The Junker again raised his head, exclaiming with sparkling eyes:

"Unite every good and noble quality, and embody them in the form of a
tall, handsome man, then you will have the image of my father;--and I
might tell you of my mother--"

"Is she still alive?" asked Peter.

"God grant it!" exclaimed the young man. "I have heard nothing from my
family for two months. That is hard. Pleasures smile along every path,
and I like my profession of soldier, but it often grieves me sorely to
hear so little from home. Oh! if one were only a bird, a sunbeam, or a
shooting-star, one might, if only for the twinkling of an eye, learn how
matters go at home and fill the soul with fresh gratitude, or, if it must
be--but I will not think of that. In the valley of the Saale, the trees
are blossoming and a thousand flowers deck all the meadows, just as they
do here, and did there two years ago, when I left home for the second
time.

"After my father's death I was the heir, but neither hunting nor riding
to court, neither singing nor the clinking of beakers could please me.
I went about like a sleep-walker, and it seemed as if I had no right to
live without my father. Then--it is now just two years ago--a messenger
brought from Weimar a letter which had come from Italy with several
others, addressed to our most gracious sovereign; it contained the news
that our lost brother was still alive, lying sick and wretched in the
hospital at Bergamo. A kind nun had written for him, and we now learned
that on the journey from Valencia to Livorno Louis had been captured by
corsairs and dragged to Tunis. How much suffering he endured there, with