se his hair; he became rheumatic. As soon as the
thermometer began to fall he shivered; if it rained he stayed at home.
He began to study medicine, all by himself. He took up the various
remedies of our remote ancestors. He read the works of Paracelsus, and
declared that all those who had written on medicine since Paracelsus
were quacks and poison-mixers.

His ideas with regard to music became also more and more strange and
bizarre. He had discovered an old Nuremberg composer by the name of
Staden. His opera entitled "Seelewig"--the first of all German operas,
by the way--he insisted was the very zenith of musical art, eminently
superior to Mozart and Bach. He played arias and melodies from
"Seelewig" to Dorothea.

"Now, when you can get that," he exclaimed, "when you come to the point
where I can see from your playing what is in it and at the bottom of it,
Heaven and Hell in one stroke of the bow, then, you little jackanapes,
I'm going to make you my heiress."

That was precisely what Dorothea had been longing to hear; it confirmed
her calculations and crowned her dreams. To hear these words roll from
her uncle's tongue had been her ambition; and she had spared no pains to
arrive at her goal.

Herr Carovius was not spoiled. Since the days his sister had kept house
for him, no woman had ever concerned herself about him in the least. But
at that time he was young; and he had wheedled himself into believing
that the women were merely waiting for him, that all he had to do was to
beckon to them with his finger and they would come rushing up to him in
battalions. But because he had dreaded the idea of making an unhappy
selection, and by reason of the expense of the enterprise, he had
neglected to give the necessary signal, and hence had been so generous
as to leave them in complete possession of their freedom.

He never knew until now that the soft, little hand of a woman could
bring out effects as if they had come from the touch of a magic wand.
"What a pleasant little phiz Doederlein's offspring has," he thought. And
if Dorothea, who had made him believe that she was visiting him on the
sly, though her father had given his consent long ago, chanced to remain
away for a few days, he would become wild with rage, and go into the
kitchen and chop wood merely to enjoy the sensation of destroying
something.

Moreover, the music lessons Dorothea was taking at Herr Carovius's
expense gave the girl a new conception of her a