Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/100

 not much, except years, of which she counts five-and-twenty; no near relations living now; no acquirements (for in literature she does not even know Werter) except economical; reads no books, not even mine; inhabits, that is, watches like a wardeness, quite alone, the thirteen void, disfurnished chambers of the Castle of Hukelum, which belongs to the Dragoon Rittmeister Aufhammer, at present resident in his other mansion of Schadeck; on occasion, she commands and feeds his soccagers and hand-maids; and can write herself By the grace of God—which, in the thirteenth century, the country nobles did as well as princes,—for she lives by the grace of man, at least of woman, the Lady Rittmeisterinn Aufhammer's grace, who, at all times, blesses those vassals whom her husband curses. But, in the breast of the orphaned Thiennette, lay a sugared marchpane heart, which, for very love, you could have devoured; her fate was hard, but her soul was soft; she was modest, courteous, and timid, but too much so;—cheerfully and coldly she received the most cutting humiliations in Schadeck, and felt no pain, and not till some days after did she see it all clearly, and then these cuts began sharply to bleed, and she wept in her loneliness over her lot.

It is hard for me to give a light tone, after this deep one, and to add, that Fixlein had been almost brought up beside her, and that she, his school-moiety over with the Senior, while the latter was training him for the dignities of the Third Form, had learned the Verba Anomala along with him.

The Achilles'-shield of the cake, jagged and embossed with carved work of brown scales, was whirling round in the Quintus like a swing-wheel of hungry and thankful ideas. Of that philosophy which despises eating, and of