The two young people saw themselves forced to make a virtue of necessity, particularly as the insensible Baron proceeded with a boisterous voice: "I observe well enough, that you would like still to be sentimental in the environs here, particularly as the moon will soon make its appearance; but such disorders are not tolerated in my prosaic company. Take my word for it, young men, all that etherializing, and that luscious piety yonder, has no other object, than that you should bite at this tempting bait in the way of marriage, provided, that is, you have places and fortune. There are so many daughters there, and only the eldest, a wild thing, is mad enough to reject all offers. Ay, that it is, the dear, good, much-desired matrimony, the wooing, towards which all the telescopes are pointed, when such fine noble daughters are sitting in the family saloon, round and plump, red and white, comely and clever, full-grown and finished! And in the midst of them the prudent mother, on the alert, lurking and watching, her eyes turned in every direction, her feelers out, to try every one that enters, whether the fine coat is paid for, whether he that talks of his travels and balls, is in condition to maintain a wife suitably to her quality. Then drop from the good matron's tender lips such pious, soft, and perfectly undesigning phrases, her looks glance towards heaven, and to the right and left, and all the words and all the looks swim like a hundred hooks in the stream of the insipid conversation, and the youngsters shoot, now after this, now after that line, wriggling and playing, till, at last, though it be some weeks first, one or other of them is fastened. So they have hooked for Kunigunde that delicate whiting, and forthwith put it into his head that the plump girl is a great deal too good for him, so that he pulls like a repentant sinner at the car of matrimony, and cannot help feeling himself honoured, that the lofty being has stooped to him; now Clara, Clementine, and the earthly-minded Dorothea are still to be settled, nay I will not warrant, that the well-stricken proselyte-maker herself does not one of these days shape her a bridegroom out of some pious stripling, and shuffle a settlement into his hands instead of the catechism. Ay, ay! For better, for worse! How all the world scampers, as if they were blind and deaf, under the melancholy yoke, and sacrifice freedom and fancy to the evil genius, which almost always debases a man into a slave." "You are an abominable scoffer," said the officer; "out of a libertine humour you hate marriage, and desire now that all men should live as licentious freethinking bachelors, and because your taste is not suited to that circle, you slander those persons, who are exalted above every calumny."