I was greatly gratified by the visit of a deputation of my constituents. It consisted of three esteemed farmer-burgomasters of the neighborhood. They made no allusion to the grief which had befallen me; our conversation referred only to the war; and when Martella brought in wine, they looked at the child with curious eyes. CHAPTER VI. Ought we to bear the blame of our son Ernst's having wandered from the right path? By our example and precept we have guided our children in the path of virtue, but who can control their souls? I have caused many a fallow soil to bear fruit, and up on the bleak hills have raised sturdy trees. Nature's law is unchanging; but if not even a tree can mature without harm coming to it, how much less can a human soul be expected to do so. We have lived to see naught but what is good and proper in our son Richard. His development is so natural and consistent. In his earliest youth, he decided to devote himself to science. He has steadily advanced, swerving neither to the right nor the left, and has always been full of the conscious power of the clear and temperate mind that grasps the laws underlying the phenomena presented by the world of thought and of action. We can neither take credit to ourselves, in the one instance, nor acknowledge that we were in fault in the other. My wife had been true to herself, and yet full of resignation in the first shock of this bitter grief; but now there came an insurmountable desire to quarrel with her lot, and the puzzling question, "Why should this happen just to us?" was again awakened. I dislike to admit it, but truth forces me to say that this was brought about by the arrival of my daughter Johanna. Johanna also had her troubles. Her husband was sickly, her son was in the army, and she seemed chosen for suffering; but chosen by reason of a higher faith. With inconsiderate zeal, she attempted to awaken the same faith in us. At that very moment, she thought, when we were crushed and bowed down by sorrow, our redemption should take place. She assigned the impiety of our household as the cause of our son's disobedience. The education which my wife had received from her father was, as some would call it, a heathen one; for she had received more instruction from the classics than from the Bible. We were seated in our statue gallery. The door that led to the garden was open; my wife had been eagerly reading from a book, which she now laid aside with the remark, "That does one good." "What were you reading?" inquired Johanna. My wife made no answer, and Johanna repeated her question, when she said, "I have been reading the Antigone of Sophocles, and I find that I am right." "In what respect?"