Tokens of condolement mingled themselves with welcomes and felicitations.
"How wet, and pale, and cold you are!"
"Oh, we have had a magnificent shower!" said Henrik, shaking himself, and casting a side glance on Jacobi, who looked both downcast and doleful in his wet apparel. "Such weather as this is quite an affair of my own. In wind and rain one becomes so—I don't know rightly how—do you, mon cher?"
"A jelly, a perfect jelly!" said Jacobi, in a mournful voice; "how can one be otherwise, knocked about in the most infamous of peasant-cars, and storm, and pouring rain, so that one is perfectly battered and melted! Hu, hu, u, u, u, uh!"
"Oh, according to my opinion," said Henrik, laughing heartily at the gestures of his travelling companion, "it is a hardening sort of weather; there is a proud exalting feeling in it, sitting there quite calm under the raging of the elements; especially when one looks down from one's elevation on other fellow-mortals, who go lamenting, and full of anxiety, under their umbrellas. Thus one sits on one's car as on a throne; nay, indeed, one gets quite a flattering idea of oneself, as if one were a little, tiny philosopher. Apropos! I bethink myself now, as if we had seen, as we came this way, a philosopher in a lady's cloak walking hither. But, how are you all, sweet, sweet sisters? How long it is since I saw you!" and he pressed their hands between his cold and wet ones.
This scene, which took place in twilight, was quickly brought to an end by the ladies resolutely driving the gentlemen out to their own chamber to change their clothes. Jacobi, it is true, on his own account, did not require much driving, and Louise found Henrik's philosophy on this occasion not so fully adopted. Louise had already taken care that a good blazing fire should welcome the travellers in their chamber.
In the mean time, the ladies quartered themselves in the library; lights were kindled, the table spread; the Judge helped all, and was highly delighted if people only called to him. The Assessor looked enraptured, as Eva arranged his confections on little plates. Petrea did not venture to look at them, much less to touch them.
"By Jove, my dear girls, how comfortable it is here!" exclaimed the Judge in the joy of his heart, as he saw the library thus peopled, and in its for-the-future every-day state. "Are you comfortable there, on the sofa, Elise? Let me get you a footstool. No; sit still, my friend! what are men for in the world?"
The Candidate—we beg his pardon, the Master of Arts, Jacobi—appeared no longer to be the same person who had an hour before stood there in his wet dress, as he made his appearance, handsomely apparelled, with his young friend, before the ladies, and his countenance actually beamed with delight at the joyful scene which he there witnessed.
People now examined one another nearer. They discovered that Henrik had become considerably paler as well as thinner, which Henrik received as a compliment to his studies. Jacobi wished also a compliment on his studies, but it was unanimously refused to him on account of his blooming appearance. He protested that he was flushed with the weather, but that availed nothing. Louise thought privately to herself that Jacobi had decidedly gained in manly bearing; that he had a simpler and more vigorous demeanour; he was become, she thought, a little more like her father. Her father was Louise's ideal of manly perfection.