"To whom?"
"How can you ask? To her,—the most charming creature; and prudent, and clever as the day! Oh! Annele!"
"What Annele—Annele of the 'Lion'?"
"So you are surprised that she should accept me! I know I am not worthy of her, but I will try to deserve her. God is my witness that I will do my best; I will lay my head under her feet, and——" Lenz looking up at his mother's picture, said, "Good mother! dear loving mother! rejoice in the seventh heavens, for your son is happy."
He could not say another word, for tears choked his voice, and he knelt before the picture. Pilgrim went up to him, and placed his hand on his shoulder.
"Forgive me, dear Pilgrim," said Lenz. "I had resolved to be such a strong iron man! I am to have a wife who well deserves a strong-minded husband; but on this day I feel quite overcome—but for this day only. On the way here I thought to myself, I wish some one would come and impose on me a severe task—I don't know what—but something—something that I might put my whole heart in, and, however difficult, I would accomplish it. I will show that I deserve the happiness God has sent me.
"Be quiet, do be quiet; other men besides you have got wives, and there is no occasion to turn the world upside down on that account."
"Oh! if my mother had only lived to see this day!"
"If your mother had lived, Annele would not have accepted you. You did not please her till you were quite alone, and without any mother."
"Don't say that; how highly she honoured my mother!"