Mittler had latterly been a frequent visitor, and when he came he staid longer than he usually did at other times.  This strong-willed, resolute person was only too well aware that there is a certain moment in which alone it will answer to smite the iron.  Ottilie’s silence and reserve he interpreted according to his own wishes; no steps had as yet been taken toward a separation of the husband and wife.  He hoped to be able to determine the fortunes of the poor girl in some not undesirable way.  He listened; he allowed himself to seem convinced; he was discreet and unobtrusive, and conducted himself in his own way with sufficient prudence.  There was but one occasion on which he uniformly forgot himself—­when he found an opportunity for giving his opinion upon subjects to which he attached a great importance.  He lived much within himself, and when he was with others, his only relation to them generally was in active employment on their behalf; but if once, when among friends, his tongue broke fairly loose, as on more than one occasion we have already seen, he rolled out his words in utter recklessness, whether they wounded or whether they pleased, whether they did evil or whether they did good.

The evening before the birthday, the Major and Charlotte were sitting together expecting Edward, who had gone out for a ride; Mittler was walking up and down the saloon; Ottilie was in her own room, laying out the dress which she was to wear on the morrow, and making signs to her maid about a number of things, which the girl, who perfectly understood her silent language, arranged as she was ordered.

Mittler had fallen exactly on his favorite subject.  One of the points on which he used most to insist was, that in the education of children, as well as in the conduct of nations, there was nothing more worthless and barbarous than laws and commandments forbidding this and that action.  “Man is naturally active,” he said, “wherever he is; and if you know how to tell him what to do, he will do it immediately, and keep straight in the direction in which you set him.  I myself, in my own circle, am far better pleased to endure faults and mistakes, till I know what the opposite virtue is that I am to enjoin, than to be rid of the faults and to have nothing good to put in their place.  A man is really glad to do what is right and sensible, if he only knows how to get at it.  It is no such great matter with him; he does it because he must have something to do, and he thinks no more about it afterward than he does of the silliest freaks which he engaged in out of the purest idleness.  I cannot tell you how it annoys me to hear people going over and over those Ten Commandments in teaching children.  The fifth is a thoroughly beautiful, rational, preceptive precept.  ’Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.’  If the children will inscribe that well upon their hearts, they have the whole day before them to put it in practice.  But the sixth