Since the death of her mother Ilse had lived an unvaried home life. Though then scarcely grown up, she had taken charge of the household. Spring and autumn came and went. One year rolled over her head like another. Her father and sisters, the estate, the laborers, and the poor of the valley--these formed her life. More than once a suitor, a sturdy, worthy proprietor of the neighborhood, had asked her hand in marriage. But she felt contented with her home, and she knew that her father wished her to remain with him. In the evening, when the active man rested on the sofa, and the children were sent to bed she sat silently by him with her embroidery, or talked over the small occurrences of the day--the illness of a laborer, the damage done by a hail storm or the name of the new milch cow. It was a lonely country. Much of it was woodland. Most of the estates were small. There were no rich neighbors. And the father, who had worked his way by his energy until he became an opulent man, had no inclination for society life, nor had his daughter. On Sunday the Pastor came to dinner, and then the father's farm-inspectors remained and related the little gossip of the neighborhood over their coffee; the children, who, during the week, were under the charge of a tutor, amused themselves in the garden and fields. When Ilse had a leisure hour she seated herself in her own little sitting-room with a book out of her father's small library--a novel by Walter Scott, a tale by Hauff, or a volume of Schiller. But now a profusion of thoughts, images, and feeling had been awakened in her mind by this stranger. Much that she had hitherto looked upon with indifference in the outer world now became interesting to her. Like fire-works which unexpectedly shoot up, illuminating particular spots in the landscape with their colored light, his conversation threw a fascinating light, now here and now there, on a life that was strange to her. When he spoke, when his words, copious and choice, flowed from his innermost heart--she bent her head as in a dream, then fixed her eyes on his face. She felt a respect commingled with fear for a human mind that soared so loftily and firmly above the earth. He spoke of the past as intimately as of the present; he knew how to explain the secret thoughts of men who had lived a thousand years ago. Ah! she felt the glory and greatness of human learning to be the merit and greatness of the man who sat opposite to her. The intellectual labor of the centuries appeared to her as a supernatural being which proclaimed from a human mouth things unheard of in her home.