"By restoring each other's freedom."
"Freedom? What freedom? The liberty of chaining themselves again as soon as possible, of making another choice at once if, as is usually the case, they have not previously done so; a new choice which will probably prove no wiser, no more circumspect, than the first? Consider, we are speaking of earnest, honorable human beings! Well, they doubtless went earnestly and honorably to work in making their first choice, and if, in spite of all their earnestness, they went astray where they could choose freely and without embarrassment, they certainly would the second time, when burdened by the weight of self-created suffering, blinded by a treacherous passion. If a new clerk begins the first calculation I allow him to make on an entirely false principle, I may not send him away, but I never intrust any important matter to him again without watching him. And--while there is time--did you say? When is there time? Perhaps never, if two people have belonged to each other body and soul--for earnest, honorable people will give their souls to each other--perhaps never, and certainly not after; and here I come back to the point from whence I started--after the bond which thereby becomes a hallowed one has been blessed with children. Believe me, I could make many other remarks upon this subject: the chasm that severs the parents goes through the hearts of the children; they will feel the gulf painfully sooner or later, and never wholly cease to suffer from it, if--which to be sure is not always the case--they have hearts."
"And will not a child's heart be torn," cried Gotthold, painfully agitated, "will it not bleed at the thought of its parents who have lived together in torment, and wasted away in this torture?"
"They would not have wasted away," replied Herr Wollnow, "if they had come to an understanding with each other in my acceptation of the term; if they had always said to each other, and kept faithfully in their hearts the thought: for our children's sakes we must not despond, must bear our sorrows, must sacredly keep the ledger of our lives, and, if any error has actually crept in, calculate and calculate until we have found it. Who in the world should be responsible for the result except the person to whom the book was intrusted? And then there is also a bankruptcy from which the unfortunate sufferer comes forth impoverished, perhaps a beggar, with nothing to cover his nakedness except the consciousness: you have done your duty, met your obligations. Woe to him who cannot think this of his parents: well for him who can think and say so; who by their graves can weep sorrowful but sweet tears, and pass on in peace."
Gotthold's head was resting on his hand. Let us have peace, he had said to his father's shade, and sorrowful but sweet tears had fallen from his eyes upon his mother's grave. Would they have been less sweet if she had left the father who could not make her happy, if she had sought and perhaps found joy in another's arms?
Herr Wollnow's dark eyes rested upon his guest's noble features, now shadowed by gloom and doubt, with an expression of mingled compassion and severity. Had he said too much, or not enough? Should he be silent, or ought he to say more, and tell the young man who so closely resembled his mother, and yet had so much of his father's character, the history of his parents?
Just then the door-bell rang, and at the same moment his wife's voice sounded from the entry. She was a woman to quickly inspire other and gayer thoughts in men's minds, even if the conversation had taken a grave and critical turn.
CHAPTER IV.
"I beg you to excuse me a thousand, thousand times," cried Fran Wollnow from the threshold of the door.
"That makes two thousand," said her husband, who with his guest had risen to meet her.