He awoke from his study and said mournfully; "Dear child, thou dost not yet understand thyself, thy destiny, or the world. I am not frivolous enough to enter into thy plans, or to encourage thee in them in the innocency of thy youth. What thou wishest cannot, must not be; and in another year, or less perhaps, thou wilt see thyself how impossible it is. We should both become wretched, and to deepen our misery should despise each other. May heaven guide thy steps: but I love and prize thee so much, that I cannot ruin thee. Pray to God: he will support thee."
"He talks for all the world just like my father!" cried Rose, and walkt away, half in sorrow, half in anger; while Edward went musing to his room.
"Is Balthasar right then after all?" he said to himself; "is human nature so utterly depraved? or is it not rather the business of energy, resolution, and reason, to transform those very qualities in us as in all other things into virtues and excellencies, which else if they are neglected would become malignant and base?"
He then wrote a long letter to Herr Balthasar, and once more told him positively that he must quit his house and the country, if the marriage of Eleazar and Rose was irrevocably fixt; and that he would readily forgo his promist fortune, if Balthasar would only afford him some degree of support in his plans for his future life. He again however called upon him as a father to consider the unsuitable, nay the shocking nature of the projected match. He conjured him to look at the happiness of his child with a steadier, more impartial eye. At the same time he begged for another, a last interview, and said he had a request which the old man must needs grant him, if he would have him leave the mountains with honour, with peace of mind, and without repenting of the years he had past there.
It was with a very heavy heart that Edward went to his old master. The whole destiny of mankind lay darkly and with a crushing weight upon his breast. Anguishing was the conviction he felt, that in the very sweetest and purest innocence all the roots of evil and sin were already lurking, and that there needed only chance and caprice to foster their growth, for them to put forth their calamitous fruits. His situation was so completely changed, his chief wish was that the house which had so long been his home, the country he was become so fond of, were but far behind him, that gradually and with a steady hand he might eraze all the recollections of the time he had spent there. He was resolved that at all events he would not be a witness of the disasters to which, he was persuaded, the dark spirits brooding there must infallibly give birth; that he would not stay to behold them; for he did not feel sure of being so firm, that his own passion and frailty might not lend a hand in bringing down the impending ruin. Heartily as at this moment he abhorred such a thought, he yet knew full well from observation and experience that no man is always the same, and that even the best are not braced with the same strength at all hours: he knew how the sophistry of our passions will come athwart all our good feelings and resolves, and that the more secure they feel the more easily it trips them up and overthrows them.