his head, "then we have really deprived him of the greatest pleasure of his life. I shall never look at the Luini I won from the prince, without a pang of conscience. Oh! oh!"

"Cheer up, dear Baron. You have only helped to prove his favorite saying, that to those who love God all things are for the best. His passion for art really emerged again, rejuvenated and vigorous, from the lagune where he had expected to bury it. Since he has lived in the suburbs, where in spite of his new and easier circumstances, he continues his old modest mode of life and industriously pursues his engraving, he has, it is true, made no attempt to return to his former 'specialty.' He says that now, when he daily sees the green fields, he perceives for the first time the full extent of the frivolous boldness, with which he daubed these wonders of God on his miserable canvass. To make amends, since what is denied always charms the soul and excites the fancy, he has how set up a new kind of genre picture; he paints views of the Spree and the green ditches, bridges, and steps leading to the water, not without skill, as it seems to me. You may suppose that he is more successful in reproducing the straight lines and grey tone, than the succulent weeds and bright sky of his former zaunkÖnigs. If you would come out to his house--he has just finished something--"

"Col sommo piacere! With the greatest pleasure. You take a hundred pound weight from my heart. But what was I going to say--what were we talking about just now? My head is growing old, friend, and nothing makes one more confused and forgetful, than intercourse with silent pictures."

"You were saying that you had been scolding about me yesterday for two hours. I am curious--"

"Yes, that was it: your book was the subject of conversation, everybody is talking about it now, so that I was at last ashamed of not having read it, though I don't exactly feel compelled to be familiar with all the new books that are talked about, not even those written by my friends. But, my dear fellow, what have you done?"

"Nothing very bad, I hope. At the worst only written a bad book."

"Something far worse, my friend--a good book, a book which in all main points is perfectly right and has the great majority of thinking men on its side. You laugh. Oh! these young people! You think it is easy to be in the right in this world. As if there could be any thing more repulsive, uncomfortable, and contrary to police regulations, than a person who looks neither to the right nor left, knows neither caution nor discretion, but calls things by their right names. Such a fool-hardy man had better go into the Theban wilderness and deliver his wisdom to the stones; but if he supposes that he will be tolerated in a society founded upon mutual cloaking and palliation of faults, feigned respect for rotten rubbish, and the superficial varnish coated over old cracks, where people do not even have the courage to lay aside the humbug of false names in the catalogues of museums, let alone calling other idols by their right names--you see, my friend, gall enters into the construction of my sentences, and I no longer know how I began. But this I do know, that if you acknowledge the authorship of such books, you will never have any prospect of making a career in our dear native land, and I sincerely regret it."

"I thank you for this regret," replied Edwin with a quiet smile. "Nay I even share it in a certain sense, though not on my own account! I am happy where I am, and offices and titles have as little charm for me, as a heap of money, which at any rate if I were a little more careful, I might procure by lecturing or writing. But in the interest of public welfare, the health and morality of our political life, I can only think with regret how far we still are, from possessing the much praised and much scouted freedom of thought. So long as the patriarchal delusion still exists, that the state has the right or even the duty, of watching over the theoretical opinions of its members, while only their acts belong to its tribunal, we shall not emerge from a dreamy and trifling minority. And this rests upon a deeper error, against which my whole book is directed, although it apparently turns upon an objectless pyschological problem--the error that metaphysics and morality are closely connected, nay are in a constant interchange of influence."

"Freedom of thought!" cried the eager old gentleman, standing still and baring his shinging bald head, as if his hat heated it, "as if it would be of any special consequence to you to obtain, this miserable acquisition, which you possess as much as the Spaniards themselves did in the darkest ages. What you want and will not obtain for a long time, is freedom to teach, freedom to transplant your thoughts into other heads, not merely by books, which will only be read by a small number, but by lectures in public halls, just as your colleague instils into his hearers the condensed milk of piety carefully tested and proved harmless. But you are wrong, my dear friend, in asking this, and that is why I blamed you, because I regret that by a premature expression of your secret thoughts, you render your own work difficult, if not impossible. Dear me, the field of philosophy is so terribly barren, people would be glad to foster and cherish a new power; but if it deals such blows to the right and left, loosens with its roots the soil on which tame kitchen vegetables have hitherto peacefully slept their nourishing plant-sleep--you have too clear a head, dear Herr Doctor, not to understand that the time has not yet come when we can need you among us."

