“Yes, she is also very good,—she belongs to the learned ones! She knows German, that she does! she can act comedy very excellently! I once got permission with the rest of the people to be up-stairs in the sitting-room—we stood behind the family; she did not manage her affairs at all badly.”
However much the old legends interested Otto, it seemed as though he listened with more pleasure to the simple reasonings of the coachman upon the family who were become so dear to him. Words and thoughts were busied about the objects there. Wilhelm, however, was and still remained the dearest; he recollected with what mildness Wilhelm had stretched forth his hand in reconciliation, when he himself had thrust him from him. Already the happy summer days which he had spent at the country-seat, the whole visit, appeared a beautiful but short dream.
Otto felt an inward impulse to express his gratitude; his pride even, which was a fundamental feature of his character, commanded him to do this. Wilhelm’s affection, his desire for a continued friendship, Otto thought he must reward; and on this account he added the following words to the few lines which he gave the coachman before his passage over the Little Belt:—
“Wilhelm, in future we will say thou to each other; that is more confidential!” “He is the first to whom I have given my thou,” said Otto, when the letter was dispatched. “This will rejoice him: now, however, I myself have for once made an advance, but he deserves it.”
A few moments later it troubled him. “I am a fool like the rest!” said he, and wished he could annihilate the paper. He was summoned on board. The Little Belt is only a river between the two countries; he soon found himself upon Jutland ground; the whip cracked, the wheels turned round, like the wheels of fortune, up and down, yet ever onward.
Late in the evening he arrived at an inn. From his solitary chamber his thoughts flew in opposite directions; now toward the solitary country-seat of his grandfather, among the sand-hills; now toward the animated mansion in Funen, where the new friends resided. He had opened his box and taken out what lay quite at the top, the garland of oak-leaves and the beautiful bouquet of flowers of this morning.
Most people maintain that one dreams at night of that which one has thought much about. According to this, Otto must have thought a deal about the North Sea, for of it he dreamed the whole night,—not of the young ladies.
CHAPTER XIII
“The heat-lark warbles forth his sepulchral melodies.”
S. S. BLICHER.