rid of him once for all. "Then there is my younger brother Ernest. He is a genius; and like all geniuses, modest, magnanimous as Don Quixote, full of philanthropic crotchets, unpractical to the last degree, and helpless as a child. He should have taken a wife of strong mind, who would have brought order into his genial confusion, and had the ambition to make something out of him. He had the stuff in him, no doubt; it only wanted fashioning. And what does he do? When a first lieutenant, twenty years old--for already, when he was little more than a boy, he had distinguished himself in the war for freedom, and came back covered with orders, so that attention was drawn to him, and he had a fine career before him--what does he do? He falls in love with an orphan, the daughter of a painter, I believe, or something of that sort, who had served as a volunteer in his battalion, and on his death-bed left her in his charge--the generous soul! He marries her; farewell promotion! They give our lieutenant, who is bent on a _mésalliance_, an honorable discharge, with the rank of captain; make him superintendent of the prison; and there he sits now, for these twenty-five years, in Z., with a half-blind wife and a swarm of children, old and gray before his time, a wretched invalid--and all this for the sake of a stupid young goose, whom the first tailor or cobbler would have suited just as well. Women! women! Dear George, beware of women!" Had Herr von Zehren, when he talked to me in this way, any special object in view? I do not think he had. I was now so much with him, we often set out so early, so seldom returned at noon, and usually came home so late at night--as a consequence I saw so little of Constance, and that almost invariably in his presence, when I felt so embarrassed and ill at ease on account of the constant hostilities between father and daughter, that I scarcely ventured to raise my eyes to her face--it was not possible that he could know how I admired the beautiful maiden, how I found her more lovely every time I saw her, and how my heart beat when I merely heard the rustle of her dress.