Louise became acquainted with a man who, although of bourgeois parentage, had worked his way into aristocratic circles. Brilliantly handsome, endowed with various accomplishments and a winning grace of manner, he succeeded in gaining entrance everywhere; but he was one of those restless, unsteady beings who can never adjust themselves for long to any environments. Possessed by a positive greed for the luxuries and splendours of existence, he had no capacity for attaining them by his own energy; he was an adventurer in the truest sense of the word. He may have loved the young Countess sincerely, he may have only hoped to achieve social position through her means; at all events, he contrived so to ensnare her that she resolved, in spite of the certain opposition of her father and of her entire family, to become his wife. When the Count learned how matters stood, he took them in hand with an energy that was indeed ominous. He believed that by commands and threats he could bend his daughter to his will, but he only aroused in her the obstinacy which she had inherited from himself. She utterly refused to yield him obedience, opposed resolutely all effort to carry out her betrothal to her cousin, and, in spite of every precaution, contrived to hold communication with her lover. Suddenly she disappeared, and a few days afterwards news was received that she had become the wife of Rodenberg. The marriage was perfectly valid, in spite of the haste and secrecy with which it was contracted; Rodenberg had arranged and prepared everything. He reckoned upon Count Steinrück's final acknowledgment of his daughter's husband: he would not surely cast them off; he trusted to the father's affection for his favourite child, but he did not know the Count's iron nature. Steinrück replied to the announcement of the marriage by an utter repudiation of his daughter; he forbade her ever again to appear in his presence: for him she was dead. He persisted inexorably in this course until his daughter's death, and even after it had taken place. At first Rodenberg made several attempts to induce his wife's father to grant him an interview, but he soon perceived the uselessness of any such attempt; the Count was neither to be persuaded nor coerced, and since all sources of aid were thus cut off, the man plunged with his wife and child into a Bohemian mode of life harmonizing with his lawless nature. What followed was the inevitable result,--misery and want, a gradual sinking into ruin; the lot of the wife beside the husband for whom she had sacrificed name, home, and family, when all hopes founded upon her and upon her wealth had vanished, can easily be imagined. She was true to her nature, and clung to the man whom she had married, without one attempt to obtain help from her father, knowing that even her death would be powerless to effect a reconciliation. She and her husband had now been dead for many years, and the wretched family tragedy was buried with them.