Bruno was much more reserved and taciturn than
Salo, who was naturally very gay and could sing and laugh so that the
halls would re-echo loudly with his merriment. The Baroness herself
often laughed in that way, too. That is why Bruno imagined that she
loved her younger son better than him, and because he himself loved his
mother passionately, he could not endure this thought. It was not true,
however. She loved his eldest boy passionately and everybody who was
close to her could see it.
"When I was ten years old and Philip fifteen, an unusually charming girl
was added to our little circle. I above everybody else was enchanted
with her. Our friends at the castle and even Philip, who certainly was
not easily filled with enthusiasm, were extremely enthusiastic about our
new playmate. She was a girl of eleven years old, you see just a year
older than I was. She was far, far above me, though, in knowledge,
ability, and especially in her manners and whole behaviour, so that I was
perfectly carried away by her charm.
"Her name was Leonore. She was related to the baroness and had come down
from the far north, in fact from Holstein, where my godmother came from
and all her connections lived. Leonore, the daughter of one of her
relations, had very early lost her father and mother, as her mother had
died soon after the Baroness decided to adopt the child. She knew that
Leonore would otherwise be all alone in the world, and she hoped that a
gentle sister would have an extremely beneficial influence on the two
self-willed brothers.
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