g with
delight, but Reinhold, after yesterday's rare expenditure of eloquence,
was as monosyllabic as if he were compelled to make up for his
unprecedented lavishness by redoubled parsimony. But the quiet smile
that gleamed through his bushy beard was enough to tell his friends how
the sun of their happiness warmed his heart. They must come again in
the evening he said; but Edwin instantly declined--they were going into
the country, or to the shooting match, or somewhere--in short, they did
not know what wise or foolish thing they might undertake, but two such
frivolous young people could not enter into any positive engagement.

The remainder of this last week of vacation passed in the same way.
They were only seen for very short periods, when they talked in a
courteous, but abstracted manner, smiled at vacancy, and suddenly
departed again, as if they had some important business to transact, and
at hours when no staid citizen would think of going to walk, would be
met on the wall of the town or in the neighboring forest, strolling
along hand in hand, or sitting on some bench engaged in eager
conversation or absorbed in happy silence.

Yet despite all this, the first chapter did make considerable
progress--more than the picture of the bouquet of roses, since the
original of the latter did not expand so quietly as Edwin's thoughts,
which had long before been bound into a beautiful wreath. "I know now,"
said he, "why I never could write the book before. Certain things
cannot be done by reason and calm judgment. A hazardous enterprise,
like the final expression of thought, can be undertaken only when, like
a somnambulist, we wander over the heights of life, intoxicated by the
winged flight of a rapturous happiness, or the march of a grand, solemn
fate, with a courage which helps us to surmount all heights and depths.
No can can be so bold, except he who has shaken off all the burdens of
mortality and escaped into eternity. When I woke last night, my
darling, and gazed at your sleeping face--the moon was still shining
brightly--you had a saucy smile on your lips, while your grave
brow--will you believe, that a light suddenly dawned upon that passage
in Kant, over which I have racked my brains so long? now my third
chapter need not end with an interrogation point."

Thus passed the bright time of this most cloudless summer. On Sunday,
the last day of vacation, they walked to a neighboring village and
passed the little chur