unattainable as they--but what does that matter? Does not what we are permitted to admire, what we can not forget, belong to us as much, nay more, than if we had it in a chest and had lost the key?" The striking of a clock in a neighboring steeple roused him from this half-conscious, dreamy soliloquy. "One!" he said to himself. "It is time to think of going to sleep. If Balder should have kept awake to watch for me, though I expressly forbade it--" He rose hastily and entered the house. When he had groped his way cautiously up the rickety stairs and reached the landing on the first story, he perceived to his astonishment that the door which led into the rooms stood half open. A small dark ante-chamber led into a larger apartment, lighted by a sleepy little lamp. On the sofa behind the table lay a female figure, still completely dressed, absorbed in a book. The light fell upon a sharply cut, sullen face, past its first youth, with very dark hair and heavy brows, to which an expression of power and defiance lent a certain charm. The reader's thick locks had become unbound, and she wore a plain summer dress of calico, which left her shoulders and arms bare. Not the slightest change of countenance betrayed that she had heard the sound of the loiterer's footsteps, and when he paused a moment in the entry and looked through the door, she did not even raise her eyes from her book, or push back the hair which had fallen over her forehead. "Are you still up, Fräulein Christiane?" he said at last, advancing to the threshold of the ante-room. "As you see, Herr Doctor," she replied in a deep voice, without being in the least disturbed. "The heat--and perhaps also this book--will not permit me to sleep. I was so absorbed that I did not even hear you come in. Besides, it is quite time to go to sleep. Good night." "May I be permitted to ask, Fräulein, what book it is that will not let you sleep?" he said, still in the dark entry. "Why not?" was the reply, after some little hesitation. "Besides, you have a special right to do so, for it is your book. The proprietor of the house, Meister Feyertag, borrowed it of you several weeks ago, and yesterday told me so much about it, that I begged it of him for a day. Now I can not leave it." He laughed, and stepped within the room. "So the wicked rat-catcher, to whose pipe all the men and women now dance, even though they often declare his tunes horrible, has seized upon you also. You have certainly just read the chapter on women, whose most striking portions our worthy host daily quotes to his wife; and though it makes you angry, you can not drive it out of your mind. The old sinner knows how to begin: he hasn't read Göthe for nothing. "'Doch wem gar nichts dran gelegen Scheinet ob er reizt und rührt, Der beleidigt, der verführt!"