The Proprietor approached the steps and seized Ilse's arm. She tore herself away from him.
"You drive your daughter from your house, father," she exclaimed, beside herself. "If you are the servant of this man, I am not. There is no room for him and my husband at the same time. He comes to ruin us, and his presence brings a curse!"
She tore open the gate into the garden and fled under the trees, burst through the hedge, and hastened down into the valley; there she sprang upon the wooden bridge, from which she had shortly before driven the village people; the flood roared wildly beneath her, and the woodwork bent and groaned. A rent, a crack, and with a powerful spring she alighted on the rock on the other side; behind her the ruins of the bridge whirled down to the valley. She stood on the rocky prominence in front of the grotto, and raised her hands with a wild look to heaven. Her eldest brother came running behind her from the garden, and screamed when he saw the ruins of the bridge.
"I am separated from you," exclaimed Ilse. "Tell father, he need not care for me; the air is pure here; I am under the protection of the Lord, whom I serve; and my heart is light."
CHAPTER XLI.
IN THE CAVE.
The dark water gurgled and streamed through the valley; the reflection of the setting sun shone on the bay-windows of the old house; the wife of the Scholar stood alone beneath the rock overhanging the entrance to the cave. Where once the wives of the ancient Saxons listened to the rustling of the forest-trees, and where the wife of the hunted robber hurled stones on his pursuers, now stood the fugitive daughter of the Manor on the Rock, looking down on the wild surging of the water, and up to the house where her husband's foe was resting in the arm-chair of her father. Her breast still heaved convulsively, but she looked kindly on the brown rock which spread its protecting vault above her. Below her roared the wild, destructive flood, while around her the diminutive life of nature carelessly played. The dragon-flies chased one another over the water, the bees hummed about the herbs of the sloping hill, and the wood-birds chanted their evening-carols. She seated herself on the stone bench, and struggled for peaceful thoughts; she folded her hands and bent her head; and the storm within her bosom spent itself in the tears that flowed from her eyes.
"I will not think of myself, but only of those I love. The little ones will inquire after me when they go to bed; to-night they will not hear the stories of the city that I used to tell them, to put them to sleep. They were all wet after their fishing, and in the confusion no one will think of putting dry stockings on them. In thinking of other things I have forgotten to care for them. The youngest persists in wishing to become a professor. My child, you do not know what it is you wish. How much must you learn, and what a change will come over you! For the work which life accomplishes in us is immeasurable. When I formerly sat here near my father, I believed, in my simplicity, that the higher the office, the more noble were the men, and the most exalted of all the best, and that all that was important on earth was done by great and refined minds. And when the two scholars came, and I talked about books with Felix for the first time, I still imagined that everything in print must be indubitable truth, and every one who wrote, a thoroughly learned man. Many think thus childishly. But I have been an obstinate thing, and have vehemently opposed myself to others, even to my husband, who stood highest in my opinion."
She looked with a sad smile before her, but immediately afterwards bent her head, and again the tears poured from her eyes.
She heard the call of her brother from the garden.