But
amazing is the ingenuity of love and lovers! You knew that none of the
older members of the family understood the classical language of the
orators, and the girl loved so dearly that she did not consider it too
great a labour to learn a dead tongue which could be of no further use
to her in order to be able to say to her beloved: _Ego te in aeternum
amabo!_ One must admit that that was a great and noble sacrifice. Every
day you corresponded with each other. Before school time the girl
dictated his lessons to her young brother, beginning with the usual
scholastic flowers of rhetoric but ending in the passionate voice of
love, and after school was over, you, in your turn dictated a similar
lesson for the lad to carry back with him. Naturally, _this_ lesson book
he _never_ took to school with him; you kept the other here, the genuine
one which he had to show to his masters. And this ingenious smuggling
was carried on beneath the very eyes of the family without their
perceiving it. Yet at last it _was_ discovered. This very day, only an
hour ago, the old head of the family placed these papers in my hands
that I might read them, informing me at the same time that he had
already read a translation of them. Terrible were the things I
discovered in these papers. The appearance of a rich and noble suitor
who, according to the notions of the world, was just made for the girl,
frustrated all your plans of waiting patiently for better times.
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