This 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 nighttime, 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 wäge 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.