“ You are not a child; you were not a child; you must have known what you were doing.—Challenge the Count? For what, when he accompanies you? Well, let him go; but alone—not with you! I entreat you, not with you! Believe me!—Love in whose omnipotence you so firmly believe, which is to help Ottomar over all difficulties as with a divine hand—it will prove itself absolutely impotent—yes, worse than that; it will completely shatter the little strength that Ottomar might have summoned. For his sake—if you will not think of yourself—do not go with him! ”

“ The burning pile of wood and the torches threw their flickering light on the excited stranger; Hans, too, bent down to his wife,—it was a dream, only a dream! How did Henriette Trublet come to be on the shore of Grunzenow?
"It's she! It's she! Oh, all Saints! Oh, Mademoiselle! Oh, Madame! ma mignonne, blessings on your sweet face! Praise God! Oh, what a miracle! It is she!"
"Henriette! Henriette Trublet!" murmured Fränzchen, looking at the French girl with fixed, doubting eyes. ”

“ Where else could peace, refuge and rest be found but with you? Oh, Fränzchen, Fränzchen, how could it be that you caused poor Hans such strange pain? How could it be that you had to bear such strange pain on his account? How could you both torment each other so and moreover entirely against the will and the good intentions of Lieutenant Rudolf Götz?
Alas, Lieutenant Rudolf had no place in the council of Providence either, he was often hard pressed enough himself; destiny takes its own course and every time of trial must come to an end in its own way in this hungry turmoil of life. ”

“ I have often been terribly, terribly hungry for a friendly face, a friendly word. I would gladly have gone away to earn my own bread, but my aunt would not hear of that. But you know all about it, Mr. Unwirrsch,—why should we say any more about it? It is wrong too, to think only of ourselves at this moment."
"It is not wrong," cried Hans with unaccustomed vehemence. "Oh, Miss Franziska, we may certainly talk of ourselves in this hour; the hard, cold world has thrust us back to the very core of our lives,—we may talk of ourselves, in order to save ourselves. ”

“ What had she to do with Fränzchen and what house was this?
Where was the friend of his youth? Where was Moses Freudenstein of Kröppel Street?
It was, as if the weird, pitiless, cold wind outside gave an answer to all these questions.
"Woe to you, struggle as you may, ours is the triumph! Ours is the triumph over spring, over youth, over faithfulness and innocence. Transitoriness and egoism are your masters! Struggle as you may, it gives us joy to watch you struggle! The only faithfulness, innocence, eternity is in—us!" ”

“ It was a height where, between stones and the shifting sands of the dunes, low bushes and a few taller trees, curiously torn by the wind, struggled with laborious persistency to wring their existence from the hard soil, to defend it against the drifting sand and the storms. It was a lonely spot where one could hold communion with land and sea, with the clouds and gulls, with one's own thoughts. There Grips had built Fränzchen a simple seat and there, on the eve of the wedding, sat Hans Unwirrsch and Franziska Götz and spoke of their own fate and of Kleophea and watched the sun go down. ”

“ But you will grow better, you will soon be well again. Oh Mother, you don't know how much I need you; no wisdom that can be taught on earth can give what a mother's word and look gives us."
"Just hear the boy," cried Frau Christine. "Does he want to make fun of the old washerwoman. Such a learned gentleman! But never mind, Hans. Hans, do you know that you are growing more and more like your sainted father! He behaved just like that if the sun went behind the clouds for a little while. He was a scholar too, even if he hadn't been to the university and I often had to wonder at the man. ”

“ He was on his way to see one die whom he loved more than any other human being; he stepped out toward darkness and it was darkness that he left behind him. At one time he had preached to the trees and the birds because the world would hear nothing of his feelings, and he had never complained of that. Now, his hunger for knowledge seemed to be dead, but his feelings were still alive, rose insistently and crowded about his heart; they grew to be the bitterest pain that a man can endure. ”

“ It was not indifferent to him that no tie bound him to his home town any longer, that he could bring nothing with him from Kröppel Street into his new life but sweet, melancholy remembrance and the shining glass globe which had formerly hung above his father's table. This glass globe now threw its brilliance on the life which Master Anton Unwirrsch had built up in his dreams of the true life on earth; but no generation extends far enough into the coming generations to see fulfilled its ideals which by that time are seldom the only ones. ”

