"Love her!" exclaimed Gottlob with an impassioned fervour, which gave his gentle face a look of inspiration. "Love her! She is my vision by day--my dream by night. When I read, it is her voice that seems to speak to me from the Minnesinger's poesy. When I paint, it is her form that grows under my pencil. When I pray, it is her seraphic smile that seems to beam upon me down from heaven. I wander forth: it is to meet her in her walks. I kneel in the church: it is to breathe the same air as she!" At these words, Magdalena covered her face, and uttered a suppressed groan. "I rise from my labour, which of old was a labour of love to me, and now is oft an irksome task: it is to watch for her coming forth into the garden. I have neither rest by day nor by night. Where there was repose in my heart, there is now eternal fever." "And she?" said Magdalena with a low tone of anxiety, as if fearful of the answer she might receive. "Does she know--does she return your love?" "How should she deign to remark a worm like me?" was the young artist's answer. "How should I dare to breathe my affection in her ear, were it even possible for me to approach her? And yet she looks upon me kindly," continued the young lover, encouraging himself in vague hopes, at the same time that he condemned their presumption. "When I doff my cap to the noble Amtmann's daughter, as she ambles forth by her proud father's side, she will answer with so sweet a smile, and greet me with a wave of her riding-switch--with what a grace!--and then grow red thereby, and then grow pale. When I offer her the holy water as she passes from the church, she will cast down her trembling eyelids, and yet will see withal who offers it; and when I stand at yon window, as she rambles in the garden, she will pluck flower after flower, as though she knew not why; then fling them all aside, then pick them up with care; then disappear as if she had gone back, and yet come forth again." Magdalena's brow grew thoughtful and anxious as Gottlob proceeded in his enumeration of these symptoms. Her bosom heaved painfully, her hands were clenched together. "Poor child! should it be so!" she murmured, casting her eyes upon the ground; and then, raising them again to Gottlob's face, into which she looked with scrutinizing eagerness, she said aloud--"And yet you do not think she loves you?" "She love me!" cried the young man. "Such a dream of bliss were madness! Can I forget the immeasurable gulf that separates the noble daughter of the high-placed Amtmann from the poor and humble artist--the dependent of a cloister? No, Magdalena. I must die as I have lived, the poor unloved and uncared-for orphan--die without a sigh of pity, without a tear of sorrow from her eye." "Have you, then, no friends, poor youth?" said Magdalena. "None. Yes! I am ungrateful. I have one--a kind protector; but he is far removed, and I have seen him seldom."