of memories between
the two deserted ones, Stella invites both mother and daughter to make
their home with her. Unfortunately Stella brings forth the portrait of
her former lover, in whom to her horror Caecilie recognises her
husband, and Lucie to her surprise recognises the officer at the
posting-house--a fact which she makes known to Stella. In an ecstasy
of excited expectation Stella dispatches a servant with the order to
fetch the long-lost one, and Caecilie, retiring to the garden,
communicates to Lucie the discovery of her father. In the rapidly
succeeding Scenes that follow the three chief persons experience
alternations of agony and bliss which find facile expression in many
sighs, tears, and embraces. Fernando and Stella, lost in the present
and oblivious of the past, melt in their new-found bliss, but are
interrupted in their raptures by the announcement that Caecilie and
Lucie are preparing to take their departure. At Stella's request
Fernando finds Caecilie, whom he at first does not recognise. Mutual
recognition follows, however, when Fernando vows that he will never
again leave her, and proposes that he and she and Lucie should make
off at once. Meanwhile, Stella is pouring forth her bliss over the
grave which, like one of the Darmstadt ladies, she has had dug for
herself in her garden. Here she is joined by Fernando, whose altered
mood fills her with a vague dread which is converted into horror when,
on the entrance of Caecilie and Lucie, Fernando acknowledges them as
his wife and daughter. After paroxysms of emotion all the parties
separate, and Stella prepares to take her flight after a vain attempt
to cut Fernando's portrait out of its frame. She is interrupted in her
intention of flight by the appearance of Fernando, and there follows a
dialogue in which we are to look for the drift of the play. Caecilie
insists on departing and leaving the two lovers to their happiness. "I
feel," she says, "that my love for thee is not selfish, is not the
passion of a lover, which would give up all to possess its longed-for
object ... it is the feeling of a wife, who out of love itself can
give up love." Fernando, however, passionately declares that he will
never abandon her, and Caecilie makes a happy suggestion that will
solve all difficulties. Was it not recorded of a German Count that he
brought home a maiden from the Holy Land and that she and his wife
happily shared his affections between them? And such is the