"I do not know how all these things should have come into my mind. I felt cheered up at last, and closed the window. Everything seemed so lovely in the room, and I felt as if I were at home. At home in eternity, and could now die. I did not fear death. I had fared so well in the world--better than millions--and master," said she, kneeling down before me and clasping my knee, "I will surely do all in my power to deserve this happiness. If I only knew of something good and hard that I might do. Tell me if there is such a thing; I will do it gladly."
It seemed that night as if an inexhaustible spring had begun to bubble up in the heart of the child.
She sat down quite near me and told me, with a pleased smile, that mother had bidden her to go to bed; but that she had stealthily gotten up, had sent Balbina, the servant, to bed, and had herself watched for me; and that she now felt as if she did not care to sleep again.
"I am living in eternity, and in eternity there is no sleep," she repeated several times.
The child was so excited that I thought it best to engage her mind in some other direction. I asked her about Ernst's plan of emigration. She told me that he had had that in view some time ago, but had now given up the idea.
We remained together for some time longer, and when I told her that she should always call me father now, she cried out with a happy voice:
"That fills my cup of joy! Now I shall go to bed. He whom you have once addressed as 'father' can never find it in his heart to send you out into the world. I shall stay here until they carry me over to the graveyard yonder; but may it be a long while before that happens! Father, good night!"
How strange things seem linked together! On the very day that Funk had so unfeelingly dragged the child's name before the public, her heart had awakened to a grateful sense of the world's kindness.
CHAPTER XIX.
Nothing so nerves a man for the battle with the outer world as the consciousness of his having a pleasant home, not merely a large and finely arranged household, but a home in which there reigns an atmosphere of hope and affection, and where, in days of sorrow, that which is best in us is met by the sympathy of those who surround us. Through Gustava, all this fell to my lot. Although the battle with the world would, at times, almost render me distracted, she would again restore my wonted spirits; and it is to her faithful and affectionate care that I ascribe the fact that the long struggle did not exhaust me. She judged of men and actions with never-failing equanimity, and her very glances seemed to beautify what they rested upon. Where I could see naught but spite or malice, she only beheld the natural selfishness of beings in whom education and morals had not yet gained complete ascendancy.