these subjects. She listens to him silently, but will not allow herself to be interested by them. If she makes any observation in reply to his glowing descriptions, it is usually a remark that it must be “very cold,” or “melancholy,” up in those mountains, or something of that kind, intended to convince him that she could never be happy there. He smiles at her remarks, but it is evident that they are painful to him. Wonderful power of love! Here is a man, endowed with all which can make life cheerful, free, beautiful, worth living for, with health, strength, fortune, independence. He has become enamored of a young girl, delicate, weak, hardly able to take care of herself, indifferent to a great deal on which he sets a high value, and especially indifferent as to pleasing him, and he lays himself, his wealth, at her feet, and would be supremely happy if she would merely give him a friendly glance and permit him to devote his life to her. In this relationship it is the weak which is the strong, the one who desires nothing who rules, the free which brings into bondage. The old saga is renewed in all ages, and Hercules again spins at the feet of Omphale. True it is that our Hercules knows how to resume his strength and his dignity, and that, together with his goodness and his earnest love, gives him a certain power over her. But whenever I attempt to speak with her about her future, he is altogether excluded, and Kindergartens and the twelve friends again come forth, but above all, the free, unanxious life in “this beautiful Italy.” Sometimes the black elves will after such conversations, again get possession of her soul. She becomes silent and sad. To-day, in the
