THE HOUSE OF HEINE BROTHERS, IN MUNICH.

The house of Heine Brothers, in Munich, was of good repute at the time of which I am about to tell,—a time not long ago; and is so still, I trust.  It was of good repute in its own way, seeing that no man doubted the word or solvency of Heine Brothers; but they did not possess, as bankers, what would in England be considered a large or profitable business.  The operations of English bankers are bewildering in their magnitude.  Legions of clerks are employed.  The senior book-keepers, though only salaried servants, are themselves great men; while the real partners are inscrutable, mysterious, opulent beyond measure, and altogether unknown to their customers.  Take any firm at random,—Brown, Jones, and Cox, let us say,—the probability is that Jones has been dead these fifty years, that Brown is a Cabinet Minister, and that Cox is master of a pack of hounds in Leicestershire.  But it was by no means so with the house of Heine Brothers, of Munich.  There they were, the two elderly men, daily to be seen at their dingy office in the Schrannen Platz; and if any business was to be transacted requiring the interchange of more than a word or two, it was the younger brother with whom the customer was, as a matter of course, brought into contact.  There were three clerks in the establishment; an old man, namely, who sat with the elder brother and had no personal dealings with the public; a young Englishman, of whom we shall anon hear more; and a boy who ran messages, put the wood on to the stoves, and swept out the bank.  Truly he house of Heine Brothers was of no great importance; but nevertheless it was of good repute.

The office, I have said, was in the Schrannen Platz, or old Market-place.  Munich, as every one knows, is chiefly to be noted as a new town,—so new that many of the streets and most of the palaces look as though they had been sent home last night from the builders, and had only just been taken out of their bandboxes. It is angular, methodical, unfinished, and palatial.  But there is an old town; and, though the old town be not of surpassing interest, it is as dingy, crooked, intricate, and dark as other old towns in Germany.  Here, in the old Market-place, up one long broad staircase, were situated the two rooms in which was held the bank of Heine Brothers.

Of the elder member of the firm we shall have something to say before this story be completed.  He was an old bachelor, and was possessed of a bachelor’s dwelling somewhere out in the suburbs of the city.  The junior brother was a married man, with a wife some twenty years younger than himself, with two daughters, the elder of whom was now one-and-twenty, and one son.  His name was Ernest Heine, whereas the senior brother was known as Uncle Hatto.  Ernest Heine and his wife inhabited a portion of one of those new palatial residences at the further end of the Ludwigs Strasse; but not because they thus lived must it be considered that they were palatial people.  By no means let it be so thought, as such an idea would altogether militate against whatever truth of character painting there may be in this tale.  They were not palatial people, but the very reverse, living in homely guise, pursuing homely duties, and satisfied with homely pleasures.  Up two pairs of stairs, however, in that street of palaces, they lived, having there a commodious suite of large rooms, furnished, after the manner of the Germans, somewhat gaudily as regarded their best salon, and with somewhat meagre comfort as regarded their other rooms.  But, whether in respect of that which was meagre, or whether in respect of that which was gaudy, they were as well off as their neighbours; and this, as I take it, is the point of excellence which is desirable.

Ernest Heine was at this time over sixty; his wife was past forty; and his eldest daughter, as I have said, was twenty-one years of age.  His second child, also a girl, was six years younger; and their third child, a boy, had not been born till another similar interval had elapsed.  He was named Hatto after his uncle, and the two girls had been christened Isa and Agnes.  Such, in number and mode of life, was the family of the Heines.

We English folk are apt to imagine that we are nearer akin to Germans than to our other continental neighbours.  This may be so in blood, but, nevertheless, the difference in manners is so striking, that it could hardly be enhanced.  An Englishman moving himself off to a city in the middle of Central America will find the customs to which he must adapt himself less strange to him there, than he would in many a German town.  But in no degree of life is the difference more remarkable than among unmarried but marriageable young women.  It is not my purpose at the present moment to attribute a superiority in this matter to either nationality.  Each has its own charm, its own excellence, its own Heaven-given grace, whereby men are led up to purer thoughts and sweet desires; and each may possibly have its own defect.  I will not here describe the excellence or defect of either; but will, if it be in my power, say a word as to this difference.  The German girl of one-and-twenty,—our Isa’s age,—is more sedate, more womanly, more meditative than her English sister.  The world’s work is more in her thoughts, and the world’s amusements less so.  She probably knows less of those things which women learn than the English girl, but that which she does know is nearer to her hand for use.  She is not so much accustomed to society, but nevertheless she is more mistress of her own manner.  She is not taught to think so much of those things which flurry and disturb the mind, and therefore she is seldom flurried and disturbed.  To both of them, love,—the idea of love,—must be the thought of all the most absorbing; for is it not fated for them that the joys and sorrows of their future life must depend upon it?  But the idea of the German girl is the more realistic, and the less romantic.  Poetry and fiction she may have read, though of the latter sparingly; but they will not have imbued her with that hope for some transcendental paradise of affection which so often fills and exalts the hearts of our daughters here at home.  She is moderate in her aspirations, requiring less excitement than an English girl; and never forgetting the solid necessities of life,—as they are so often forgotten here in England.  In associating with young men, an English girl will always remember that in each one she so meets she may find an admirer whom she may possibly love, or an admirer whom she may probably be called on to repel.  She is ever conscious of the fact of this position; and a romance is thus engendered which, if it may at times be dangerous, is at any rate always charming.  But the German girl, in her simplicity, has no such consciousness.  As you and I, my reader, might probably become dear friends were we to meet and know each other, so may the German girl learn to love the fair-haired youth with whom chance has for a time associated her; but to her mind there occurs no suggestive reason why it should be so,—no probability that the youth may regard her in such light, because that chance has come to pass.  She can therefore give him her hand without trepidation, and talk with him for half an hour, when called on to do so, as calmly as she might do with his sister.

Such a one was Isa Heine at the time of which I am writing.  We English, in our passion for daily excitement, might call her phlegmatic, but we should call her so unjustly.  Life to her was a serious matter, of which the daily duties and daily wants were sufficient to occupy her thoughts.  She was her mother’s companion, the instructress of both her brother and her sister, and the charm of her father’s vacant hours.  With such calls upon her time, and so many realities around her, her imagination did not teach her to look for joys beyond those of her present life and home.  When love