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By Root 9886 0

and a dashing hussar had fallen in love with her, a von if you please; but his parents opposed a marriage with a person of her condition, and she had been sent to Heidelberg to forget him. She could never, never do this, and corresponded with him continually, and he was making every effort to induce an exasperating father to change his mind. She told all this to Philip with pretty sighs and becoming blushes, and showed him the photograph of the gay lieutenant. Philip liked her best of all the girls at the Frau Professor’s, and on their walks always tried to get by her side. He blushed a great deal when the others chaffed him for his obvious preference. He made the first declaration in his life to Fräulein Hedwig, but unfortunately it was an accident, and it happened in this manner. In the evenings when they did not go out, the young women sang little songs in the green velvet drawing-room, while Fräulein Anna, who always made herself useful, industriously accompanied. Fräulein Hedwig’s favorite song was called Ich liebe dich (I love you); and one evening after she had sung this, when Philip was standing with her on the balcony, looking at the stars, it occurred to him to make some remark about it. He began:

“Ich liebe dich. ”

His German was halting, and he looked about for the word he wanted. The pause was infinitesimal, but before he could go on Fräulein Hedwig said:

“Ach, Herr Carey, Sie müssen mir nicht ‘du’ sagen—you mustn’t talk to me in the second person singular.”

Philip felt himself grow hot all over, for he would never have dared to do anything so familiar, and he could think of nothing on earth to say. It would be ungallant to explain that he was not making an observation, but merely mentioning the title of a song.

“Entschuldigen Sie, ” he said. “I beg your pardon.”

“It does not matter, ” she whispered.

She smiled pleasantly, quietly took his hand and pressed it, then turned back into the drawing-room.

Next day he was so embarrassed that he could not speak to her, and in his shyness did all that was possible to avoid her. When he was asked to go for the usual walk he refused because, he said, he had work to do. But Fräulein Hedwig seized an opportunity to speak to him alone.

“Why are you behaving in this way?” she said kindly. ‘You know, I’m not angry with you for what you said last night. You can’t help it if you love me. I’m flattered. But although I’m not exactly engaged to Hermann I can never love anyone else, and I look upon myself as his bride.”

Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression of a rejected lover.

“I hope you’ll be very happy,” he said.

XXIV

Professor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out a list of books which Philip was to read till he was ready for the final achievement of Faust, and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on a German translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip had studied at school. It was the period in Germany of Goethe’s highest fame. Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude toward patriotism he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy to be one of the most significant glories of national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer’s greatness is that different minds can find in him different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe because his works, Olympian and sedate, of fered the only refuge for a sane mind against the onslaughts of the present generation. There was a dramatist whose name of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the winter before one of his plays had been given at the theater amid the cheers of adherents and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard discussions about it at the Frau Professor’s long table, and at these Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he beat the table with his fist, and drowned all opposition with a roar of his fine deep voice. It was nonsense and obscene nonsense.