‘You may trust me indeed, _mein liebes Fräulein_! And now I go to the Herrn Professor, to tell him of my success. He will let you know all about the rest.’ With the most affectionate adieux she departed. Sara and Avice, left alone, both burst into a fit of laughter. ‘What an absurd little woman!’ exclaimed Avice. ‘Painfully so,’ responded Sara. ‘I own that I wonder to see her going about doing this kind of thing herself. If it were not that the dear old Professor evidently desires it so much’—she tossed Wilhelmi’s note to Avice—‘I should refuse.’ ‘They are both very different subjects—the pictures, I mean,’ said Avice, musingly. ‘You will look splendid as Thusnelda, Sara.’ ‘Shall I? It is a splendid picture, certainly.’ It was a picture representing that scene in Kleist’s _Hermannsschlacht_, in which Hermann, seated beside Thusnelda, listens to her, while she indignantly relates how the Roman envoy, Ventidius, had impertinently, and without her knowledge, clipped off a lock of her hair, upon hearing which Hermann, with a grim and granite humour, and a mirth bordering on the diabolical, describes to her how that lock will probably go to Rome, there to excite the cupidity of the Roman women, who, he informs her, admire hair like that—‘_gold’ und schön, und trocken so wie dein_,’—and sometimes have it—not growing on their own heads, but shorn from those of other women, and that the golden locks of a Teuton princess would be an ornament which they, any of them, would especially glory in wearing. It was a noble picture, by a celebrated artist, and Sara, already even, felt some thrills of pleasure in the idea of taking a part in the representation of it. The other picture was a rather ambitious _tableau de genre_, Goldmark’s last, and was called _Ja, oder Nein_. The next time that Wilhelmi saw Sara, she told him what she had done, and added: ‘I hope I have been right, but it seems to me that there are many girls in Elberthal who ought to have had the parts offered to them—your townspeople,’ she added, smiling. Wilhelmi laughed as he asked, ‘Do you seriously mean to say you think there is any one young woman in Elberthal except yourself who would in the least _look_ the part of Thusnelda?’ Sara laughed, but was obliged to confess that she did not. She wrote to Jerome, telling him what she was going to do; adding, ‘I hope you don’t mind. My Hermann will only be Max Helmuth; he will look the part every inch, I must say, but he is quite harmless; he is engaged to Wilhelmi’s daughter, and wildly in love with her; so say you don’t mind, because they have set their hearts upon it.’ Jerome replied that she must certainly take the part. ‘I suppose your Hermann is a contrast to me. One can only think of that enlightened barbarian as some fair-haired giant, with a fierce yellow moustache. You will make an ideal Thusnelda, I must say, according to Heinrich Kleist’s version, at any rate.’