All talked at once. "How do you like her? How do you like him?" Those were the most coherent words which echoed simultaneously from all sides. Lori's sharp voice was the first to pierce through the noise. "She cannot long have left her governesses. She is a very nice child, but the schoolroom clings to all her movements. He is a very different man. He shows plainly that he has long since passed through school, and also the school of life." "She has fine eyes," said Ophelia, opening her own widely. "But not so fine as yours," said Lori, quickly, "as that is all that you wished to hear." "T could not like him," said Marie, "he looks so sleepy." "That indicates a deep, mental life," said Euphrasia; "when he does open his eyes, a great deal of intellect lies in them. And he does open them when anything arouses his sympathies. We all, of course, are very uninteresting to him, but I like men to whom we are, or appear so." "Well, then, you have an extensive public upon whom to exercise your liking," said Lori. Albertina interrupted a silence of some hours with the thoughtful words-- "Besides, he has a good figure." "I imagine her to be most domestic," said Emma, "and that is the principal matter. She is sure to be at home beside the kitchen fire and the bread board, and look very pretty there, too. And that is very important. It is no art to look well in a ball dress." "My dear Emma," interposed Lori, "that is exactly true art! With the aid of paint, rouge, and the sculpture of a laced bodice, one must become a work of art." "The bride-elect pleases me," said old Baute, wiping his spectacles, "she is natural," added he, with a melancholy glance at his daughters. Herbart once maintained that everybody at certain points feels cramped by society. Professor Baute often, in the midst of his daughters, had this sensation of being cramped. "There is something pleasant about her, and certainly it is a healthy nature. She possesses repose and equanimity, and as thus the mutual determination of all ideas is connected through one another, she will also be sensible, she will not give way too much either to strong or weak affections; I believe we may congratulate this Blanden. He himself, however, appears to be of a passionate nature. But passions arise from an immoderately strong or ill-connected mass of conceptions. There are eulogists of passion. But, according to Herbart's and my view, it stands in repulsive contrast to all that really belongs to the well-being of mankind. Passion plays a great part in history. Herbart cautions us against charging the all-providing spirit of the universe with this part, it would otherwise resemble Mephistopheles too closely." Doctor Reising's lips quivered convulsively; he passed his hand through his hair, and, as soon as Baute again wiped his spectacles, he broke forth indignantly with the words--