h succeeding hour and the privations of the hour, and, as if in the
depths of a smooth water, to gather fold over patient fold of the
submerged self, safe from wounds; the happiness was not noble, but it
breathed and was harmless, and it gave me rest when the alternative was
folly and bitterness.

Visitors were coming to the palace to meet the prince, on his return with
my father from England. I went back to the University, jealous of the
invasion of my ecstatic calm by new faces, and jealous when there of the
privileges those new faces would enjoy; and then, how my recent deadness
of life cried out against me as worse than a spendthrift, a destroyer! a
nerveless absorbent of the bliss showered on me--the light of her morning
presence when, just before embracing, she made her obeisance to the
margravine, and kindly saluted me, and stooped her forehead for the
baroness to kiss it; her gestures and her voice; her figure on horseback,
with old Warhead following, and I meeting her but once!--her walk with
the Professor, listening to his instructions; I used to see them walking
up and down the cypress path of the villa garden, her ear given to him
wholly as she continued her grave step, and he shuffling and treading out
of his line across hers, or on the path-borders, and never apologizing,
nor she noticing it. At night she sang, sometimes mountain ditties to the
accompaniment of the zither, leaning on the table and sweeping the wires
between snatches of talk. Nothing haunted me so much as those tones of,
her zither, which were little louder than summer gnats when fireflies are
at their brightest and storm impends.

My father brought horses from England, and a couple of English grooms,
and so busy an air of cheerfulness, that I had, like a sick invalid, to
beg him to keep away from me and prolong unlimitedly his visit to
Sarkeld; the rather so, as he said he had now become indispensable to the
prince besides the margravine. 'Only no more bronze statues!' I adjured
him. He nodded. He had hired Count Fretzel's chateau, in the immediate
neighbourhood, and was absolutely independent, he said. His lawyers were
busy procuring evidence. He had impressed Prince Ernest with a due
appreciation of the wealth of a young English gentleman, by taking him
over my grandfather's mine.

'And, Richie, we have advanced him a trifle of thousands for the working
of this coal discovery of his. In six weeks our schooner yacht will be in
the Elbe