aughter Jenny to the Hirsau cloister.

The daughter specially attracted me. She was pretty, well educated,
and possessed so much independence and keenness of mind that this alone
would have sufficed to render her remarkable.

Afterwards I often thought simultaneously of her and Nenny, yet they
were totally unlike in character, having nothing in common save their
steadfast faith and the power of looking with happy confidence beyond
this life into death.

The devout Protestant had created a religion of her own, in which
everything that she loved and which she found beautiful and sacred had a
place.

Jenny's imagination was no less vivid, but she used it merely to behold
in the form most congenial to her nature and sense of beauty what faith
commanded her to accept. For Jenny the Church had already devised and
arranged what Nenny's poetic soul created. The Protestant had succeeded
in blending Father and Son into one in order to pray to love itself.
The Catholic, besides the Holy Trinity, had made the Virgin Mother the
embodiment of the feeling dearest to her girlish heart and bestowed on
her the form of the person whom she loved best on earth, and regarded as
the personification of everything good and beautiful. This was her older
sister Fanny, who had married a few years before a cousin of the same
name.

When she at last appeared I was surprised, for I had never met a woman
who combined with such rare beauty and queenly dignity so much winning
amiability. Nothing could be more touching than the manner in which this
admired, brilliant woman of the world devoted herself to the sick girl.

This lady was present during our conversations, which often turned upon
religious questions.

At first I had avoided the subject, but the young girl constantly
returned to it, and I soon perceived that I must summon all my energies
to hold my ground against her subtle dialectics. Once when I expressed
my scruples to her sister, she answered, smiling: "Don't be uneasy on
that score; Jenny's armour is strong, but she has sharp arrows in her
quiver."

And so indeed it proved.

She felt so sure of her own convictions that she might investigate
without peril the views of those who held a different belief, and beheld
in me, as it were, the embodiment of this opportunity, so she gave me no
peace until I had explained the meaning of the words pantheism, atheism,
materialism, etc.

At first I was very cautious, but when I perceived th