"What, you! Do you not know?" said Ernestine. "Is it possible! Does no one know that woman--the famous daughter of that great man Schläger? She only died in eighteen hundred and twenty-four, and is she forgotten already?" "She cannot have materially advanced the cause of science," said Johannes, "or she would not have been forgotten." "Such a rarely-endowed individual as this woman must, I should suppose, always be an object of scientific interest, even if she did not directly advance the cause of science itself. It must surely be interesting to physiologists, as well as to psychologists, that a woman has lived capable of learning all that Dorothea Rodde learned, even although she taught nothing. All cannot create. Many men have been held in high esteem for diligence alone. Besides, Dorothea would have achieved greatness if she had not committed the folly of marrying, thus arresting her scientific development in the bud and retiring entirely from public view. She buried herself alive, and the world is always ready to strew ashes upon a woman's coffin. Had she been a man, every one would have known that, when a boy of seventeen, he could speak all the dead and living languages, was thoroughly versed in chemistry, medicine, anatomy, and mineralogy, and in his eighteenth year, after a brilliant examination, received the degree of doctor of philosophy from the University of Göttingen! But it was only a girl who achieved all this thus early; and if the less envious time in which she studied acknowledged her superiority, the more prudent present ignores it all the more utterly." A painful silence ensued. Every one was busied with his or her own thoughts. Every one felt confused. This beautiful, placid Ernestine had suddenly showed her claws! The Staatsräthin silently laid down her knife and fork,--she had lost all desire to eat. Johannes looked sadly at Ernestine, and gently shook his head. Herbert alone grew more cheerful as the rest seemed disturbed, and looked down the table at Elsa, who sat at the other end, lost in melancholy reverie as she drew several flowers and grasses out of the large vase on the table, intending, like Ophelia, to deck herself with them; but, alas, Hamlet had no eyes for her sweet madness! "May I request you to present me to the lady?" Herbert asked Johannes. "Herr Professor Herbert," said the latter, and added with emphasis, "your bitterest opponent!" Ernestine bowed slightly and looked coldly at Herbert. "Permit me," he began sneeringly, "to beg you to inform me, Fräulein von Hartwich,--I ask solely for instruction in the matter,--what possible scientific interest the fact that a woman spoke several languages--she could hardly have spoken _all_, as you declared--could possess." "Yes, I too am curious upon that point!" cried Moritz.