“Ay, and dear Tyrol!” added Moida. “And he tells me Loewenstein Castle has been sold by the state to a rich gentleman from Cologne, who has engaged Ulrich to restore its faded frescos, and he is beside himself with delight. The least thing raises his spirits ever so high, and now he imagines that this undertaking will be the beginning of his fortune. I must caution the dear boy, in my answer, not to indulge in dreams.” “Ah! true; he is given to dreaming, like myself,” said Walburga, shaking her head. “But this is a hard world, as you have often told me, and dreams will not feed us. I must sell my paintings—sell them—and not work for pure love of the beautiful.” “Yes, indeed. Murillo, Raphael, and all of them had to eat, and bread costs money,” said Moida. “Well, I hope this new-comer is a good man, and may he know how to keep his castle. Alas! if our family had known how to manage things, instead of letting everything go at loose ends. If there had been heads among us like yours, Moida, I should not have been living to-day in narrow, dingy Fingergasse, trying hard to make the two ends meet, and not always succeeding.” “But then I should never have known you; a grand lady dwelling in a castle would not stoop to look at me.” “Oh! true; and ’twas worth coming down in the world—down to a humble abode—in order to know you.” Then, after a pause: “But what else does my brother say about this gentleman?” “Well, he says he is not a bit handsome, and that he looks stern. Ulrich says, too, he is passionately fond of art, is a believer in the aristocracy of nature, and declares he doesn’t know who his great-grandfather was. The only thing that is really not good about him is that he has no faith.” “No faith!” sighed Walburga. “Well, at any rate, Moida, he’ll not suffer for want of company; for it cannot be denied that very few of those learned men are ever seen inside a church. Oh! how comes this?” Moida shrugged her shoulders, but made no response. The truth is, although a very good girl, she did not think deeply on religious subjects. Walburga, on the contrary, was often much distressed by the infidelity which she saw spreading around her, and trembled for her dear brother, who had once declared that out of every hundred students who frequented the university with him seventy lost their belief in a God after being there six months; and nothing is so dead as a dead faith. And now she was not certain that Ulrich himself went to church; for of late he had been away from her a good deal. Walburga called to mind, too, a grave conversation which she once had with him about religion, when he told her something that had left a deep impression upon her.