I remained only half an hour in the club-room, to which he conducted me mainly to show the distinction he enjoyed among these worthy citizens. His game of dominoes, at which I was merely a spectator, wearied me, and his drinking three small glasses of rum to one cup of coffee completely destroyed my dawning good opinion of him. I pleaded a headache, which would not allow me to endure the smoke-laden atmosphere of the room, and, as he was entirely absorbed in a conversation with several enthusiastic admirers, he dismissed me without opposition by one of his royal gestures of the hand.

I sauntered in a very miserable mood through the little city and out of the gate.

The day was beautiful, the air had been cooled by a light shower while we were drinking our coffee, and the neighborhood of the little town, with its fields and meadows dotted with fruit-trees, was well worth seeing. But my mind was closed against the perception of anything pleasant.

I could not help constantly saying to myself: "So she lives here, with this man, among these people! And she has before her a long life, which can never again tend upward to the heights, but always downward, slowly paralyzing the mind and soul."

For the unruffled cheerfulness of her manner at the table had not deceived me an instant. True, the life she had led in her uncle's house was by no means what she deserved. Yet, in those days, amid all the oppression, all the repugnance to so much that was base, her eyes had sparkled with joyous pride, and her head was held proudly erect on her strong shoulders. Now it drooped slightly as though under an unseen burden, and her large eyes often wandered to the floor as though seeking something that was lost.

My grief for her was so intense that it even crowded the old passionate love into a corner of my heart, especially as I had taken a solemn vow to see in her only the wife of another. Nay, I believe, if I had found her perfectly happy, with head erect and laughing eyes, I would have uprooted the weeds of envy and jealousy from my poor soul forever.

True, Uncle Joachim had said: "Whatever folly a woman like her may commit, she will not allow herself to succumb to it." He knew her well. But how much secret misery a human being may have to endure, even though he or she "bears the inevitable with dignity."

Absorbed in these thoughts, I had walked a long distance, and was already considering whether I should not let the "Ancestress" go, and find some pretext for taking my departure that very evening, when I saw Frau Luise herself, with her little boy, approaching me by the shady path that led through a wood. The child was frisking merrily around his mother, but she walked slowly with bowed head, and seemed to answer his questions very absently. She had put on a small hat that had slipped back from her head, and a blue sunshade rested carelessly on her left shoulder. She came slowly forward without looking up, until the child noticed me, and with a sudden exclamation ran to her and seized her hand; then, with a friendly nod, she paused.

At first we talked of indifferent matters, the weather, the pretty location of the city, and the superior fertility of the soil to that of her native region. This brought us to the persons we had both known there, and about whom she had been kept informed by Uncle Joachim. I learned that my former pupil had been placed in the cadet barracks, and that his sister was betrothed to Cousin Kasimir. Mademoiselle Suzon had quitted the castle a few weeks after my departure, to return no more. She passed quickly over this point, but a contemptuous curl of her lower lip betrayed that she had been informed of the whole affair. A young English lady had now taken the Frenchwoman's place; she did not know whether she could play chess, but she seemed to fill her predecessor's position satisfactorily in every other respect. Sometimes the new pastor--the old one had gently fallen asleep in death--came to the castle in the evening and held devotional exercises for an hour. Everything else remained unchanged. The veteran peacock had spread his tail for the last time the previous winter, and she was keeping some of his feathers as a relic.