tself abroad!" answered he: "here at home there are
only two ways in which it can publicly develop itself--in the pulpit,
and at a meeting in the shooting-house. Yet it is true that now we
are going to have a Diet and a more political life. I feel already,
in anticipation, the effect; we shall only live for this life, the
newspapers will become merely political, the poets sing politics the
painters choose scenes from political life. 'C'est un Uebergang!'
as Madame La Fleche says. [Author's Note: Holberg's Jean de France.]
Copenhagen is too small to be a great, and too great to be a small city.
See, there lies the fault!"

Otto felt an irresistible desire to contradict him in most things which
he said about home. But the cousin parried every bold blow with a joke.

"Copenhagen must be the Paris of the North," said he, "and that it
certainly would become in fifty, or twice that number of years. The
situation was far more beautiful than that of the city of the Seine. The
marble church must be elevated, and become a Pantheon, adorned with the
works of Thorwaldsen and other artists; Christiansborg, a Louvre, whose
gallery you visit; Oester Street and Pedermadsen's passage, arcades such
as are in Paris, covered with glass roofs and flagged, shops on both
sides, and in the evening, when thousands of gas-lamps burnt, here
should be the promenade; the esplanades would be the Champs Elysees,
with swings and slides, music, and mats de cocagne. [Author's Note:
High smooth poles, to the top of which victuals, clothes, or money are
attached. People of the lower classes then try to climb up and seize the
prizes. The best things are placed at the very top of the pole.] On
the Peblinger Lake, as on the Seine, there should be festive water
excursions made. Voila!" exclaimed he, "that would be splendid!"

"That might be divine!" said Sophie.

Animation and thought lay in the cousin's countenance; his fine features
became striking from their expression. Thus did his image stamp itself
in Otto's soul, thus did it place itself beside Sophie's image as she
stood there, with her large brown eyes, round which played thought and
smiles, whilst they rested on the cousin. The beautifully formed white
hand, with its taper fingers, played with the curls which fell over her
cheeks. Otto would not think of it.

CHAPTER XXIX

"And if I have wept alone, it is my own sorrow."--GOETHE

Latterly Otto had been but seldom at Mr. Berger's. He