CHAPTER X.
FIRESIDE SCENES.
"From home may be good, but at home is best!" said Elise from the bottom of her heart, as she was once more in her own house, and beside her own husband.
The young people said nothing in opposition to this sentiment as they returned to their comfortable every-day life, which they now enlivened with recollections and relations out of the lately-past time. They hoped that Louise would become pleasant and contented with her calm activity in the house and family as formerly, but it was not so; a gnawing pain seemed to consume her; she became perceptibly thinner; her good humour had vanished, and her eyes were often red with weeping. In vain her parents and sisters endeavoured, with the tenderest anxiety, to fathom the occasion of the change; she would confess it to no one. That the root of her grief lay at her heart she would not deny, but she appeared determined to conceal it from the eye of day. Jacobi also began to look pale and thin, since he lamented deeply her state of feeling, and her altered behaviour, especially towards himself, which led him to the belief that he unconsciously had wounded her, or in some other way that he was the cause of her displeasure; and never had he felt more than now what a high value he set upon her, nor how much he loved her. This tension of mind, and his anxiety to approach Louise, and bring back a friendly understanding between them, occasioned various little scenes, which we will here describe.
FIRST SCENE.
Louise sits by the window at her embroidery-frame: Jacobi seats himself opposite to her.
Jacobi (sighing). Ah, Mamselle Louise!
Louise looks at her shepherdess, and works on in silence.
Jacobi. Everything in the world has appeared to me for some time wearisome and oppressive.
Louise works on, and is silent.