Irma instructed Walpurga not to tell the queen, and said that she would join her. She went to her room and sat there for a long while, buried in thought. She felt as if she had extended a friendly hand and that no one had clasped it in return.

In the hallway, they were moving trunks about. Suddenly, she thought of the time when she sat in her room, an orphan child, clad in black, and heard them moving her mother's coffin about in the adjoining apartment.

Why had it occurred to her at that moment? She arose--she could no longer endure being alone. She hastily changed her dress and went to the queen.

The queen saw her coming and advanced to meet her.

Irma bent low and made an effort to kiss her hand.

The queen held her up and, embracing her, imprinted a tender kiss upon her lips.

"You're the only one who dare touch the lips that my father has kissed," said Irma--that is, she did not say it aloud, but simply moved her lips as if forming the words. Deep within her soul, arose a thought: I'd rather die a thousand deaths, than sadden that guileless heart.

The thought illumined her countenance with a n.o.ble expression, and the queen, all delight, exclaimed:

"Oh how beautiful, how radiant you are, Countess Irma!"

Irma dropped her eyes and knelt down beside the child's cradle. Her eyes were so l.u.s.trous that the child put out its hand as if to seize them.

"He's right," said Walpurga, "he tries to catch the light already, but I think your eyes have grown larger than they used to be."

Irma went with Walpurga and excused herself for not having visited the cottage by the lake. She then told her of her friend in the convent.

"And how's your father?" asked Walpurga.

Irma was startled. The queen had not even inquired about her father.

Walpurga was the only one who had asked about him.

She told her that he knew her mother, and also her uncle, who often burnt pitch in the forest.

"Yes, he's my mother's brother; so you know him, too?"

"I don't, but my father does."

Walpurga told her about her uncle Peter, who was known as the "little pitchman," and vowed that she would send him something, one of these days, for the poor old fellow had a hard time of it in this world. Old Zenza had had the courage to come to the palace, but the little pitchman would starve to death before he would do such a thing.

While Walpurga was speaking, the queen went to the cradle, and when the prince saw her, he struggled, with hands and feet, as if trying to get to her. She bent down and raised him up, and Walpurga exclaimed:

"Dear me! on the very day our countess returns, our prince sits up for the first time. Yes, she can make everything go right."

The queen and Irma remained together in cheerful and unconstrained conversation. In the evening, there were joyful greetings on the part of those who had returned from the excursion to the Devil's Pulpit.

Irma now, for the first time, learned that her brother was not at court. While at the baths, he had made the acquaintance of Baroness Steigeneck and her daughter and was now visiting them.

The king's greeting of Irma was quite formal. Even Countess Brinkenstein could have found nothing to object to in it; but how could he well have done otherwise, when the queen said:

"I can't tell you how happy our dear countess's return has made me; we've already spent several delightful hours together."

In the evening, there were fireworks which the king had ordered to be prepared in honor of Irma's arrival. Far and near, the people were looking at the lights and the gay-colored sheets of fire ascending heavenward. At last, Countess Irma's name stood forth in letters of fire, held aloft by mountaineers. The flame crackled, and, from behind the shrubbery, there issued strains of music which were echoed back from the distance. In the midst of all this noise and splendor, Irma was ever asking herself: "How fares it now with your father?"

Count Eberhard, in his mountain castle, was sitting by the window and, looking out into the starry night, said to himself: "Just as the stars above are separate and distinct from each other, so is every human soul solitary and alone. Each travels in its own orbit, its course determined by the attraction and repulsion of the heavenly bodies that environ it."

That night, Irma dreamt that a star descended from heaven and fell upon her bosom. She tried to grasp it, but it eluded her and transformed itself into a human figure which, with averted glance, exclaimed: "Thou, too, art solitary."

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

Hansei was looking out of the window, holding his pipe with both hands and smoking away, while the morning pa.s.sed. Near by, a day-laborer was cutting a load of wood. Hansei looked on, calmly nodding approval when the woodcutter made a clever stroke and, like a true judge, smiling at the awkward fellow when an obstinate branch would oblige him to turn it again and again before he succeeded in chopping it up. The grandmother was carrying the chopped wood into the shed at the gable end of the house and was there piling it up. Every time she pa.s.sed, she would look at Hansei, who did not stir. At last, with an armful of wood, she stopped before him and said: "Well?"

"Of course," he replied and puffed on. The grandmother's exclamation had meant: "What's this? Are you only here to look on? Can't you, at least, pile up the cut wood?"

Hansei had fully understood her and had answered as if to say: "Of course I shan't help; I don't feel a mind to."

The grandmother was about to throw down the armful of wood before his very face, but she reflected that the day-laborer outside need not see that. She carried the wood into the shed and then went into the room and said:

"Look here, Hansei! I've got something to tell you."

"I can hear you," he replied, still looking out of the window.

"I don't know what to make of you. What's got into you?"

Hansei did not deem it necessary to make any reply, but went on smoking while the grandmother continued:

"It's shame enough that you have the wood brought to the house, instead of going and getting it yourself. You're a woodcutter, and yet you must have another come and cut your wood for you. Such a thing never happened before. As long as this house stands, the axe-handle has never grown warm in the hands of a stranger. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"There's no need of my doing it," replied Hansei.

"Very well, I suppose you know your needs, better than I do," cried the old woman, angrily; "but I'll not scold. Do just as you please; let yourself and everything else go to ruin. As you make your bed, so you'll have to lie on it. Oh, if Walpurga knew of this! She's gone away among strangers, for our sake, while you--"

"There! I've had enough of it," said Hansei, closing the window and turning round. "Mother-in-law, I don't interfere in anything; I let you manage just as you please, and so I don't mean to let anybody interfere with me."

"I don't want to interfere with you. You're father and husband."

"A fine husband, indeed, whose wife leaves him for a year."

"Perhaps she's having a harder time of it than you."

"May be so; but she has pleasure and enjoyment, and what have I? I wander about as if lost, and that's why I'm not ashamed. The best thing left me is the tavern. One can feel at home there, when he can't in his own house. I don't need to cut or haul wood any longer, and I want to have some good of my wife's being--"

Hansei could not finish what he was about to say, for, at that moment, the door opened and Zenza entered.