"Then let me go!" said Sara, with gentler voice; "we do not accord well together. I embitter your life, and you make--perhaps you cannot make mine happy. Let me go with him who will love me with all my faults, who can and will open a freer scope to my powers and talents than I have hitherto had."
"Ah, Sara," returned Elise, "will you obtain in this freer field a better happiness than can be afforded you by a domestic circle, by the tenderness of true friends, and a happy domestic life?"
"Are you then so happy, my mother?" interrupted Sara with an ironical smile, and a searching glance; "are you then so happy in this circle, and this domestic life, which you praise so highly, that you thus repeat what has been said on the subject from the beginning of the world. Those perpetual cares in which you have passed your days, those trifling cares and thoughts for every-day necessities, which are so opposite to your own nature, are they then so pleasant, so captivating? Have you not renounced many of your beautiful gifts--your pleasure in literature and music--nay, in short, what is the most lovely part of life, in order to bury yourself in concealment and oblivion, and there, like the silkworm, to spin your own sepulchre of the threads which another will wind off? You bow your own will continually before that of another; your innocent pleasures you sacrifice daily either to him or to others: are you so very happy amid all these renunciations?"
The Judge rose up passionately; went several times up and down the room, and placed himself at last directly opposite to Sara, leaning his back to the stove, and listening attentively for the answer of his wife.
"Yes, Sara, I am happy!" answered she, with an energy very unusual in her; "yes, I am happy! Whenever I make any sacrifice, I receive a rich return. And if there be moments when I feel painfully any renunciation which I have made, there are others, and far more of them, in which I congratulate myself on all that I have won. I am become improved through the husband whom God has given to me; through my children, through my duties, through the desires and the wants which I have overcome at his side--yes, Sara, above all things, through him, his affection, his excellence, am I improved, and feel myself happier every day. Love, Sara, love changes sacrifice into pleasure, and makes renunciation sweet! I thank God for my lot, and only wish that I were worthier of it!"