"My brother is right," said Lori. "Such festivals contribute considerably to the people's education, and the people must be educated; one feels this necessity most keenly on such occasions as the present. Not only the lower orders, even the higher require education; people may say that men's student life for a time unsettles them; scorn of citizen-like customs is implanted in them; late hours, beer-drinking, smoking are acquired as noble habits of life, and to be intoxicated is considered manly and correct, perhaps because the ancient Germans, even upon their bearskins, sometimes lost their sense of sobriety with drinking mead. Thus it is with men; but the daughters of the higher classes are not much better off; more or less, they are all badly brought up. Yes, people may even maintain the same of us, although we are the daughters of a professor." "You go too far," said Albertine, angrily, and thus broke the silence, deep as an abyss, with which until now she had celebrated the day of jubilee. "Too far? What, have we then really learned, according to any system, any principle? Nothing, absolutely nothing! Yes, any one who gave herself the trouble, who followed her own inclinations, might attain splendid results. But that is the case even with the B[oe]otians! Method is everything; I shall introduce a method into my educational institution that will satisfy the most temperate minds." Reising looked timidly at Euphrasia, who always resisted the mention of this future boarding-school most decidedly, to-day she contented herself with carelessly humming a few bars of music. "That is very grand," said Emma; "but I believe that physical well-being has its rights also. Living in hotels is as uncomfortable as possible; a stranger runs about like a numbered prisoner whose whole rights of humanity depend upon the numeral of his rooms. How totally different is a furnished house upon the English model; everything in common, breakfast-table, dinner, tea in the evening, all flavoured with conversation; an hotel transformed into a drawing-room--I could arrange it capitally, like that intellectual society of which papa always talked." "What, intellectual society!" said Dr. Reising, while he coughed slightly, as though this Herbartian allusion had stuck in his throat, "all you have to do is to provide for the system of wants, for good food and drink, that soul of every hotel, and even of an _hotel garni_." "What is the use of these castles in the air?" said Euphrasia, shrugging her shoulders. "What do you say to it, Herr von Blanden," began Lori, who wished to draw the silent guest into the conversation. "I have become estranged from all society in my forest solitude," replied he. "And you live solitarily and alone?" asked Lori, with peculiar emphasis. "Alone with my thoughts and with the remembrance of the grief that has befallen me."