The spoiled child of fortune, always accustomed to see every wish fulfilled, Elise had not learned the power of self-control, nor to bend her will to any higher power.  Fortune seemed anxious to spare yet awhile this warm, loving heart, and to allow her a little longer the freedom of happy ignorance, before it initiated her into the painful and tearful mysteries of actual life.  Besides this, Elise had inherited from her father a strong will and dauntless courage, and behind her bright, dreamy eyes dwelt a proud and spirited soul.  Like her father, her whole soul yearned for freedom and independence; but the difference between them was, that while she only understood freedom as applying to herself personally, Gotzkowsky’s more capacious mind comprehended it in its larger and more general sense.  She wished for freedom only for herself; he desired it for his country, and he would willingly have allowed his own person to be cast into bonds and fetters, if he could thereby have secured the liberties of the people.  Out of this similarity, as well as from this difference of character, arose all the discord which occasionally threatened to disturb the harmony of these two hearts.

Gotzkowsky could not understand the heart of the young maiden, nor Elise that of the noble patriot.  To these two strong and independent natures there had been wanting the gentle, soothing influence of a mother’s love, acting conciliatingly on both.  Elise’s mother had died while she was young, and the child was left to the care of strangers.  Her father could seldom find time to be with his daughter; but, though seldom personally present, yet his whole soul was faithfully, unalterably devoted to her.  Elise did not suspect this, and in consequence of seldom seeing or meeting him, and the want of mutual intercourse, the heart of his daughter became estranged from him, and in the soul of this young girl, just budding into life, brought up without companions, in the midst of wealth and plenty, arose at first the doubt, and later the conviction, of the indifference of her father toward his only child.  But proud as she was, and full of a feeling of independence, she never met him with a reproach or complaint, but withdrew into herself, and as she believed herself repelled, strove also, on her part, to emancipate herself.

“Love cannot be forced, nor can it be had for the asking,” said she, as, yielding sometimes to a natural childish feeling, she felt an irresistible longing to go to her father, whom she had not seen the livelong day; to hunt him up in the midst of his work, to lay herself gently on his breast, and say to him:  “Love me, father, for without love we are both so lonely!” Once she had yielded to the impulse of her heart, and had gone down to his work-room, to take refuge with all her love and all her desire in her father’s heart.  It was on the very day that Gotzkowsky had returned from a most important journey.  He had been absent for weeks from his daughter, and yet his first visit