When the silk industry was in operation, Mrs. Forest and the twins went over to see it. Linnie had for some days declared that she was going to learn silk-weaving, and when she saw the actual operation she was fully decided. The factory was a beautiful building, only a little less ornate than the palace itself, and Mrs. Forest was so charmed with the polished oiled floors, the immense, deep-set windows, and the exquisite cleanliness of everything, that she pronounced it “so unlike a factory! Why, I almost want to weave silk here myself,” she said. Leila declared if Linnie came to weave, she also would. “It will be setting a good example, you know, for the independence of young ladies,” she added, half in irony. Mrs. Forest did not fail to remark that a great many of the weavers were quite respectable young girls, and finally she gave her consent that Leila and Linnie should learn—there could be no harm in it. They were already both engaged to teach in the Social Palace schools, but these would not be organized yet for two months. The doctor’s apartments were already selected, and Mrs. Forest went to see them on this day. She had not expected to find them so grand.
“What do you think now, mamma?” asked Linnie.
“Why, I suppose we shall only reside here temporarily. We are not to give up our house,” said Mrs. Forest, very gently but positively.
“Oh, the house will be given up,” said Leila. “I expect you, mamma, will become one of the council of twelve. I shall see you presiding, no doubt, and gravely giving the ‘casting vote.’ What a woman’s righter you’ll become,” she added, laughing. “There’s no use trying to resist such an outside pressure. We’ll all have to become radical reformers like papa and ‘Papa’s Own Girl.’”
“Papa’s Own Girl” was in a state of beatitude these days, that shone out from her beautiful face, and lent a divine softness and tenderness to her every word, and act, and motion. Susie, who loved to give wings to her imagination, declared to Clara that there was often a halo about her head, like those crowning the saints in the pictures of the old masters. Paul, when absent now, did not sit with ink drying on his pen. He wrote freely, from an overflowing, all-absorbing happiness, great enough to fill even his great heart; and if he hesitated now when writing his beloved Clara, it was not for lack of words, but rather from the impotence of all possible combinations of words, to express the half that he felt. The first letter that he wrote her after their happy union, or parts of it, may be given here, for the benefit of lovers; others may find it extravagant and out of character as an expression of the passion of love in a practical, philosophical gentleman like Count Frauenstein, and so they can pass it over unread:
“Dear Heart:—Ah! dear indeed, since it has answered mine. Jean Paul sighed that he had lived so long and had never seen the sea. Like his longing was mine, to find my love—and I have found her! For me there is no more sighing—never any more; for I have seen the sea, the broad, the deep, the infinite. It broke upon my vision with a sweet surprise, and my mind and heart went out to measure it; but I knew that on and on, beyond the purple limits, it still extended in its earth-embracing mystery. Erewhile I had heard but its far-off echoes answering to the whisperings of my heart, as one who listens to the sea-shell. But now my eyes have seen its changing beauty. I have heard its murmurings and its laughter. I have swayed with its flux and reflux; and its waves—ah! dear, they have overflowed my soul! Everlasting sunlight is spread upon its bosom, on which I have floated into rest. The sunshine is abiding. I have taken it away in my heart—my satisfied, contented heart—and the music of its waves I shall hear forevermore! * * * All things should bless you for loving me, since with the remembrance of that sweet loving with which my heart is full, I touch more tenderly even the dear earth that has been made young again for me. It seems as if every one should notice that something has happened to me; as if the little children should gather about me, believing that I could bless them; as if the flowers should turn to me for sunlight. Oh, what have you done to me, my darling, that I am so happy and so strong, that I have such tenderness in my heart, and that such heavenly peace sits upon my forehead. * * *
“I try in vain to still my beating heart into some more temperate mood. They might as well have attempted to presume upon sanity who were visited with the Pentecost.” * * * * * *
The next day Paul wrote:
“To-day, love, the furnaces for our Social Palace are on the way to Oakdale. For three days I have been attending to the most prosaic details of business, feeling myself all the while a thing distinct and apart from the mortals with whom I discussed smoke-flues, heating capacities, and combination-boilers! I believe I have accomplished everything with an exemplary sanity; though as I talked I found myself surprised, from time to time, that none of these business men discovered the great mystery of my other and deeper life, which I know my whole manner and expression might have betrayed.
“Yesterday being Sunday, I stayed nearly all day in my room, that I might luxuriate in my happiness. For a long time I lay on my lounge in a half dream, my heart, and lips, and my whole body thrilling with the very memory of your kisses and caresses. With what difficulty I rose to write you. It was so sweet to simply remember!