Hitherto
I have only committed blunders in life and never crimes. Nevertheless,
I have, of late, become the victim of a deep and inscrutable melancholy,
which I can ascribe to no cause, and can divert by no resource. Can you
throw any light upon my dark feelings? Can you remove them?'

'How long have you experienced them?' inquired the physician.

'More or less ever since my return,' replied Walstein; 'but most
grievously during the last three months.'

'Are you in love?' inquired Schulembourg.

'Certainly not,' replied Walstein, 'and I fear I never shall be.'

'You have been?' inquired the physician.

'I have had some fancies, perhaps too many,' answered the patient; 'but
youth deludes itself. My idea of a heroine has never been realised, and,
in all probability, never will be.'

'Besides an idea of a heroine,' said Schulembourg, 'you have also, if I
mistake not, an idea of a hero?'

'Without doubt,' replied Walstein. 'I have preconceived for myself a
character which I have never achieved.'

'Yet, if you have never met a heroine nearer your ideal than your hero,
why should you complain?' rejoined Schulembourg.

'There are moments when my vanity completes my own portrait,' said
Walstein.

'And there are moments when our imagination completes the portrait of
our mistress,' rejoined Schulembourg.

'You reason,' said Walstein. 'I was myself once fond of reasoning, but
the greater my experience, the more I have become convinced that man is
not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from
passion.'

'Passion is the ship, and reason is the rudder,' observed Schulembourg.

'And thus we pass the ocean of life,' said Walstein. 'Would that I
could discover a new continent of sensation!'

'Do you mix much in society?' said the physician.

'By fits and starts,' said Walstein. 'A great deal when I first
returned: of late little.'

'And your distemper has increased in proportion with your solitude?'

'It would superficially appear so,' observed Walstein; 'but I consider
my present distemper as not so much the result of solitude, as the
reaction of much converse with society. I am gloomy at present from a
sense of disappointment of the past.'

'You are disappointed,' observed Schulembourg. 'What, then, did you
expect?'

'I do not know,' replied Walstein; 'that is the very thing I wish to
discover.'

'How do you in general pass your time?' inquired the physician.

'When I reply _in do