At these words Georg shook back his waving locks and hesitated in great embarrassment, but as no one interrupted him and he saw Barbara’s eager face and the children’s glowing cheeks, quietly continued: 

“So I came home, and was to learn for the first time, that in life also beautiful sunny days often end with storms.  I found my father ill, and a few days after my return he closed his eyes in death.  I had never seen any human being die, and the first, the very first, was he, my father.”

Georg paused, and deeply moved, passed his hand over his eyes.

“Your father!” cried Barbara, in a tone of cordial sympathy, breaking the silence.  “If we can judge the tree by the apple, he was surely a splendid man.”

The Junker again raised his head, exclaiming with sparkling eyes: 

“Unite every good and noble quality, and embody them in the form of a tall, handsome man, then you will have the image of my father;—­and I might tell you of my mother—­”

“Is she still alive?” asked Peter.

“God grant it!” exclaimed the young man.  “I have heard nothing from my family for two months.  That is hard.  Pleasures smile along every path, and I like my profession of soldier, but it often grieves me sorely to hear so little from home.  Oh! if one were only a bird, a sunbeam, or a shooting-star, one might, if only for the twinkling of an eye, learn how matters go at home and fill the soul with fresh gratitude, or, if it must be—­but I will not think of that.  In the valley of the Saale, the trees are blossoming and a thousand flowers deck all the meadows, just as they do here, and did there two years ago, when I left home for the second time.

“After my father’s death I was the heir, but neither hunting nor riding to court, neither singing nor the clinking of beakers could please me.  I went about like a sleep-walker, and it seemed as if I had no right to live without my father.  Then—­it is now just two years ago—­a messenger brought from Weimar a letter which had come from Italy with several others, addressed to our most gracious sovereign; it contained the news that our lost brother was still alive, lying sick and wretched in the hospital at Bergamo.  A kind nun had written for him, and we now learned that on the journey from Valencia to Livorno Louis had been captured by corsairs and dragged to Tunis.  How much suffering he endured there, with what danger he at last succeeded in obtaining his liberty, you shall learn later.  He escaped to Italy on a Genoese galley.  His feet carried him as far as Bergamo, but he could go no farther, and now lay ill, perhaps dying, among sympathizing strangers.  I set out at once and did not spare horseflesh on the way to Bergamo, but though there were many strange and beautiful things to be seen on my way, they afforded me little pleasure, the thought of Louis, so dangerously ill, saddened my joyous spirits.  Every running brook urged me to hasten, and the lofty