"Our own house and our own land," cried the poet: and then added
seriously, "but not the existence, not the happiness of another."

"Have I not told you that I do not look upon the heart as the seat of our
intelligence? So far as I am concerned, I would as soon be buried with a
ram's heart as with my own."

"I do not speak of the plundered dead, but of the living," said the poet.
"If the deed of the paraschites is discovered, he is undone, and you
would only have saved that sweet child in the hut behind there, to fling
her into deeper misery."

Nebsecht looked at the other with as much astonishment and dismay, as if
he had been awakened from sleep by bad tidings. Then he cried: "All that
I have, I would share with the old man and Uarda."

"And who would protect her?"

"Her father."

"That rough drunkard who to-morrow or the day after may be sent no one
knows where."

"He is a good fellow," said the physician interrupting his friend, and
stammering violently. "But who 'would do anything to the child? She is
so so .... She is so charming, so perfectly--sweet and lovely."

With these last words he cast down his eyes and reddened like a girl.

"You understand that," he said, "better than I do; yes, and you also