Then, when the evening came, little Frances only succeeded, after much shouting and shaking, in dispelling his leaden sleep; from which, however, the weary man awoke with joyous eyes. He lay for a while and enjoyed the physical relief, the peace in his heart, which he had missed so long. Every word his beloved had said to him that morning came back to his mind again; he knew that with all her kind words she could have meant but one thing; and yet he trembled at the thought that it might all have been a delusion. But the certainty of happiness invariably kept the upper hand. When, at length, he arose, he felt as if he had recovered from an illness--as if he were invigorated by fresh blood--and he marveled at this transformation; for he remembered that on this very morning he would have liked best to burrow his way into the earth and never see the sun again. He kissed his little daughter again and again, pressed the old woman's hand--the foster-mother was absent--and started off for Julie's lodgings. But, when he arrived at the house, he was surprised to see a bright light streaming through the blinds of all five windows. He knew that she was fond of having her room bright, but for all that it struck him that all was not as usual. He asked the old servant, who helped him to take off his overcoat in the hall, but received no definite answer; and he was painfully surprised when he opened the door and saw the brightly-lighted room full of people. It is true, they were all familiar faces. Angelica sat on a sofa by the side of old Schoepf, Rossel had established himself in the most comfortable of the two armchairs, and Rosenbusch and Kohle appeared to be absorbed in the contemplation of some engravings on the wall, while Julie was conversing with Schnetz and Elfinger near the door. A covered table, decorated with beautiful bouquets, stood along the wall on the side where the windows were, and little Frances's foster-mother was busy adding the last finishing touches to it. They were all in evening dress, and even Rosenbusch had refrained from wearing his historical velvet-jacket, which the summer had dealt with pretty severely, and appeared in a magnificent dress-coat--the only trouble with which was that it was rather too broad, inasmuch as it had been taken from Rossel's wardrobe. But the most beautiful of all, in her simplicity, appeared the mistress of these halls herself. She wore a white dress of the finest woolen, which exposed but a little of her white shoulders and her arms as far as the elbow. A plain gold chain, from which hung a medallion containing a miniature of her mother, was wound several times about her neck; her hair was brushed back smoothly, and intertwined with a garland of myrtle; in her bosom was fastened a dark-red pomegranate blossom.