unable to go out, the community
came to my father, to unite together in prayer in his study, and, while
a little child, I used to hear much discourse on worldly events.

"What did we know of the world?

"The world belonged to the officials outside, to the soldiers. They
were, in our eyes, beings moving in a fabulous realm, into which we
could never enter.

"My brother, who was a handsome man--he resembled Herr Dournay--formed
a friendship with a young drummer named Grassler, who was billetted in
our house. We were all made perfectly happy by the reverence which this
youth showed towards my father, whom he regarded as a saint, and by his
gentleness and timidity when in his presence. I yet remember, as though
it were but yesterday, how I stood on the steps, turning round and
round with my hand one of the knobs of the balustrade, when the drummer
said to me:--

"'Yes, Rosalie, when you are grown up, and I have become an officer, I
will come back and take you away with me.'

"He went away drumming; but I kept hearing those strange words in the
sound of the drum, and still stood on the steps, twirling the knob,
while the whole world seemed to whirl with me. But I beg pardon, I am
growing too prolix."

"No, go into details as much as you like."

"But I cannot," replied Fraeulein Milch. "Well, then, they went to the
war. My brother fell. Conrad came back. He had become an ensign, and he
brought back to my father my brother's little prayer-book, its cover
and leaves pierced by a ball. My father and my mother and I sat on the
ground, mourning for seven days. Conrad came and sat with us: he
honored our foreign observances.

"Father seated himself again among his sacred books; but, whereas he
used formerly to read with a low, humming sound, he now spoke the words
aloud and with violence. He seemed obliged to put a constraint upon his
thoughts, which would go out after his son.

"Time gradually healed our wounds. My brother had long been at rest in
his grave,--who can say where? Conrad had returned to his home. I was
seventeen. It was on Easter eve; we had solemnized the Passover, and my
father discoursed much on the liberation from servitude, in
commemoration of which we keep Easter, and lamented the oppression
beneath which we were sighing still. He loved Jesus heartily and
warmly, and only bewailed unceasingly the misuse of his name as an
authority for the misery into which we, members of his race, were
plunged. That