7. VII.
Rodolph flew instantly to Bertha, with a degree
of impatience that might have seemed less than
respectful, but that it was duly mixed up with a
sufficient share of tenderness; he unfolded his
cause of difficulty, related his love at length, recounted
the scene with her parents, and resolutely
declared that he neither would nor could live without
her. The poor girl was sufficiently over-whelmed
with the novel character of her situation.
She had never deliberated much upon the condition
of her heart, which, like a gipsey's child, had
been allowed all along to do just what it pleased;
and the sudden and unaccustomed contraction of
all its liberties, just now threatened it, had an effect
not less paralyzing on her than it was maddening
to him. She knew not how to consider her affliction,
or in which way to turn first. It was now,
for the first time, that Rodolph had declared himself;
the words were strangely new to her ears,
but somehow they came naturally enough, and as
a thing of course, to her heart. That heart fully
responded to them; and, certainly, she loved the
youth quite as much as it was possible for her, and
proper for a young maiden of seventeen, to love.
The strength of her attachment to the youth became
fully evident to herself, when she understood
the intention of her parents to give her to the baron
with a long name. She confessed how much
she loved him; shed a world of tears; showed by
look, word, and action, that she was miserable at
the thought of marrying another; and when the
youth, flattered with these manifestations, was bold
enough to propose that she should avail herself of
the present opportunity to change the air of her
father's castle for that of his own, which he assured
her was far more likely to be beneficial to her
health, to his great surprise, she flatly refused him.
Bertha was a good child; and the holy law which
teaches us to love father and mother, in order that
our days may be long in the land, was not less a
feeling and an instinct in her heart, than a principle
in her mind. Her soul was too pure, too secure
in its natural whiteness, to permit even love
to obtain a triumph over its sense of duty.
