hin.

The strategic arts of the beautiful young lady received no small degree
of additional power from the genuine effort made by her to please the
stately double millionaire. In a short time she was to such an extent
successful that one day Carl rallied her in the following humorous
strain: "Your intended is sitting in the arbor singing a most dismal
song! You will have to allow him a little more line, Louise, else you
run the risk of unsettling his brain. Moreover, I cannot be expected to
instruct a man in the mysteries of progress, if he sees, feels, and
thinks nothing but Louise."

The banker had not uttered an exaggeration. It sometimes happens that a
first love bursts forth with an impetuosity so uncontrollable, that,
for a time, every other domain of the intellectual and moral nature of
a young man is, as it were, submerged under a mighty flood. This
temporary inundation of passion cannot, of course, maintain its high
tide in presence of calm experience, and the sunshine of more ripened
knowledge soon dries up its waters. But Seraphin possessed only the
scanty experience of a young man, and his knowledge of the world was
also very limited. Hence, in his case, the stream rose alarmingly high,
but it did not reach an overflow, for the hand of a pious mother had
thrown up in the heart of the child a living dike strong enough to
resist the greatest violence of the swell. The height and solidity of
the dike increased with the growth of the child; it was a bulwark of
defence for the man, who stood secure against humiliating defeats
behind the adamantine wall of religious principles--yet only so long as
life sought protection behind this bulwark. Faith uttered a serious
warning against an unconditional surrender of himself to the object of
his attachment. For he could not put to rest some misgivings raised in
his mind by the strange and, to him, inexplicable attitude which Louise
assumed upon the highest questions of human existence. The uninitiated
youth had no suspicion of the existence of that most disgusting product
of modern enlightenment, the _emancipated_ female. Had he discovered in
Louise the emancipated woman in all the ugliness of her real nature, he
would have conceived unutterable loathing for such a monstrosity. And
yet he could not but feel that between himself and Louise there yawned
an abyss, there existed an essential repulsion, which, at times, gave
rise within him to considerable uneasiness.

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