"I dislike Bruno! I love him as I love a storm at sea which I can watch from the shore; like a wild horse that runs away with somebody else; like a thunder-storm which strikes a tree at a few miles' distance.--Apropos! that was a terrible storm yesterday! We did not reach home till eleven o'clock. Frau von Berkow told me you had been caught by the rain in the forest cottage." "And you will really go to-morrow?" said Oswald, to turn the conversation. "I will," said Bemperlein, in a plaintive tone. "I will not at all, my dear sir, but I must. That's the trouble. Alas! if I had my will I would never leave Berkow again as long as I live; and not even afterwards, for I would ask it as a last favor to be buried there. And, really, I do not like to think what is to become of me when I am gone. If you had lived, as I have done, seven years at one and the same place, and that place had been Berkow, and you had taken root there, so as to know every sparrow who builds his nest near your window, and every horse that is in the stable, and if you were then to try to tear yourself away, you would feel how painful that is." The good fellow took again his handkerchief and passed it, under the pretext of wiping off the perspiration, several times over his eyes. "I can understand that perfectly," said Oswald, with unaffected sympathy. "You cannot understand that, my dear sir! You see, I commenced last year to train some ivy against my window, and all the summer and winter I fancied how pretty it would look in fall, when the window should be shaded by the leaves, from top to bottom, and we--I mean my canary-bird and my tree-frog--could hide behind the broad leaves. You do not know what very broad leaves the ivy has--as large as grape-leaves--and this fall the window will be completely filled up. But the room will be empty, and the sun will send its rays through the leaves, and the raindrops will run down on them, and not a soul will derive any pleasure from them." "I think I can feel that with you," said Oswald "Impossible, my dear sir, impossible!" sighed the other. "I tell you there is no such window in the wide world. In the deep embrasure stands an arm-chair, covered with black morocco, which Frau von Berkow gave me as a birthday present two years ago--a cushion, which she has herself embroidered for me on my last birthday, lies against the back--well, I cannot describe it all. But then, to sit there on a summer evening, when the voices of Frau von Berkow and Julius come up to me from the garden, and the smoke of my cigar floats away through the leaves----" With these words Mr. Bemperlein blew two huge blue clouds of smoke from his cigar through the open window at which he sat, and shook his head sadly, as if to say, Here, that produces not the slightest effect; but you ought to see it in my arm-chair! "Yes, indeed----" suggested Oswald.