This modest requirement disconcerted and displeased me, and I had the courage to tell him so. He must know perfectly well, I thought to myself, how very dear he is to me--and if I can make so bold as to assume that he likes me, he surely might be satisfied of my love for him. And so I told him that, for my part, I should always have him in my thoughts, and that to do so would be my greatest happiness. My dear parents had now quite yielded to my wish that I should never marry. So that danger was over--once for all. I should go on living with them, loving and tending them as long as their dear lives lasted; and when I had them no longer on earth, would honor their memories, carry on their good works, and lead the life of an old maid, honored, happy, and perhaps of some use in my generation. He listened patiently, then responded: “Very good. You have made me fully acquainted with it all: first, of your rules day by day; now your plans for the future. Very good, we will keep to it. You a willing and contented old maid; I,” he shrugged his shoulders, “of necessity, an old bachelor.” “Of necessity?” “Yes!” he cried. “Where should I find a wife willing to share the hard life which I, at least temporarily, have to offer her?” “Oh, on that account? A hard life is no obstacle!” “And what is?” “The wishes of one’s parents.” “Ah, there we come back to the same thing. The parents’ wishes spring from the feeling that the children they have brought up in luxury must not make a bad match; it would only lead to unhappiness and misery. It would lower them in their own eyes, and they would lose caste.” Waxing hotter and hotter as he went on, in his warmth he said many things which were utterly illogical. He derided the prejudices of society, and yet constrained himself with painful self-mastery to declare that custom had sanctified these prejudices, and that they who belonged to the circles where they held good, did right to honor them. “Then you do not act up to your convictions?” I said. “I? Good Heavens! Do not speak of what I do. I, as everyone will tell you, am a fool. I am far from acting up to those convictions, because I do not, in truth, hold them; and on that account I am a very fool. But not fool enough, countess, not fool enough to persuade the one I love”--and here he pressed my hand with such force that I had the greatest difficulty to prevent an exclamation--“to follow my example, and be my companion on my lonely way.” He clenched his teeth. His eyes looked wild; his accustomed self-control had quite forsaken him. He looked so fearfully agitated that he would have terrified me had I not loved him so well; but because I loved him so well I felt, oh, so sorry for him, and I said: “I know somebody who would have no need of persuasion; who would only be too glad to go with you, if she dared!” Instead of calming him, my words only seemed to excite him the more.