Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita’s fright.  She was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.

She said severely, ’Where did you learn that song you were last singing, Margarita?  Speak, thou girl!’

Margarita laughed.

’The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
They taught me how to sing: 
And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
And the eagle lend his wing.’

‘I will not hear these shameless songs,’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

’For I would view the lands they view,
And be where they have been: 
It is not enough to be singing
For ever in dells unseen !’

A voice was heard applauding her.  ’Good! right good!  Carol again, Gretelchen! my birdie!’

Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway.  She tripped toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting.  Gottlieb glanced at the helm of Siegfried.

’Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete!  Very pretty!  And that’s Drachenfels?  Bones of the Virgins! what a bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in Deutschland in love with him.  Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after all, I believe!  Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried.  So chirrup on, my darling!’

‘Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,’ replied Margarita, untwisting some silver threads.

‘Do thy father’s command, girl!’ said Aunt Lisbeth.

’And doing his command,
Should I do a thing of ill,
I’d rather die to his lovely face,
Than wanton at his will.’

‘There—­there,’ said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; ’you see, Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to.  Not another girl in blessed Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!—­than—­ I can’t repeat them!—­don’t ask me!—­She’s becoming a Frankish girl!’

‘What ballad’s that?’ said Gottlieb, smiling.

’The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness.  And she loved him—­loved him——­’

‘As you love Siegfried, you little one?’

’More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried.  Ah! if I had seen Siegfried!  Never mind.  She loved him; but she loved Virtue more.  And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave her for loving Winkried, the Devil’s son, because she loved Virtue more, and He rescued her as she was being dragged down—­down—­down, and was half fainting with the smell of brimstone—­rescued her and had her carried into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before all men, as a hope to little maidens.

’And when I thought that I was lost
I found that I was saved,
And I was borne through blessed clouds,
Where the banners of bliss were waved.’

‘And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils’ sons, girl?’ was Aunt Lisbeth’s comment.