when sitting in his
office over his account-books, as much impatience to rejoin his beloved
wife, as he had ever experienced as an enthusiastic young lawyer, in
the earliest days of his love.

In his circumstances there was no outward improvement; his sons grew
up, and no promotion or increase of salary could be thought of. But
nevertheless their happiness increased, and their stock of youth, love,
and romance seemed to grow greater as the children grew. The mother,
who bore the beautiful name of Nanna, would not hear of calling her
first-born Fritz or Carl, but gave him the name of Edwin. But the boy
himself made no preparations to accommodate himself to the lyrically
adorned idyl of his parents. His outward appearance was insignificant
and remained so; a tall lad with awkward limbs, which were all the more
unmanageable because their master in the upper story was thinking of
very different matters than how he ought to move his arms and legs;
besides, the boy's mind was fixed upon other things than the fairy
tales his mother told him, or any of the elegancies with which she
surrounded her child. A thoughtful, analytic mind developed in him at
an early age; his mother, for the first time in her life was seriously
angry with her dear husband, declaring that the father's horrible
calculating of figures had gone to the child's head and entered his
blood. She tormented herself a long time in trying to efface this
instinctive taste, but was at last forced to relinquish her efforts
when the boy went to school and brought home the most brilliant
testimonials of his progress; yet a secret vexation still gnawed at her
heart, all the more unbanishable as for nine years he remained the only
child. At last she gave birth to a second, a boy, who promised to make
ample amends for the disappointment caused by the apparently sober,
prosaic nature of her oldest son. This child was in every respect the
exact image of his mother; beautiful as the day, with rich golden
curls; he liked nothing better than to be lulled to sleep with fairy
tales, cultivate flowers, and learn little stories by heart. The mother
seemed to grow young again in her radiant delight in the possession of
this innocent creature, to whom the name of Balder, the God of Spring,
appeared to her exactly suited. Any one who had seen her at that time,
would scarcely have believed her to be the mother of her older son,
the long-legged schoolboy with the grave, prematurely old