"According to Aunt Thekla, society about here is unusually gay this year. A Herr von Rothkirch is visiting at Klausenburg, who enlivens young and old; and one day there is a picnic, and the next a _bal champêtre_, and the next an excursion to some point of interest in the neighbourhood. Magelone is in her element,--she dresses and flirts, and has a 'divine time.' Aunt Thekla shakes her head sometimes, but grandpapa says, 'Let her do as she chooses, we are not all alike. I cannot take it ill of the little thing that she does not mope and sigh like a girl forsaken of her lover; and if she finds Dönninghausen dull without Johann Leopold, it is well that she can find amusement elsewhere.' How grandpapa can believe that Magelone loves Johann Leopold is more than I can comprehend. She herself tells every one who will listen that she is only contracting a _mariage de raison_. At times I have felt sure that she loves another; or is she right when she maintains that she cannot love? "And, after all, what is love? Is it a spell to which we accidentally succumb, or does it result from certain requirements of our being which bestow us helplessly upon another? How, for example, was it possible for Christine to fall in love with Red Jakob? He is almost repulsive to me, but she is in bliss. "They married in April, and went to live at the Forest Hermitage. Of course grandpapa had to know: I chose my time, and told him the story as pathetically as I could. Johann Leopold was right,--I did not succeed in softening his heart. 'A fine reformation, truly,' he said, 'with the fellow tied fast by the arm. Johann Leopold can, of course, employ whomsoever he pleases, but I'll have nothing to do with the rascal, and so long as my eyes are open he must not show himself on Dönninghausen land; on that condition I'll not interfere with him.' "So on one of our first fine mornings I rode up to the Forest Hermitage alone. The bridle-path winds up the Klettberg through a magnificent hemlock forest, and then along the summit for some distance. The light comes brighter and brighter through the trunks, glimpses are caught here and there of distant views, bathed in a magic blue mist, which vanish the next moment. Then the path turns about a rock, and with a long breath you find yourself on a plateau that emerges from the forest like an island in the ocean. Around you, below you, far as the eye can reach, lie the wooded peaks, gleaming in the golden morning light, while far and near yawn a myriad dark chasms, tempting to the eye and to the imagination.