"It was all for nothing then (as I am constrained to conclude) that, when I had the honour of bringing you here from Augspurg in my carriage, I described to you with all the eloquence at my command, the blessedness of the married state, before you had had an opportunity of learning it by experience; it seems I might just as well have spoken to the winds of heaven. Can it really be the case that all that I said to you in the carriage simply went in at one ear and out at the other? when I told you how happy a wife was in and through her husband, how she often could hardly help crying for joy at possessing him--how these two had but one heart and one flesh, and shared everything between them, joy and sorrow, every morsel of food, every wish and desire, ay and the very smallest secrets. Well, well, Madame Siebenkæs, I see the Schulrath may keep his breath to cool his porridge." Upon this she twice wiped and dried her eyes hurriedly, constrained herself to look at him very kindly indeed, and with a forced appearance of being quite pleased again, and said with a deep sigh, but softly and not in a tone of pain, "Oh dear me!" The Schulrath touched her hand as it hung down with his finger tips in a priestly manner, and said-- "But may the Lord be your physician and helper in all your necessities" (he could hardly say more, for his tears were coming), "Amen,--which is, being interpreted, 'Yea, verily, so mote it be.'" Here he embraced and kissed the husband, and this with much warmth, saying, "Send for me, if your wife can obtain no consolation--and may God give you both strength. O, by the by--the very thing I came here about--the review of the Easter programme must be ready by Wednesday--and I am in your debt for the eight lines or more you did about that piece of rubbish the other day, which you gave such a capital dressing to." When he had gone, however, Lenette didn't seem so thoroughly consoled as might have been expected: she leant at the window sunk in deep, hopeless, amazement and reflection. It was in vain that Firmian pointed out that of course he wasn't going to change his and her present name any more, and that her honour, marriage, and love didn't depend upon a wretched name or so up or down, but upon himself and his heart. She restrained her tears, but she continued to be troubled and silent the whole of the evening.