What a strange feeling it is when we enter, in travelling, at early morn the streets of a town! The sun is gilding the steeple, the air is fresh and cool, the birds are singing in the linden-trees before the old gable-houses on the market-place--nature is awaking and blooming forth in morning beauty--and men are still lying in the bonds of sleep, within their musty, oppressive chambers. The traveller can hardly understand why no shutter opens, and no smiling face appears, to enjoy with him the glorious morning.... It is the same feeling which overcomes the lover who has just been assured of the return of his love, who looks around with beaming eye, and would like to press flowers and all to his overflowing heart. But the flowers do not mind him, and the people have the same everyday faces, worn with care or heavy with sleep and evil dreams. The sun of his love, which rouses him to a new life, has neither light nor heat for the others in the musty, oppressive chambers of their joyless, unloving existence.

Oswald felt this as he awoke on the following day, after a short, restless sleep, which had rolled like a Lethe stream over the recollections of the day before. But the soul receives impressions which no sleep can efface, unless it be the last, the eternal sleep; and thus he also had scarcely opened his eyes when the image of that glorious woman stood bright and clear before his soul. What had happened, up to that moment when the Venus image floated down to him in the forest chapel, he had forgotten; what had happened afterwards, till he had pressed Melitta once more in his arms, not far from the carriage, to which she had accompanied him through the forest, he knew it no more. But the kisses which he had given and received were still burning on his lips; the sweet breath which had mingled with his own was still there, and the loving eyes that had rested on his were still shining brightly before him. Oh, those eyes, sparkling with animation, those two bright stars which the morning dawn cannot efface, how they still shone, and sparkled, and pursued him everywhere! He saw them when he closed his eyes; he saw them when he looked out of the window up to the bright morning sky; he saw them when he lost himself in the blue shadows which filled the spaces between the tall trees down in the silent, dewy garden. He felt as if he could have wept unto death, as if he could have shouted for joy, as if his whole being might float away like a harmony of sweet sounds.... There are moments in our life when our bodies seem to us a mockery. We would like to fly away, and we are chained to the spot; we would pour forth a world of sensations in eloquent words, and our tongue stammers; we would like to be entirely different, and we remain the selfsame men. Oh, that is a torment equal only, perhaps, to that of a person in a trance, when they close the coffin and he cannot raise a finger nor move his lips to tell them--I am alive!... Oswald slipped on tiptoe into the boys' room. He wanted to see at least one dear face, Bruno's face. The first dawn was peeping into the room through the closed curtains; it was quite cool there. Bruno had again left the window open all night, as he liked to do. Oswald closed it, for the morning air was blowing in and Bruno's face was heated by a restless dream. Again he was lying there, as in the first night when Oswald saw him, with his arms crossed on his breast, dark defiance on his weird, beautiful face. But when Oswald kissed him on his forehead he did not open his eyes, as before, to smile upon him in blissful dreams; he did not open his lips, as before, to whisper to him the touching words: I love you! the dark brows almost met, and pain contracted the proud lips. At any other time Oswald would have looked upon this as a mere accident, but now, in his momentarily softened humor, it pained him. "Is he still angry," he thought, "because I left him at home yesterday? Does he feel that he has no longer all my love? And yet, do I not love him all the more now?" He pushed the hair gently from the boy's forehead; he wrapped the covering closer around his delicate limbs, and crept out of the room again, with heavy heart. A sad anticipation of a great sorrow passed through him. Was it to happen to him, to Bruno, and alas! perhaps, even to her, after this blessed happiness! He hastened down into the garden to breathe more freely in the open air, and wandered about in the walks and avenues, and shook the dew from the branches into his feverish face, and looked with his dim, wearied eyes into the pious, childlike eyes of the flowers. In the kitchen-garden he found the gardener at work. He was a man, at least, and Oswald longed to hear a human voice. He spoke to the man, a thing he had never done before; he asked him if he was married? Whether he had any children? Did he love his children very much? The man gave him those awkward, half answers, which such people generally return to our questions--it is not that they feel less than the higher classes, but they are not accustomed to analyze their feelings and to clothe them in appropriate words. It is this which often gives them the appearance of indifference. He became more talkative when he was questioned about his work; he spoke with delight of the glorious weather, magnificent sunshine, alternating with warm rains and thunder-storms. But Oswald only heard him half, and left the old man suddenly, who lifted his cap, looked after him in astonishment, shook his head and continued his work. Oswald wandered on and on restlessly, but soon the garden felt too confined; he passed through the open space enclosed by the high wall, and hurried out into the fields, from the fields into the forest, and on and on towards the roar which fell upon his ear, first indistinctly, then louder and louder.

