wit! and, thank God, no more she had. The fact is, that do what I will I
see I'm in love with her still, and would be if she had fifty children;
but my passion blinded me THEN, and every arrow that fiery Ottilia
discharged I marked with savage joy. Dolly, thank heaven, didn't mind
the wit much; she was too simple for that. But still the recurrence of
it would leave in her heart a vague, indefinite feeling of pain, and
somehow she began to understand that her empire was passing away,
and that her dear friend hated her like poison; and so she married
Klingenspohr. I have written myself almost into a reconciliation with
the silly fellow; for the truth is, he has been a good, honest husband
to her, and she has children, and makes puddings, and is happy.

Ottilia was pale and delicate. She wore her glistening black hair in
bands, and dressed in vapory white muslin. She sang her own words to
her harp, and they commonly insinuated that she was alone in the
world,--that she suffered some inexpressible and mysterious heart-pangs,
the lot of all finer geniuses,--that though she lived and moved in the
world she was not of it, that she was of a consumptive tendency and
might look for a premature interment. She even had fixed on the spot
where she should lie: the violets grew there, she said, the river went
moaning by; the gray willow whispered sadly over her head, and her heart
pined to be at rest. "Mother," she would say, turning to her parent,
"promise me--promise me to lay me in that spot when the parting hour has
come!" At which Madame de Schlippenschlopp would shriek, and grasp her
in her arms; and at which, I confess, I would myself blubber like a
child. She had six darling friends at school, and every courier from
Kalbsbraten carried off whole reams of her letter-paper.

In Kalbsbraten, as in every other German town, there are a vast number
of literary characters, of whom our young friend quickly became the