The half-darkened cafe was soon empty; only some of Alphonse’s nearest friends stood in a group and whispered.  The doctor was talking with the proprietor, who had now appeared on the scene.

The waiters stole to and fro, making great circuits to avoid the dark corner.  One of them knelt and gathered up the fragments of the glass on a tray.  He did his work as quietly as he could; but for all that it made too much noise.

“Let that alone until by and by,” said the host, softly.

Leaning against the chimney-piece, Charles looked at the dead man.  He slowly tore the folded paper to pieces, while he thought of his friend.

HOPES

BY

FREDERIKA BREMER

The Translation by Mary Howitt.

HOPES

BY

FREDERIKA BREMER

I had a peculiar method of wandering without very much pain along the stormy path of life.  Although, in a physical as well as in a moral sense, I wandered almost barefoot,-I hoped, hoped from day to day; in the morning my hopes rested on evening, in the evening on the morning; in the autumn; upon the spring, in spring upon the autumn; from this year to the next, and this amid mere hopes, I had passed through nearly thirty years of my life, without, of all my privations, painfully perceiving the want of anything but whole boots.  Nevertheless, I consoled myself easily for this out of doors in the open air but in a drawing-room it always gave me an uneasy manner to have to turn the heels, as being the part least torn, to the front.  Much more oppressive was it to me, truly, that I could in the abodes of misery only console with kind words.

I comforted myself, like a thousand others, by a hopeful glance upon the rolling wheel of fortune, and with the philosophical remark, “When the time comes, comes the counsel.”

As a poor assistant to a country clergyman with a narrow income and meagre table, morally becoming mouldy in the company of the scolding housekeeper, of the willingly fuddled clergyman, of a foolish young gentleman and the daughters of the house, who, with high shoulders and turned-in toes, went from morning to night paying visits, I felt a peculiarly strange emotion of tenderness and joy as one of my acquaintance informed me by writing, that my uncle, the Merchant P—–­in Stockholm, to me personally unknown, now lay dying, and in a paroxysm of kindred affection had inquired after his good-for-nothing nephew.

With a flat, meagre little bundle, and a million of rich hopes, the grateful nephew now allowed himself to be shaken up hill and down hill, upon an uncommonly uncomfortable and stiff-necked peasant cart, and arrived, head-over-heels, in the capital.

In the inn where I alighted, I ordered for myself a little—­only a very little breakfast,—­a trifle—­a bit of bread-and-butter—­a few eggs.