ther who had dissuaded the son from returning
from Italy until he had reached the goal for which he was striving with
unwearied energy.

She also knew that Melchior gave the old man precise information of his
progress in every letter, and that when her master turned over the
care of the shop to Schimmel, the dispenser, it was only because he had
arranged a laboratory for himself on the first floor, where, following
the directions received in his son's letters, he worked with his
crucibles and retorts, pots and tubes, early and late before the fire.
Yet despite this, the housekeeper saw that the longing for his son was
gnawing at the old man's heart, and had she been able to write she would
have let Melchior know how things stood and begged him to return to
Leipsic. "But there ought to be no need to tell him," she would reflect
in her leisure moments, "he must know it himself," and for this reason
she would force herself as well as she could to be angry with him.

Thus the years passed. Nevertheless, her anger flew to the winds when
one day a messenger arrived bringing a little package from Italy and
the master called her into the laboratory. Then the old withered love
suddenly came to life once more and put forth new leaves and buds, for
what she saw was indeed something wonderful; the Court apothecary held
out to her in his carefully washed hands a sheet of gray paper on which
in red crayon was an exquisite drawing of a beautiful young woman with a
lovely child on her lap. Then, having charged her not to speak of it
to any one, he confided to her that this beautiful woman was Melchior's
young wife, and the little boy their first-born and his grandchild who
would carry on the name of Ueberhell. He had given his consent to
his son's marriage with the daughter of his master in Bologna and now
he--old Caspar Ueberhell--was the happiest of men, and when the doctor
returned to him with wife and child and the thing for which he was so
earnestly searching, why, he would not envy the emperor on his throne.
When the widow Vorkel noticed the tears that were streaming down the old
man's sunken cheeks, her eyes too began to overflow, and after that
she often crept to the chest where the portrait was kept to gaze on
the little one and to press her lips on the same spot whence the
grandfather's had already worn away some of the red crayon.

Herr Ueberhell's joy had been so great that now the longing for his
son took deeper hold of