directly, but she would say; 'Go, if you can be without me; I
indeed cannot live without you, but if you can, I will not disturb you;
I am accustomed indeed to make every sacrifice to you.' Of course the
thing was not done, and my sisters gave their vexation the air of
devotion, and I, who did not belong to the compact, was forced to pay
for their humours. My courage failed me. I endured to be taken to task
even by my youngest sister. O my friend! when I observed all this,
which appeared to me unnatural and wrong, I would then go into the most
solitary corner of the garden, and give my hot tears their course; for
I seemed to myself vile and reprobate to confess all this to myself,
and to be unable to stifle my sense of truth, which had been awakened
and formed by my father. I was often so inexpressibly miserable that I
prayed for death. There would come times too, when, as I could not help
seeing how every body that came to our house paid respect and homage to
my sisters, and avoided me, I appeared to myself vile and despicable.
But when I struggled to be like the others, all my strength failed me,
and my arms dropped unnerved by my side.--But did you not hear a noise
in the next room?"

"No, my sweet girl," said Madame von Halden: "every body is asleep, it
cannot be any thing more than a cat."

"Kunigunde married," proceeded Dorothea; "the men who paid their
addresses to me, only teazed me by their coxcombry, or shocked me by
their ill breeding. I could not conceive that any one could love me,
without my most fervently loving him, and on that account their
affected hyperbolical phrases appeared to me so insipid, and I could
not possibly believe in their passion. All however was still tolerable,
till Baron Wallen came to our house; he soon gained possession of my
mother's affections, and the slavery now grew quite insupportable. Now
began a parade to be made on a great scale with the love which my
sisters bore each other and my mother; it was the talk of the whole
province; when strangers came, it was like a drama in which all the
virtues were displayed. O forgive me! you and the lonely night will not
carry my words farther; you have yourself indeed seen their way, and
heaven must alter my feelings, or pardon them. But what was truly
alarming was, that in this smooth Baron there moves a very satyr under
the priestly robe. He took a liking to Clara, to Clementine too; but
the girls, great as was the reverence which the