CHAPTER XXVIII 418
scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman ' s knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.
" Listen, Diana," said one of the absorbed students; " Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror-- listen!" And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue-- neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell.
" That is strong," she said, when she had finished: " I relish it." The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me-- conveying no meaning:-
"' Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.' Good! good!" she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. " There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. ' Ich wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.' I like it!"
Both were again silent.
" Is there ony country where they talk i ' that way?" asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting.
" Yes, Hannah-- a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way."