HE KING'S BETHROTHED

THE SERAPION BRETHREN.

SECTION V.

The ever-fluctuating vicissitudes of human life had once more scattered
our little group of friends asunder. Sylvester had gone back to his
country home; Ottmar had travelled away on business, and so had
Cyprian; Vincent was still in the town, but (after his accustomed
fashion) he had disappeared in the turmoil, and was nowhere to be seen;
Lothair was nursing Theodore, who had been laid on a bed of sickness by
a malady long struggled against, which was destined to keep him there
for a considerable time.

Indeed, several months had gone by, when Ottmar (whose sudden and
unlooked-for departure had been the chief cause of the breaking up of
the "Club") came back, to find, in place of the full-fledged "Serapion
Brotherhood," one friend, barely convalescent, and bearing the traces
of a severe illness in his pale face, abandoned by the Brethren, with
the exception of one, who was tasking him severely by constant
outbreaks of a grim and capricious "humour."

For Lothair was once more finding himself in one of those strange and
peculiar moods of mind in which all life seemed to him to have become
weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, by reason of the everlasting
mockery ("chaff" might be the modern expression of this idea) of the
inimical daemonic power which, like a pedantic tutor, ignores and
contemns the _nature_ of men; giving man (as a tutor of the sort would
do) bitter drugs and nauseous medicines, instead of sweet and delicious
macaroons, to the end that his said pupil, man, may take a distaste at
his own nature, enjoy it no more, and thus keep his digestion in good
order.

"What an unfortunate idea it was," Lothair cried out, in the gloomiest
ill-humour, when Ottmar came in and found him sitting with
Theodore--"what an unfortunate idea it was of ours to insist on binding
ourselves together again so closely, jumping over all the clefts which
time had split between us! It is Cyprian whom we have to thank for
laying the foundation-stone of Saint Serapion, on which we built an
edifice which seemed destined to last a lifetime, and tumbled down into
ruin in a few moons. One ought not to hang one's heart on to anything,
or give one's mind over to the impressions of excitements from without;
and I was a fool to do so, for I must confess to you that the way in
which we came together on those Serapio