"I am glad you are not going as far as the city to-night," said Rahel, looking up at the clouds: "what a gloomy ending for such a bright day!"
"And yet," replied Goethe, "I shall always think of the parsonage as an enchanted castle associated with perpetual sunshine."
"Well, if the storm should overtake you," answered Rahel, laughing, "my sister and myself will be the powerful princesses to protect you till you get beyond our dominions. Will we not, Alide?" And she turned to her sister, who reappeared with the scroll.
"That we will," said Alide, with spirit; "and here is my talisman to shield you from the dangers of the road."
When he looked back at her, he saw her smiling still upon him, until her fresh rose-face and white-clad form were lost in the folds of mist, and she vanished as weirdly and gradually as a spirit maiden.
"Well, I am not sorry to get under shelter after the infernal cold darkness of this night," cried Max, as they entered their room at the inn.
"We are fortunate to have escaped a storm," replied Goethe, and relapsed into silence.
"It is strange," resumed Waldstein, "that you should have hit upon that story to read to the girls. Did you not notice what a peculiar impression it made?"
"How do you mean? I could not help observing that the elder laughed more than was appropriate at certain passages, that Fräulein Alide shook her head, that you all looked significantly at each other, and you yourself were nearly put out of countenance. I do not deny that I almost felt embarrassed myself, for it struck me that it was perhaps improper to tell the dear girls a parcel of stuff of which they had better been ignorant, and to give them such a bad opinion of the male sex as they must have formed from the principal character."
"You have not hit it at all," said Max. "The 'dear girls' are not so unacquainted with such matters as you imagine, for the society around them gives occasion for many reflections; and there happens to be on the other side of the Rhine exactly such a couple as you describe, allowing a little for fancy and exaggeration; the husband just So tall and sturdy and heavy, the wife so pretty and dainty that he could easily hold her in his hand. Their mutual position in other respects, their history altogether, so exactly accords with your tale, that the girls seriously asked me whether you knew the persons and described them in jest. I assured them you did not; and if you follow my advice you will let the story remain uncopied. With the assistance of delays and pretexts you may easily find an excuse."