“Your health, Leo! May good fortune be with you abroad, and may fate bring us all together again before long! I know that you are angry with me, children,--but I can’t do anything except suffer with you. You see, Mother and I have the best part of our lives behind us--I’m on the threshold of old age; so it’s only natural for us to resist with every fibre of our being the departure of the last sunbeam that shines for us. But even if we were capable of such almost superhuman selflessness my sense of duty would not permit it. Were we living in normal times I would let you go, and would say that after all we could spend a couple of months with you in Paris every year. But today, when the krone is almost worthless, that is impossible. Only speculators can indulge in such luxury today; and you know that although we live well and comfortably we nonetheless must count with every thousand-kronen bill. If Lotte were to go abroad with you now she would lose her home forever. And not only she, but your children, too, would be homeless exiles, wouldn’t know the soil in which their grandparents are buried. And--who knows?--perhaps the day would come when you, Lotte, would be seized with such homesickness that it would crowd out your love for your husband, and your entire being would become embittered with reproach of him whom you followed into exile. You are young, both of you. You, Lotte, are almost a child--you, Leo, a youth; and your whole life lies before you. Let a few years pass. Then, perhaps, you will have grown apart--or there will be new developments that will unite you again.” While Lotte and her mother wept inconsolably, Leo, too, raised his glass: “Father--I suppose I may still call you by that name--I must respect your reasons for refusing to let Lotte go with me; I’d probably do the same if I were in your place. But there is one thing I must say to you, and to Lotte, whom I will always love: From now on my life will be one great struggle! My people is said to possess tenacity--well, I will unite all the faculties of my race in myself. With my brain and my heart, with all my power and all my will I shall work to win Lotte, by fair means or foul! They may drive me out like a mangy dog, but they cannot kill my will-power! And I drink to your health and to our reunion, which will come sooner than any of us dares hope today.” The next day Leo Strakosch left the country on a train occupied mostly by intellectual workers and artists. The Hofrat, Frau Spineder, and Lotte saw him off. Except for them Leo left no dear ones behind him, for his parents had died long before. CHAPTER VIII. “MY DEAR CHRISTIANS!”