By the time we had got so far with our deliberations, it I was two o'clock, and we had until dusk at least three hours, which were to be got through with with as much patience as we could muster--a hard task for me, who was in a burning fever of impatience. Hans showed himself the most amiable of hosts. He brought out his best cigars and his best wine; he was more talkative than I had ever known him; the prospect of an adventure of so serious a character as that which we had in view, seemed to have had the good effect of arousing him out of his usual apathy. He recounted the simple story of his life: how he had early lost his parents, how he had been sent to a boarding-school at the provincial capital, where he was prepared for the gymnasium, in which he remained until his seventeenth year and rose to the fourth class. Then he became a farmer; took his estate in hand as soon as he was of age, and had been living upon it six years--he was now in his thirtieth--quietly and placidly, using his weapons only against the creatures of the forest and the field, raising his wheat, shearing his sheep, smoking his cigars, drinking his wine, and playing his cards. There was but one romantic feature in all his prosaic life, and that was his love for Constance. It was in the year that he came to live upon his estate, that she came back to her father; and to see Constance, to love her, and to love her still more devotedly long after he had been convinced of the hopelessness of his passion, to drown this hopeless passion in wine, so far as was in his power--this was the poor fellow's fate. He accepted it with perfect resignation, convinced that he was not the man to make his own fortune, any more than he had been able, when at school, to do his own exercises. Why and for whom should he plague himself with work? He had all that he wanted in the present, and there was no future for him to look forward to. He was the last of his race, and had not even a kinsman in the world. When he died, his estate, as a lapsed fief, reverted to the crown. The crown then might see what was to be done with the ruined barns and stables and with the dilapidated house. He let decay and weather work their will. He only needed a room, and in this room we were now sitting, while Hans went on with his recital in his monotonous way, and the rain beating against the low windows kept up a melancholy accompaniment.