Oldenburg folded up Birkenhain's letter, after having read so far, and looked at Melitta.
"How is it, Melitta?" he said; "you were several days in Fichtenau, I know; did you also hear people talk of this beautiful gypsy woman and her child, who must have been Xenobia and Czika, if I am not altogether mistaken?"
"More than that," replied Melitta; "it was Xenobia and Czika, and I saw them and spoke to them."
Oldenburg rested his head on his hand. "You did!" he murmured; "and you--why did you not tell me?"
"Because I feared to renew your sorrow about the lost one; because--listen to me, Adalbert, I will tell you. I would have told you long ago if I had had the courage." And she told Oldenburg of her meeting with the Brown Countess in the Fichtenau forest, how she had tried to persuade the gypsy to come with her, and how she had been grieved when she found all her persuasions and her prayers unavailing; and, finally, how she had received from Xenobia the promise to bring her the child if she should ever change her mind, and how she, Melitta, was firmly convinced that this would happen sooner or later.
As the young widow told him all this, the tears were running down her cheeks, and her voice trembled with deep emotion.
Oldenburg rose and silently kissed her hand, then he strode eagerly up and down the room, while Melitta continued to tell him how she had, shortly before her encounter with the gypsy, overtaken the wagon of the rope-dancer, and that she now recollected having seen among them a man in a blue blouse whom she had then taken for a peasant, but who she now knew must have been Professor Berger. "There is no doubt," she said, "that 'the good people and bad musicians,' of whom Berger speaks in his letter to Birkenhain, were none else but those very rope-dancers, whom he had joined, and with whom he has wandered to Northern Germany, as the letter says. Perhaps he is even now in our neighborhood. If Birkenhain had mentioned the name of the place, I would suggest to you to go there at once and to do what you can to bring Xenobia and Czika back with you; as it is, however, it would only be a wild-goose chase, from which you would return disappointed in your hopes, out of humor and out of health. I advise you, therefore, to write to Birkenhain and to await his answer before you undertake anything. I ought to add, candidly, that I consider it best, all in all, to leave the unravelling of this strange complication confidingly to the future. Xenobia has a thousand ways and means to escape from you if she chooses; her resolution to return to us and to surrender Czika to us must be the work of her own free will."
"If you think that waiting is the best I can do in this case, why do you advise me then to do just the opposite?"
"Because I fear you will find it impossible to sit still after you have once more found a trace of the lost one; because I know that you yearn to see your child; because I know that the resignation to which you have now condemned yourself is unnatural; and, finally----"
"Finally?"