ric had informed him that his mother had a
knowledge of it, and he was happy to meet in her an associate in his
special pursuit--for he considered botany his specialty.

He turned the conversation, aptly and sympathizingly, to the lady's
past history. He asked first, whether she would not take pleasure in
coming, at some time, to the Rhine.

She replied that she should like much to do so, and that she had a
special desire to see once more, before she died, a friend of her
youth, the present Superior of the island-convent, and principal of the
seminary.

"Are you so intimate with the Superior?" said Sonnenkamp, and something
occurred to him which he could not make clear to himself, but he
evidently impressed it upon himself to reserve this for further
consideration. He smiled in a very friendly manner, when the lady dwelt
at length, in a pleasant way, upon the strangeness of life. There sits
a lady in her cage, and here another has her nest in a little garden,
and they cannot come to each other. The older one becomes, indeed, so
much the more enigmatical seem often the interwoven threads of human
relations in the world.

She added, gently closing her eyes, that it had seemed so only since
the death of her husband, for she had been able to say everything to
him, and he had unfolded clearly and harmoniously what seemed to her a
confused puzzle.

Sonnenkamp experienced something like a feeling of devotion, as the
wife said this.

She made mention now of her life as a lady of the court, and her eyes
glistened while speaking of the Princess dowager.

"I had not only the happiness and the honor," she said, "to visit and
oversee with her, and yet oftener in her name and by her order, the
many various institutions of beneficence of which her highness was the
protectress, but I had the yet more important and often more
melancholy, though blessed and refreshing duty, to visit those, or to
institute inquiries concerning those, who applied to the Princess for
assistance, often with heartrending cries for help. The greater part of
the letters were entrusted to me, either to bring in a report
concerning them, or to answer them. This was a sad, but, as I said
before, a blessed and an ennobling service."

While the lady was thus speaking, placing at the same time her
delicate, soft hand upon her heart, as if she must repress the
overflowing feelings of this recollection, her whole countenance was
illuminated by an inexpressib