d Kosch
at this moment, so great and strong was it, and lead her with a smile
to the distinguished old man, saying, "This is the red-haired beauty
from the Rauchfuss farm, who crossed our path so often as a wild
youngster when we used to make excursions up to the Ettersberg. Our
hills produce such wonders."

The girl bowed before the dignified old man and kissed his hand
respectfully. He patted her auburn hair softly. "Happy man for whom
this sunny head shall shine! Joy and love beam in her eyes." He turned
to his princely friend. "What an ocean of beneficent happiness lies in
the young creatures of the earth!"

"If it only didn't dribble away in such cursed little drops!" growled
the prince, raising his blunt nose and beckoning to the coach to draw
near.

"Ah, but from another point of view that means watering the earth! Have
no care, pretty child--whichever way it comes!"

The grave, distinguished man followed his prince into the coach, and
both waved a farewell to the pretty girl, who made the deep curtesy she
had learned so thoroughly from Frau Kummerfelden. Every girl in Weimar
who had ever been to the old actress's sewing-classes understood how to
make a proper court reverence; "for," said the good woman, "in a little
town like this, where there are so many princes both of the blood and
of the intellect, a certain _savoir vivre_ should prevail, even in the
streets." In things of this kind she was a past mistress.

The engraver had stood as if under a spell; his meeting with his
"brother," the old master, had come and gone. But he had played no part
in it. He looked at his rough, sinewy hands. "Those are hands for you!"
he cried in his heart. "To gain nothing but a halfway-decent suit of
clothes, four shirts, two pairs of shoes, and a miserable hole to live
in, they have become as rough and lined as if they had conquered a
world. _He_ has conquered a world--and his hands, at his age, have
remained soft, moved by the soul. Ah, plebeian, you won't go and knock
at his window! But the girl whom he caressed with his eyes and passed
his hand over her hair--this little goose--!" He grasped angrily at
Beate's hand. "Let us go, Mamsell," he cried--"let us go!"

And amidst all the still May greenness, under the shelter of the tender
shrubs, he caught the startled girl to him, kissed her and buried his
face in the glory of her hair, which his "brother" had stroked and
the perfume of whose young life intoxicated him. "I