But though Jansen had welcomed and urged the idea most eagerly, he became more and more doubtful, as the hour for putting it into execution drew near, whether he should succeed without some trouble in removing the child from the associations to which it was accustomed, and placing it amid entirely new relations. Julie felt no less nervous; what had seemed to her the evening before to be easy and self-evident, appeared to her now in broad daylight as an audacious undertaking that made her heart beat more anxiously the nearer they approached to their goal. What if the child should not take to her? What if she, try as hard as she would, should not be able to take it to her heart at once?--or should not be able to learn the art of managing it rightly? The thought made her silent, and she involuntarily walked more slowly. Jansen, too, slackened his pace, so that the good Angelica, who walked along with them quite cheerful and free from care, was obliged to stand still every few minutes in order to wait for the stragglers. But she did not lose her good-nature. On the contrary, it seemed as though the happiness of her adored friend, the share in it which fell to her as the patron saint of the secret union, and, by no means least, the authority which her position as protectress gave her over her honored master, tended to excite her humor in an unusual degree, so that she delivered the drollest speeches entirely on her own account, whenever the other two abused too flagrantly the privilege of being tiresome--a privilege that belongs by right to all lovers. "Children," she cried, standing still again and fanning her heated face with her handkerchief, "this is the first time in my life that I ever 'played the elephant' to a pair of secret lovers, but I swear by the ball on the tower of that Protestant church never to do so again, unless I am provided with an equipage at the very least! That you are not very entertaining I find to be quite in order, and at all events much better than if you should perpetually speak in sonnets, like _Romeo_ and _Juliet_--which I find highly absurd even on the stage. But to creep along at your side through this Sahara-like glare, while you walk at a snail's-pace, since you no longer feel external heat because of the flames within, is more than an elderly girl of my complexion can stand. So we will jump into the next droschke, where I can close my eyes and ponder why it is that love, which is after all such a pleasurable invention, generally makes the most sensible people melancholy."