"But the cause of this strange metamorphose?"
"No one pretends to tell," continued Josephine. "There is a report--and my father, who, I am sure, knows all, does not contradict it--that Paul Lindhorst was attached to a young girl who resided in the same town, and that his affection was returned. On one occasion, a detachment of French soldiers was quartered in Thun for a short time, and a sub-lieutenant, who had in some way been made acquainted with her, was smitten with the charms of the pretty Swiss. I suppose, like some of her sex, she had a spice of coquetry in her composition, and now, possessing two lovers, she had a good opportunity to practise it. Paul Lindhorst, however, was of too earnest a nature to bear this new conduct from the dearest object of his heart with composure, neither was it his disposition to suffer in silence. He remonstrated, and was laughed at; he showed signs of deep dejection, and these marks of a wounded spirit were treated with thoughtless levity or indifference; he became indignant, and they quarrelled. It is quite the old story; the girl, half in revenge, half from a fancied liking for her new lover, married him: soon the order for march came, and, by special permission, she was permitted to accompany her husband, as the regiment was to be quartered in France, and not to go on active service. Such," continued Josephine Fluellen, "is the story which I have heard repeated, and to which was attributed the extraordinary change in the young physician. His devotion to his favorite pursuits continued to engross him, he grew more abstracted, more laborious, more unremitting in his vocation. Again he visited foreign lands, and was gone another three years. Returning, he brought, in addition to his various collections, a little bright-eyed, brown-haired child, a girl, some four years old; and taking her to his house, which he still retained, he made arrangements for her accommodation there, by sending to Berne for a distant relative, a widow lady, who had but one child, also a little girl, about the age of the stranger. She accordingly took up her residence with Dr. Lindhorst, and assumed the charge of both the children, while the Doctor continued to pursue his labors, apparently much lighter of heart than before."