"If it is a secret,
they will bid us go; but I should like to know what ails the fine-
looking young man whom Madame von Lutzow calls a poet and a hero.
Oh, I have never yet seen a poet, and this one is so handsome!"
"Let us sit down on this bench," whispered Caroline, "and--"
"Hush, let us listen!" said Leonora, sitting down.
"It is not that, then?" exclaimed the lady, who in the mean time had
continued her conversation with the young man. "Your father has not
rebuked his son for the quick resolve he had taken."
"No, no," said Theodore Korner, hastily, "on the contrary, my father
approves my determination to enlist, and sends me his blessing. I
received a very touching letter from him this morning."
"It is his affianced bride, then, that has driven our poet to
despair, because he loves her more ardently than the fatherland,"
said Madame von Lutzow. "It is true, I cannot blame her for it, for
the woman that loves has but one country--the heart of her lover,
and she is homeless as soon it turns from her. But this is precisely
the grand and beautiful sacrifice--that you give up for the sake of
your country all that we otherwise call the greatest and holiest
blessings of life--your affianced bride; your pleasant, comfortable
existence; a fine, honorable position, and a future full of a poet's
fame and splendor.
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