cious Frau called her always Madame.

"The keeper is right," added Joseph. "Fraeulein Perini is a woman with
the strength of seven cats, and a marten into the bargain."

Eric wished to hinder this revelation, but Joseph begged him to allow
everything to be spoken out, and to pardon him as being a University
acquaintance. He only added the information that Pranken was to marry
the daughter of the house.

"Ah! that is a beauty! not exactly a beauty, but lovely and charming;
formerly she was so frolicsome, no horse was too wild for her, no storm
on the Rhine too violent; she hunted like a poacher, but now she is
only sad--always sad--vilely sad."

Eric was glad when the gossiping youth suddenly drew out his watch, and
said:--

"In one minute the master gets up, and then I must be near him. He is a
man always up to time," he added as he went away.

Like confused echoes which gradually mingle into one sound, Eric
thought upon all that he had now heard about the daughter of the house.
And was not this the girl with wings, who had met him the day before
yesterday in the convent? Involuntarily standing still, and staring at
a hedge, a whole life-picture presented itself to his mind. Here is a
child sent to the convent, removed from all the world, from all
intercourse with people; she is taken out of the convent, and they say
to her: "Thou art the Baroness Pranken!" and she is happy with the
handsome and brilliant man, and all the dazzling splendor of the world
is showered upon her through him. It seems as if he had called it all
into being, and this without knowing what kind of a man her husband
is,--it will be indeed a good thing for her not to know.

He shook his head. What was the little cloister-plant to him?

Eric saw nothing more of the gorgeous beauty of the garden; he hastened
out of it with his eyes fixed upon the ground, wandered through the
park, and just as he came out of a copse of trees by the pond,
Sonnenkamp met him. He had a foreign look in his short gray
plush-jacket fastened with cord, and was especially glad to find Eric
already up, proposing to himself to show him the house and grounds.

He directed his attention first to a large tuft of prairie-grass; he
smiled as Eric imagined a stampede of buffaloes, and he made a peculiar
motion of throwing, in describing how he had caught many a one with the
lasso.

Then he led Eric to an elevation set out with beautiful, plane-trees,
which he pointed out a