Ottmar did everything in his power to employ her time and occupy her thoughts. He was well aware that he could only win this noble woman gradually, and by noble means. He read with her, gave her the most beautiful classical works, explained the thoughts of the ancient and modern philosophers, and perused with her the best of modern literature. Thus she learned to associate with him the impressions made by the noblest productions of the intellect, from which he obtained a certain halo that made him worthy of worship in her eyes. He understood all these grand works, and made them comprehensible to her,--it seemed as great a deed as if he had created them himself. She looked up to him as a superior being, and at last could really neither think, feel, nor live without him. He, in his turn, was delighted with her susceptibility and active mind, and became accustomed to impart everything good and beautiful which came in his way to Cornelia, and enjoy it doubly with her. Thus he unconsciously entangled himself in the net he was weaving for the young girl; she became as great a necessity to him as he to her, and he had never been so happy before. Yet this life was not wholly without discord. His twofold nature often wounded Cornelia; he was either passionately excited, or brilliant and cold. She could not be at ease; one she was forced to repel, the other repelled her. Both prevented the calm happiness of loving intercourse which woman's platonic nature so fully understands and needs. She often took for want of love what was merely lack of sensuous feeling, and the glowing ardor which alternated with the coldness could not supply the place of the uniform warmth of deep affection. Ottmar at last understood what she lacked. He perceived that there was a middle path, that he must be at once less cold and less warm, to obtain entire control over her. During the time that his intellect was in the ascendant, he endeavored to assume a more affectionate tone, and the oftener this happened the better it pleased _Heinrich_ to press his lips to the brow which contained the thoughts that delighted him, and stroke the hair that veiled it, while it afforded him still higher enjoyment to study in her classic form and features the idea of the beautiful. She became a living work of art to him, and as art is the first mediator between mind and matter, he began to rejoice in her physical charms from an artistic stand-point. _Henri_, on the contrary, ennobled the expression of his love and appropriated more and more of the impulses of Cornelia's soul. Thus intellect began to grow warmer, sensuality to be spiritualized. The separation between them had been lessened by struggling for a common object; if his moral consciousness had ripened in the same proportion as the two extremes approached a normal union, he would have adopted a different course of action. But the individual conflict was not yet entirely settled, and the moral one could not be decided.