sed between them, they understood one another. Klytia
was free, he himself had released her from her promise.

She now went oftener than ever to the couch of the sick brother, cooled
his brow with damp cloths and bound up his wounds with the delicate,
apt hands of a woman.

Thus passed away peacefully the last sunny days of autumn, leaving to
all the inhabitants of the gable-house the precious impression, that
there was even something beautiful in the stillness of a sick-room, in
which no sounds were heard but the regular breathings of the patient,
the ticking of the large Nuremberg clock in the ante-chamber, and the
buzzing of the gnats on the diamond panes reflecting the sun. However
little the relations of the various persons seemed to have changed
outwardly, Erastus nevertheless felt the magnetic deviation which had
taken place in Lydia. Wearied from many visits, he sat down one
afternoon with his daughter near the chapel on the other side of the
bridge to enjoy the last sunny hours of the fleeting year. The
Heidelberg woods lay before them tinged with yellow, and their serrated
lines blue and indistinct melted away as some old poetic saw in the
autumn mist causing the mountains to appear higher than usual. Near to
the bench on which they sat, the blue flower bloomed by the wayside and
ever turned its calix to the sun. Lydia plucked one and pondered over
the world of experiences she had lived through in the short time since
Felix had related to her the fable out of Ovid. Her father looked
steadily at her and said: "Hast thou broken thy bonds towards Felix?"

"Felix remains a Papist," she answered evasively. "He cannot fulfil the
conditions which thou hast laid upon him."

"I release him from them," said Erastus. "Are we not all Papists since
we have Olevianus as our Pope, execute heretics, and that Theologians
assume to themselves not only the authority of Princes, but also that
of heads of houses, and fathers of families? Hardly any trace is left
of the freedom which Luther and Zwingli sought to introduce."

"Dost thou permit me then to marry a Catholic?"

"What right would I have to forbid? So often as I pass the square on
which was spilt the blood of my friend, the very stones cry out to me,
'thou hypocrite, in what art thou better than the Caraffas?' The
officium of the Calvinists has rendered me lenient towards index and
inquisition."

"And wilt thou be equally lenient," asked Lydia timidly, "if I marry