The most attentive of all had been the fair Kunigunde, and she it was who most loudly expressed her approbation. "How fortunate are we," she at last concluded, "to assemble in our dear circle more and more of those spirits, who aim at what is good and noble; who have a perception of something above the earthly, and to whom the world, with all its alluring treasures, appears but vanity. But it is the property of truth and goodness to attract better natures, and to sublimate the weak. While social intercourse has this happy effect in a larger sphere, it is, in the confined domestic circle, the blissfulness of wedlock, that kindles in the souls which it unites a still more fervent enthusiasm for every thing divine, which here still more powerfully raises the weaker spirit to the love of the infinite Being." "Yes indeed," said a young man, who sat by the elderly gentleman, "this is what I feel every day more intensely and thankfully." He sighed and looked at the clouds, and the counsellor learnt upon inquiry, that this was the husband of the lovely and pious Kunigunde. The mother took up the theme and said, not without emotion, "How happy I needs must feel, thus to have found in the circle of my children the highest end of life, and to have enabled them also to attain the noblest acquisition this earth can yield. How utterly unable I am to take an interest in the pursuits of the generality of mankind! Nay, I rather feel my pity moved by the various turns of their enthusiasm, than could find, in that multiplicity of exertions to attain what they call a good, any thing that claims our respect. So they run after art, or philosophy; suppose that the eternal light is to dawn upon them in science, or in colour and sound; weary themselves with history and the perplexed affairs of life; and in their eagerness neglect the one thing needful, which supplies and makes up for all beside. Since I have found this spring which so sweetly satiates every thirst of the soul, I have had no sense left for that motley variety of objects, towards which in my youth I myself turned many a longing look." "How you force my admiration!" exclaimed the counsellor: "with what eagerness have I sought life, and grasped only an empty shadow! And yet how easy is it, to find that truth, which never deceives us, never slips away from us, which fills every desire of the heart, that in which alone we have real life and being." "I understand you," answered the Baroness, "You belong to our circle; it is a blessed thing to feel, that the communion of pious and heavenly-minded spirits is constantly increasing."