"Glad to see you, esteemed colleague! Kindest regards from Frau von Berkow, and here she sends you Bemperlein and Julius to look at; cut copies are not taken back by the publisher!"

With these words there entered a small pale gentleman, with spectacles on his nose, and dressed in an old-fashioned but neat costume. He might be thirty or more, and held a boy by the hand.

"Heartily welcome!" said Oswald, hastily rising from his corner of the sofa in which he had been sitting, lost in thought, and half embarrassed; he shook hands with the new-comer. His eye rested with deepest interest on the boy, the son of the woman he loved. Julius was a charming boy. The blouse of dark green velvet, which he had fastened around the waist with a broad leathern belt, gave him the appearance of a charming little page. Dark curls hung gracefully around his well-shaped head; his face was almost girlish in its beauty and delicacy, and Oswald trembled as he held his soft warm hand for a moment in his own and looked into his large light-brown eyes. He felt as if he had touched Melitta's hand, as if he had looked into Melitta's eyes.

"It is very kind in you, Mr. Bemperlein," he said, mastering his confusion, "to have found time to come and see me. To tell the truth, I partly expected you to-day, especially because Bruno thought it was absolutely impossible that Julius should leave without having said good-by to him."

Here the door opened and Bruno rushed in, a huge slice of bread and butter in his hand. "Hurrah, Julius, sugar man!" he cried. "Lucky that you came! I should have run after you to Grunwald and whipped you in the open street. There! take a bite! The last piece of bread and butter we shall share for a long time! And now come! Let us run once more through the garden and the wood. You are going to spend the evening here, Mr. Bemperlein?"

"Non Monseigneur!" replied the latter, who had sunk into a chair and was wiping the perspiration from his brow; "our moments are counted. You would, therefore, oblige me by not extending your excursions beyond the garden, and especially by not throwing Julius again into a ditch, as you did the last time."

"Julius, did I throw you into a ditch?"

"No; but you pulled me out of a ditch when I had fallen in."

"Well, then, come along, sugar man," cried Bruno, lifting the light boy in his arms and carrying him bodily out of the room.

"That is a boy!" said Mr. Bemperlein. "By my life, what a boy! Really, my dear sir, I admire you."

"How so?"

"Because I see you dressed in a light summer coat instead of triple brass, like Horace's first sailor, and as everybody ought to be dressed, in my humble opinion, who has to do with such a sea-monster, such a shark, such a spiny ray--I mean Bruno."

"For heaven's sake, Mr. Bemperlein, if you wish us to be friends, do not tell me that you dislike Bruno."

"I dislike Bruno! I love him as I love a storm at sea which I can watch from the shore; like a wild horse that runs away with somebody else; like a thunder-storm which strikes a tree at a few miles' distance.--Apropos! that was a terrible storm yesterday! We did not reach home till eleven o'clock. Frau von Berkow told me you had been caught by the rain in the forest cottage."

"And you will really go to-morrow?" said Oswald, to turn the conversation.

"I will," said Bemperlein, in a plaintive tone. "I will not at all, my dear sir, but I must. That's the trouble. Alas! if I had my will I would never leave Berkow again as long as I live; and not even afterwards, for I would ask it as a last favor to be buried there. And, really, I do not like to think what is to become of me when I am gone. If you had lived, as I have done, seven years at one and the same place, and that place had been Berkow, and you had taken root there, so as to know every sparrow who builds his nest near your window, and every horse that is in the stable, and if you were then to try to tear yourself away, you would feel how painful that is."

The good fellow took again his handkerchief and passed it, under the pretext of wiping off the perspiration, several times over his eyes.

"I can understand that perfectly," said Oswald, with unaffected sympathy.

"You cannot understand that, my dear sir! You see, I commenced last year to train some ivy against my window, and all the summer and winter I fancied how pretty it would look in fall, when the window should be shaded by the leaves, from top to bottom, and we--I mean my canary-bird and my tree-frog--could hide behind the broad leaves. You do not know what very broad leaves the ivy has--as large as grape-leaves--and this fall the window will be completely filled up. But the room will be empty, and the sun will send its rays through the leaves, and the raindrops will run down on them, and not a soul will derive any pleasure from them."

"I think I can feel that with you," said Oswald

"Impossible, my dear sir, impossible!" sighed the other. "I tell you there is no such window in the wide world. In the deep embrasure stands an arm-chair, covered with black morocco, which Frau von Berkow gave me as a birthday present two years ago--a cushion, which she has herself embroidered for me on my last birthday, lies against the back--well, I cannot describe it all. But then, to sit there on a summer evening, when the voices of Frau von Berkow and Julius come up to me from the garden, and the smoke of my cigar floats away through the leaves----"

With these words Mr. Bemperlein blew two huge blue clouds of smoke from his cigar through the open window at which he sat, and shook his head sadly, as if to say, Here, that produces not the slightest effect; but you ought to see it in my arm-chair!

"Yes, indeed----" suggested Oswald.

"No, my dear sir, you cannot possibly feel as I feel. You do not know what a charming boy Julius is. I have been there seven years now, and if he has given me a single unpleasant hour, a single minute even, my name is not Anastasius Bemperlein. And then--Frau von Berkow--you do not know her."

Oswald turned his face, for he felt how the blood rose in his cheeks.

