bility of the three university faculties.
For example, since patriarchal conditions were her ideal, she
questioned whether mankind derived any material advantages from
jurisprudence. It settled everything, as she thought, by favoritism or
personal advantage, or at least in a mechanical way. Riches, property,
especially landed property, accompanied if possible by the airs of a
legation attache--_that_ was something that unlocked the world and
the hearts of men, that was real power. Everything else was comedy,
illusion, a soap-bubble, that threatened to burst any moment. And then
nothing was left. One can readily understand why my mother, with such
views, insisted upon taking me out of the barefoot school, and did not
consider an interim, with no regular school instruction, any special
misfortune. The evil in it was that it violated the rule. As for the
rest, the little bit of learning lost could be made up at any time.
And if not, then not....

It is a pretty saying that every child has its angel, and one does not
need to be very credulous to believe it. For the little tots this
angel is a fairy, enveloped in a long white lily veil, which stands
smiling at the foot of a cradle and either wards off danger or helps
out of it when it is really at hand. That is the fairy for the little
ones. But when one has outgrown the cradle or crib, and has begun to
sleep in a regular bed, in other words, when one has become a robust
boy, one still needs his angel just the same, indeed the need is all
the greater. But instead of the lily angel it needs to be a sort of
archangel, a strong, manly angel, with shield and spear, otherwise his
strength will not suffice for his growing tasks.

As a matter of fact, I was not wild and venturesome, and all my
escapades that were attributed to me as of such a nature were always
undertaken after a wise estimate of my strength. Nevertheless I have,
with respect to that period, a feeling that I was constantly being
rescued, a feeling in which I can hardly be in error. When I left home
at the age of twelve, the age at which, as a usual thing, real dangers
begin, there was doubtless a sudden change in my case, for it now
seems to me as though my angel had had a vacation from that time on.
All dangers ceased entirely or shrank into such insignificance that
they left no impression upon me. In view of the fact that the two
periods were so close together, there must have been this difference,
otherwise I