ill perhaps come to see that it would have been good
for you if you had lent a more willing ear to my maternal counsellings;
will perhaps come to deplore that you rewarded the love I cherished for
you with reproaches and bitterness!"

"Then let me go!" said Sara, with gentler voice; "we do not accord well
together. I embitter your life, and you make--perhaps you cannot make
mine happy. Let me go with him who will love me with all my faults, who
can and will open a freer scope to my powers and talents than I have
hitherto had."

"Ah, Sara," returned Elise, "will you obtain in this freer field a
better happiness than can be afforded you by a domestic circle, by the
tenderness of true friends, and a happy domestic life?"

"Are you then so happy, my mother?" interrupted Sara with an ironical
smile, and a searching glance; "are you then so happy in this circle,
and this domestic life, which you praise so highly, that you thus repeat
what has been said on the subject from the beginning of the world. Those
perpetual cares in which you have passed your days, those trifling cares
and thoughts for every-day necessities, which are so opposite to your
own nature, are they then so pleasant, so captivating? Have you not
renounced many of your beautiful gifts--your pleasure in literature and
music--nay, in short, what is the most lovely part of life, in order to
bury yourself in concealment and oblivion, and there, like the silkworm,
to spin your own sepulchre of the threads which another will wind off?
You bow your own will continually before that of another; your innocent
pleasures you sacrifice daily either to him or to others: are you so
very happy amid all these renunciations?"

The Judge rose up passionately; went several times up and down the room,
and placed himself at last directly opposite to Sara, leaning his back
to the stove, and listening attentively for the answer of his wife.

"Yes, Sara, I am happy!" answered she, with an energy very unusual in
her; "yes, I am happy! Whenever I make any sacrifice, I receive a rich
return. And if there be moments when I feel painfully any renunciation
which I have made, there are others, and far more of them, in which I
congratulate myself on all that I have won. I am become improved through
the husband whom God has given to me; through my children, through my
duties, through the desires and the wants which I have overcome at his
side--yes, Sara, above all things, through him, his