So now, for the first time, the future of the little maidens was marked out, so far, that is, as one human being can arrange the course of life for another; but destiny is a strange fellow for a godfather, and he interferes often in the most quiet and reasonable plans that old, serious, white-haired people can think out, with some stupid trick that nobody could dream of. The worst of this plan-making is, that generally the very wisest prove the stupidest in the end, because the good, old, white-haired people think merely of their own white heads, and do not take into account the black ones which they had in their youth. It had never seriously occurred to the old Herr Pastor that his foster-child might be taken off his hands by a young man; and the Frau Pastorin, who, after the fashion of women, had thought much and often upon this chapter in the woman's catechism, had always comforted herself with the reflection that Louise was not acquainted with any young men; since, on account of his nobility, she did not consider Franz as a young man, and Fritz, with his stupid jokes and her own motherly authority over him, seemed like a little, undeveloped boy. But her eyes were to be opened, she was to discover that a young, pretty maiden, even if she is hid in a parsonage, will attract young people as surely as a flower the butterflies. The gay-colored caterpillar, which had crept across her path so often to her annoyance, had popped out of its chrysalis, a gorgeous, yellow, swallow-tailed butterfly, which fluttered around the flower in her garden, and settled upon it, and devoted himself to it, in a way which would have amused her extremely, if the butterfly had not been her sister's son, and the flower Louise Habermann. Fritz came to Gurlitz, a few days after the confirmation, with a great and righteous hatred in his heart, against the whole race of womankind. The wash-bowl full of water, which he had got over his head, and the banishment from his pantry-paradise, had exercised a damp, cold, hungry influence upon him, and as he had learned from his romances that every young man in love, when he quarrels with his loved one, has a right to hate all other women too, he made use of his right. He had not been at Gurlitz for a long time, because he wished to punish his aunt a little for the everlasting fault-finding in which she allowed herself toward him. Now, as he sat in the parsonage, feeding his hatred, and speaking to no one but the Pastor, the Frau Pastorin rejoiced over his serious behavior, and said to Louise, out in the kitchen, "Fritz is really quite sensible. Thank God! he is coming to years of discretion."