become _Sub_-Librarian, at a salary of about 15_l._, with all the
Library duties to do; an older and more favoured gentleman, perhaps in
lieu of pension, enjoying the Upper Office, and doing none of the
work.

Under these continual pressures and discouragements poor Reinwald's
heart had got hardened into mutinous indignation, and his health had
broken down: so that, by this time, he was noted in his little world
as a solitary, taciturn, morose and gloomy man; but greatly respected
by the few who knew him better, as a clear-headed, true and faithful
person, much distinguished by intellectual clearness and veracity, by
solid scholarly acquirements and sterling worth of character. To bring
a little help or cheerful alleviation to such a down-pressed man, if a
wise and gentle Christophine could accomplish it, would surely be a
bit of well-doing; but it was an extremely difficult one!

The marriage was childless; not, in the first, or in any times of it,
to be called unhappy; but, as the weight of years was added,
Christophine's problem grew ever more difficult. She was of a
compassionate nature, and had a loving, patient and noble heart;
prudent she was; the skilfulest and thriftiest of financiers; could
well keep silence, too, and with a gentle stoicism endure much small
unreason. Saupe says withal, 'Nobody liked a laugh better, or could
laugh more heartily than she, even in her extreme old age.'--Christophine
herself makes no complaint, on looking back upon her poor Reinwald,
thirty years after all was over. Her final record of it is: "for
twenty-nine years we lived contentedly together." But her rugged
hypochondriac of a Husband, morbidly sensitive to the least
interruption of his whims and habitudes, never absent from their one
dim sitting-room, except on the days in which he had to attend at the
Library, was in practice infinitely difficult to deal with; and seems
to have kept her matchless qualities in continual exercise. He
belonged to the class called in Germany _Stubengelehrten_ (Closet
Literary-men), who publish little or nothing that brings them profit,
but are continually poring and studying. Study was the one consolation
he had in life; and formed his continual employment to the end of his
days. He was deep in various departments, Antiquarian, Philological,
Historical; deep especially in Gothic philology, in which last he did
what is reckoned a real feat,--he, Reinwald, though again it was
another who got the