CHAPTER XXV.
QUIET AT FURSTENBERG. WEDDINGS.
Quiet seclusion enveloped the residents at Fürstenberg during the sorrowful winter of 1290. The still rugged evidences of strife without corresponded with the agitated, and at times ebullient emotions of those within. The general stillness produced acalm feeling, and turbulent thoughts subsided. The current of human sensibilities necessarily obeys the external influences that supply the sources whence those sensibilities receive their moving power, and which in time engross human attention. Impossible to withdraw ourselves from that light and life whereof we form a part.
All attempts to do this have resulted only in stagnation and the unnatural perversion of human faculties. Equally impossible it is for throbbing hearts to resist the impulse communicated from the changing and brightening and enlivening scenes and activities around. They are drawn into the current and share its rapids and its eddies. As the leaves drooped, and died, and withered as they lay, and mingled in one common change, the emotions and hopes and joys that had adorned the life of those within the half deserted castle, also drooped, and blended, as they de-
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