Ilse was pleased with this meeting and with having so well overcome her first difficulty. She called out joyfully to her husband when he came to the door, "Felix, the first student has been here."
"Indeed," answered the husband, in no wise disturbed by the announcement; "what is his name?"
"I do not know his name, but he wore a red cap and said he was not a freshman. I was not at all afraid and I asked him to dinner for Sunday."
"Well," replied the Professor, "if you do that to everyone our house will soon be full."
"Was it not right?" asked Ilse, troubled. "I saw that he was not one of the principal ones, but I wished, on your account, to do too much rather than too little."
"Never mind," said the Professor; "we will not forget that he was the first one to look into your dear face."
Sunday came, and with it, at the hour of noon, the student, who had on this occasion paid exceptional attention to his toilet. But Ilse, observing the demeanor of her husband toward the student, maintained a quiet, motherly dignity. In accordance with this she gave him a second helping of the roast and provided him with quantities of vegetables. This kindly treatment and several glasses of wine, the last of which was poured out by Ilse, strengthened the heart of the student and raised him above the petty things of earthly life. After dinner the Professor conversed with the Doctor on some learned subjects. But Ilse kindly kept up a conversation with the young gentleman and put him so much at his ease that he began to speak of his family affairs. Then the student became confiding and pathetic and began some very sorrowful disclosures. In the first place, naturally, that he had no money; then he ventured to add the painful confession of a tender attachment for the daughter of a lawyer who lived in the same house with him, and whom he had secretly worshiped for a whole year and expressed it in poetry. But at last the father interposed; he, with a tyranny peculiar to magistrates, forbade the acceptance of the poems by his daughter and contrived to remove the student from the house. Since that time the heart of the student had been an abyss of despair; no longer did any poem--they were sonnets--penetrate to the secluded beloved one. Nay, he even had grounds to believe that she too despised him; for she attended balls, and only the previous evening he had seen her with flowers in her hair alighting from her father's carriage at a brilliantly lighted house. Sorrowfully he had stood at the door of the house among the spectators; but she had glided past him smiling and beaming. Now he wandered about in despair and alone, weary of his life and full of dismal thoughts, concerning which he gave gloomy intimations. Finally, he asked Ilse's permission to send her these poems which expressed the condition of his heart. Ilse, of course, consented, with expressions of sincere compassion.
The student took his leave and the next morning Ilse received a package with a very respectful letter, by post, in which he excused himself for not sending her all the poetical pieces which would place his misfortune in the right light, as he had not copies of them ready. Enclosed with them was a sonnet to Ilse herself, very tender and full of reverence, in which it was clearly the secret intention of the student to make Ilse the mistress of his dreams in the place of his unfaithful love.
Ilse, somewhat embarrassed, laid this enclosure on the writing-table of her husband.
"If I have done wrong, Felix, tell me."