nservare_, if I simply baffle this longing and stay away, I have
sufficiently experienced during the last fortnight. Whether matters
will be worse if I see her again, who can tell? So I think I'll go
there and ask her whether she thinks me a fool or a man over wise, for
again playing with heat and cold which have given me chilblains
already?"

"Fortunately we're rich young men again," he added smiling. "For
although she esteems me very highly because I visit her without gloves,
it might seem quite too magnificent if I should call in a straw hat at
the end of October. I will spend something on myself, child, and even
look around for a respectable winter overcoat. My old one has gone
Heaven knows where with Franzelius, who wore it for a Sunday coat."

He could devote no more attention to his books, but while talking to
Balder in a half earnest, half satirical tone, made as careful a
toilette as is possible when a man possesses but one suit of clothes,
and finally, with his huge paper shears clipped his beard before the
tiny mirror. "I should really like to know," he said, while engaged in
this operation, without looking at Balder, "whether I should be less
indifferent to her, if I were a handsome young fellow like you, so that
she could be vain of me, or rather see her natural love of beauty
satisfied by my insignificant self. That I shall ever be necessary to
her, is not to be hoped. But to be an elegant superfluity, like a
parrot, or a piano on which she doesn't even know how to play--the
prospect wouldn't be very glorious, but for lack of a better. There,
the bushes have been pruned till they're fit to appear at court. I look
quite ghostly; this fortnight has been hard upon me. But perhaps it
will touch her: 'heart-sick, pallid, and true.' Good bye, my boy. I'll
bring back all sorts of things for dinner."

He was so strangely agitated that he embraced Balder, kissed him on the
forehead, and then rushed out of the room, humming in his powerful
"transcendental" voice--as Mohr called it--"_la donna e mobile_."

CHAPTER II.

His first errand was to a hatter, his second to a ready made clothing
store. When, though the October sun was shining warmly, he took his way
toward the Rurfuersten Bridge in his new winter overcoat, he could not
help laughing at his shadow, which he could scarcely recognize in its
present stately contour. He crammed the large pockets with oranges, of
which Ba