"Yes, the little rogue is healthy enough," says Erwin, sighing, as he softly leaves the nursery with Elsa. "I wish I could say the same of her mamma. Poor Elsa, how thin you are."
"Do I not please you any longer?" she replies, half laughing.
"You are not very sensible!"
"Probably not," replies she seriously. "With such old married people as we are, there can be no more talk of 'pleasing.'"
"Do you think so?"
"And if I should have small-pox, would it make any difference to you?" she asks him, looking at him curiously; the noblest woman is not ashamed to be loved a little because of her beauty.
"Certainly," he replies, "I should love you just as much as before, but I would be bitterly sorry for your pretty face." Jestingly he passes his finger over her cheeks.
They go into the garden; all is gay as if for a feast, the whole earth with her blooming mixture of white, blue and violet elder, golden rain and red acacias--a gay, shimmering picture under an endless blue sky. Everything lives and breathes. The birds twitter, the insects hum, every blade of grass seems to have a voice, and join in the great triumphal chorus of the newly-risen nature.
There is a rustling, a murmuring, a whispering, a nodding, a quiver of life and pleasure, and in the enchanting music suddenly mingles a soft crackling, the crackling of dead leaves, which play at the foot of the trees.
Garzin has led his wife to a bench, over which an elder tree bends its branches of bushy white blossoms. Elsa gazes before her at the lovely nature, the mixture of luxuriant green and gay blossoms, of short black shadows amid dazzling light.