e infidels.

Why should not this vision become a reality? Doubtless it owed its origin
to a memory, for Wolff Eysvogel had been fired with love for her sister
while Els was winding laurel around his helmet.

After the Honourable Council had resolved that the youths belonging to
noble families, who had fought in the battle of Marchfield and returned
victorious, should be adorned with wreaths by the maidens of their
choice, Fate had appointed her sister to crown Eysvogel.

At that time Wolff had but recently recovered from the severe wounds with
which he had returned from the campaign. But while he knelt before Els
and his eyes met hers, love had overmastered him so swiftly and
powerfully, that at the end of a few days he determined to woo her.

Meanwhile his own family resolutely opposed his choice. The father
declared that he had made an agreement with Berthold Vorchtel to marry
him to his daughter Ursula, and withdrawal on his son's part would
embarrass him. His grandmother, the arrogant old Countess Rotterbach,
agreed with him, and declared that Wolff ought to wed no one except a
lady of the most aristocratic birth or an heiress like Ursula. Her
daughter Rosalinde Eysvogel, as usual, was the echo of her mother.

Herr Ernst Ortlieb, too, would far rather have seen his Els marry into
another home; but Wolff himself was a young man of such faultless honour,
and the bride he had chosen was so eager to become his, that he deemed it
a duty to forget the aversion inspired by the suitor's family.

As for Wolff, he had so firmly persisted in his resolve that his parents
at last permitted him to ask for his darling's hand, but his father had
made it a condition that the betrothal, on account of the youth of the
lovers, should not be announced till after Wolff had returned from Milan,
where he was to finish the studies commenced in Venice. True, everyone
had supposed that they were completed long ago, but Eysvogel senior
insisted upon his demand, and afterwards succeeded in deferring the
announcement of the betrothal, until the resolute persistence of Wolff,
who meanwhile had entered the great commercial house, and the wish of his
own aged mother, a sensible woman, who from the first had approved her
grandson's choice and to whom Herr Casper was obliged to show a certain
degree of consideration, compelled him to give it publicity.

A few days later Herr Casper's brother died, and soon after his estimable
old mother. He use