"Wegen has asked for my hand; he has already paid me attention for a long time."
"But until now the outlines of his courtship were somewhat indistinct," said Kuhl, scoffingly.
"He offers me what hundreds of others would consider to be supreme happiness, and when I question myself calmly, I must confess that he is an honourable man, more goodhearted and honourable than most; that he is one of those natures in whom true devotion seems to be innate."
Kuhl laughed loudly.
"Indeed you have suddenly set up quite new ideals for yourself, new for you and us that is to say, as they can be bought by the dozen at Leipzig fair."
"You would scoff away all that is strange to you, yet it continues to exist, and to exist in honour before the world. Besides, it is only a question of a good match; my poor mother would find a new, comfortable home. I myself should no longer stand with a dark future before me, which offers nothing but loneliness to the toil and trouble and age of coming years."
The Doctor's mockery ceased at this turn; it contained too sad a truth.
"When I, therefore, ask my common sense," continued Cäcilie, while she blew a curling cloud of smoke into the air, "I receive an answer which really admits of no doubt, and the wicked world even maintains that common sense plays a preponderating part in me."
"Then the riddle is solved," said Kuhl.
"If I were to make comparisons they would certainly not all be drawn in favour of the deeply learned doctor of medicine, as he, in his self-complacency, may dream. Wegen is not so intellectual, but there is something dangerous, discomposing in intellect--and now even a chemist he would dissolve us into every variety of element; he would throw our characters into retorts, our advantages and failings into the scales, and once we are dismembered, what are we then? Wegen is not so intellectual, but neither is he paradoxical; he would not set the world upon its head. As regards beauty, well, that is a matter of taste. He is no Apollo, but a Hercules is not one either. His faults are those of his virtues, but others only possess the virtues of their faults, in short--"