"Oh, do not drink your coffee without a morsel of something solid. Well, if you do not wish it--but, you see, here it is!"
"Yes, my dear Frau Leonhardt, I see it," Johannes assured her, with a smiling glance at the great basketful of biscuits.
"You must know that my Brigitta was up half the night to prepare her most tempting biscuits for your breakfast,--it is all she could do for you. Yes, Brigitta, the Herr Professor can appreciate your good will."
"Indeed I can," said Johannes. "Such womanly kindness is dear to me wherever I meet with it. Your labour shall not be in vain." And he forced himself to eat.
"Oh," said Brigitta, "if the Fräulein had known that you were walking up and down beneath her windows in the cold night, she would have been grieved enough, and filled with pity!"
"The Fräulein knows no pity, my dear Frau Leonhardt," said Johannes bitterly.
The old man laid his hand kindly upon Johannes' shoulder. "You do not mean what you say. You cannot think so meanly of her--your impatience speaks now, not you. If you could only understand her noble nature as I do, who am not blinded by passion!"
"But, Father Leonhardt, I do not deny Ernestine's noble nature. Should I devote myself to her as I am now doing after her rejection of me, if I did not know her to be more than worthy of all that I can do? But if you could have seen her rigid, marble face yesterday, you would have questioned, as I did, whether that young girl really possessed a heart."
"Indeed, indeed she does possess one," affirmed the old man. "But remember, Herr Professor, her heart has hitherto been fed solely through her understanding. She has had nothing to love but ideas. Human beings she has known nothing of. What wonder, then, if she imagines that she should love only where her intellect can say Amen? That Amen cannot be said in your case, for you have opposed all that has hitherto had the warrant of her intellect, which must needs be in arms against you, and the oppressed young heart must mutely acquiesce. Ernestine's intellect is that of a full-grown man, while her sensibilities are as undeveloped as those of a girl of fifteen. The consequence is that incessant contradictions appear in her conduct. Give these undeveloped sensibilities time, do not stunt them by coldness, and you will see them assert their rights in opposition to the intellect. She might almost be called a kind of Caspar Hauser in the world of sentiment. She is not at home there. She needs a patient teacher, and such a one she will find in you, I am sure. Do all that you can to prevent her from going to America; if she goes, she is as good as dead for us."
"Rely upon me, faithful and wise old friend," cried Johannes, and fresh resolution was depicted on his face. "I will do all that I can for her,--not for my own sake, but for hers."