Feelings, too, which I cannot explain, and a number of happy omens, have combined to strengthen me in the belief, in the assurance, that Ottilie will one day be mine.  The glass with our initials cut upon it, which was thrown into the air when the foundation-stone was laid, did not go to pieces; it was caught, and I have it again in my possession.  After many miserable hours of uncertainty, spent in this place, I said to myself, ’I will put myself in the place of this glass, and it shall be an omen whether our union be possible or not.  I will go; I will seek for death; not like a madman, but like a man who still hopes that he may live.  Ottilie shall be the prize for which I fight.  Ottilie shall be behind the ranks of the enemy; in every intrenchment, in every beleaguered fortress, I shall hope to find her, and to win her.  I will do wonders, with the wish to survive them; with the hope to gain Ottilie, not to lose her.’  These feelings have led me on; they have stood by me through all dangers; and now I find myself like one who has arrived at his goal, who has overcome every difficulty and who has nothing more left in his way.  Ottilie is mine, and whatever lies between the thought and the execution of it, I can only regard as unimportant.”

“With a few strokes you blot out,” replied the Major, “all the objections that we can or ought to urge upon you, and yet they must be repeated.  I must leave it to yourself to recall the full value of your relation with your wife; but you owe it to her, and you owe it to yourself, not to close your eyes to it.  How can I so much as recollect that you have had a son given to you, without acknowledging at once that you two belong to each other forever; that you are bound, for this little creature’s sake, to live united, that united you may educate it and provide for its future welfare?”

“It is no more than the blindness of parents,” answered Edward, “when they imagine their existence to be of so much importance to their children.  Whatever lives, finds nourishment and finds assistance; and if the son who has early lost his father does not spend so easy, so favored a youth, he profits, perhaps, for that very reason, in being trained sooner for the world, and comes to a timely knowledge that he must accommodate himself to others, a thing sooner or later we are all forced to learn.  Here, however even these considerations are irrelevant; we are sufficiently well off to be able to provide for more children than one, and it is neither right nor kind to accumulate so large a property on a single head.”

The Major attempted to say something of Charlotte’s worth, and Edward’s long-standing attachment to her; but the latter hastily interrupted him.  “We committed ourselves to a foolish thing, that I see all too clearly.  Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself.  Each ten years of a man’s life has its own fortunes, its own