"Is it happiness never to experience the highest of emotions?" exclaimed Laura. "Can we die like Leonidas?"
Ilse pointed to the door of her husband's room. "My Hellas sits there within and works, and my heart beats when I hear his step, or only the scratching of his pen. To live or die for the man one loves is also an elevating idea, and makes one happy. Ah, happy only if one knows that one is a source of happiness to him also!"
Laura threw herself at the feet of her friend, and looked entreatingly into her anxious face. "I have made you serious with my prattling, and that was wrong of me; for I would gladly conjure a smile to your lips every hour, and always see a friendly light in those soft eyes. But do bear with me; I am a strange, unaccountable girl, and often discontented with myself and others, and frequently without knowing why. But Xerxes was a good for nothing fellow, to that I stick; and if I had him here I could box his ears every day."
"At all events he received his due," replied Ilse.
Laura started suddenly. "Was that a proper retribution for the wretch who had destroyed or made miserable hundreds of thousands, to return home without a scratch? No punishment would be severe enough for such a wicked king. But I know right well how he became so; his mother and father spoiled him; he had always lived at home, had grown up in luxury and all men were subject to him. And so he treated all with contempt. It would be the same with others if they were in the same position. I can well imagine myself such a monster, and many of my acquaintances too."
"My husband?" asked Ilse.
"No, he is more like Cyrus or Cambyses," replied Laura.
Ilse laughed. "That is not true. But how would it be with the Doctor over there?"
Laura raised her hand threateningly towards the neighboring house. "He would be Xerxes, just as he is in the book, if one could think of him without spectacles, in a golden dressing-gown, with a sceptre in his hand, without his good heart (for Fritz Hahn undoubtedly has that); somewhat less clever than he is, and still more spoilt, as a man also who has written no book, and learnt nothing but to treat others badly; he would then be Xerxes out and out. I see him sitting before me on a throne, by a brook, striking the water with a whip because it made his boots wet. He might have become a very dangerous fellow if he had not been born here close to the city park."
"I think so too," replied Ilse. In the evening, in the course of her hour of study. Ilse said to her husband: "When Leonidas died with his heroes, he saved his countrymen from the rule of foreign barbarians; but after him many thousands of these glorious men fell in the civil wars of the cities. In these quarrels the people became deteriorated, and before long other strangers came and deprived their descendants of their freedom. For what end did these many thousands die?--of what use was all the hatred, and enthusiasm, and party zeal?--it was all in vain, it was all a token of decay. Man is here like a grain of sand that is trodden down into the earth. I find myself facing a terrible mystery and I am afraid of life."