"The handsome young couple came here. I saw them again by accident a few years after, when business chanced to bring me into this neighborhood, for I would have gone out of my way to avoid a meeting which could only cause me pain. But as I drove through Rammin, one of the wheels of my carriage broke directly in front of the parsonage. I was thrown out so violently that I dislocated my arm, and was compelled to claim your parents' hospitality for several weeks. You cannot remember me, but I can still see the curly-haired, large-eyed little boy, who played so happily at his mother's side among the beds of asters in the garden in the autumn sunlight, and, thank God, had no suspicion of the meaning of the mournful expression with which the beautiful young mother often gazed over the child's head into vacancy. Alas! for her the flowers did not bloom, the sun did not shine; everything around her was dark, and darkness was within her, in her warm young heart. And it was the same in the ardent heart of the man whom she had once so passionately loved, and who had loved her with equal fervor, who, I am perfectly sure, loved her with no less devotion at that moment, when they already seemed to hate each other, perhaps fancied they did. Oh! my dear friend, I won't preach--I won't begin our late dispute again; but how can I help touching the wound, and saying: 'Here again it was--and in a fatal manner--the want of moderation, which will not be satisfied with things as they are, will not try to make the best of circumstances, but releasing itself from commonplace conditions, strives to realize an ideal vision'? These two beautiful natures, which could offer so much, be so much to each other, considered it nothing because it was not all. She expected him to be not only the champion of the Church before whom she had at first knelt in admiration, but also to possess every virtue the intelligent, much-courted young girl had ever admired in any man. He expected her to wear, in addition to all the charms with which nature had so lavishly endowed her--I know not what mystic crown, without which all earthly beauty was valueless in the eyes of the enthusiastic apostle. And instead of trying to lessen the necessary differences between their natures as much as possible by gentleness and patience, and overlook the remnant which would still be left, out of respect for the Great Power of which we are only an infinitesimal part, both with fatal defiance increased their special gifts; he wanted to do nothing but see and read obscure writings by a glass; she, who had always been far too proud to be vain, declared that the glass told her nothing except that she was young and beautiful, as the world was, in spite of all fanatics and devotees. And now this strange conflict went on in the quiet parsonage of a little village, on an island which in those days was almost entirely secluded from all intercourse with the outside