re they destined to
forget their vows of gratitude.

* * * * *

CHAPTER V.

FOUR YEARS' LABOR.

Four years of work, of industry, of productive activity, had passed
away since the stormy year of 1760. They had produced but little
alteration in the life of Gotzkowsky and his daughter.

Gotzkowsky toiled and worked as he always had done; his factories
were enlarged, his wealth increased and his fame as a merchant sounded
through the whole world.

But all this would he have given, if he could have seen the light on
the lips, the rosy glow on the cheek of his daughter, as in bygone
days. But the beautiful and impassioned young girl had altered into
the pale, serious, silent young woman, who had learned to throw
the veil of quiet resignation over the secret of her heart, and to
suppress any manifestation of pain.

Elise had grown old _internally_--old, despite her two-and-twenty
years; she looked upon the life before her as a joyless, desert waste,
which she had to traverse with bleeding feet and broken heart; and in
the desolation of her soul, she sometimes shuddered at the death-like
apathy and quiet of her feelings, broken by no sound, no note, not
even the wail of woe.

She was without a wish, without a hope. Grief had spent itself on her.
She wept no more--she wrestled no longer with her love, for she
had conquered it. But she could not rise again to any new joys of
life--she could only be resigned. She had accepted life, and she bore
it as does the bird shut up in a gilded cage, robbed of freedom and
fresh air, and given in return a brilliant prison. She, too, was an
imprisoned bird; and her wounded heart lay in the cage of her breast,
sorrowful and infinitely wretched. She prayed to God for peace,
for resignation, no longer for happiness, for she did not believe
happiness any more possible. She had sunk into that apathy which
desires nothing more than a quiet, dreamy fading away. Her grief was
deficient in the animating consolation of the thought that "it came
from God." Real and sacred suffering, which does come from God, and
is imposed upon us by fate, always carries with it the divine power
of healing; and at the same time that it casts us down and humbles us,
raises us again, steels our courage, and makes us strong and proud
to suffer and to bear. Quite different is that misfortune which comes
from man--which is laid upon us by the envy, hatred, and malice of
manki