to the circumstances, and returned with
these prospects and hopes to the Superior.

Charlotte's confinement was now approaching; she kept more in her own
room. The ladies who had gathered about her were her closest companions.
Ottilie managed all domestic matters, hardly able, however, the while,
to think what she was doing. She had indeed utterly resigned herself;
she desired to continue to exert herself to the extent of her power for
Charlotte, for the child, for Edward. But she could not see how it would
be possible for her. Nothing could save her from utter distraction,
except patiently to do the duty which each day brought with it.

A son was brought happily into the world, and the ladies declared, with
one voice, it was the very image of its father. Only Ottilie, as she
wished the new mother joy, and kissed the child with all her heart, was
unable to see the likeness. Once already Charlotte had felt most
painfully the absence of her husband, when she had to make preparations
for her daughter's marriage. And now the father could not be present at
the birth of his son. He could not have the choosing of the name by
which the child was hereafter to be called.

The first among all Charlotte's friends who came to wish her joy was
Mittler. He had placed expresses ready to bring him news the instant the
event took place. He was admitted to see her, and, scarcely able to
conceal his triumph even before Ottilie, when alone with Charlotte he
broke fairly out with it; and was at once ready with means to remove all
anxieties, and set aside all immediate difficulties. The baptism should
not be delayed a day longer than necessary. The old clergyman, who had
one foot already in the grave, should leave his blessing, to bind
together the past and the future. The child should be called Otto; what
name would he bear so fitly as that of his father and of his father's
friend?

It required the peremptory resolution of this man to set aside the
innumerable considerations, arguments, hesitations, difficulties; what
this person knew, and that person knew better; the opinions, up and
down, and backward and forward, which every friend volunteered. It
always happens on such occasions that when one inconvenience is removed,
a fresh inconvenience seems to arise; and in wishing to spare all sides,
we inevitably go wrong on one side or the other.

The letters to friends and relations were all undertaken by Mittler, and
they were to be writt