Sonnenkamp experienced something like a feeling of devotion, as the wife said this.
She made mention now of her life as a lady of the court, and her eyes glistened while speaking of the Princess dowager.
"I had not only the happiness and the honor," she said, "to visit and oversee with her, and yet oftener in her name and by her order, the many various institutions of beneficence of which her highness was the protectress, but I had the yet more important and often more melancholy, though blessed and refreshing duty, to visit those, or to institute inquiries concerning those, who applied to the Princess for assistance, often with heartrending cries for help. The greater part of the letters were entrusted to me, either to bring in a report concerning them, or to answer them. This was a sad, but, as I said before, a blessed and an ennobling service."
While the lady was thus speaking, placing at the same time her delicate, soft hand upon her heart, as if she must repress the overflowing feelings of this recollection, her whole countenance was illuminated by an inexpressible tenderness.
Sonnenkamp rose suddenly, as if some irresistible power had called to him, and there was deep feeling in his voice, as he said,—
"Might I be allowed, noble lady, to offer you a compensation, if you will be induced to live in our neighborhood? I am no prince, but I am, perhaps, as much overrun with begging letters. Our good Major frequently helps me in instituting inquiries. But you, honored lady, could render much more effectual service in this matter; and even if one cannot render assistance in every case, it is always a consolation to the poor to receive at least a friendly answer, and your look is radiant with a mother's blessing."
It was an hour in which Sonnenkamp experienced a blessedness such as he thought himself wholly incapable of receiving, and his fixed purpose was,—
"This must be; here is the starting-point in life which you have so long desired, and all the past is annihilated."
Sonnenkamp had formed an entirely different notion of the professor's widow and her sister-in-law. He saw in Eric's mother a stately lady of fine mind and high-bred manners; she was pale, and this paleness was very much increased by her black cap and her mourning dress.
The aunt seemed to him still handsomer.