stocratic expedients long ago; pride is a weapon, but a two edged
sword, as it were, a shield that pierces the arm with its sharp edges.
Now my heart, which is not thoroughly aristocratic, has run away with
me again. And for what do we have friends, except to abuse them? But
we'll be sensible and talk of more cheerful things. Your friend
Marquard, for instance, what do you really think of him? He has such
contradictory traits of character, that he resembles people with one
blue and one black eye, we never know which is of the right color. So
he too in the same moment is grave and frivolous, honest and not to be
trusted. A singular combination."

Edwin made no reply, he did not seem to have heard what she said. After
a long pause, during which he had gazed intently into vacancy, he
suddenly exclaimed: "And the child--your child? If your womanly nature
awoke too late, were you not a mother soon enough to at least find
consolation in that?"

"Oh! my friend," she replied, relapsing into her former tone, "these
are strange, sad mysteries. This child--I might perhaps have been able
to reconcile myself to the way in which I became its mother, but
unfortunately it looked so much like its father that it reminded me
with a thrill of horror, at what a price I had obtained it. Pray spare
me the memory of the time when, each day, I asked myself whether I
could endure to remain longer in this world! There are mothers who care
little for their children and would rather dance or flirt, than be
troubled with the charge of them. I--with my freshly aroused need of
loving, of pressing something close to my heart--rose every day with
the resolve to live only for the child; but when I approached its
cradle and saw its delicate, cold, aristocratic little face, with the
eyelids often half closed like its father's--I could not overcome my
repugnance, could not hug and kiss it, rejoice in its innocent voice
and baby ways. I sat beside it as if petrified, and it seemed as if I
could read my doom in its features, as if the silent little mouth said:
'Mother; why have you done this, why have you sold yourself, profaned
yourself without love? Now I shall atone for your sin, as you did for
that of your mother, who at least did not commit it of her own free
will.' And then, when it died, and I saw it lying before me in the
coffin, with the haughty pale little lips distorted, the eyes so
pitifully sunken--oh! my friend, it was strange that I did not fa