"That is very grand," said Emma; "but I believe that physical well-being has its rights also. Living in hotels is as uncomfortable as possible; a stranger runs about like a numbered prisoner whose whole rights of humanity depend upon the numeral of his rooms. How totally different is a furnished house upon the English model; everything in common, breakfast-table, dinner, tea in the evening, all flavoured with conversation; an hotel transformed into a drawing-room--I could arrange it capitally, like that intellectual society of which papa always talked."
"What, intellectual society!" said Dr. Reising, while he coughed slightly, as though this Herbartian allusion had stuck in his throat, "all you have to do is to provide for the system of wants, for good food and drink, that soul of every hotel, and even of an hotel garni."
"What is the use of these castles in the air?" said Euphrasia, shrugging her shoulders.
"What do you say to it, Herr von Blanden," began Lori, who wished to draw the silent guest into the conversation.
"I have become estranged from all society in my forest solitude," replied he.
"And you live solitarily and alone?" asked Lori, with peculiar emphasis.
"Alone with my thoughts and with the remembrance of the grief that has befallen me."
Lori's eyes shone. Here was a chance, and the daughters of the upper classes might wait. With rapid change of front, she turned away from her brother-in-law and looked on without jealousy while Emma buttoned up his overcoat. She herself began to pour out a cornucopia of sweetness which was only destined for Herr von Blanden. She possessed esprit and aspirations, did that little Lori, and under pedagogic education the enfant terrible would have developed into a more reserved lady of mental acuteness.
"I imagine life to be so beautiful in those primeval forests, where elks and bison rove as in the days of the blessed Pikullus! How delightful to be able thus to live upon one's recollections. You have seen the world, Herr von Blanden; what a miserable part we must play compared with you. You have seen the snowy peaks of the Himalaya, the calm lakes of Thibet, the cloisters and pagodas, the tea-gardens of Japan and the tea-plantations of the Celestial Empire. Lions, tigers and apes are as familiar to you as generals, counsellors and dancing partners of the haute volée are to us; how insignificant to you must the society appear that revolves in a circle upon this tiny spot of earth! And yet you should not live in such retirement; a man of intellect such as you is guilty of robbing us all, of robbing society even when he buries himself in quietude."
Blanden listened with polite attention, when his glance suddenly fell upon two ladies who passed by, accompanied by an officer and several gentlemen, and who were greeted on all sides. His glance had only swept slightly over the features of the one; but there was no doubt she was his principessa of the Lago Maggiore.