She walked heavily up and down the room, wringing her hands. Leuthold had carried Gretchen to the window, and was looking down into the court-yard, where the broad, stalwart figure of Heim was just leaving the house. He shot one glance of deadly hatred at his enemy, but it did no harm; and with a profound sigh Leuthold leaned his cold forehead against the window-frame and looked on whilst Heim stepped into his carriage and took a pinch of snuff with a most cheerful air. The driver clambered clumsily upon the box, and gathered up his whip and reins, the horses started off, the chickens flew in all directions, their old friend the watch-dog came barking out of his kennel, and the old-fashioned coach, belonging to the Hartwich establishment, rattled away. As, after seasons of intense emotion, the exhausted mind slavishly follows the lead of the ever-active senses, Leuthold, in his misery, thus minutely observed every particular of Heim's departure. "He is happy!" he thought; and then his eyes rested upon the fowls devouring the remains of the oats that had been brought for the horses. "Happy he to whom has been given the faculty of making himself beloved! mankind follow him as those fowls follow in the track of Heim's carriage. Is it any merit of his that wins him the hearts of all? Bah, nonsense! it is a talent,--and the most profitable one for its possessor. These benefactors of mankind, as they are called, thrive upon it: who would not do likewise if he only could? But those who have not the gift cannot do it. One man comes into the world with qualities that make him useful and pleasing to his fellow-men; another with propensities that make him an object of fear to his kind. Is the lapdog to be commended because his agreeable characteristics qualify him to spend his life luxuriously on a silken cushion? And is the fox to be blamed because he does not understand how to ingratiate himself with mankind, but must eke out his miserable existence by theft? Each after his kind, and we human beings have senses in common with the brutes,--and why not the peculiarities also of their several species? Yes, there are lapdogs among us, and foxes, and wolves, cats, and tigers! Struggle against it as we may, with all our babble of free will, temperament is everything. How can I help it if I belong among the foxes? Only a fool would look for moral causes in all this chaos of chances. The activity of nature is shown in eternal creation, destruction, and re-creation from destruction,--plants, brutes, and men are the blind tools of her secret forces, creative and destructive, or, as the moralist calls them, good and evil! But what do we call good? What pleases us. What evil? That which harms us. And we are to judge the world by this narrow egotistic scale of morals? Oh, what folly! Creative and destructive forces--are they not alike necessary agents in nature's great workshop? And if they work so steadily in unconscious