would not care to leave the life in Cologne of which he had become fond for such a trifling matter.  The repairs could be completed in a short time with the present working force.  There were only a few damaged places on the tower and roof.  Moreover, apart from his wife’s dislike of Apollonius which he had continued to combat in vain, it would be a useless torture to his brother to refresh in his mind all that he must be glad to have forgotten.  He would easily find an excuse for refusing to obey a command which only oddity had suggested.  The conclusion of the letter contained a teasing insinuation of a relation between our hero and his cousin’s youngest daughter, of which his home town was talking.  His brother sent his regards to her as his future sister-in-law.

Although no such relation existed, Apollonius acknowledged to himself that it was only for him to call it into being.  He knew that he could become his cousin’s son-in-law if he wished.  The girl was pretty, good, and fond of him, as was her sister.  But he looked on her only as a sister; he had never felt a wish that she might be more to him.  He believed he had conquered his love for Christiane; he did not know that after all it was only she that stood between him and his cousin’s daughter, as she would have stood between him and any other woman.  When he learned that Christiane loved his brother, he had taken from his breast the little metal box in which he had carried the flower ever since the evening when he had picked it up in the mistaken belief that it had been laid there for him.  When Christiane became his brother’s wife, he packed up the box with the flower and sent it to him.  He could not throw away what had once been dear to him—­but he might no longer possess it.  Only he had a right to the flower for whom it had been intended, to whom belonged the hand which had bestowed it.

His father called him back; he must obey.  But it was more than mere obedience that awoke in him.  He not only went; he went gladly.  His father’s words conveyed to him a permission rather than an order.  When the spring sun penetrates into a room that has been uninhabited and closed for the winter we see that what has lain on the floor like dry mummies was really sleeping life.  Now it moves and stretches itself and becomes a buzzing cloud and swarms up jubilantly into the golden ray.  Not his father alone, every house in his home-town, every hill, every garden about it, every tree within it, called him.  His brother, his sister—­this was the name he gave Christiane—­called him.  Yet, she did not call him.  She felt a dislike of him, a dislike so strong that for six years his brother had struggled in vain to overcome it.  He felt as if he must go home on that account if on no other; he must show her that he did not deserve her dislike, that he was worthy to be her brother.  He wrote this to his brother in the letter which announced his intention to obey and named the day on which they might expect him.  He was able to assure him that recollections of the time that was gone would not torture him, that his brother’s anxiety was groundless.