A woman with a babe in her arms, whose melancholy face and tattered garb spoke sadly of unhappiness and destitution, stood in the path. He would not have noticed her, had she not timidly touched the hem of his garment.
“Why do you disturb me?” he asked impatiently, as he looked up. “You have interrupted the current of my thoughts. What would you have?”
“I hope, sir,” said the woman, in a low tone, “you will pardon the interruption. I would not willingly intrude; but you see my situation. I am left destitute, and without friends. For myself, I care not. Perhaps it is well that I should die; but my child,—I would live for him.”
Gottfried listened with an unmoved countenance, and as one who but half comprehended what he heard.
“If you are poor and in distress,” he said at length, “you can apply to the proper authorities. I have matters of more importance to attend to.”
“Of more importance than the life of a fellow-creature?” interrupted a rough-looking man, in a farmer’s dress, who had just stepped up. “Nay, then, I have not. Come with me, my poor woman. I live in the cottage yonder. It is but a poor place; but it will afford you food and shelter.”
“Such men,” mused Gottfried, “do not estimate the superiority of science over the trivial objects upon which most waste their lives to little purpose. But how should they? They pass their lives in a round of petty duties and petty employments, above and beyond which they care not to look.”
Such were the meditations of Gottfried. Ah! thou that canst see the mote in thy brother’s eye, and dost not discern the beam that is in thine own!
Gottfried was approaching his study on his return from the walk, when his meditations were disturbed by a cry which always makes the blood course more quickly through the veins,—the fearful cry of “Fire!” Voice after voice took up the cry till it swelled into a terrible and confused clamor. Fire! Gottfried looked up, and, to his inexpressible consternation, beheld the flames rapidly consuming his own dwelling. The conviction flashed upon him, with the speed of lightning, that he had left a candle burning which he had lighted for the purpose of sealing a letter. Undoubtedly it had come in contact with the loose papers which lay about it, and this was the result.
“My books! my treatise!” exclaimed Gottfried with anguish, as he contemplated the probability of their destruction. “They will all be consumed!”