Then he stepped out from under the beech-trees, which formed a dense canopy overhead with their broad branches, upon the chalk cliffs, and the holy, eternal sea lay before him, vast and infinite. Far out the white combs of the waves glittered in the light as they came on with irresistible power, and broke at his feet with incessant thunder amid the enormous rocks on the beach--wave after wave, ever new ones and new ones, innumerable, overwhelming, marvellous. Not a sail was to be seen in the whole view, only, far on the horizon a dark trail of smoke was moving slowly from east to west It came from the smoke-stack of a steamer--who knows from whence? and whither bound? Above the foaming breakers white gulls were fluttering; now they threw themselves screaming into the briny flood, and now they reappeared and winged their way whither? High up in the air a sea-eagle was drawing his majestic circles, higher and higher, till it appeared to Oswald's eye but a black moving point. But even the magnificent sight of the sea could not fill Oswald's heart to-day. The ocean is not as large and not as deep as the heart of man; and however he had formerly admired the music of the waves, he had heard a more marvellous music a few hours ago. He envied the eagle, however. "One beat of your powerful wings and you fly over forests and fields far off to Melitta's house."

He started up and hastened back to the chÂteau, up to the top of the tower; perhaps he could see Melitta's house from there; and he shouted with the joy of surprise as he really could discern the uppermost gable-end of her house rising just above the edge of the forest. He shuddered with mysterious delight; he felt as if he had touched the hem of her garment. In love, as in religion, everything is mystical. Why are millions of faithful believers strengthened when they turn their faces to the East at prayers? Why is it a comfort to lovers merely to stretch out the hand in the direction of the beloved one?

The hour at which Oswald usually began his lessons had struck. He went to his room, but he did not find the boys, who, contrary to the rules of the house, were still down stairs at breakfast. His own breakfast was on the table.

Somebody knocked gently at the door, and the old baron entered, holding a bundle of papers in his hand. After the first words of polite inquiry, he excused himself on account of the unseasonable interruption, and said:

"You could do us (he never said me, since he was unable to think of himself without his wife), you could do us a great favor, doctor."

"I presume it is in connection with the papers which you hold in your hand, baron?"

"Yes, yes. You know that Grenwitz and Stantow will have to be rented again at Michaelmas. Now we should like to have the two farms surveyed anew, as the plats which were made twenty-five years ago are very indifferent. The first letter, therefore, which we would beg you to write for us, is to a surveyor. His name is Albert Timm, and he lives in Grunwald. You would ask him to come immediately, in order to make some arrangement. The second letter is for our lawyer, also in Grunwald. Anna Maria wants him to revise the contracts. Here is a copy of the last. Anna Maria has marked on the margin what changes she desires in the new contracts. If you could copy this document for us--it is asking a good deal----"

"Give it to me, baron. When do you want the papers?"

"If you could write them till dinner-time? We have told the boys that they would drive down to Stantow with us. You do not object?"

"I suppose it is all right."

"Well then, good-by, doctor, and pardon our troubling you with these matters. But you know, Anna Maria----"

"No excuse, baron."

Any one who has ever been in the state of mind in which Oswald had been, before the baron came to him with his formidable request, will readily understand why the young man hurled the whole package of papers contemptuously into a corner as soon as he was alone again.

He threw himself on the sofa and closed his eyes to dream of Melitta. But the more he tried to recall the image of the beloved, the more obstinately the wrinkled face of the baron presented itself instead. Then again it would change into the face of the Brown Countess; then the Reverend Mr. Jager made him a face, and suddenly Bruno was standing before him, clad in long, flowing white garments. Oswald tried to laugh at the mad masquerade, but when he looked at the boy's face his laugh died on his lips, his hair stood on end, he shivered with cold--that waxy-white complexion, contrasting so strangely with the bluish-black hair, the wide open fixed eyes, a nameless something in those lack-lustre, broken, and yet eloquent eyes--that was not Bruno, that was Death, Death in person, under the beloved form of Bruno! Oswald started up with a wild cry. The terrible vision had vanished, but it took several minutes before the young man could convince himself that it had been only a vision. He had seen everything so very distinctly; every piece of furniture in the room, the ray of the sun that came in at the window, and the atoms of dust dancing in the light.

Suddenly he heard the cracking of a whip and the grating of wheels on the gravel before the great portal of the chÂteau. The baron was riding off with the boys.

