A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who
were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at
the table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy
and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet,
as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I
cannot call them handsome--they were too pale and grave for the
word: as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost
to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle and two
great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing them,
seemingly, with the smaller books they held in their hands, like
people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of
translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had
been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it,
I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its
obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-
click of the woman's knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice
broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.
"Listen, Diana," said one of the absorbed students; "Franz and old
Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream
from which he has awakened in terror--listen!" And in a low voice
she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me;
for it was in an unknown tongue--neither French nor Latin. Whether
it were Greek or German I could not tell.
"That is strong," she said, when she had finished: "I relish it."
The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister,
repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read.
At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will
here quote the line: though, when I first heard it, it was only
like a stroke on sounding brass to me--conveying no meaning:"'Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.' Good!
good!" she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. "There
you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line
is worth a hundred pages of fustian. 'Ich wage die Gedanken in der
Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.'
I like it!"
Both were again silent.
"Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?" asked the old
woman, looking up from her knitting.