foolish attempts to teach tortoises to fly. Do all you can for the poor
prisoners; and if you--"

"By daybreak to-morrow I will be with them," Johannes said, and he
hastily took leave.

As soon as they were alone Berenike observed "There he goes, quite
offended, as if I had done him a wrong. That is the way with all these
Christians. They think it their duty to force on others what they
themselves think right, and any one who turns a deaf ear to their
questionable truths they at once set down as narrow-minded, or as hostile
to what is good. Agatha, of whom you were just now speaking, and Zeno
her father, my husband's brother, are Christians. I had hoped that
Korinna's death would have brought the child back to us; I have longed
to see her, and have heard much that is sweet about her: but a common
sorrow, which so often brings divided hearts together, has only widened
the gulf between my husband and his brother. The fault is not on our
side. Nay, I was rejoiced when, a few hours after the worst was over,
a letter from Zeno informed me that he and his daughter would come to
see us the same evening. But the letter itself"--and her voice began to
quiver with indignation--"compelled us to beg him not to come. It is
scarcely credible--and I should do better not to pour fresh oil on my
wrath--but he bade us 'rejoice'; three, four, five times he repeated the
cruel words. And he wrote in a pompous strain of the bliss and rapture
which awaited our lost child--and this to a mother whose heart had been
utterly broken but a few hours before by a fearful stroke of Fate! He
would meet the bereaved, grieving, lonely mourner with a smile on his
lips! Rejoice! This climax of cruelty or aberration has parted us
forever. Why, our black gardener, whose god is a tree-stump that bears
only the faintest likeness to humanity, melted into tears at the news;