held. I
am grateful to him still, for it is due to this kindness that I can think
without resentment of those whose severity robbed me of six months of my
life.

This conference taught me how warm a friend I possessed in Professor
Tzschirner, and showed that Professor Braune was kindly disposed. I
remember how my heart overflowed with gratitude when Professor Tzschirner
sketched my character, extolled my rescue of life at the Kubisch factory,
and eloquently urged them to remember their own youth and judge what had
happened impartially. I should have belied my nature had I not availed
myself of the chain of circumstances which brought me into association
with the actress to make the acquaintance of so charming a creature.

To my joyful surprise Herr Ebeling agreed with him, and spoke so
pleasantly of me and of Clara, concerning whom he had inquired, that I
began to hope he was on my side.

Unfortunately, the end of his speech destroyed all the prospects held out
in the beginning.

Space forbids further description of the discussion. The majority, spite
of the passionate hostility of the informer, voted not to expel me, but
to exclude me from the examination this time, and advise me to leave the
school. If, however, I preferred to remain, I should be permitted to do
so.

At the close of the session I was standing in the square in front of the
school when Professor Tzschirner approached, and I asked his permission
to leave school that very day. A smile of satisfaction flitted over his
manly, intellectual face, and he granted my request at once.

So my Kottbus school-days ended, and, unfortunately, in a way unlike what
I had hoped. When I said farewell to Professor Tzschirner and his wife I
could not restrain my tears. His eyes, too, were dim, and he repeated to
me what I had already heard him say in the conference, and wrote the same
thing to my mother in a letter explaining my departure from the school.
The report which he sent with it contains not a single word to indicate a
compulsory withdrawal or the advice to leave it.

When I had stopped at Guben and said goodbye to Clara my dream was
literally fulfilled. Our delightful intercourse had come to a sudden end.
Fortunately, I was the only sufferer, for to my great joy I heard a few
months after that she had made a successful debut at the Dresden court
theatre.

I was, of course, less joyfully received in Berlin than usual, but the
letters from Professor Tzschi