CHAPTER I.
LEONORE TO EVA.
"And so you are coming home? Coming really home soon, sweet Eva? Ah! I am so happy, so joyful on that account, and yet a little anxious: but don't mind that; come, only come, and all will be right! When I can only look into your eyes, I feel that all will be clear. Your good eyes!—Gabriele and I call them 'our blue ones'—how long it is that I have not seen you—two long years! I cannot conceive, dear Eva, how I have lived so long without you; but then it is true that we have not been in reality separated. I have accompanied you into the great world; I have been with you to balls and concerts; I have enjoyed with you your pleasures and the homage which has been paid to you. Ah! what joy for me that I have learned to love you! Since then I have lived twofold, and felt myself so rich in you! And now you are coming back; and then, shall we be as happy as before?
"Forgive, forgive this note of interrogation! But sometimes a disquiet comes over me. You speak so much of the great world, of joys and enjoyments, which—it is not in home to afford you. And your grand new acquaintance—ah, Eva! let them be ever so agreeable and interesting, they would not love you as we do, as I do! And then this Major R——! I am afraid of him, Eva. It appears to me the most natural thing in the world that he should love you, but—ah, Eva! it grieves me that you should feel such affection for him. My dear, good Eva, attach yourself not too closely to him before—but I distress you, and that I will not. Come, only come to us; we have so much to talk to you about, so much to hear from you, so much to say to you!
"I fancy you will find the house yet more agreeable than formerly; we have added many little decorations to it. You will again take breakfast with us—that comfortable meal, and my best-beloved time; and tea with us—your favourite hour, in which we were assembled for a merry evening, and were often quite wild. This morning I took out your breakfast-cup, and kissed that part of the edge on which the gold was worn off.
"We will again read books together, and think about and talk about them together. We will again go out together and enjoy all the freshness and quiet of the woods. And would it not be a blessed thing to wander thus calmly through life, endeavouring to improve ourselves, and to make all those around us happier; to admire the works of God, and humbly to thank Him for all that he has given to us and others? Should we not then have lived and flourished enough on earth? Truly I know that a life quiet as this might not satisfy every one; neither can it accord with all seasons of life. Storms will come;—even I have had my time of unrest, of suffering, and of combat. But, thank God! that is now past, and the sensibility which destroyed my peace is now become as a light to my path; it has extended my world; it has made me better: and now that I no longer covet to enjoy the greater and stronger pleasures of life, I learn now, each passing day, to prize yet higher the treasures which surround me in this quiet every-day life. Oh, no one can be happy on earth till he has learned the worth of little things, and to attend to them! When once he has learned this, he may make each day not only happy, but find in it cause of thankfulness. But he must have peace—peace both within himself and without himself; for peace is the sun in which every dewdrop of life glitters!
"Would that I could but call back peace into a heart which—but I must prepare you for a change, for a great void in the house. You will not find Petrea here. You know the state of things which so much distressed me for some time. It would not do to let it go on any longer either for Louise or Jacobi's sake, or yet for her own, and therefore Petrea must go, otherwise they all would have become unhappy. She herself saw it; and as we had tidings of Jacobi's speedy arrival here, she opened her heart to her parents. It was noble and right of her, and they were as good and prudent as ever; and now our father has gone with her to his friend Bishop B. May God preserve her, and give her peace! I shed many tears over her; but I hope all may turn out well. Her lively heart has a fresh-flowing fountain of health in it; and certainly her residence in the country, which she likes so much, new circumstances, new interests——
"I was interrupted: Jacobi is come! It is a good thing that Petrea is now whiling away her time in the shades of Furudal; good for her poor heart, and good too for the betrothed pair, who otherwise could not have ventured to have been happy in her presence. But now they are entirely so.
"Now, after six years' long waiting, sighing, and hoping, Jacobi sees himself approaching the goal of his wishes—marriage and a parsonage! And the person who helps him to all this, to say nothing of his own individual deserts, is his beloved patron the excellent Excellency O——. Through his influence two important landed-proprietors in the parish of Great T. have been induced to give their votes to Jacobi, who, though yet young, has been proposed; and thus he will receive one of the largest and most beautiful livings in the bishopric, and Louise will become a greatly honoured pastor's wife—'provost's wife' she herself says prophetically.