The Magister had also quiet talks concerning the welfare of the soul with the older girls, and the maidens acknowledged, that they had never before conceived how bad, how in reality wicked they were, but their heavenly good Magister knew how to console them so lovingly, that they had never been so happy as at the present moment. But how came it to pass that about this time Lydia Erast took to complaining that recently in their games the less agreeable positions were always given to her, and that when playing: "Do not look round, the Fox is about," Clara and Bertha, who used to be her best friends, now struck out at her more spitefully even than did the others? How came it also that the usually so grave Magister came at times out of the class rooms with a happy smile such as had never been seen on his lips when leaving the Sapientia, and instead of reciting his breviary warbled the Odes to Lalage to the astonished beeches? How all this came about, he himself knew not. At first his eye had rested unwittingly on this fair head, as a young teacher when giving the first lesson, out of embarrassment fixes his look on some bright face, a particular pillar, or the corner of one of the benches. Next the bright blue eye fixed on him with touching devotion had attracted him, and soon he had to acknowledge to himself, that he especially directed his teaching to that sweet child, that only for her did he prepare the substance of his discourse, that he only saw her, only thought of her, only heard her answers, though she in no wise surpassed the others in mental acquirements. An indefinite yearning seized him, to see her always before him in all the classes. Thus the misery, which rendered his days peaceless and his nights sleepless began, and cast him into that inwardly at variance, gloomy state of mind, in the which his brother found him.