"I have no authority over you, and your mind is not torn by conflicting feelings as Ferdinanda's must have been in that unhappy hour." "So much the better, that one of us at least should know what he wishes and wills." That had been Uncle Ernst's last word, and he had said it with a calmness that to Reinhold was more terrible than the wildest outburst of passion would have been. And yet not so terrible as the smile with which the stubborn old man a few days later received the news that Ferdinanda was, in the doctor's opinion, out of danger. Reinhold could not forget that smile; it haunted him even in his dreams. He had never seen the like on any human face; he could not even describe it to Justus, to whom he had repeatedly mentioned it, till one day he stopped with a sudden exclamation at a face that stared at him from the wall in a remote corner of the studio. "Good heavens, Anders, what is this!" "The mask of the Rhondonini Medusa," said Justus, looking up from his work. "That was my uncle's smile." "I dare say it was something like it," said Justus, coming up with his modelling-tool in his hand, "although I cannot quite reconcile Uncle Ernst's beard with the Medusa; but one sees sometimes such diabolical resemblances." Justus's friendship was invaluable to Reinhold in these dark days; when he was almost giving way, the artist's perpetually cheerful temper would keep him up. "I cannot understand you," said Justus; "I certainly have every possible respect for Uncle Ernst's splendid qualities, and I take really a sincere interest in Ferdinanda, to say nothing of Aunt Rikchen, poor soul, who will soon have cried her eyes out; but sympathy and pity and all that sort of thing, like everything else in the world, must have its limits, and if anything of the kind affects my own life and incapacitates me from working--why, then, you see, Reinhold, I say with Count Egmont: 'This is a foreign drop within my veins!' and--out with it! Have you written to the President?" "Three days ago." "That's right. Heaven knows how sorry I shall be to lose you; but you have been here too long already. You ought to have a ship's planks under your feet again, and a northeaster whistling in your ears; that would soon blow your melancholy and hypochondria and all that well out of you, and clear your brain and your heart--you may take my word for it!" "If only it comes to anything," said Reinhold; "I almost fear, as the answer is so long in coming, that my report may have roused bad feelings in the other department as well, as the General prophesied it would."