Inherent maidenly pride is to Heyse the most beautiful thing in nature. An entire group of his "novellen" might bear the title "Mädchenstolz" (Maidenly Pride) Kierkegaard somewhere calls the essence of woman "a surrender, whose form is resistance." This is an utterance as from Heyse's own heart, and it is this resistance which, as a token of the noble-born nature, interests and charms him. It is that eternally impenetrable stronghold in the feminine disposition which captivates him, the sphinx-like element of her nature, whose riddle he feels ever impelled to solve. The sweet kernel is doubly sweet in its hard shell, the fiery champagne doubly flaming in its surroundings of ice. The feminine natures which Heyse depicts (from L'Arrabbiata to Julie and Irene in his "Im Paradiese") are enveloped in a coat of ice-mail, which conceals, repels, misleads, breaks, and melts away. Woman asserts her nobility by refusing, as long as possible, to give her _ego_ out of her own keeping,--by guarding and cherishing the treasure of her love. She maintains her nobility by placing her _ego_ exclusively in the hands of one single person, and offering resistance to all the rest of the world. She is subject to no blind force. But once let her maidenly pride be broken, and conquered, she finds herself again on the opposite side of the gulf, and yields freely, I might almost say as freely as nature. A seduction never occurs among Heyse's creations; if such a thing be alluded to a single time, as a past event, as in "Mutter und Kind" (Mother and Child), it only serves to place in the sharpest possible light proud self-assertion and equally proud conscious self-surrender.