gister, that people before the Flood were
really worse than they are nowadays?"

"Oh, much, much better," answered the Candidate.

"Are you fond of roasted hare, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
Proprietor.

"Are you fond of roasted hare, Magister?" whispered Petrea waggishly to
Jacobi.

"Brava, Petrea!" whispered her brother to her.

"Are you fond of cold meat, Cousin Louise?" asked the Landed
Proprietor, as he was handing Louise to the supper-table.

"Are you fond of Landed Proprietor?" whispered Henrik to her as she left
it.

Louise answered just as a cathedral would have answered: she looked very
solemn and was silent.

After supper Petrea was quite excited, and left nobody alone who by any
possibility could answer her. "Is reason sufficient for mankind? What is
the ground of morals? What is properly the meaning of 'revelation'? Why
is everything so badly arranged in the State? Why must there be rich and
poor?" etc., etc.

"Dear Petrea!" said Louise, "what use can there be in asking those
questions?"

It was an evening for questions; they did not end even when the company
had broken up.

"Don't you think, Elise," said the Lagman to his wife when they were
alone, "that our little Petrea begins to be disagreeable with her
continual questioning and disputing? She leaves no one in peace, and is
stirred up herself the whole time. She will make herself ridiculous if
she keeps on in this way."

"Yes, if she does keep on so. But I have a feeling that she will change.
I have observed her very particularly for some time, and do you know, I
think there is really something very uncommon in that girl."

"Yes, yes, there is certainly something uncommon in her. Her liveliness
and the many games and schemes which she invents--"

"Yes, don't you think they indicate a decided talent for the fine arts?
And then her extraordinary thirst for learning: every morning, between
three and four o'clock, she gets up in order to read or write, or to
work at her compositions. That is not at all a common thing. And may not
her uneasiness, her eagerness to question and dispute, arise from a sort
of intellectual hunger? Ah, from such hunger, which many women must
suffer throughout their lives, from want of literary food,--from such an
emptiness of the soul arise disquiet, discontent, nay, innumerable
faults."

"I believe you are right, Elise," said the Lagman, "and no condition in
life is sadder, particularly in more advanced y