“ Now, Kleophea told in her fashion how from that evening on Théophile had made her life more of a hell than ever, how she had spent her days in idle, unoccupied torment, how, trembling, she had counted the minutes in the night and listened for the step that she feared on the stairs. She told of her secret, timid meetings with Henriette, of senseless plans to free herself from that unendurable, terrible existence, of thoughts of death and hopes of death and finally how the idea of flight had occurred to her, had stuck in her mind and become a resolution. ”

“ We must bear it and I will help, those too who have done me harm; only, Lord, my God, be merciful to us men!"
He turned his eyes to the side, towards the new koog; about it foamed the sea; but in it lay the peace of night. Involuntarily triumphant rejoicing rose in the rider's breast: "The Hauke-Haien-Dike, it must stand; it will hold after more than a hundred years!"
A roar like thunder at his feet roused him from these dreams; the white horse did not want to go on. What was that? The horse jumped back and he felt how a piece of the dike in front of him plunged down into the depths. ”

“ The next gust might strike the sea, letting loose the storm which would bring the flood.
There was another storm for which human machinations appear as child's play, and human hate as an offense, but one feeling remains victorious—love! That Reinhold felt in the depth of his heart, as he hastened downward to redeem the minutes which had been foolishly lost, to risk his life if it must be, in spite of it all, for the lives of other men. ”

“ For the universe and the human soul are, in themselves, dark, and receive their light only from the shining spheres that we call stars. In man's sky these are love, friendship, faith, patience, mercy, courage, humility, honor. Still more wonderful, however, than the existence of these stars is perhaps the fact that originally we did not possess them at all, but have only found them in the course of thousands of years. And how did they become ours? Through life's suffering and distress and infamy. Here, indeed, we arrive at the centre of Raabe's thought and work. ”

“ Oh dear, dear, Hans, what is man? What does he not have to endure in his life? Such great hunger——"
"And such very great thirst," threw in Auntie Schlotterbeck.
"That too, Miss Schlotterbeck," continued Uncle Grünebaum with dignity, though not without showing some annoyance. "Such great hunger and—thirst, that no angel who has not tried it would believe. What does a man do when he has come to his years of discretion?" ”

“ Infinitely credible are these stories of the beginnings of things and credible they remain even though every day it is more clearly proven that the world was not created in seven days. At Auntie Schlotterbeck's feet Hans lost himself with shuddering delight in the dark abyss of chaos: and the earth was without form and void;—till God divided the light from the darkness and the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. ”

“ Is not that the clear and simple truth?"
"It is," said Fränzchen. "We have not been able to defend ourselves."
The rain poured down in streams; the wind shook the window like a wild beast, but both wind and rain, and the darkness that added to their terror might do and threaten and say their worst: from then on, even on this night when Kleophea Götz did not return to her home, they scarcely seemed dreadful or uncanny any longer. From then on the wind and the rain and the night were blessings; no longer were they voices from the abyss, proclaiming destruction—death and the reign of egoism. ”

“ And not one of the famous and popular speakers whom Hans had heard in the great city, not one of the celebrated professors who had given him such good precepts at the university could have spoken more fittingly than did the aged vicar of the hunger parish of Grunzenow, to whom the library of his predecessors had remained a perplexing maze, and the modern science of theology a book with seven seals.
His greeting to his congregation was that of the angels than which there is no more beautiful one in the world: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." ”

“ The light which falls through the hanging glass globe onto the work-table is the realm of fantastic spirits; during the meditative work it fills the imagination with strange figures and pictures and gives to thought a tinge that no other lamp, patented or unpatented, can lend it. It makes one think of all sorts of rhymes, queer legends, marvelous tales and merry and sad events of the world which, when they have once been put on paper by an unpractised hand, amaze the neighbors; at which the shoemaker's wife laughs or is afraid when her husband hums them in a low voice in the dusk. ”

“ After he fully realized that he was under the roof of the vicarage in Grunzenow and not in Grinse Street, or, indeed, in the house in Park Street, he lay for some time with half-closed eyes and gave himself up to the rapturous feeling of certain happiness and the sweetly melancholy thoughts and memories that are always so inseparably bound up with that feeling. The moment that shows a man what he has gained also teaches him to realize what he has lost most clearly. How many faithful hearts and warm hands we always miss in our happiest hours! ”