eno, and when he was dressed
in his best on feast-days a prettier and nobler looking child than he
was not to be seen.

But the doctor did not seem to have much affection for him; yet in
the evenings when the little one was in bed he went through the same
performance that had been customary during the lifetime of its mother,
and once in a while he would lift the child out of the cradle and press
it to his heart so passionately that the boy, in a fright would struggle
to get away from him and would cry for Frau Schimmel. Finally the child
became so afraid of its father that it would not go near him and this
the old housekeeper could bear no longer, so she took her courage in her
hands and spoke to her master about it.

She began by saying she had not forgotten that, according to his dead
father the saints had endowed her with a very limited intelligence, but
that she knew enough to be certain that it could be neither wise,
nor right for a man who had been blessed with such a fine son, to be
indifferent to his treasure and indeed to estrange it.

The extraordinary man looked at her with his sad eyes and answered
thoughtfully: "I demand nothing from the boy be cause I have no other
idea than to give him all I have and am. For his benefit I am seeking
something higher than the world has yet known, and I shall find it."

The lofty words silenced Frau Schimmel, but she thought to herself:
"With my few brains I am yet wiser than you. A heartfelt, willing kiss
from your child would make you happier than all the learning that you
make so much fuss about, and a caress or a spank from you--each at the
proper time--would do little Zeno more good than all the world-improving
discoveries in search of which you embitter your days and nights."

One beautiful afternoon in June on her return from the graveyard,
whither she regularly took the boy, and where she herself carefully
tended the white roses on Bianca's grave, she found the doctor stretched
on the sofa, instead of being in the laboratory as usual, and as he
sighed heavily when she entered, she asked him respectfully what it was
that oppressed him.

At first he shook his head as if he wished to be left alone, but when
she, in spite of this, remained and he noticed that her gray eyes were
full of tears, he suddenly remembered that by the side of his mother's
coffin, and more recently at Bianca's death-bed they had wept together,
then his full heart overflowed, and gasping an