Then he saw the prince take Beate Rauchfuss, whose beauty dazzled Kosch at this moment, so great and strong was it, and lead her with a smile to the distinguished old man, saying, "This is the red-haired beauty from the Rauchfuss farm, who crossed our path so often as a wild youngster when we used to make excursions up to the Ettersberg. Our hills produce such wonders." The girl bowed before the dignified old man and kissed his hand respectfully. He patted her auburn hair softly. "Happy man for whom this sunny head shall shine! Joy and love beam in her eyes." He turned to his princely friend. "What an ocean of beneficent happiness lies in the young creatures of the earth!" "If it only didn't dribble away in such cursed little drops!" growled the prince, raising his blunt nose and beckoning to the coach to draw near. "Ah, but from another point of view that means watering the earth! Have no care, pretty child--whichever way it comes!" The grave, distinguished man followed his prince into the coach, and both waved a farewell to the pretty girl, who made the deep curtesy she had learned so thoroughly from Frau Kummerfelden. Every girl in Weimar who had ever been to the old actress's sewing-classes understood how to make a proper court reverence; "for," said the good woman, "in a little town like this, where there are so many princes both of the blood and of the intellect, a certain _savoir vivre_ should prevail, even in the streets." In things of this kind she was a past mistress. The engraver had stood as if under a spell; his meeting with his "brother," the old master, had come and gone. But he had played no part in it. He looked at his rough, sinewy hands. "Those are hands for you!" he cried in his heart. "To gain nothing but a halfway-decent suit of clothes, four shirts, two pairs of shoes, and a miserable hole to live in, they have become as rough and lined as if they had conquered a world. _He_ has conquered a world--and his hands, at his age, have remained soft, moved by the soul. Ah, plebeian, you won't go and knock at his window! But the girl whom he caressed with his eyes and passed his hand over her hair--this little goose--!" He grasped angrily at Beate's hand. "Let us go, Mamsell," he cried--"let us go!" And amidst all the still May greenness, under the shelter of the tender shrubs, he caught the startled girl to him, kissed her and buried his face in the glory of her hair, which his "brother" had stroked and the perfume of whose young life intoxicated him. "Into thy hands, O Lord ...!" he almost sobbed. She had fallen suddenly into such a storm of hot caresses that her breath failed her as if a hailstorm were beating down on her. She pushed him away, and at the same time nestled closer to him. "Do you love me, then? Do you love me?" she asked him, trembling and shaken.