"Indeed I am not," she said, earnestly. "I have only too often felt how my powers are no longer sufficient for my brothers, and that young men need to be guided by a man, and not by a woman, who does not know where the limit lies to which a youth may go, nay, must go, if he is to become anything. Good friend as the doctor is, I cannot rely on him in this point, for he is an eccentric, and an eccentric is no fitting model for a young man. For this reason I have been all the time wishing for you. You know the boys so well, and they are so fond of you. I know no one to whom I would so willingly intrust them."
"But, Paula, a workman in a machine-shop, a mere common journeyman blacksmith, is no pattern for students and young artists."
"You will not--yes, you will always be a workman, but not always a journeyman: you will become a master, a great master in your craft. And the day is no longer distant; at least it is much nearer than you think. You do not know your own worth."
Paula said this with a slightly elevated voice, and with flashing eyes. I was so in the habit of giving full confidence to her words, and it had so prophetic a sound, that I did not venture to express the slight doubt that arose in my mind as to its fulfilment.
At this moment came a ring at the bell. "It is my mother and the boys," Paula said hurriedly and softly.
"They do not know that you have been two weeks at liberty; my mother could not comprehend how you could let so long a time elapse without coming to see us, after you had once reached the city. You must not let her know that it has been so long."
At this they came rushing in at the door: Oscar, my favorite, Kurt, my second favorite, and Benno, who had always been my third favorite, who came with his mother on his arm; and there was rejoicing, and shaking hands, and kisses, and exultations, and perhaps some tears, though I am not sure. Of course I must spend the day with them. And in the evening nothing could keep them from seeing me home, that they might bring their sister word where and how I was living: and then I went back with them a piece of the way until they were out of the workmen's quarter, and in a part of the town which they knew better; and when I returned it was very late, and I fell asleep at once and had a long dream about the picture which Paula had painted, and Hermine had bought, and the fair Bellini, who resembled Constance von Zehren, had so much admired.
CHAPTER IV.
To be sure, if I had any fancy at this time for indulging in dreaming, I had to do it at night, for by day I had no leisure for such vagaries. By day I was taken possession of by work--hard jealous work, that kept me busy from the early morning to late at night--now thrusting the heavy hammer into my hand and giving me a mass of iron to conquer, and then placing in my fingers the pen with which I covered page after page with long rows of figures and complicated formulas. Altogether it was a pleasant time, and even now I think of it with pleasure tempered with sadness. In our memory the brightest light always lies upon those periods of our lives in which we have striven forward most eagerly, and I was now, in all senses, a striver, and there was no day in which I did not mount at least one round of the steep ladder. Now it was some bit of technical dexterity that I caught from my fellow-workmen; now a new formula which I had calculated myself; and at all times the delightful sensation of rising, of progressing, of increasing powers, the joyous consciousness that a far heavier burden might lie upon my shoulders without danger of my sinking under it. It was a happy, a delightful time; and whenever I think of it, it is as if the perfume of violets and roses were floating around me, and as if then the days must all have been days of spring.
And yet it was not spring, but a rough severe winter, in which the icy sky lay gray and heavy above the snow-piled roofs and the filthy factory-yards, while the sparrows fluttered about all day, seeking in vain for food, and at night the famishing crows expressed their sufferings in incessant cawing; and day by day we saw pale, hollowed-eyed, ragged figures, in ever-increasing numbers, wandering in the stormy streets, or crouching at night in the dim light of the lamps upon the steps of the houses, or where any projecting masonry offered them a little shelter.