Therefore I found no evil in it, on the contrary I thought: "When he asks her of me according to custom, we will see about it. I will say neither yes nor no at once; one must not have the air of throwing one's self at people's heads; but I will, and by yielding, for neither must one break young people's hearts."
Those were the ideas that I revolved in my head.
Besides which the young man was of good family; he had his uncle, Daniel Merlin, who was schoolmaster at Felsberg; his father had been sergeant in a regiment of infantry, and his mother, Margredel, though she lived with him in the forester's house at Tömenthal, possessed at Felsberg a cottage, a garden, and four or five acres of good land; one could not desire a match in every way more advantageous.
And seeing that everything seemed to go according to my wishes, almost every evening when I returned from my circuits through the woods, in the path which skirts the valley of Dôsenheim, at the moment when the sun is setting, when the silence spreads itself with the shadow of the forest over the great meadows of La Zinzelle--that silence of the solitude, scarcely broken by the murmur of the little river--almost every evening, walking thoughtfully along, I pictured to myself the peace that my children would have in this corner of the world, their pleasant home, the birth of little beings whom we would carry to Dôsenheim to have them baptized in the old church, and other similar things, which touched my heart and made me say:
"Lord God, it is all sure; these things will happen. And when you grow old, Frederick, very old, your back bent by age, like grandmother Anne, and your head quite white, you will pass away quietly, satisfied with years, and blessing the young brood. And long after you are gone, that brave Jean Merlin, with Marie-Rose, will keep you in remembrance."
In picturing all this to myself, I halted regularly on the path above the forester house of Jean Merlin, looking beneath at the little tiled roof, the garden surrounded with palisades, and the yard whence the mother of Jean drove her ducks and fowls into the poultry-yard towards night, for foxes were not wanting in that outskirt of the forest. I looked down from above, and I cried, raising my cap, "Hilloa! Margredel, good evening."