t is
I who ought to be blamed, not he."

No more was said that night.

Some time the next morning I read the letters. They were filled with
vague, inflated, sentimental descriptions of his inner life and feelings;
entirely egotistical, and intermixed with quotations from second-rate
philosophers and poets. There was, it must be said, nothing in them
offensive to good principle or good feeling, however much they might be
opposed to good taste. I was to go into the next room that afternoon for
the first time of leaving my sick chamber. All morning I lay and
ruminated. From time to time I thought of Thekla and Franz Weber. She
was the strong, good, helpful character, he the weak and vain; how
strange it seemed that she should have cared for one so dissimilar;
and then I remembered the various happy marriages when to an outsider
it seemed as if one was so inferior to the other that their union
would have appeared a subject for despair if it had been looked at
prospectively. My host came in, in the midst of these meditations,
bringing a great flowered dressing-gown, lined with flannel, and the
embroidered smoking-cap which he evidently considered as belonging to
this Indian-looking robe. They had been his father's, he told me; and
as he helped me to dress, he went on with his communications on small
family matters. His inn was flourishing; the numbers increased every
year of those who came to see the church at Heppenheim: the church which
was the pride of the place, but which I had never yet seen. It was built
by the great Kaiser Karl. And there was the Castle of Starkenburg, too,
which the Abbots of Lorsch had often defended, stalwart churchmen as
they were, against the temporal power of the emperors. And Melibocus was
not beyond a walk either. In fact, it was the work of one person to
superintend the inn alone; but he had his farm and his vineyards beyond,
which of themselves gave him enough to do. And his sister was oppressed
with the perpetual calls made upon her patience and her nerves in an
inn; and would rather go back and live at Worms. And his children wanted
so much looking after. By the time he had placed himself in a condition
for requiring my full sympathy, I had finished my slow toilette; and I
had to interrupt his confidences, and accept the help of his good strong
arm to lead me into the great eating-room, out of which my chamber opened.
I had a dreamy recollection of the vast apartment. But how pleasantly i