THE LOST SON.

THE LOST SON.

About the middle of the seventeenth century there lived in the town of
Berne a worthy matron named Helena Amthor, the widow of a very rich and
respected burgher and town councillor, who after twelve years of happy
married life, left her with two children while she was still in the
prime of her age and beauty. Nevertheless she declined all the
advantageous and honourable offers of second marriage made to her,
declaring on every such occasion that she had now only one thing to do
on earth, and that was to bring up her children to be good and worthy
members of society. But as it often happens that too great anxiety
defeats itself and achieves the very reverse of what it aimed at, so it
proved here. The eldest child, a boy, who was eleven when his father
died--an intelligent but very self-willed fellow--rather required the
discipline of a man's strong hand than the tender but too indulgent
care of a mother who positively idolised him as the image of the
husband she had prematurely lost, and who never knew how to oppose any
of his impetuous wishes. The consequence was that the older the young
Andreas grew, the worse he behaved, and rewarded his mother's unwise
love by almost breaking her heart. When she first came to some
recognition of his faults it was already too late. The remonstrances
and admonitions of his uncles were all in vain, and even the grave
censure and heavy fines he incurred, from the town authorities, owing
to his irregular conduct, tamed his rude nature as little as did his
mother's tears. At length Frau Helena made up her mind to the greatest
pang she had known since her husband's death--to a parting with her
son, whom a cousin in Lausanne, a wealthy merchant, now offered to take
into his house, in the hope that change of scene and regular work might
exercise a healthy influence on the reckless youth. Andreas, who was
twenty years old at the time, consented willingly enough to leave the
old-fashioned "bear-garden," as he called his native town, for a
strange place, where he promised himself, spite of his cousin's
_surveillance_, a far freer and more amusing life. Neither did
he show the least tender feeling on parting from his mother and his
little sister of twelve, Lisabethli, but kept his large stock of
travelling-money far more carefully in his belt than his mother's
counsels in his heart. No wonder, therefore, before