some unexplained opposition to a project of marriage; but I
doubt if, without the clue with which the good miller had furnished us,
we could have made out even this much from the passionate, broken
sentences that made us fancy that some scene between the mother and
daughter--and possibly a third person--had occurred just before the
mother had begun to write.

"Thou dost not love thy child, mother! Thou dost not care if her heart
is broken!" Ah, God! and these words of my heart-beloved Ursula ring in
my ears as if the sound of them would fill them when I lie a-dying. And
her poor tear-stained face comes between me and everything else. Child!
hearts do not break; life is very tough as well as very terrible. But I
will not decide for thee. I will tell thee all; and thou shalt bear the
burden of choice. I may be wrong; I have little wit left, and never had
much, I think; but an instinct serves me in place of judgment, and that
instinct tells me that thou and thy Henri must never be married. Yet I
may be in error. I would fain make my child happy. Lay this paper before
the good priest Schriesheim; if, after reading it, thou hast doubts
which make thee uncertain. Only I will tell thee all now, on condition
that no spoken word ever passes between us on the subject. It would kill
me to be questioned. I should have to see all present again.

My father held, as thou knowest, the mill on the Neckar, where thy
new-found uncle, Scherer, now lives. Thou rememberest the surprise with
which we were received there last vintage twelvemonth. How thy uncle
disbelieved me when I said that I was his sister Anna, whom he had long
believed to be dead, and how I had to lead thee underneath the picture,
painted of me long ago, and point out, feature by feature, the likeness
between it and thee; and how, as I spoke, I recalled first to my own
mind, and then by speech to his, the details of the time when it was
painted; the merry words that passed between us then, a happy boy and
girl; the position of the articles of furniture in the room; our father's
habits; the cherry-tree, now cut down, that shaded the window of my
bedroom, through which my brother was wont to squeeze himself, in order
to spring on to the topmost bough that would bear his weight; and thence
would pass me back his cap laden with fruit to where I sat on the
window-sill, too sick with fright for him to care much for eating the
cherries.

And at length Fritz gave way, and beli