“Very well. I will promise not to break off with him yet.”
And then Johann thought it prudent to get up and go out of reach; and no sooner was he gone than Dorothea laid down the gleaming cover right in a pool of water, so that all the polishing would have to be done over again.
After which she went quietly out of the kitchen and upstairs to her own room, to prepare for the visit of the King.
On this afternoon Maximilian came by himself, only attended as far as the forest by his favourite Karl.
He came along with beating heart, murmuring to himself the fragment of an old German song:—
“Ill for the man who loves a child;
Better to woo the wood-bird wild,
Flying free in the middle air.”
Over and over again he reckoned up all the smiles he had ever received from Dorothea, and every look and word which could betoken the secret growth of love. And as he thought, and as he counted, his heart grew great within him, and his step grew buoyant, and the old earth seemed to bend and swing beneath him, and all the branches of the trees to wave salutes, and every leaf and blade to toss for joy, as he strode onward to meet his bride.
And ever and anon, from the very bottom of his heart there crept up a cold doubt like a mist, and blotted out all his tender pictures one by one; and his spirit wavered and went down like the flame of a fire when the rain falls on it; and bitterly he reproached his fortune that had done so much for him, but yet could not do this one last thing—like the mighty roaring Nasmyth hammer, that can crush a cannon-ball and stroke an eggshell, but yet cannot give a new curve to the stalk of the tiniest flower.