en she is unharnessed, my next choice
is soon settled; a girl of low rank, when she is as beautiful as my
Agatha, is dearer to me than a dozen countesses."

"Flatterer," murmured Agatha, winding her arms about his neck, while
her kisses burnt upon his lips.

"Gracious Heaven!" cried a deep-base voice, and the lovers started from
each other in terror.--Onophrius Goldmann stood at the open door, his
left hand hid in his doublet, and supporting himself with the right,
for he was exhausted almost to fainting; but his eyes shot lightning at
the delinquents. Francis in vain sought to recover from the shame of
surprise to his usual braving tone, and Agatha wrung her hands and
wept.

"So you have at last succeeded, master Friend, in seducing my child,"
said the wretched father. "May God reckon with you for it!--and you,
obstinate girl, have I not warned, prayed, threatened? Did you not
swear to me to shun the man who makes you thus unhappy? How have you
deceived me!--a long time deceived me, with your wicked artifices; for,
from what I now see, your sin is not of to-day. These are the
consequences of the infernal love-songs and romances, which ought to be
utterly forbidden to women; their place is at the hearth and the
spindle. The mad trash, invented by the dry brains of the poetasters to
tickle your nobles, is for them poison. There it is they learn to build
up air-castles in the midst of reality--there it is that they find
every passion painted in fine colours, and, before they dream of it,
their honour is gone, and--God deliver us!--their eternal salvation
also."

"I give you my word," at length stammered Francis, "that Agatha's
honour shall one day be redeemed before the world."

"You!" cried Onophrius,--"a husband! Heaven have mercy on us! Would you
send your wife after the murdered Netz, or, like count Gleichen, get a
dispensation at Rome for a double wedlock?"

"Not so rough, old man," exclaimed Francis in a tone of menace; "I
don't like to hear such language, nor does it become the servant
towards his master's son."

"That is the curse which rests upon the poor and lowly," exclaimed
Onophrius, crawling to the nearest chair, and sinking down upon it,
exhausted. "It is our curse that we are powerless, and weaponless, and
lawless, against the great who wrong us, while, over and above all, we
must spill our blood for our tyrants. Maimed in your defence, I return
to my hovel, find you in the arms of my seduced chil