"Should you like to be a landed-proprietor?" whispered Henrik to her as she left it.
Louise answered exactly as a cathedral would have answered—looked very solemn, and was silent.
Petrea, like something let quite loose, after supper would not let anybody remain quiet who by any possibility could be made to answer her. "Is reason sufficient for mankind?" asked she. "What is the foundation of morals? What is the proper meaning of revelation? Why is the nation always so badly off? Why must there be rich and poor?" etc., etc.
"Dear Petrea," said Louise, "what can be the use of asking such questions?"
It was an evening for questions; there was not even an end to them when people separated for the night.
"Do you not think," asked the Judge from his wife when they were alone together, "that our little Petrea begins to be quite disagreeable with her perpetual questions and disputations? She leaves nobody at peace, and is at times in a sort of unceasing disquiet. She will, some time or other, make herself quite ridiculous if she goes on so."
"Yes," replied Elise, "if she goes on so; but I think she will not. I have observed Petrea narrowly for some time, and do you know I fancy there is something out of the common way in that young girl."
"Yes, yes," said he, "in the common way she certainly is not; the merriment and the everlasting joviality which she occasions, and the comical devices that she has——"
"Yes," replied the mother, "do they not indicate a decided turn for art? And then she has a remarkable thirst for knowledge. Every morning she is up between three and four, in order to read or write, or to work at her Creation. It is, in fact, quite uncommon; and may not this unrest, this zeal to question and dispute, arise from a sort of intellectual hunger? Ah! from such hunger, which many a woman for want of fitting aliment suffers through the whole of her life! From such an emptiness of the soul proceed unrest, discontentedness, nay, innumerable faults!"
"I believe you are right, Elise," said her husband; "and no condition in life is more melancholy, particularly in advanced years. But this shall not be the lot of my Petrea—that we will prevent. What do you think now would be good for her?"