garten and
his wife, and also through Herr von Endlich's family.

He added in a very confident tone: "Be strong and charming, lovely Frau
Ceres; you will return to these rooms a Baroness."

Frau Ceres sat up, and only mourned that the dresses ordered in Paris
had not yet arrived. Sonnenkamp promised to telegraph directly, and
promised also that the Professorin should go with them, so that the
entrance into society could be made under her auspices.

"You may kiss me," said Frau Ceres.

Sonnenkamp did so, and she said,--

"I think that we shall all be very happy. Ah, if I could only tell you
my dream, but you never like to hear about dreams, and it is better
that I should not tell it. But there was a bird with great wings,
enormously large, and I was sitting on the bird, and was carried
through the air; and I was ashamed because I was not dressed, and all
the people below were looking up at me, and hooting, and shouting, and
laughing, and then the bird turned its head round, and it was the
Professorin, and she said: You are so splendidly dressed! and then I
had all my ornaments on, and my lace-trimmed satin dress--but I know
you don't want to hear my dream."

Sonnenkamp left the room in good spirits. The day was bright, a keen,
cold, sparkling winter-day, when the whole landscape, every rock, every
tree, stood sharply out against the blue sky; the ice had closed over
the Rhine, and a strange quiet, like a repressed breathing, lay over
the whole scene.

Sonnenkamp was glad that the bright daylight had driven away all the
spectres of the night, and brought fresh life. He immediately gave
orders in the stable, that two pairs of horses and a second carriage
should be sent to the capital. An hour afterwards, as he was walking
with Eric and Roland to the vine-clad cottage, they saw the horses,
covered with warm blankets, on the highroad, already on their way to
the capital. Roland begged that his pony might be sent also, and
permission was given; then he asked which dogs he might take, and when
told that only one must go he could not decide which it should be.

The Professorin's large sitting-room looked like a yearly fair; on
tables and chairs lay great packages of knit and woven woollen garments
for men and women. Fraeulein Milch was reading from a large sheet of
paper the names of various needy people, and a list of the articles
intended for them, while the Mother and the Aunt compared the bundles
with the list.