“So, then, once more the old story of the year is being repeated over again.  We are come now, thank God, again to its most charming chapter.  The violets and the may-flowers are as its superscriptions and its vignettes.  It always makes a pleasant impression on us when we open again at these pages in the book of life.”

“We find fault with the poor, particularly with the little ones among them, when they loiter about the streets and beg.  Do we not observe that they begin to work again, as soon as ever there is anything for them to do?  Hardly has nature unfolded her smiling treasures, than the children are at once upon her track to open out a calling for themselves.  None of them begs any more; they have each a nosegay to offer you; they were out and gathering it before you had awakened out of your sleep, and the supplicating face looks as sweetly at you as the present which the hand is holding out.  No person ever looks miserable who feels that he has a right to make a demand upon you.”

“How is it that the year sometimes seems so short, and sometimes is so long?  How is it that it is so short when it is passing, and so long as we look back over it?  When I think of the past (and it never comes so powerfully over me as in the garden), I feel how the perishing and the enduring work one upon the other, and there is nothing whose endurance is so brief as not to leave behind it some trace of itself, something in its own likeness.”

“We are able to tolerate the winter.  We fancy that we can extend ourselves more freely when the trees are so spectral, so transparent.  They are nothing, but they conceal nothing; but when once the germs and buds begin to show, then we become impatient for the full foliage to come out, for the landscape to put on its body, and the tree to stand before us as a form.”

“Everything which is perfect in its kind must pass out beyond and transcend its kind.  It must be an inimitable something of another and a higher nature.  In many of its tones the nightingale is only a bird; then it rises up above its class, and seems as if it would teach every feathered creature what singing really is.”

“A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is but poor comedie a tiroir.  We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste to the next.  Even what we know to be good and important hangs but wearily together; every step is an end, and every step is a fresh beginning.”

CHAPTER X.

Charlotte meanwhile was well and in good spirits.  She was happy in her beautiful boy, whose fair promising little form every hour was a delight to both her eyes and heart.  In him she found a new link to connect her with the world and with her property.  Her old activity began anew to stir in her again.

Look which way she would, she saw how much had been done in the year that was past, and it was a pleasure to her to contemplate it.  Enlivened by the strength of these feelings, she climbed up to the summer-house with Ottilie and the child, and as she laid the latter down on the little table, as on the altar of her house, and saw the two seats still vacant, she thought of gone-by times, and fresh hopes rose out before her for herself and for Ottilie.