room at the usual time. She had no longer any struggle to bear. The times were so troublous that it was not surprising if she looked weary; but feeling exhausted itself in pain.

On clearing out his room Franziska found a volume of Goethe, which Johannes had taken up with him :

He who must part from the beauty he loves,

With averted gaze must his course maintain,
For the sight but rekindles the innermost flame,

And she draws him, nay, snatches him back again.

The roses which she had placed on his table were lying withered on the book at the opened passage.

Franziska smiled at the playful allusion. They were both five-and-thirty years old. The poet who with such emphatic words depicted the pain of separation possessed more of the spring-tide feeling of life. She had, however, one sweet consolation; and it was strange how this accompanied her, without being affected by the bustle and all that was going on in the disorderly household. She kept hearing in her ears the song of the choir which Klaren had played to her a few months before from his old score. Had she. carried with her the whole wonderful harmony, and did it now break forth from her memory,

when there was no word to bring her consolation, wafting to her as it were a breath from a higher world, Give us peace! give us peace!' To such a peace are we called. The soul seeks its way through night and gloom, and overhead shine the everlasting stars. The tones seemed to her to fade away at the close; she heard the last notes of the sublime choir sounding in such immeasurable distance, that it seemed to her as if no flight of the soul could follow them, and as if her ear could not hear them!

CHAPTER VIII.

DOMESTIC PEACE.

SOME years had passed away. Franziska and her husband had borne the burdens of the time. For two years they had lived at Hamburg; going into the world, having intercourse with their fellow-men, and helping their exiled fellow-country-men; then they travelled, and were at liberty to return to the estate at Holstein. They did all that was possible in their position 'to oppose the growing decay which pervaded the people and institutions of the country. The bailiff saw with regret and sorrow how the reaction was taking place in Germany-how in Schleswig-Holstein the best powers in that still healthful race were ruined. They were troublous years, and their end lay in uncertain distance.

In the fair family circle nothing had altered either for good or evil. Franziska was not unhappy; she had not made others unhappy. Those who are pure in heart have a high promise. Her children were not to grow up in a home, inwardly

without peace, outwardly without the reputation of honour; father and mother claimed from them, with the same right, reverence and confidence. The beautiful daughter was married; the elder sons stood on their own footing; but the threads of their various lots were linked together in the calm, happy, paternal home. The father still regulated all; Franziska, with her influence and actions, was ever where she was wanted.

She had never spoken with her husband of what she had gone through; she had never been able to do so. Reserved within herself, she lived almost timidly at his side; but her husband knew everything from her mother, and Franziska had a high claim upon his heart.

He was old, and he felt for the first time that his white hairs were a happiness in his relations to her. The bailiff, however, would never have consented to any separation, on account of the children and her own honour.

Time heals us and renovates us unconsciously. In Franziska's nature there was nothing morbid. Life is such, it brings much to do, to love and to endure; to see, to hear, to recognise and to reject; to work and to care for. Franziska saw without regret that her hairs also were getting white

before their time; but her life, nevertheless, was

not poor in joy.

While they were living at Hamburg her friend Klaren had died suddenly; she had been with him an hour before. To him she had given vent to her heart, as she had done once before; and she had reproached herself for not having remained single, true to the yearnings of her youth. A glance on her children was a better consolation than aught that her friend could say to her in His death freed the tears that lay frozen in her heart; and she felt thankful that death had gently carried him away, and had removed him from the feebleness of a slowly decaying old age.

reason.