"Good Petrea!" whispered Sara, laying her arm round her neck, and kissing her weeping eyes, "continue to love Sara, but do not follow her!"
"It seems terribly sultry to me this evening!" said Henrik, wearily: "we cannot manage any family assembling to-night; not a bit of music; not a bit of entertainment. The air seems as if an earthquake were at hand. I fancy that Africa sends us something of a tempest. Petrea is weeping like the cataract of Trollhätten; and there go the people in twos-and-twos and weep, and set themselves in corners and whisper and mutter, and kiss one another, from my God-fearing parents down to my silly little sisters! The King and Queen, they go and seat themselves just has it happens, on living or dead things; they had nearly seated themselves on me as I sate unoffensively on the sofa; but I made a turn about tout d'un coup.—Betrothed! horribly wearisome folks! Are they not, Gabriele? They cannot see, they cannot hear; they could not speak, I fancy, but with one another!"
A light was burning in Sara's chamber far into the night. She was busied for a long time with her journal; she wrote with a flying but unsteady hand.
"So, to-morrow; to-morrow all will be said, and I——shall be bound.
"I know that is but of little importance, and yet I have such a horror of it! Oh, the power of custom and of form.
"I know very well whom I could love; there is a purity in his glance, a powerful purity which penetrates me. But how would he look on me if he saw——
"I must go! I have no choice left! S. has me in his net—the money which I have borrowed from him binds me so fast!—for I cannot bear that they should know it, and despise me. I know that they would impoverish themselves in order to release me, but I will not so humiliate myself.
"And why do I speak of release? I go hence to a life of freedom and honour. I bow myself under the yoke but for a moment, only in order to exalt myself the more proudly. Now there is no more time to tremble and to waver—away with these tears! And thou, Volney, proud, strong thinker, stand by me! Teach me, when all others turn away, how I may rely on my own strength!"
Sara now exchanged the pen for the book, and the hour of midnight struck before she closed it, and arose tranquil and cold in order to seek the quiet of sleep.