Bianca's father, had known how to cultivate her appreciation of the good
and the beautiful. To hear her questions and her husband's tender and
wise replies was a pleasure unspeakable.

If the weather were fine the doctor would sometimes go out in the
mornings also, and then he liked best to take his young wife to the
Ueberhell garden outside the Petersthor, and show her what rare herbs and
fruit-trees his father and grandfather had planted, and Frau Bianca
amused herself by gathering the flowers, or helping her child to pick the
ripe cherries and early pears.

In Bologna she had found it difficult to entice her husband away from his
work, indeed her own father, his master, had held him back, and now she
rejoiced that in the new home he was willing to give her so many hours of
his time, moreover--he had confessed it to her--instead of the elixir,
which she had been taught from childhood to regard as the worthiest
object of research, he was seeking for a medicine that should cure her.

Autumn came, and the starlings assembled on the Thomaskirche, the storks
in the village, and the swallows on the roof of the neighbour's house to
prepare for their flight towards the south; heavy storms tore the leaves
from the trees, one dull rainy day followed another, and when at last the
mountain-ash berries and the barberries were shining in all their
brightest scarlet, the rosy flush that had been coaxed into the young
wife's cheeks during the long, dry, happy summer changed to a crimson
spot, her eyes acquired a strained, longing, mournful expression, and
after she had had an attack of coughing she would sink together as if the
autumn winds had broken her as they had the stems of the mallow which
were hanging from the trellis in the little garden outside.