ced them to make their escape together. There
is one other motive which persons like us cannot enter into. I tried
for a long time to discover it, and believe at last that I have
succeeded: it is the consciousness of beauty. I am a beauty: that is a
principle on which a whole system is founded. Other people are only
made for the purpose of seeing and admiring the beauty. Bella committed
an act of treason against herself when she married Clodwig: she could
not have done it except in a moment of forgetfulness of this great
principle. But how can we judge such people aright? The longer I live,
the more clearly I see that human beings are not alike: they are of
different species."

"You want to provoke us by heresies."

"By no means: that is the reason why this anti-slavery fever is
distasteful to me. This claiming equality for all men is a wrong."

"A wrong?"

"Yes. Men are not all the same kind of beings; one is a nightingale
that sings on a tree; another is a frog that croaks in the marsh. Now,
to require of the frog that he should sing up in a tree is a wrong, a
perversion of Nature. Let the frog alone in his marsh, he is very well
off there, and to him and his wife his song sounds as sweet as that of
the bird to his mate. Men are of different kinds."

The Major called from his room to know what the Doctor was talking so
loudly and excitedly about. Fraeulein Milch soothed him by telling him
it was nothing for a sick man to hear, though she confessed that they
had been talking of Bella. As she re-entered the sitting-room, a
messenger arrived from Villa Eden with intelligence which summoned the
Doctor and the Professorin thither instantly: Frau Ceres was
dangerously ill.

The Doctor and the Professorin made all haste back to the Villa.

CHAPTER V.

THE BLACK HORROR.

"Henry, come! Henry, come back! these are your trees, and your house.
Come back! I will dance with you. Henry, Henry!"

Such was Frau Ceres' incessant cry.

She refused all nourishment; she insisted on waiting till her husband
said "Dear child, do take something." Only after the most urgent
entreaties of Fraeulein Perini, did she at last consent to eat
something. She wanted to embroider, and took up her work; but the next
moment she laid it down again.

Weeping and lamenting, she went through the gardens and greenhouses.

Fraeulein Perini had the greatest difficulty in soothing