Do not laugh, Ulrich; I well know that youth lies behind me, that I am old, yet Pasquale loves me; since I have had him, I have been more content and, Holy Virgin! now--I love him in return.

Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven! Why is it so?
This heart, this miserable heart, still throbs as fast as it did twenty years ago." "You will not leave him ?" "No, no, I love him, and I know why.

Every one calls him a brave man, yet they only half know him; no one knows him wholly as I do.

No one else is so good, so generous.

You must let me speak! Do you suppose I ever forgot you?
Never, never! But you have always been to me the dear little boy; I never thought of you as a man, and since I could not have you and longed so greatly for you, for a child, I opened my heart to the soldiers' orphans, the little creature you saw in the tent is one of these poor things, I have often had two or three such babies at the same time.