And now, Charles, this is a
water-book I have brought you, you can study it in the winter-evenings."
[Three more years had passed, and Louisa Hawermann at the parsonage was
repaying her father's and her foster parents' love and care by growing
up the loveliest girl of the neighborhood. Uncle Braesig, to be sure,
would have qualified this by saying "next to his two round-heads." No
qualification, however, was justified in the eyes of Frank von Rambow
and Fred Triddelfitz, the two young men studying agriculture under
Hawermann. They fell in love with her, each after his own fashion. Frank
deeply and lastingly, Fred--whom uncle Braesig loved to call the "gray
hound"--ardently if not irretrievably. This, however, he did not know,
and as he felt his blood seething, he was thoroughly wretched.]
No human being can stand more than a certain amount of pain, after that
it becomes unbearable and a remedy must be found; now the only remedy a
lover finds effectual is an interview with his sweetheart. Matters had
come to such a pass with Fred that he could no longer exist without
seeing Louisa, so he began to lie in wait for her in all sorts of holes
and corners. Every hollow-tree was a good hiding-place from which he
could watch for her coming, every ditch was of use in concealing his
advance, every hill was a look-out from which he could sweep the country
with his gaze, and every thicket served him for an ambush.
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