CHAPTER IX.
HERO ROLAND'S MOTTO.
The Professor's wife announced herself at Manna's door; Manna opened it. With a bloodless countenance, she stood, before the Mother and languidly-held out her hand.
"I have wrestled with myself all alone," she said; "I cannot find the outlet; I must tell you all."
And now Manna related how she had grown up in most reverent respect for her father, and how she had often painfully lamented that her mother was so harsh and cold to him; but once—she had never learned what had transpired previously—her mother had said in the presence of her father:—
"'Know then who your father is, who your father is.' Don't look at me, I beg of you; I beg you, let me speak it softly in your ear."
She whispered the words softly in the ear of the Professorin. The latter sat there and held her hands in her lap, and shut her eyes; not a sound was heard in the room: it seemed as if the whole world was dead, and the two human beings that sat there opposite to each other, dead as well. Manna went on to say that she did not at first understand what this meant, but gradually it had come to her, and she had persuaded her, parents to let her go to the convent. On the way thither the thought was continually present to her, how, in old times, Iphigenia had offered herself up as a propitiatory sacrifice, and so she longed to offer herself up a willing and a hopeful victim, to wash away all the guilt of those who were dear to her.
"I felt then as if something had been cleft within me, as if a vein had burst in my heart. I looked upon myself as a victim on the altar. I had the courage then, I wanted to act decisively before that courage deserted me, for I was afraid of my own cowardice, and for that reason was anxious to bind myself at once."
Again, after a longer pause—the Professorin did not interrupt with a single word—Manna said that she did not understand what her father was doing, and she, she herself must be made noble, and become Pranken's bride, of equal rank with him. She had honored and esteemed Pranken; he was a man of the world, but of a profoundly generous and religious character.
Sobbing bitterly, she threw herself upon the mother's neck, and exclaimed:—