Spitehahn crept along quietly but depressed, with his tail between his legs, listening to the praise bestowed on him, whilst Raschke, accompanied by Gabriel, returned through the park to the house. Gabriel flung open the parlor door, and announced "Professor Raschke."
Ilse stretched out both hands, "Welcome--welcome, dear Professor!" and led him in to her husband's study.
"Here I am again," said Raschke, in a cheerful tone, "after an adventure like a fairy tale. I have been brought back by two animals who have shown me the right path--a roast fowl and a perverted dog."
Felix sprang to his feet, the two friends shook hands cordially, and, after all misunderstanding, the evening passed off most pleasantly.
When Raschke at length withdrew, Gabriel said sorrowfully to his mistress: "It was the new coat; the chicken and the dog have ruined it beyond all recognition."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ILLNESS.
It was the first burst of spring in the wood and gardens adjoining the city. The buds and the caterpillars had slumbered together in quiet winter dreams; now the leaves expanded, and the grubs crawled over the young green shoots. Under the bright rays of the sun in its higher course, the struggle of life began,--the blooming and withering, the rich colors, and the frost under which they were to fade, the bright green leaves and the caterpillars that gnawed them; the eternal strife began anew in buds and blossoms just as in the heart of man.
Ilse, in her hours of instruction, was now reading Herodotus; he, too, was a harbinger of spring for the human race; hovering above the borderland between dreamy poetry and unclouded reality, the glad proclaimer of a time in which the people of the earth rejoiced in their own beauty and perfection, and first began to seek seriously truth and knowledge. Again Ilse read with passionate excitement the pages which brought a shattered world before her eyes with such vivid reality. But there was not the same serene and exalted pleasure in the narrative as in the works of the great poet who so directed the fate and deeds of his heroes as to produce a pleasing impression upon the mind, even when they excited sorrow and fear. For it is the privilege of human invention to form the world as the tender heart of man desires it; with alternations and fitting proportions of happiness and sorrow, the recognition of each individual according to his powers and actions, and due compensation. But the mind which here delineated the life of the past, did so in a superhuman manner, life crowded life, so that one devastated the other, destruction mercilessly overtook them, good and bad alike; here too, there was retribution; here, too, there was a curse, but their effect was incomprehensible and cruel. What was good ceased to be good, and evil gained the victory. What was first a blessing afterwards became ruin; what was now beneficent greatness and dominion, afterwards became a disease, which destroyed the state. The individual heroes were of little importance; if a great human power rose and dominated for a moment. Ilse soon saw it disappear in the whirling stream of events. Crœsus, the over-confident, good-hearted king, fell; the powerful Cyrus passed away, and Xerxes was beaten. But nations also sank, the blooming flower of Egypt withered, the golden realm of Lydia was shattered, and mighty Persia first corrupted others and then itself. In the young Hellenic people, that rose with such heroic strength, she already saw busily at work violence, evil deeds, and enmities, through which the most beautiful picture of antiquity, after short prosperity, was to pass away.
Ilse and Laura were sitting opposite each other, with an open book lying between them. Laura, indeed, was not admitted to the private lessons of the Professor, but her soul faithfully accompanied Ilse on the path of learning. Ilse imparted the acquisitions of her hours of instructions to her, and enjoyed the sweet pleasure of infusing new ideas into the mind of her friend.