"You have no idea what an angel of goodness that lady is! What do I not owe her--all! Before I came to Berkow, I knew just as much of the air and the sun, of everything that is beautiful on earth, as a mole. I was a real bear, a perfect rhinoceros, and if I now look a little more like a man, I owe it all to her. And what has she not done for me in every respect! Once, I remember, I was laid up for weeks with typhoid fever. The first person I recognized, when I awoke from my stupor, was Frau von Berkow, and then old Baumann. It was an afternoon in summer, just as to-day. The bed curtains were half closed. Baumann and his mistress were standing at a little distance from me, near a table. 'If I am not to be sick myself, Baumann, I must ride out this afternoon for half an hour,' said Frau von Berkow. 'Don't let Bemperlein die in the mean time, you hear!' 'Yes, ma'am,' said old Baumann. But you must not think, my dear sir, that I think this kindness on the part of Frau von Berkow is anything like a special favor due to my special merits--far from it. I have seen Frau von Berkow lavish the same grace and goodness upon entirely indifferent persons. I really believe the heart of the lady is not made of the same material of which other hearts are made. I think she cannot help doing good and making others happy, just as a canary-bird must sing and a squirrel must jump, because it is their nature and they cannot help it. Pardon me, my dear sir, for detaining you with these things, which cannot possibly interest you, but really, my heart is too full--I cannot keep it from overflowing, and I trust you will not, for all that, set me down as a sentimental fellow."

"I can only assure you, Mr. Bemperlein, that your confidence is not misplaced, even though you will not allow me to sympathize with you fully."

"I will not allow you! It is my greatest wish that you should do so, especially as I came here, to tell the truth, with the very selfish design to ask your advice in a very important matter of business."

"My advice?"

"Yes, yours! I will tell you candidly how it happens that I come to you, as people used to go to a hermit in the woods to relieve them of their scruples. You have been appointed to that important voice by an authority from which I know no appeal--I mean by Frau von Berkow. I tried to explain to her this morning what I shall presently tell you, if you permit me. She listened to me with angelic patience from beginning to end, and then, placing her hand on my arm, she said, 'Dear Bemperlein, you ask for my advice?' 'Of course, madam,' said I. 'Well, then,' said she, 'dear Bemperlein, go over to Grenwitz, present my compliments to Doctor Stein, and tell him at full length what you have just told me, and what he says is my answer.'"

On Oswald's lip a proud smile began to appear. He saw in Melitta's humility a compliment paid him; he felt that she could give no clearer expression to her love than this avowal, that henceforth her life was bound up with his.

"How you are going to relieve me from my embarrassment," continued Mr. Bemperlein, "that is your part; you have been appointed my confidant, and you must play the part as well as you can. The thing is simply this, or rather not simply, but is, a very complicated matter. I am--I have--no, I cannot tell you all that here, I must have the pure heavens above me, for the thoughts which have brought about such a revolution in my mind have come to me under the pure heavens. You would do me a great favor, my dear sir, if you would accompany me to Berkow. I will make my confession on the way. Now I will go and call Julius, and say farewell to the baroness. You can get ready in the mean time, but, I pray, do not keep me waiting long. Ten minutes are amply sufficient, and I could not stand a tÊte-À-tÊte with the baroness for more than that. Then, au revoir in ten minutes; it will do no harm if it is in nine minutes."

When Oswald came down, Mr. Bemperlein was just bowing himself out of the sitting-room.

"Not a step further, baron! Uff! Now let us be off, my dear sir. Where is my Julius?"

They found the boys in the courtyard. Bruno was sitting on the edge of the basin of the headless Naiad, and was arranging Julius' curly hair while he was standing between his knees.

"How will you get along without your pony, Julius?"

"Well, I don't know. Perhaps I'll send for it."

"You happy fellow. I believe you would send for your mamma and for Mr. Bemperlein, if you could not get on without them. I wish I could go with you; I do not want to see this wretched hole any longer."

"Mamma says you are very fond of Doctor Stein--is that so?"

"I fond of him?" said Bruno, raising his head defiantly; "why should I be fond of him? He is perfectly indifferent to me. He does not care for me! He! Why, yesterday he has been running about all day long without me, and today he has not looked at me once; he is perfectly indifferent to me, you hear? You can tell your mamma so. Perfectly indifferent!" And thereupon he hid his face in Julius' curls and sobbed bitterly.

"What is the matter, Bruno?"

"The matter? Nothing! What should it be?"

"Bruno, I am going with Mr. Bemperlein," called Oswald across.

"Doctor, I am going with Julius!" Bruno called back.

"Where is Malte?"

"Am I Malte's keeper?"

"Malte is in the baron's room," said Mr. Bemperlein. "The drive has fatigued him very much, and the baron has made him lie down on the sofa, where he is snugly coiled up like a kitten. Which way shall we go?"

"Suppose we go through the forest?" said Oswald.

They crossed the drawbridge, which had not been raised for two hundred years, through the linden avenue into the wood, Mr. Bemperlein and Oswald ahead, Bruno and Julius following at a little distance. Bruno had put his arm around Julius' neck; he had no interest to-day in anything but his friend, whom he had always loved dearly, and on whose brown eyes he had written more than one poem, and whom he now, in the hour of parting, overwhelmed with caresses.

"You are going away, Julius," he moaned; "and when you have been away for three days you will have forgotten me."

"I shall never forget you, Bruno!"

"Ah! Are you quite sure of that? You have a better memory, then, than Oswald--I mean Doctor Stein. He told me the same thing, that he loved me like a brother, and since night before last he has forgotten that I am in the world. Now he is probably telling Mr. Bemperlein that he loves him like a brother--just look how he takes his arm! And nobody cares for me! Ah! I hate him! I hate everybody--except you, Julius."

While the poor boy was thus pouring out his love and his sorrow into his friend's bosom, and felt clearly that he also did not understand him, and that he was alone, quite alone on this joyless earth, Mr. Bemperlein spoke thus to Oswald: