Heinrich von Ottmar had been educated entirely without love. His mother died before he reached his fifth year; his father, a heartless aristocrat, was Grand Steward of the Court of the Principality of H----, where Heinrich was now to commence his career, and all the efforts of the haughty, ambitious noble were directed solely to the one object of inoculating his son with the ideas which, as he believed, had made him great, and might prepare a similar destiny for Heinrich. He was one of those tyrannical persons who make even those they wish to benefit unhappy, because they take no account of individuality, and compel the victim of their anxiety to be happy, not in _his own_, but _their_ way. He brought only discord into _Heinrich's_ young soul, which was already sympathetically attracted by the development of the times, for while he succeeded on one hand in rousing and directing it entirely towards one object,--that of obtaining power and position on the loftiest heights of society,--he could not suppress his leaning towards the struggles for freedom peculiar to the times, which were an abomination to the man whose inclinations tended towards ultramontanism. Here also, influenced by the illusion that everything could be done by force, there were many violent scenes, in which he threatened the young defenseless boy with expulsion from his home, a father's curse, and disinheritance. But no opinions are changed, no convictions uprooted, by menaces and blows; they are at most forced to conceal themselves where it is impossible to struggle with them. Heinrich accustomed himself _to be silent_ and to _dissimulate_ at an age when he was incapable of understanding the moral wrong and evil of these qualities. Thus, under this father's tyrannical sway, every budding germ of manly truth was suffocated, and shot forth unavailingly. There are two results from such a course of training. When the parental authority asserts itself also in the petty details and interests of life, a most independent and rugged character is often developed, firmly determined to exchange a hated, tyrannical present for a free future, however dark it may be. This was not the case with Heinrich von Ottmar; on the contrary, his worldly-wise father allowed him full liberty in all the trifles on which youth sets so high a value,--greater liberty than a more conscientious man would have done. He knew how to make his home-life pleasant enough to him, induce him to fear expulsion from it as the greatest misfortune; thus he always retained his influence, and the youth, spoiled by the glitter and pleasures of life, bore the intellectual tyranny of his father because it allowed the most unlimited personal freedom, and learned to yield and submit. He was naturally generous and warmhearted, capable of enthusiasm for everything good and beautiful; but under these circumstances only his intellectual, not his moral, powers could