I confided my discovery to my friend, Dr. Snellius.
"Keep away from me with such nonsense!" cried he. "A fairy, indeed! It is Lessing's old fable of the iron pot that must needs be taken off the fire with a pair of silver tongs. What does she do, then, that is so extraordinary? She is the housekeeper, the teacher of the children, her father's friend, her mother's companion, and the nurse of both. All good girls are all this: there is nothing so unusual in it; it all lies in system and order. But a fantastic head of twenty years naturally cannot see men and things as they really are. Do you marry her. That is the best means of discovering that the angels with the longest azure wings are but women after all."
I passed my hand through my hair, which was now perceptibly regaining its former luxuriance, and said thoughtfully:
"I marry Paula? Never! I cannot imagine the man who would be worthy to marry her; but this I know certainly, that I am not he. What am I?"
"For the present you are condemned to seven years' imprisonment, and have therefore fully that amount of time for considering what you will be when you are released. I trust that you will then be a worthy man, and I do not know what girl, nor what seraph is too good for a worthy man."
"But I know another reason, doctor, why I shall not be able to marry her then."
"What is that?"
"Because by that time you will have married her yourself."
"What a grinning, gnashing mammoth! Do you suppose a girl like that will marry an apoplectic billiard-ball?"
Whether the doctor was provoked at the contradiction into which he had fallen in scouting, as regarded himself, the possibility which he had just maintained in reference to me--or whatever the cause may have been, the blood rushed so violently to his bald head, that he really bore a striking resemblance to the remarkable object to which he had just compared himself, and his crow rose to such an extraordinary height of pitch, that he did not even make the attempt to tune himself down.