Page:The German Novelists (Volume 3).djvu/38

28 as she returned from church, where she never omitted going with her mother to hear mass. Hitherto he had paid no serious attention to the other sex: during his prosperous days, all his finer feelings had been blunted, his senses bewildered in a perpetual round of dissipation, encouraged by his boon companions. But now the wildness and effervescence of his youth was over; the chords of his feelings were finely strung, and the least breeze was enough to ruffle the surface of his soul. Enchanted at the lovely sight, he instantly threw up his dry studies of meteorology, and entered on a more favourite pursuit. He began by questioning his landlord respecting his pretty neighbour and her mother, from whom he heard the chief part of what has been already related.

For the first time he began to accuse himself of his former wilful and extravagant conduct: he could not now offer a handsome fortune, as he might have done, to the beautiful Mela; yet his wretched abode was dearer to him than a palace, and he felt that he would scorn to exchange it for the finest house in Bremen. His beloved dwelt opposite to him, and he passed whole hours together at the window. When she appeared, he felt greater delight, perhaps, than the astronomer Horocks himself, when he first beheld Venus passing over the Sun’s disk at Liverpool. But her mother was as vigilant in her obser-