all go to
Mulhausen. Wilt thou come with me?"

"Yes, uncle."

Neither willing nor unwilling was the tone, and the answer appeared to
dissatisfy the other, who said:

"'Yes, uncle'--what does that mean? Dost thou not wish to go?"

"Oh, yes! I would as soon go as stay at home."

"But the distance, Bruno," here interposed the countess, in a low tone.
"I am sure it is too far. He is not too strong."

"Distance? Pooh! Hildegarde, I wonder at you; considering what stock you
come of, you should be superior to such nonsense! Wert thou thinking of
the distance, Sigmund?"

"Distance--no," said he, indifferently.

"Come with me," said the elder. "I want to show thee something."

They went out of the room together. Yes, it was self-evident; the man
idolized the child. Strange mixture of sternness and softness! The
supposed sin of the father was never to be pardoned; but natural
affection was to have its way, and be lavished upon the son; and the son
could not return it, because the influence of the banished scapegrace
was too strong--he had won it all for himself, as scapegraces have the
habit of doing.

Again I was left alone with the countess, sitting upright over her
embroidery. A dull life this great lady led. She cared nothing for the
world's gayeties, and she had neither chick nor child to be ambitious
for. Her husband was polite enough to her; but she knew perfectly well,
and accepted it as a matter of course, that the death of her who had
lived with him and been his companion for twenty-five years would have
weighed less by half with him than any catastrophe to that mournful,
unenthusiastic child, who had not been two years under their roof, and
who displayed no delight in the wealth of love lavished upon him.

She knew that she also adored the child, but that his affection was hard
to get. She dared not show her love openly, or in the presence of her
husband, who seemed to look upon the boy as his exclusive property, and
was as jealous as a tiger of the few faint testimonies of affection
manifested by his darling. A dull journey to Berlin once a year, an
occasional visitor, the society of her director and that of her
husband--who showed how much at home with her he felt by going to sleep
whenever he was more than a quarter of an hour in her presence--a little
interest of a lofty, distant kind in her townspeople of the poorer sort,
an occasional call upon or from some distant neighbor of a rank
approaching her