w and despair. It is too true,"
sobbed the old woman, in a voice choked with tears. "But your hand
raised me up--your arms warmed me into life--your voice encouraged me,
and gave me force. You brought me to your home, fostered me, and nursed
me--me, an unknown outcast, whose very history you did not even seek to
know--whose silence and secrecy you respected. Your kindness saved me
from despair, and gave me hope; and I lived on, in order to pay, were
it possible, my debt of gratitude to my preserver."

"Good Magdalena," said the young man soothingly, taking her withered
hands between his own, "I did but the duty of a Christian man."

"And you love her, then?" resumed Magdalena, recalling her young
preserver to his promised confidence.

"Love her!" exclaimed Gottlob with an impassioned fervour, which gave
his gentle face a look of inspiration. "Love her! She is my vision by
day--my dream by night. When I read, it is her voice that seems to speak
to me from the Minnesinger's poesy. When I paint, it is her form that
grows under my pencil. When I pray, it is her seraphic smile that seems
to beam upon me down from heaven. I wander forth: it is to meet her in
her walks. I kneel in the church: it is to breathe the same air as she!"
At these words, Magdalena covered her face, and uttered a suppressed
groan. "I rise from my labour, which of old was a labour of love to me,
and now is oft an irksome task: it is to watch for her coming forth into
the garden. I have neither rest by day nor by night. Where there was
repose in my heart, there is now eternal fever."

"And she?" said Magdalena with a low tone of anxiety, as if fearful of
the answer she might receive. "Does she know--does she return your
love?"

"How should she deign to remark a worm like me?" was the young artist's
answer. "How should I dare to breathe my affection in her ear, were it
even possible for me to approach her? And yet she looks upon me kindly,"
continued the young lover, encouraging himself in vague hopes, at the
same time that he condemned their presumption. "When I doff my cap to
the noble Amtmann's daughter, as she ambles forth by her proud father's
side, she will answer with so sweet a smile, and greet me with a wave of
her riding-switch--with what a grace!--and then grow red thereby, and
then grow pale. When I offer her the holy water as she passes from the
church, she will cast down her trembling eyelids, and yet will see
withal who offers it; and