Louder became the roaring of the distant waves; Käthe, without waiting for orders, guided the boat back to the shore. And the billows, rearing themselves up ever higher, came rolling on like serpents behind the young betrothed couple, tossing the skiff up and down. Eva's blooming features and cheeks paled, dizziness and discomfort took possession of her; it was time that the boat should reach the shore. Blanden was obliged to exert all his strength in assisting Käthe to land. "The storm has put our young love to the test," said Blanden, "but we hold to one another in trouble and in joy, and defy danger." Which Eva confirmed with a heartfelt kiss and fervent embrace. The ocean-maiden, however, again lay upon the strand; the tempest raged above her; her red shawl fluttered in the wind; the waves must wet her feet. Of what was she thinking? Idiot Käthe loved Blanden and hated her rival. CHAPTER XI. IN NEUKUHREN. During all these occurrences, life in the bathing-place, Neukuhren, continued on its course, like a wound-up watch. Professor Baute and Dr. Reising still lived upon a philosophical war-footing; Baute often maintained, with an energy which seemed to disarm any contradiction, that Hegel's philosophy was quite incomprehensible to any reasonable creature, that the somersaults of his ideas were only harlequinades of thought, and that if he had read a few chapters of logic he felt like the scholar of Faust-- "My brain with all that nonsense reels, As if in my head revolved mill wheels." Dr. Reising paled with internal annoyance, and bit his lips; he pushed his rebellious hair back from his head with a nervously trembling hand, but he took tall Albertina for an example, who, like a goddess of silence, always seemed to lay a finger upon his lips. He, too, was silent, and he had his reasons for it, he was now making great progress in the conquest of the Professor's seven daughters. Dr. Kuhl had advised him to fix his eyes upon one of two youngest, who had the longest future before them, and of whom, perhaps, something might still be made; but when, obediently to such experienced counsel, he devoted particular attention to Gretchen and Marie, he encountered a decided repulse, as the two foolish creatures did not know how to appreciate the great importance of a Hegelite. Gretchen and Marie, who quarrelled the live-long day, were only unanimous on one point--that Dr. Reising's nose had an ugly termination, and that there was something intolerably knowing in his mode of placing his finger upon it. Gretchen considered that his voice was too thin, that his words could be passed through the eye of a needle, and Marie said the Doctor appeared to her like a nibbling mouse.