confused to take much note of words and signs. I made an appointment to
meet my father the day following, and walked away and returned at night,
encountered Schwartz and fed on the crumbs of tidings I got from him, a
good, rough old faithful fellow, far past the age for sympathy, but he
had carried Ottilia when she was an infant, and meant to die in her
service. I thought him enviable above most creatures.

His principal anxiety was about my finding sleeping quarters. When he
had delivered himself three times over of all that I could lead him to
say, I left him still puffing at his pipe. He continued on guard to be
in readiness to run for a doctor, should one be wanted. Twice in the
night I came across his path. The night was quiet, dark blue, and
starry; the morning soft and fragrant. The burden of the night was
bearable, but that of daylight I fled from, and all day I was like one
expecting a crisis. Laughter, with so much to arouse it, hardly had any
foothold within me to stir my wits. For if I said 'Folly!' I did not
feel it, and what I felt I did not understand. My heart and head were
positively divided. Days and weeks were spent in reconciling them a
little; days passed with a pencil and scribbled slips of paper--the lines
written with regular commencements and irregular terminations; you know
them. Why had Ottilia fainted? She recommended hard study--thinks me
idle, worthless; she has a grave intelligence, a serious estimation of
life; she thinks me intrinsically of the value of a summer fly. But why
did she say, 'We change countries,' and immediately flush, break and
falter, lose command of her English, grow pale and swoon; why? With this
question my disastrous big heart came thundering up to the closed doors
of-comprehension. It was unanswerable. 'We change countries.' That is,
she and Miss Sibley change countries, because the English woman marries a
German, and the German princess--oh! enormous folly. Pierce it, slay
it, trample it under. Is that what the insane heart is big with?