urs' walk from home
before, was tossed by varied emotions. At first she praised her native
village: "it lies upon the hills, and the fields have a soil like
flitches of bacon." She only regretted that the Neckar did not flow
across the mountain, so that the water might not be so scarce.

The stars twinkled brightly: Emmerence looked up to them, and said,
"What a splendid sight it is to see those millions of stars just like a
thousand lights twinkling on a rusty pan,--only much finer and more
holy; and up there sits our Lord God and keeps watch. How much one
loses by sleeping in the course of a year! And if you don't look about
you you don't even see it when your eyes are open. He was right: I look
out for things much more diligently now, and great pleasure it gives
me." A shooting star came down. Raising her hands, Emmerence cried,
"Ivo!" She stood still and looked blushing to the ground: she had
revealed the inmost wish of her heart; for it is well known that what
you wish when a shooting star falls will surely come to pass.

Still walking briskly on her way, Emmerence said again, "Oh, if I only
had such a mill, wouldn't I work like a horse? Oh, my goodness! how
fine it must be to look at one of these little properties and say,
'It's mine!' I should just like to know whom he would marry if he
shouldn't be a minister. God is my witness, I'd run this errand for him
just as willingly if he were to take another. Just as willingly? No,
not quite: but still right willingly. He is right not to be a minister:
to have nobody in the world to yourself, and belong to nobody, is a
sorry piece of business. If it was our Lord God's wish that people
shouldn't get married, he'd have made nothing but men and let them grow
on trees. Well, if these a'n't the most wicked thoughts!" Emmerence
closed her soliloquy, and ran the faster, to escape from her own
reflections. With an effort, she directed her attention to external
things, and, listening to the rush of waters which moved forward
unceasingly like herself, "What a strange thing," thought she, "is such
a stream of water! It runs and it runs. Ah, you'd like to just lumber
along the road without working, wouldn't you? No, you don't, my
darling; you must carry the rafts and drive the mills: every thing in
the world must work, and so it should be. Why, that's Ivo's trouble,
too: he wants to work hard, and not only preach and read mass and pore
over his books. That isn't work at all, nor a