Another of the merits of the tale is the vigour with which its main idea, honour (the true and the false sense of honour, the shame of wounded pride and the real shame and infamy to which ambition may lead), is presented to us and developed in the actions and experiences of the two principal characters. Kasperl, the brave Uhlan, whose sense of honour is so keen that it amounts to sentimental weakness, is driven to despair by the dishonourable conduct of his father and stepbrother. He commits suicide, and is thereby saved the anguish of knowing the fate of his sweetheart, fair Annerl. Annerl's whole life has been controlled by a cruel fate. The poet, in his gloomy superstition, has taken real pleasure in driving her onwards to calamity and death with the irresistible, mysterious power of predestination. Annerl's mother in her day had loved a huntsman. This huntsman is to be executed for murder. When the child comes near the executioner, his sword trembles in its scabbard--an unmistakable sign that it thirsts for her blood. The huntsman's head, when it is cut off, flies towards her, and the teeth grip her frock. Of the power that draws her on to wrong-doing and misfortune we are constantly told: "It drew her with its teeth" ("Es hat sie mit den Zähnen dazu gerissen"). Ambition leads to disgrace; Annerl is seduced by a young officer under a false promise of marriage; in her anguish and madness she strangles her new-born child, then gives herself up to justice and pays the penalty of her crime with her young life--her seducer, the ensign, arriving too late with a pardon. This epitome of the tale shows to what extent Brentano, in this particular case, has done homage to the doctrines of Romanticism. Supernatural warnings play an important part. The career of the heroine is regarded from the standpoint of Oriental fatalism; but at the same time, and without any attempt to smooth away the contradiction, we have the genuinely Catholic persuasion that a sin is being punished, the sin committed by the chief character in setting the purely human principle of honour above the Church's doctrine of heavenly grace. Nevertheless, the little tale has both artistic style and a genuine popular ring. The spirit of the popular ballad from which its theme is borrowed hovers over it. And, what is still more worthy of note, it is in so far an epoch-making work in German literature, that, long before the appearance of Immermann's _Der Oberhof_ it heralds the age of the peasant-story, striking in its naïve if somewhat artificial style the chord of which we hear the echo so long afterwards in Auerbach and others. [1] "Yes, despise reason and science, the highest possessions of man, let yourself be persuaded by the spirit of lies to believe in hallucinations and magic, and you are mine without fail."