“Well, in a word, he is the most drunken, roaring, cruel lord in all Saxony and Brunswick. Two months since he had a peasant’s guts torn out and wound around a tree--and just for barking the trunk thereof. ‘To cover the peeled part,’ said his Lordship, merrily. He forces the peasants to beat the bushes by night to quiet the frogs. He leads his whole trampling hunt across their cornfields. He forces their children to serve in the castle without pay--and woe then to the honest, modest wenches among his foul varlets.” “Verily,” said I, with a dry shrug, “I have a right courtly neighbor!” “Pray God, he will not last very long. Graf Moritz, his son, is a very prudent, honorable young lord. But his father will have drunk and gambled away nigh everything. Moritz will get nothing but the stripped acres and the bare castle. Poor young ritter--we all pity him.” “You seem to have no pity for Lady Ilsa, however?” “Pity? My heart has broken long since for her. I’ll lament no more. How she has lived through these years and not become even as her sire, the Holy Mother knows! But she will become a saint, and need none of our pity.” “Become a saint? I really saw no signs of that.” “Then she did not tell your Lordship? Her aunt is resolved she should join her in the convent. She works upon the Graf’s fears, saying ‘Give your daughter to God, and He will spare your soul.’ As yet he has not consented, but he will give way at last. He fears hell, and well he may.” “And Lady Ilsa?” “Will of course yield. She is betwixt the abbess all ice, and her father all vice.” “Ah!” I let the conversation drop. Hedwig pointed out my way to Regenstein, and I walked back, under the long northern twilight, filled with thought. This then was the destined fate of the baffling creature who had crossed my path this day. The veiling in the church; the shorn hair; the severance from the world; the perpetual fast, vigil, and service; the hardening monotony of years of routine performance; the shadows of old age. Once I tried to contrast Ilsa and my glorious Marianna; the thing was impossible: who can contrast the noontide sun with starlight? Yet the starlight had its beauty. I confess I was not sorry, in my isolation at Regenstein, to think there was a young woman within reach to whom I could pay my addresses. Just how far my addresses should go, whether even they should be entirely honorable, I admit I did not let come into my consideration. But I was determined not to let any ill-repute of the father prevent me from company with the daughter. The next morning, when Andrea came to shave me, I ordered him to take his razor away. “I will not be stared at by all the country. I will grow a beard.” “But Eccellenza?” he began in dismay. “And furthermore, I will order over a tailor from Halberstadt to have my clothes made in the German fashion.”