to rest, and he fell
asleep with a "Good night, Annele! good night, you dear creature!"

He had strange sensations in the morning. He remembered what he had
dreamt. His dream placed him on the top of the high rock on the crest
of the hill behind his house, and he was always lifting his foot, and
trying to soar into the air.

"What nonsense to allow myself to be plagued by a mere dream!" So he
tried to forget it, and, quickly effacing it from his memory, he looked
at Annele's coin.

A messenger presently arrived from the Landlady, to say that Lenz was
to come there at eleven o'clock. Lenz dressed himself in his Sunday
suit, and hurried to his uncle Petrowitsch.

After he had repeatedly rung at the bell, and was at last admitted, his
uncle came towards him, looking considerably disturbed.

"What brings you here at this early hour?"

"Uncle, you are my father's brother."

"Yes; and when I left the country I left everything to your father. All
that I possess, I earned for myself."

"I don't want any money from you, but to represent my father for me."

"How? what?"

"Uncle, Annele of the 'Lion' and I are attached to each other, truly
attached; and Annele's mother knows about it, and has given her
consent; and I am to propose for her to-day, at eleven o'clock, in due
form to her father, according to custom; and I wish you to go with me,
as you are my father's brother."

"So?" said Petrowitsch, cramming a large piece of white sugar into his
mouth, and walking up and down the carpeted room.

"Really?" said he, after a few turns. "You will get a sharp, quick
wife, and I must say you show considerable nerve. I never should have
imagined that you had sufficient courage, to take such a wife."

"Why courage? What has that to do with it?"

"Nothing bad; but I had no idea you were so vain as to try for such a
wife."

"Vain? What vanity is there in it?"

Petrowitsch smiled, and made no reply.

Lenz continued: "You know her, uncle. She is prudent and frugal, and
her family most respectable."

"That is not what I mean. It is vanity on your part to imagine that you
can supply to a girl of twenty two the place of the numerous guests
that swarm in the Inn, all complimenting her and flattering her. It is
vanity in you to wish to secure for yourself alone, a woman who can
conduct a large inn. A prudent man takes no wife who will make him
spend half his substance, if he wishes to please her. And to rule such
a woman is