"We will live right comfortably together in our Masuren wilderness, for I am seriously inclined to make a home, and then you shall visit me every day. It is true I was always afraid on account of the cooking:--next to love that is the principal thing, and I am convinced that a bad dinner would make me angry with my wife for the whole day, even if I loved her as Romeo does his Juliet. Every one has his own ideal at some time, and a sweetheart or wife must be found in the perihelion of that ideal, else the transfiguring halo is wanting around her; but I should prefer to be buried in the vault of the Capulets to having an unpalatable joint or fish in some impracticable sauce set before me by a Juliet. Well, do you see my friend, it is true that even by the most cunning insinuations I have not been able to find out what my Cäcilie thinks of the culinary art, and if our natures meet in unanimity upon this important point; as yet also I have seen and tasted no practical proofs of her possession of this gift, and the worst is, I am convinced that Frau von Dornau's cuisine offers no opportunity for the development of artistic talents, and that it does not extend beyond the most simple requirements of the needs of the inner man; because, according to General Montecuculi's views, cooking, like war, needs money, money and ever again money, and Frau von Dornau's pension, according to my unprejudiced calculation, suffices at the outside for potatoes, grey peas, and occasionally fish. On the other hand I am firmly convinced that my Cäcilie in the kitchen would always find herself equal to the situation, if her finances permitted her brilliant supplies; to a mind like hers the importance of the culinary art for human life, and especially for mine, cannot remain unknown, and if she does not quite understand the tactics of the roasting-spit, and the strategy of the bill of fare, she has sense enough to select a proper talented kitchen adjutant, and it is quite immaterial whether the field-marshal or his adjutant gain the victory, so long as it be gained. I then crown my wife with the kitchen-laurels, which I do not estimate so lowly as though its leaves were only fitted for the preparation of a boar's head, and in that laurel wreath I entwine the most beautiful myrtle of love, and the olive-branch of domestic peace." To this complacent communication, which might at the same time claim the merit of being a soliloquy, speaking the deepest thoughts of his mind, Blanden only listened with abstracted understanding; his glance rested inadvertently upon the misty horizon. A steamboat passed by; its column of smoke disappeared in a heavy, lowering cloud; here and there a white sail became visible that lost itself out at sea, and at last only appeared like a streak of chalk upon a black wall.