"A few minutes, more or less, do not matter; and besides, I should like to speak with you definitely about our future. We must at last make an end to this provisional state, which is pleasant to no one--not to God--I mean Nature--nor to man--and is daily becoming more oppressive. An unmarried man is a fish; but an engaged man is neither fish nor flesh. When two people are in their own heart and conscience man and wife through their mutual love, they ought to be man and wife also in the world, before men, provided circumstances admit of their marrying. Now, that is the case with us. We have enough for our support, and for the present we need no more; whatever else may be necessary will come. In short, shall we have our wedding day four weeks from to-day?"
"But, Franz, I have not finished half of my trousseau!"
"Then we'll marry with half a trousseau."
"And what will papa say? You know how very hard it is for him to let me go from him; and shall I just now ask such a sacrifice from him, when he needs me more than ever? I have not the courage to propose it to him."
"But I have it; your father knows that I am not less anxious for your happiness than he is, and he is far too sensible not to see that my plan is the best. Come, my darling, don't hang your head. To-day four weeks we are man and wife."
"Ah, Franz! I wish it could be so. But I fear, I fear, Heaven does not mean it so well with us!"
"Why not? Heaven means it well with all who have the courage to determine upon their own happiness. For, how says the poet: 'In our bosom are the stars of our fate.'"
The haste with which Franz pressed her had a very good motive in the illness of her father. Franz, as a physician, knew best that the life of the excellent man was hanging on a very slender thread. He had rallied quickly enough from a stroke of apoplexy, which had attacked him a fortnight ago, but several bad symptoms announced that another attack was not improbable, and with his nervous, very delicately-organized system, this was likely to be fatal. But if the father died before his daughter had been married, the poor girl would have been placed in a very painful position, as her mother had been dead for many years, and she had neither brothers and sisters nor any near relations. The world with its prejudices would have hardly been willing to admit that under such circumstances her only home should be in the house of the man whom she loved, but would have been inconceivably shocked if the daughter had married "before the shoes were worn out in which she had followed her father's funeral." The whole city would have broken out in one cry of indignation against such a fearful crime against decency and propriety.
Sophie loved her father with a love which bordered upon enthusiasm, little as enthusiasm generally formed a part of her clear and sensible character, which shrank instinctively from all exaggeration. And the father was well worthy of such love.
The privy councillor, Roban, was a man of rare distinction in many respects. As a man of science he stood very high; he was considered the very first pathologist in Germany. But a remarkable versatility of mind enabled him to gather, outside of the studies which his profession required, information upon the most varied fields of knowledge, and to attain to a high degree of perfection in more than one of the arts. In the morning he would take his pupils, hour after hour, from bed to bed in the hospital, and open to them views into the innermost workings of nature. Then again he would wander for long hours from house to house, soothing here a sufferer's pains, comforting others, and exhorting them to patient endurance. And yet in the evening, when a circle of intimate friends were gathered under his hospitable roof, he would be ready to take an active part in an animated conversation about art, literature, or politics, or perhaps take his favorite instrument, the violoncello, between his knees, and delight even the best cultivated ears by his correct and yet deeply-felt playing in a quickly-improvised quartette.