“_Donnerwetter_, Walter. Don’t you see how you will never be happy here in the North till you have somewhat to hold you? You know what I wished for Ilsa? Well--the cat has lapped up that cream long since, but there is more elsewhere. What with your wealth and breeding, you might look for a great prince’s daughter; but Gräfin Elisabeth of Wernigerode--” “Good heavens, Moritz,” cried I, suffering him no further;--“are you also in the conspiracy against me?” “Conspiracy, no! Friendly truth. She is of the best of our Harz nobility, piously bred, tall as a pine, and as lovely. Her father announces a very ample dowry. There could be nothing more fortunate.” Here, however, he stopped, halted by the pain that surely flashed from my eyes. I put my hand on his knee. “Good comrade,” said I, “you mean your words for the best, and I will strive hard not to be angry. In the very spirit you name--friendly advantage--I said that I sought your sister’s hand. It is everywhere the same. ‘Passion for a sweetheart, cold calculation in picking a wife.’ In Italy, Germany, in France or Spain, that is the kind of a union the Church blesses. But your sister, Ilsa von Blankenburg, thought otherwise, and she was right. Rather than take me, as I made my chilly proffer, she sought the convent. And now how may I do this wrong to Elisabeth von Wernigerode or any woman else?” “Romance--worthy of a minnesinger!” he laughed in my face. “Awake, man! Dwell not in minstrel’s dreams, but in realities.” “Yes,” I tossed back bitterly; “in desperate realities I live, right truly. And now I say somewhat that may startle you.” “Discharge your culverin,” he ordered, watching me intently. “_I will wed your sister Ilsa, or I will wed no woman._” “Holy God!” he exclaimed, crossing himself; “are you proclaiming a vow of celibacy, or are you mad? Whatsoever may befall Luther, nuns have been nuns since Christians have been Christians. On what do you base your hope?” “I cannot tell,” I answered, with a fierce gesture, rising and pacing feverishly. “In that Book which Luther teaches me to read is written ‘Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.’ We stand on the threshold of changes beyond human imaginings. Since quitting Italy, night after night I have seen some one in my dreams--your sister. We are always together. We are holding each other’s hands, we are looking into one another’s faces, we are growing old joyously together as husband and wife. There is enough Southern blood in me still to believe in signs and presages. I cannot tell how it will all come to pass. I will do the task that comes to hand--and hope.” “Alas! poor Walter,” said he, shaking his head; “you might dream better of the pot of gold beyond the moon than that Quedlinburg convent will ever give you an honorable bride.” “I am doing nothing rashly,” said I, reassuring him: “my deeds shall be deeds of reason, but my thoughts are not to be ruled by schoolman’s logic.”