t grudge her
to him, they were so worthy of each other. He would hold their children
in his arms, and lavish all his store of songs and jests for their
amusement. Now all that was changed, and Lenz stood, as he firmly
believed, on the edge of an abyss.

Thus he sat long, gazing at the light. At last he extinguished it,
saying, with a sigh and a sad shake of the head, "I could not help
myself, neither can I help others."

Lenz, meanwhile, was on his way home. He walked slowly. He was so weary
he had to sit awhile on a heap of stones by the roadside. All was dark
when he came to the Lion inn. No star was to be seen. The heaven was
overcast with clouds. He stood by the inn till the whole building
seemed about to fall upon him.

When he reached home, Franzl was asleep. He waked her, that he might
have some one to rejoice with him. Pilgrim had strewn all his joy with
ashes.

Franzl was enchanted at the news he brought her, and made him smile by
repeating for the hundredth time, in order to prove that she also knew
but too well what love was, the story of her own "blighted love," as
she called it. She always began with tears and ended with complaints,
for both of which she had ample reason.

"How pleasant it was then at home, up there in the valley! He was our
neighbor's son, good, and industrious, and handsome,--oh, far handsomer
than any one nowadays, begging your pardon. But he--I hardly need
mention his name, for every one knows it was Anton Striegler--he was
bent upon going abroad, and he went abroad on business. There at the
brook we said good by. 'Franzl,' he said, 'as long as that brook runs,
my heart will be true to you. Keep yours true to me.' He had beautiful
ways of talking, and he could write beautifully too. It is always so
with those false men. I could not have believed it. I received
seventeen letters from him during the first four years,--from France,
from England, and from Spain. The letter from England cost in all a
crown-piece; for Napoleon would allow no tea or coffee to come into our
country, and so the letter, as our curate said, had to go by way of
Constantinople through Austria, and, by the time it reached me, cost a
whole crown-piece. Since that no letter has come. I waited fourteen
years, and then learned that he had married a black woman in Spain. I
would have nothing more to do with the base man,--the basest man that
ever lived,--and I burned the beautiful letters, the lying letters that
he