A better lot's in store for thee,
has been haunting me, all day long.
How simple the words! Music is the fairy that invests Cinderella's accents with royal robes, and enthrones them on the lips of all mankind.
O happy nursery tale! Thou askest not how the princess lived as poultry-maid. Thy fancy uttered its creative: "Let there be--" and behold! it was.
But, in life, such transformations are not brought about without great effort.
Walpurga has rightly divined my feelings. It was but to-day that she said:
"You can't get used to things here. Life here must seem almost as strange to you as it did to me in the palace, but, of course, it's easier to get used to a silken bed than to a sack of leaves."
I felt like saying: "And if one means to go home again, it's far easier to put up with such discomfort," but I repressed it. One ought not to torment such people with logical consequences. Their thoughts and feelings are like the singing of birds, without rhythm and, at best, like the folk-songs, whose melodies close on the third, instead of on the key-note.