The story begins with a recently young married couple named Lovisa and Sigismund Lovisa and Sigismund are ages nineteen and twenty four and they are incredibly in love despite the efforts of her family attempting to keep them apart since they were more wealthy than his family Lovisa feels that she is more free by having gotten married and is delighted that she has never kept a secret from her husband Sigismund was afraid that he could not provide an ideal life for his wife which she thought was