I became a refugee--must seek for myself a new father-land." She wiped away a tear from her cheek, and sunk into deep meditation.
She knew the horrors of a revolution, and only saw in this new one a repetition of those scenes of terror which she had experienced, and which had driven her out into the world, up into the north, where she struggled on, until at length she found a home with Otto's grandfather--a resting abode.
Everything great and beautiful powerfully affected Otto's soul; only in one direction had he shown no interest--in the political direction, and it was precisely politics which had most occupied the grandfather in his seclusion.

But Otto's soul was too vivacious, too easily moved, too easily carried away by what lay nearest him.

"One must first thoroughly enter into life, before the affairs of the world can seize upon us!" said he.

"With the greater number of those who in their early youth occupy themselves with politics, it is merely affectation.

It is with them like the boy who forces himself to smoke tobacco so as to appear older than he really is." Beyond his own country, France was the only land which really interested Otto.