for her father's
"old flame," took a footstool and sat near her, and kissed her hand as
soon as she could possess herself of it.

The lady devoted herself exclusively to her old worshipper, cast the
beams of her beautiful eyes upon him, and smiled bewitchingly.

"This is a great delight!" thought Elise, as she wiped away a traitorous
tear; "but I will keep a good face on it!"

The Candidate, who perceived all this, quickly withdrew from the lady's
enchanted circle, in which he also had been involved, and taking "the
baby" on his knee, began to relate a story which was calculated as much
to interest the mother as the child. The children were soon around him:
Petrea herself forsook her new flame to listen, and even Elise for the
moment was so amused by it that she forgot everything else. That was
precisely what Jacobi wanted, but it was not that which pleased the
Judge. He rose for a moment, in order to hear what it was which had so
riveted the attention of his wife.

"I cannot conceive," said he to her in a half-whisper, "how you can take
delight in such absurdity; nor do I think it good for the children that
they should be crammed with such nonsense!"

At length Emelie rose to take her leave, overwhelming Elise with a flood
of polite speeches, which she was obliged to answer as well as she
could, and the Judge, who had promised to show her the lions of the
place, accompanied her; on which the rest of the guests dispersed
themselves. The elder children accompanied the Candidate to the
school-room to spend an hour in drawing; the younger went to play;
Petrea wished to borrow Gabriele, who at the sight of a gingerbread
heart could not resist, and as a reward received a bit of it; Elise
retired to her own chamber.

Poor Elise! she dared not at this moment descend into her own heart; she
felt a necessity to abstain from thought--a necessity entirely to forget
herself and the troubling impressions with which to-day had overwhelmed
her soul. A full hour was before her, an hour of undisturbed repose, and
she hastened to her manuscript, in order to busy herself with those rich
moments of life which her pen could call up at pleasure, and to forget
the poor and weary present--in one word, to lose the lesser in the
higher reality. The sense of suffering, of which the little annoyances
of life gave her experience, made her alive to the sweet impressions of
that beauty and that harmonious state of existence which was so dear to