hy had Ottilia fainted? She recommended hard study--thinks
me idle, worthless; she has a grave intelligence, a serious estimation
of life; she thinks me intrinsically of the value of a summer fly. But
why did she say, 'We change countries,' and immediately flush, break and
falter, lose command of her English, grow pale and swoon; why? With this
question my disastrous big heart came thundering up to the closed doors
of-comprehension. It was unanswerable. 'We change countries.' That is,
she and Miss Sibley change countries, because the English woman marries
a German, and the German princess--oh! enormous folly. Pierce it,
slay it, trample it under. Is that what the insane heart is big with?
Throughout my night-watch I had been free of it, as one who walks
meditating in cloisters on a sentence that once issued from divine lips.
There was no relief, save in those pencilled lines which gave honest
laughter a chance; they stood like such a hasty levy of raw recruits
raised for war, going through the goose-step, with pretty accurate
shoulders, and feet of distracting degrees of extension, enough to craze
a rhythmical drill-sergeant. I exulted at the first reading, shuddered
at the second, and at the third felt desperate, destroyed them and sat
staring at vacancy as if I had now lost the power of speech.

At last I flung away idleness and came to a good resolution; and I
carried it through. I studied at a famous German university, not far
from Hanover. My father, after discussing my project with me from the
point of view of amazement, settled himself in the University town,
a place of hopeless dulness, where the stones of the streets and the
houses seemed to have got their knotty problem to brood over, and
never knew holiday. A fire for acquisition possessed me, and soon an
ungovernable scorn for English systems of teaching--sound enough for the
producing of gentlemen, and perhaps of merchants; but gentlemen rather
bare of graces, and merchants not too scientific in finance. Mr.
Peterborough conducted the argument against me until my stout display
of facts, or it may have been my insolence, combined with the ponderous
pressure of the atmosphere upon one who was not imbibing a counteracting
force, drove him on a tour among German cathedrals.

Letters from Riversley informed me that my proceedings were approved,
though the squire wanted me near him. We offered entertainments to the
students on a vast scale. The local newspaper sp