gh. "Brought to reason," he resumed,
"but how? By waking one morning to find myself a spoiled man, and
spoiled by myself, too."

A pause, while I turned this information over in my mind, and then said,
composedly:

"I don't quite believe in your being a spoiled man. Granted that you
have made some _fiasco_--even a very bad one--what is to prevent your
making a life again?"

"Ha, ha!" said he, ungenially. "Things not dreamed of, Friedel, by your
straightforward philosophy. One night I was, take it all in all,
straight with the world and my destiny; the next night I was an outcast,
and justly so. I don't complain. I have no right to complain."

Again he laughed.

"I once knew some one," said I, "who used to say that many a good man
and many a great man was lost to the world simply because nothing
interrupted the course of his prosperity."

"Don't suppose that I am an embryo hero of any description," said he,
bitterly. "I am merely, as I said, a spoiled man, brought to his senses
and with life before him to go through as best he may, and the knowledge
that his own fault has brought him to what he is."

"But look here! If it is merely a question of name or money," I began.

"It is not merely that; but suppose it were, what then?"

"It lies with yourself. You may make a name either as a composer or
performer--your head or your fingers will secure you money and fame."

"None the less should I be, as I said, a spoiled man," he said, quietly.
"I should be ashamed to come forward. It was I myself who sent myself
and my prospects _caput_;[A] and for that sort of obscurity is the best
taste and the right sphere."

[Footnote A: _Caput_--a German slang expression with the general
significance of the English "gone to smash," but also a hundred other
and wider meanings, impossible to render in brief.]

"But there's the boy," I suggested. "Let him have the advantage."

"Don't, don't!" he said, suddenly, and wincing visibly, as if I had
touched a raw spot. "No; my one hope for him is that he may never be
known as my son."

"But--but--"

"Poor little beggar! I wonder what will become of him," he uttered,
after a pause, during which I did not speak again.

Eugen puffed fitfully at his cigar, and at last knocking the ash from it
and avoiding my eyes, he said, in a low voice:

"I suppose some time I must leave the boy."

"Leave him!" I echoed, intelligently.

"When he grows a little older--before he is old enough to