Oswald walked hurriedly up and down in his room.

"Why must I see that fearful vision just to-day? Must Bruno die, die before me, in order that I may love Melitta? Is it impossible to love a boy and a beloved one at the same time, and with equal fervor? Is the heart of man so small that one sentiment must crowd out another to find room there? and is faithlessness a law of nature?"

The young man had calmed down, but the ambrosial beauty of the summer morning had disappeared. The sun was without beauty for him; the song of the bird was no longer sweet to his ears; the overflowing fountain of joy in his heart was dried up.

You are just in the right frame of mind, he said to himself, to do the dry piece of work; and he picked up the papers in the corner where he had thrown them. He sat down at his table and began to write. First the letter to the surveyor--that was easy enough; the letter to the lawyer also came happily to an end, though not without a few secret imprecations; but in order to make a copy of the two contracts he required all his patience. The work was tedious enough, but what annoyed him far more were the notes of the baroness, in which she tried to explain her reasons for the changes she desired to be made. The rent was raised in both cases to double the amount, a fact which excited Oswald's astonishment all the more, as he had heard the steward say repeatedly: Mr. Pathe, the tenant of the two farms, is an exceedingly industrious, able, and economical man, and yet he is so situated that a single bad year must ruin him infallibly. In one note she said: "Mr. P. is a negligent monsieur, and his fine steward W. is not much better. The kinder one is to such people the lazier they grow." In another: "The rent payable in kind, and to be delivered at the chÂteau, must in any event be doubled, for we can safely assume that we receive after all only half what is due, while the other half remains in the hands of these people." The following words were marked out, but so that they could still very easily be read: "If anything should be left unused, it can easily be sold every Saturday in the market town." In another place: "Could it not be stipulated that the stewards, headmen, housekeepers, etc., of the tenants must be confirmed by the baron? We would then know what sort of people we have to do with, and we would have some hold on their honesty."

"And these men have a fortune of millions!" said Oswald, and angrily threw down his pen. "Let somebody else copy that stuff! Am I to be the most humble tool of these selfish, haughty, heartless aristocrats?"

And the young man's heart grew heavier and heavier. It was not the first time he was reminded of the awkwardness, the inconsistency of his present position. And what had induced him to accept it, except his friendship for Professor Berger, whose advice he had followed, contrary to his own conviction? He remembered that he had not answered his odd friend's last letter. So he sat down and wrote:--

"'There is nothing wrong in the world except a contradiction'--this is, if I remember right, one of your pet maxims, and the fundamental law by which you judge all men's doings. Well, then! You were altogether wrong to persuade me to accept this position, for it consists, in whatever light you may look at it, of nothing but contradictions. I to instruct others, who need instruction myself! I, the enemy of the aristocracy, who hate all nobles, in the bosom of a noble family--half friend and half servant! And what is still worse is, that I see myself share the enjoyments of this aristocratic life as if it were all harmless, and I had never trembled with awe at the words: 'The son of man hath not where to lay his head.' Were not these words written for me also, who think no cushion too soft, no carpet too yielding, no dish too delicate, and no wine too costly? I, who, far from being disgusted at such luxury, not only disdain gulping it down at once, but savor it slowly, thoughtfully, and accept it as something that is self-understood, as something I was born and bred to enjoy. Can it be that the great baroness was right the other day when she said that all so-called friends of the people, now and in ancient times, had only thought of their own interest? One, she said, sells his principle a little dearer than the other--one takes money for his apostasy, another place, a third something else--but that is all the difference. Then I objected, of course, vehemently--it was in the first days of my stay here--but I do not know whether I would have the courage to do so now. For, my friend, I think of Marie Antoinette, and think if another woman as beautiful and as bright as the unfortunate queen, a woman with the eyes, the sweetness of voice, the charms of--well, of my ideal, of the woman I could love, I would have to love--if she said to me: Abjure your principles and I will love you!--Oh God! She will not say so, she cannot say so, for I must believe that in the fairest body dwells the fairest soul; but, if she should be so imbued with the prejudices of her class--how then? Oh, I feel, I know I should not be able to resist her words, her tears; I know that my proud strength would melt like wax under the fire of her glances and the warmth of her kisses; that I should not be able to tear myself away from her soft words; that my oppressed heart would have no word of anger and of scorn to utter, but only the one word: I love you!

"You smile: oh, my dear friend, why can a mere supposition excite me to such a degree? You think such fantastic hot-house plants cannot thrive in the cool air of reality. Well, the whole thing is but a problem, and would to God it could remain problematical forever."