more, high-sounding phrases in daintiest handwriting, concluding, of course, with the announcement of her new engagement, by which, as by a _fait accompli_, she must needs assist her wavering heart. "The letter was written from here, from Rinstedt. I hurried to the railway; at the last station I got hold of a vehicle. When we got to Fischbach, the poor overdriven steeds could not get on any further. By the shortest, steepest path I climbed to the top of the Hirschstein, the hill you have just come by; here, on the top, I fell down like one dead. I gathered myself together again, and staggered on, on, until I reached your father's house. She must have had some foreboding that I would not submit to this in all patience; she had left your father's house an hour before, driving to Fichtenau, taking the road by which it was impossible for me to come. Afterwards I came to be grateful to her for her circumspection and her precaution, for I think I must have been simply raving mad; and it was well for both of us that my power was broken, that I could not pursue the fair fugitive, but had to remain here, a burden on your parents, sick unto death, given up by the doctors, until some six or eight weeks' after, I surprised them all by recovering, enabled to live on as best one can with a sorely wounded heart--and a heart injured, not in the physical sense alone. What good, do you think, did it do me whilst I was struggling with death here, and afterwards dragged myself on crutches through the terrace-gardens, that my work had appeared, had taken the world by storm, and made me, once for all, what they call a famous man? What good that, just at that time a childless old miser of an uncle took it into his head to die, and that, in default of other heirs, his whole huge fortune fell to me? I had had enough of the lying and cheating of humanity. Fame, love--I cared no longer for these things. I became what I am, what my acquaintances know me to be, what they have called me to you--a cold egotist. What if for all that I do not cross my hands idly in my lap but work on, and now and again utter a word of freedom which others, less independent, might lack the courage to utter; or if I start and encourage works of general utility; or if here and there I help some lame dog over a stile; these things I surely do not for the love of the Lord, nay, solely, so as not to lose that modicum of self-respect which belongs to the indispensable stock-in-trade of a discreet egotist. And talking of self-respect, dear, I begin to perceive with pain that I am lessening the aforesaid modicum considerably in telling you all this. For, in affairs of the hearts a gentleman should always spare the lady the utterance of the first word and leave her the last, and if she asserts that he is Don Giovanni and she Donna Elvira, why, he has but to bow and thank her for assigning so brilliant a part to him. And now, my dear child, now try to be fond of your garrulous old uncle once