"Not yet," Magelone replied. "Thus far grandpapa has only informed us both, Johann Leopold and myself, of his desire. He called us into his study and addressed us very solemnly." "And you?" Johanna asked. "Johann Leopold bowed, as he always does, like an automaton,--_cela n'engage à rien_,--and I suppose I smiled. But what does it matter what we say? You may be sure that if we employed all the eloquence in the world to combat grandpapa's arrangements it would avail nothing. At Christmas, when all the noble family are assembled here, the betrothal will take place, and at the hour that grandpapa shall appoint we shall stand before the altar and exchange rings whether we will or not." "That I cannot understand," said Johanna. "You will understand it when you have once seen how terrible grandpapa's anger is," Magelone rejoined,--"when he frowns, and his eyes flash from beneath his bushy white eyebrows, and his voice thunders and roars. It occurs but rarely, but the terror of it is in our very blood, or has been taught us from childhood, I cannot tell which." "Did you ever see grandpapa so?" asked Johanna. "Only once, when Otto, who is very hasty, had boxed the forester's ears. Grandpapa roared out that so to treat an honest man, who could not demand satisfaction for the insult, was the act of a blackguard; Otto was not worthy to bear the name of Dönninghausen. As I tell it it seems nothing, but when grandpapa flew out at the poor boy I really thought he would have felled him to the earth, and every one present--it happened during the charmingly social hour after breakfast--was petrified with horror." "But grandpapa was right!" exclaimed Johanna. "Cousin Otto must have acknowledged that, for he speaks of him with the greatest reverence, and calls him a nobleman in the fullest sense of the word." Magelone shrugged her shoulders. "My dear child, that is the Dönninghausen craze. They all imagine that because they bear this name they are superior to all other human beings; and since they are not so,--I mean the younger generation,--they fall down and worship the old gentleman, in whom the family craze has become flesh and blood. But what have we to do with that?" she went on, jumping up and throwing her arms around Johanna. "You are not weighted with the sacred name. I have, for a while at least, thrown it aside, and I only wish we could really and truly enjoy life. There it goes again!" she added, with an expression of comic despair,--"that dreadful bell, for the second breakfast, and then four vacant hours before it rings again to call us to dinner. Poor Johanna! Day after day passes here, each the exact counterpart of these last twenty-four hours, year out, year in, and there is nothing for it but to lament with Heine's Proserpine,-- ''Mid corpses pale, While Lemurs wail, To grieve away my youthful days.'"