Ah! I would almost have preferred that the soft moonlight had then and there shone on the kiss of love.... After all the pictures of hate and bitter woe which I had been obliged to witness a short time ago, a picture of love and sweet pleasure would have seemed to me like some compensation.
“Oh! is it you, Martha?”
Rosa had now become aware of me, and was at first very much shocked that any one should have been listening at this scene, but then pacified that it was only me.
The prince, however, was in the highest degree discomposed and perplexed. He stepped towards me.
“I have just made an offer of my hand to your sister, gracious madam. Kindly say a word in my favour. My action may perhaps seem to both of you somewhat sudden and presumptuous. At another time I should myself perhaps have proceeded more cautiously and more modestly; but in these last few weeks I have been accustoming myself to advance quickly and boldly—no hesitation or trembling was allowed then—and the practice which I formed in war I have now involuntarily again exercised in love. Pray forgive me, and be favourable to me. You are silent, countess? Do you refuse me your hand?”
“My sister,” said I, coming to Rosa’s assistance, who was standing there in deep emotion with her head turned aside, “cannot surely be expected to decide her fate so quickly. Who knows whether our father will give his consent to a marriage with ‘an enemy’; who knows again whether Rosa will return an inclination so suddenly kindled?”
“I know,” she replied, and stretched out both her hands to the young man; and he pressed her warmly to his heart.
“Oh, you silly children,” I said, and drew back a few paces to the drawing-room door, to watch that—at least at that moment—no one should come out.
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On the following day the betrothal was celebrated. My father offered no opposition. I should have thought that his hatred of the Prussians would have made it impossible for him to receive into his family a hostile warrior and a victor; but whether it was that he separated altogether the individual question from the national (a common method of action—for one often hears people protest: “I hate them as a nation, not as individuals,” though there is no sense in it, no more sense than if one were to say: “I hate wine as a drink, but I swallow each drop with pleasure”; still a phrase need not be rational in order to be popular, quite the contrary), or whether it was that ambition got the upper hand and an alliance with a princely house flattered him, or, finally, that the sudden love of the young folks so romantically expressed touched him—in short, he said yes, and with seeming heartiness. Aunt Mary was less disposed to agree. “Impossible!” was her first exclamation. “The prince is surely of the Lutheran sect.” But in the end she comforted herself with the consideration that Rosa would probably convert her husband. The deepest resentment it awoke was in Otto’s heart. “How would you like it,” he said, “supposing the war was to break out again, that I should chase my brother-in-law out of the country?” But to him also the famous theory of the difference between nation and individual was explained, and to my astonishment—for I could never understand it—he understood it.