y
visits last only for a few hours or days, and make the solitude
afterwards more keenly felt.

Bella was very amiable always, and to everybody, provided everybody
always did according to her will, and lived to please her. She really
had no love for people and no desire for their society; she wanted
nothing from others, and wished only to be left alone. The manifold
relations which Clodwig had formerly had with men and women were
repugnant to her, and he accommodated himself to the wish of his wife,
who lived wholly for him, so far as to reduce his extensive
correspondence and his personal intercourse to the smallest possible
limit. They kept up a periodical connection with only two social
circles in the neighborhood: one of these was the so-called
middle-class circle who were invited to collation, as it was named,
which we made acquaintance with yesterday; the other was a select
circle, of the noble families scattered around, who were invited twice
a year. Was this renegade captain now to change all this?

In the triumphant thought that she had banished him, Bella became more
and more talkative. Eric could not refrain from highly extolling that
mirthful excitement, that exuberant humor which pervades the Rhineland,
and takes possession of every one who comes within the sphere of its
inhabitants. At last he led the conversation again to Sonnenkamp, by
remarking that the manner in which the man was spoken about yesterday
was very puzzling to him.

Bella in an off-hand manner declared, that she found the man very
interesting, although this was going counter to the universal
Philistinism; that she regarded him as a conqueror, a bold Berserkir,
who had nothing to win for himself in this stock-jobbing age but gold.

There appeared to be a sympathetic attraction between Bella and
Sonnenkamp's speculative and daring spirit. Clodwig considerately
added,--

"I have often noticed, that so long as a man is accumulating wealth,
his prosperity seems to give universal satisfaction; men feel pleased,
as if they were accumulating too. But when he has attained his end,
they turn round and find fault, where before they had commended. Do you
understand anything of horticulture?"

"No."

"Herr Sonnenkamp is a very considerable horticulturist. Is it not
strange that in the laying out of parks we have wholly supplanted the
formal methods of French gardening, which now turn to the culture of
fruit, and find encouragement in the pecu