his projects for selfish aggrandizement. As a cook she possessed his entire approbation, and the union between these utterly different natures was universally considered a happy one.

"She's an ugly thing, that Ernestine," said the affectionate aunt, looking after her pale little niece, who was walking slowly along with drooping head. "Kind as I may be to her, she will have nothing to say to me. They say dogs and children always know who likes them and who does not; so I suppose the child knows I can't abide her."

"Whether you like her or not is not the question," replied her husband. "You have not attached her to you, and that is a mistake; for it makes us sharers in the common report of Hartwich's cruelty to the child. She is considered in the village as the victim of unfeeling treatment. The pastor thinks her a martyr, whose cause he is bound to adopt; the schoolmaster talks about her clear head; and who can tell that all this nonsense may not waken the conscience of my fool of a brother, and induce him at the eleventh hour to make, Heaven only knows what changes for her advantage! That would be a blow--such people easily fall from one extreme into the other. Therefore the child must be separated from him. If I cannot succeed in having her sent away, we must manage somehow to attach her to us, and so stop people's mouths." An involuntary sigh from his wife interrupted him. "I know it is troublesome, up-hill work; but, Heaven willing, it cannot last long. Hartwich is failing. He may live a year; but, if he should have another stroke, he may go off at any moment; then, for all I care, you may be rid of the disagreeable duty at once, and send Ernestine to boarding-school. Still, appearances must be kept up, my dear. You know how much I would sacrifice for the sake of my reputation. I cannot bear a shabby dress or to dine off a soiled table-cloth; and just so I cannot endure a stain upon my name."

While speaking, he had seated himself at the table and filled a goblet of sherbet from the fragrant bowl. As he was sipping it delicately, with his lips almost closed, his wife threw herself down upon the sofa by his side with such clumsy violence that the springs creaked, and her husband was so jolted that he lost his balance, and the contents of his glass were spilled upon his immaculate shirt-front. Much annoyed, he carefully dried his dripping garment with his napkin. "Now I shall have to dress again," he said in a tone of vexation.

"To spill your glass over you just in the midst of such a conversation as this means no good," said his superstitious wife.

"It means that you never will learn to conduct yourself like a lady," was the quiet reply.

"Indeed!" she cried with a laugh. "So I must learn aristocratic manners that I may do more credit to your brother, who has drunk himself into an apoplexy! A fine aristocrat he is!"

"Just because he disgraces his standing I will respect mine; and you should assist me to do so, instead of laughing. And when his estate is ours, I will show the world that it is not necessary to be born in an aristocratic cradle in order to be an aristocrat. The dismissed Marburg professor will yet play a part among the élite of the scientific and fashionable world that a prince might envy him. Wealth is all-powerful; and where there is wealth with brains, men are caught like flies upon a limed twig."

"Ah, how fine it will be!" cried his wife, excited by this view of the subject; and she hastily filled a glass from the bowl and drank it greedily.

"It is indeed such good fortune that a man less self-controlled than myself might well-nigh lose his senses at the thought of it!" her husband rejoined. And there was a dreamy look in his light-blue eyes.

"Then we can keep a carriage, and I shall drive out shopping, with footmen to attend me, and Gretchen shall have a French bonne, and shall be always dressed in white and sky-blue. We will live in the capital, and you, Leuthold, need never do another day's work,--you can amuse yourself in any way that pleases you."

And the wife tossed her head proudly, as though already lolling upon the soft cushions of her carriage.

"Do you suppose I could ever be a robber of time?" he asked her with a sharp glance. "No, most certainly not. If I had made the ten commandments, the seventh should have been, 'Thou shalt not steal a day from the Lord.' He who steals a day seems to me the most contemptible of all thieves."

Ills wife laughed and displayed a double row of fine white teeth, whose strength she was just proving by cracking hazel-nuts.

"Do you suppose," continued Leuthold, "that I should ever be content with the reputation of a merely wealthy man? No; I long for other honours. As soon as the means are in my power, I will resume my old scientific labours, and will soon distance the miserable drudges who daily lecture in our schools. I will have such a chemical and physiological laboratory as few universities can boast. Ah! when I am once free from all the hated servitude, the miserable toil day after day, in that detestable factory, I will bathe in the clear, fresh stream of science, and make a name for myself that shall rank among the first of our time."

"Is that all the happiness you propose to yourself?" asked his wife with a sneer.

"There is no greater happiness than to play a great part in the world through one's own ability; and if my poverty has hitherto prevented my doing so, my wealth, in making me independent, shall help me to my goal. Make a man independent, and he has free play for the exercise of his talents; while the hard necessity of earning his daily bread has crushed many a budding genius before his powers were fully developed. It is glorious to be able to work at what we love!--as glorious as it is miserable to be forced to work at what we hate." He smoothed with his hand his thin, glossy hair, and murmured with a sigh, "No wonder it is growing gray; I wonder it is not snow-white, since for ten years this miserable fate has been mine. It is enough to destroy the very marrow in one's bones, and dry up the blood in the veins."

His wife stared at him with surprise. "Why, Leuthold, think what good dinners I have always cooked for you!"

Leuthold looked up as if awakening from a dream, and then, with the ironical expression which his unsuspicious fellow-men interpreted as pure benevolence, he said, "You are right, Bertha! Your first principle is 'eat and drink;' mine is 'think and work.' That yours is much the more practical can be mathematically proved!" He glanced with a smile at his wife's portly figure.

"Only wait until we are settled in the capital, and see what I will do for you. Then you shall have dinners indeed!" said Bertha.

"Your skill will be needed, for we shall have plenty of guests. Men are like dogs: they gather where there is a chance of a good dinner, and the host is sure of many friends devoted to him through their palates. 'Tis true, such friends last only as long as the fine dinners last; we can have them while we need them, and throw them overboard, like useless ballast, when they can no longer serve our turn."

"Yes, you are right; what a knowing fellow you are!" cried Bertha. "Heavens!" she added, clapping her hands with childlike naïveté, "if he would only die soon!"

Her husband looked at her sternly. "I trust that in case of the event, which will be as welcome to me as to you, no human eye will be able to discern anything but grief in your countenance. Should you be too awkward to simulate sorrow, I must invent some method for making you really feel it; for appearances must be preserved at all costs! Remember that!"

Bertha clasped her hands in