eserts, and if
a woman passes by your cave, exclaiming: _Apage, Satanas!_ I had
trouble with you even at the university. But now you seem to wish to
continue this course, until nature, so shamefully abused for the sake
of mere mind, is overstrained and fairly crazed with impatience."

"A very clever pathological lecture," replied Edwin smiling. "I will
request the continuation in our next; there is always something to be
learned. But for all that, Fritz, you wont get a kuppel'pelz[3] from
me."

"Nonsense! Who's talking about any such thing? But if _I_, with my
constantly increasing practice, can find time for little romances, in
which the mind has employment--"

"And also the heart, my boy."

"Well, the heart too, for aught I care, though that muscle is greatly
overestimated, and with all your sentimentality, only fit for a
dangerous hypertrophy. I'm now on the track of a little witch--"

"A fair Helen or Galatea?"

"Aristocratic, my son, and unfortunately very unapproachable--so far.
But what am I thinking about? You must have already made her
acquaintance."

"I?"

"Didn't you sit beside her in the box, day before yesterday? At least
the doorkeeper told me she always took the same place."

Edwin turned pale.

"I have a faint recollection of it," he replied. "Didn't she sit very
far front, and have brown hair, a very fair complexion, blue eyes--"

"Black or brown, my son. But we must mean the same person--and I,
magnanimous mortal that I am, solemnly renounce all my claims in your
favor."

"Then you must lend me your carriage, to continue this love affair
properly," said Edwin, forcing a smile, "for one can hardly pay
attention to this princess as a private tutor."

"You need have no anxiety on that score. To be sure I don't know the
will-o'-the-wisp very well, she baffled all my conversational powers.
But haughtily as she turns up her little nose--by the way it's a nose
to rave over--there is evidently something wrong about her. Young
ladies who go to the theatre alone, find their company home afterwards.
But I will discover in whose cage this bird of paradise has its
nest--yesterday I unfortunately came across an old Geheimrath, who
wanted to consult me about his liver, just as I was going to follow the
proud little nose. If it is as I suspect, you shall see, my son, what a
base materialist is capable of doing for his friends."

Laughing merrily, he sprang into his light carriage, took the reins
fr