"Not yet come, certainly, but it is near, nearer perhaps than those in high places suppose. Or how long do you think it will be, before shame at the incompleteness and artificially fostered self-deception, which is palliated by pedagogical considerations, will flush the faces of the leaders of the public, and compel them to openly acknowledge what has long since been secretly perceived and recognized? It is true that hitherto we have had other tasks to solve, questions of existence, of defence in peril, and then of our power and honor. But after we have advanced tolerably far in these, do you suppose that we, who have to support our moral dignity before other nations, will continue in this traditional track, and thereby allow the noblest intellectual possessions to be endangered? For all the canonized myths and metaphysical legends have also produced an ethical effect, not according to the measure of their truth, but by the degree of veracity in the author and hearer of the composition. And must the degree of veracity no longer be the standard of the allowableness and moral power of a lesson? Or is it not a great immorality, out of mere external considerations relating to the political education of children, to give us for the corner stone of our happiness, fairy tales and legends, which all cultivated minds believe as little, as the Greeks of Aristotle's time credited the fables of Homer and Hesiod. Of course we must not pour away the dirty water before we have fresh; but who will answer for it that we shall ever draw from the deepest, purest fountain? And who would not quench his thirst with the wild fruit that grows by the way side, rather than drink the water, which in spite of all filtering, has constantly become darker and more slimy? Oh! my dear friend, I see in your face the reply you wish to make, that the great masses are not so particular, and are satisfied with the foul stream in which weak minded theologians have washed their dirty linen for centuries, while we educated people could support ourselves on the fruits that philosophy and natural philosophy pluck from the tree of knowledge. I, too, once held the same aristocratic notions. But I can no longer reconcile myself to them. For--let alone every thing else--I do not believe that it would be dangerous for the masses, if they were educated to the truth instead of to a conventional fable, such as our histories of dogmas offer them. But even if certain village and city churches should become still more empty, than is now the case in consequence of the deadness and constantly decreasing reality in our forms of worship, has the state duties to perform only toward the uneducated? Can it, without danger, lose in the eyes of the educated that credit for veracity, which it might so easily maintain, if it did not take sides, and venture to decide questions of conscience by state institutions? Has it not also responsibilities toward the great strata between the educated and the simple people, those who will be strengthened and almost confirmed in their own frivolity by all these partly known, partly unknown things? The evil of shallowness and secularization in its worst sense existing in these circle, the preponderance of thoughtless pleasure, the whole despicable materialism of our times--do you really suppose, my friend, that all this is to be remedied by throwing up a dam composed of the crumbling ruins of a faith, which for centuries the elements have shaken, disintegrated, and scarcely left one stone upon another? I cannot believe it, even if I desired to do so, and the patching and mending of the tottering structure seems to me more wicked and dangerous, than erecting a new dam--or at least measuring and marking out the foundations, on which our children's children may put up the structure."

"Our children's children already? Oh! you sanguine mortal!"

"You are right. Who can tell? And yet how quickly intellectual transitions take place now, in comparison with former days, when the intercourse between minds was effected with so much greater difficulty! Has a century elapsed since the time when Lessing's Nathan was a fact, a challenge, a single burning need of that great heart, until now, when his timid gospel of toleration for all religions has become a commonplace, and honest toleration even of the irreligious ripened to the silent need of countless numbers?"

"I hope your book will be introduced into German seminaries, but at any rate Nathan will be turned into flesh and blood, so that a Jew may be permitted, without hesitation, to read logic and metaphysics before grown men."

"I hope the latter also," replied Edwin smiling. "The former would be a sad token of the small progress science had made in a hundred years. One of us will then I hope be a conquered station."

"No," exclaimed the old man with a solemnity which moved Edwin strangely, and seizing both his companion's hands, while he looked him steadily in the eyes, he continued: "I must tell you here, though it probably will not signify much from an old enthusiast in art, in the new building of which you speak, even though it too, after thousands of years will become mouldy and tottering, and have to be rebuilt, the foundation will remain, and among other mementoes of these days, which will deserve to be placed in the corner stone, your book will find a place. I bought it and wrote on the first page averse of the old poet enlightened by divine frenzy the poet Holderlin:

"And may this peace be with you, my dear fellow. Farewell."

He embraced his silent companion and in spite of the throng of pedestrians, kissed him on both cheeks, then hastily turned the nearest street corner and vanished from Edwin's sight.