The Bride of Dreams

ow we must pass without comment. Little as I was, I knew full well that the priests were on my mother's side and that my father fought against a coalition. But with my mother I felt a sense of warmth, gentleness and tenderness, and had already been won over to her side long before I knew what the contest was about. Her beauty, which I heard praised; the deference I saw her met with; her sanctity, which I recognized as a great power, which my father, otherwise yielding to nothing or no one, dared only resist with faltering mockery; the sphere of suffering and tears in which she lived - all this drew my chivalrous heart to her. I considered my father a great man, a giant who dared anything and could get whatever he pleased - but for this very reason would I defend my mother against him. I went to church with her faithfully, and strictly followed her admonitions to piety, and the frivolous jokes which my father sometimes made on that score I proudly and heroically met with profound gravity.

But this chivalrou