'The serious character of a people,' says the translator of Schiller's poem 'The Glocke,' 'who begin the common business of everyday life with prayer, who attach importance as well to the manner of performing an action as to the action itself, the custom of travelling, either in their own or in foreign countries, in the interval between the completion of their education and their settlement in life, the domestic manners, where great attention is paid to the minutiæ of domestic economy,' are all, he maintains, peculiar to the German people. As southerns, the family of Frankenburg were more gay and lively in manner than Germans usually are, for being nearer the Rhine they had been for generations insensibly under French influences; yet they were all German, to the heart's core. Ernestine was looking crushed and pale. The self-conscious air that a really beautiful girl usually possesses had nearly left her now; while Herminia, happy in her love, and having but one anxiety--the safety of Heinrich--looked bright and radiant as ever. In a letter from Heinrich to her, Ernestine had been told the story of the strangely coincident dreams; and to a romantic and enthusiastic girl like her--one deeply imbued, too, with German mysticism--the idea that she had thus communed and met, and might again commune with and meet her lover in the spirit, was a source of the purest joy. Every night she laid her head on the pillow in the hope that her soul might fly to him; but as yet no more such visions had come. And this brave-hearted and handsome young Englishman--Carl, her own Carl--he was risking wounds and death, enduring toil and suffering for the Kaiser, for Germany, and for _her_; for well she knew that Charlie Pierrepont identified her image with the Fatherland. Then how cruel it was of the Countess to view him so, and to treat him as she did; and again and again she asked in her heart-- 'Is it a crime to love?' But rank was the _joss_, the idol that was worshipped in Frankenburg. However, she had Charlie's ring on her finger, and a curly lock of his hair in a gold locket, reposing in the cleft of her white bosom, all unknown to the Herr Baron, and to all, save Herminia, who could now see the blue ribbon at which it hung encircling her slender neck; and in her bosom, too, she had his last letter, a mere scrap, but full of love and truth and great tenderness; and yet he wrote of pay and poverty. Ob, how hard it was when youth alone should be money, beauty, wealth, and everything. 'Ernestine, meine liebe,' the Countess would say from time to time, 'attend to the Herr Baron--assist him with your own pretty hands. Dear girl! she is always so bright when you are here, Grünthal. She must be doubly happy to see you this morning, after only leaving you last night.'