So with my own self-righteousness, and, as I afterwards came to recognize, an awakening conscience, for chief companions, I passed the most unprofitable, tedious, dreary winter of my life. I did not refuse Moritz’s company, and a few blunt and bearish petty nobles of the region accepted my hospitality, but real comradeship there was none. I wearied of the endless boar hunts, which Adolf prescribed as the infallible remedy for ennui. Barring the toothless old chaplain, there was not a soul in the Regenstein who could read my books; and even he (reverend dotard) was mostly in his cups, and his sermons on Sunday were rambling stories, such as how St. Peter, when revisiting this earth, cheated his inn-keeper out of the reckoning. As for Luther (at whose summons I had returned to Germany) I could not think of him for a while save with an inward curse. _He_ it was who had destroyed that jaunty peace of mind which had been my comfort and stay so long. But for him I would be well-groomed, happy, and elegant at Palaestro or some other charming retreat in Italy. If his enemies snatched him away to the stake, I almost thought I would run to bring the faggots. Yet all the while my thoughts would flit from Luther, from Palaestro, from Rome, from everything else, to Ilsa: always to Ilsa. For I knew now as I never knew on the day I had ridden forth to demand her hand, how much I had loved her, and that with her passing, there passed from my soul the richest part of my being. Inconsistent, all this? Assuredly. Life is one great inconsistency. Concerning Ilsa I presently heard that, after a novitiate shortened under a dispensation, she had entered the convent at Quedlinburg. “She was dead to the world.” Thus went by this most intolerable winter. CHAPTER XVI THE GREAT WORD AT LEIPZIG All things mundane will end, and so at last did that winter. As never before I enjoyed the springtime, the return of leaf and greenery, the singing of the brooks, the pine-laden breezes down the hills, a northern springtime incomparably superior to the milder contrasts of like seasons in Italy. The new life and color put me in a better mind. If Marianna and Ilsa were no more for me, at least the larks were climbing upward in the deepening blue of the sky, and life had still its recompenses. At five-and-twenty few men are willing to cry out on life as “failure.” As assuagement for my troubles I had sought to throw myself into the life of my Regensteiners, studying their problems, and seeking their betterment. That winter and spring I won their esteem, and I hoped I was winning their affection. “The kind Graf!” I once heard little children calling me in the hamlet below the castle; and all that day I thought less bitterly touching Ilsa.