Walther had just risen from table, when Erich hastily came into the picture-saloon to him.
— What is the matter with you, my friend? exclaimed the counsellor: have you seen a ghost?
— As you take it, replied Erich, prepare for an extraordinary piece of intelligence.
— Well?
— What would you give, what would you do in return, if all the lost paintings of your late friend, those invaluable treasures, were brought to light again, and might become your own?
— Heaven! exclaimed the counsellor, changing colour: I pant for breath. What say you?
— They are discovered, cried the other, and may become your property.
— I have no means to buy them, said the counsellor: but every thing, every thing would I give, to obtain them, my gallery and fortune, but I am too poor for it.
— What if the owner were willing to make them over to you, and required in return merely the favour of becoming your son-in-law?
Without answering, the old man ran out to find his daughter. They returned in dispute together.
— You must make me happy, dear child, he cried as they came in; on you now depends the felicity of my life.
The terrified daughter was going to make farther opposition, but upon a secret nod from Erich, which she thought she understood, seemed at last to give way. She went out, to change her dress; for the pictures and the suitor were waiting for her, as Erich declared, at his house. Amid what strange thoughts, and expectations, did she select her best attire; Might she not be mistaken in Erich? Had he understood her? Had she rightly interpreted him? Walther was impatient, and counted the moments; at last Sophia came back.
In Erich's house all those pictures were hung in the best light, and it would be fruitless to attempt a description of the father's astonishment, joy, and rapture. The pictures were, he asserted, far more beautiful than he had seen them in his recollection.
— You say my daughter's admirer is young, well-bred, and of good condition; you give me your word, that he will be a steady man, and never alienate these pictures again after my death? If all this be so, he needs possess no other fortune than these pictures, for he is superabundantly rich. But where is he?
A side-door opened, and Edward stepped in, in a dress nearly the same as that of his likeness, the shepherd, in the old picture of Quintin Messys.
— He? cried Walther: whence have you the pictures?
When Edward had related the singular occurrence, the old man took the hand of his daughter, and laid it in that of the youth, saying:
— Sophia ventures much, but she does it out of love to her father; I presume, my son, you will now have become prudent and good. But, one condition; you live with me, and Eulenböck never crosses my threshold, nor are you ever to set eyes upon him again.
— Certainly not; answered Edward, besides he sets off from here to-morrow on his travels with the foreign prince.
They proceeded to the father's house. He led the youth into his library:
— Here, young man, you find your curiosities too again, which your whirligig librarian sold me for an old song. In future you will hold these treasures of your father more sacred.
The lovers were happy. When they were alone, Sophia folded the youth tenderly in her arms.
— I love thee, Edward, from my heart, she whispered to him, but I was forced the other day, to give way to my father's humour, and then and to-day to play the part of unqualified obedience, in order, in the first instance, not to abandon all hope, and to-day to be thine without opposition; for if he had observed my love he would never have given his consent so soon.
Some weeks after, they were married. The youth found no difficulty in becoming a regular and happy man; in the arms of his wife and the circle of his children, he reflected on his wild youth only as a feverish dream. Eulenböck had left the city with the prince, and with him the titular Librarian, who obtained that place of secretary to the prince which Edward had applied for, and some years after married the easy fair one who had caused our young friend such an ill name in his native town, and had almost become the occasion of his ruin.
The End