“Stop!” interrupted his wife, with a commanding wave of her hand, which silenced the obedient husband immediately. “It belongs to me to question her, for I am her mother, and my daughter owes me submission and obedience above all things.--Answer me, Marie, did you not know that we had forbidden you to speak to this man, or have any communication with him? Did you not know that I, your mother, had menaced you with a curse if you married this man, or even spoke to the miserable, pitiable creature?” “Mother,” cried Marie, vehemently, “he is not a poor, miserable creature. You may hate him, but you dare not outrage the noble, the good, and just man!” “He is a good-for-nothing fellow,” cried her father; “he has tried to win a minor behind the parents’ back. He is a shameful, good-for-nothing seducer.” “He is dishonorable,” cried the general’s wife--“a dishonorable man, who has misused our confidence. We confided to him our daughter to teach, and paid him for it. He improved the opportunity to make a declaration of love, and stole the time from us to infatuate the heart of our daughter with flattery, and from his pupil win a bride.” “Oh, unworthy, shameful slander!” cried Marie, her eyes flashing with anger. “You well know that it is a vile scandal, that Moritz was no paid teacher. If he had been--if he had felt obliged to yield to the sad necessity of being paid for his valuable time, because he was poor, and forced to live by his intellect, he was a free man, and had the right to love whom he chose. He loves me, and I have accepted his love as the most precious, most beautiful, and most glorious gift of my life. Ah! do not look so angry with me, father; I cannot say otherwise. I cannot crush or deny the inmost life of my life.--Oh, mother, forgive me that I cannot change it! You know that otherwise I have been a most obedient daughter to you in all things, although you have never taught me the happiness of possessing a loving mother; though neither of you could ever forgive your only child for not being a son, who could inherit your name, and win a brilliant position, yet I have always loved you tenderly and truly, and never complained that the unwelcome daughter received neither love nor tenderness, only indifference and coldness from her parents.” “Beautiful, very beautiful!” replied the mother, contemptuously. “Now you wish to blame us that you are a heartless and thankless daughter.--We have not understood her heart, and it is our fault that her love has flown somewhere else. “This is the language of romance. I have, indeed, read it in the romances of Herr Moritz, and my daughter has only repeated what she learned as a docile pupil from her schoolmaster. Very fine, to pay Herr Moritz to form our daughter into the heroine of a romance! She ought to have learned the languages, but has learned only the language of romances.”