ss him alone. He soon had
enough of this, and entered the army. The colonel thanked him for the
compliment which he paid the regiment by choosing it, his superior
officers showed him endless marks of consideration, and if some of them
affected to make no distinction between him and other young officers,
he detected in it an intention which also irritated him. As, moreover,
he found no special pleasure in the conversations of his comrades, nor
in the parades, watchwords, and other details of garrison life, he
forthwith quitted active service, not without having been promoted, in
rapid succession, to first-lieutenant, captain, and major in his
regiment.

Of course meanwhile woman had entered his existence. But in what a
manner! Light relations with actresses, which merely occupied his
senses and left no trace in his life except some considerable sums in
the account book which his faithful family steward kept with great
accuracy; fleeting flirtations with society ladies, which soon became
intolerable because he merely found incomparably greater demands, but
otherwise nothing more than with his actresses, toward whom he need use
no ceremony. This was all. A great, deep love would have given his
life happiness and purpose; but it did not dawn for him. Was it
because he did not meet the right woman? Was it because he did not
come out of himself sufficiently? was he, as it were, too much walled
in by his indifference to discover, behind the reserve of maidenly
timidity, faint emotions by which his own feelings might have been
kindled? Enough, he passed woman by, without seeing in her aught save
a toy. By accident, or to be more accurate, through the jealousy of
another interest which believed itself threatened, he discovered a
cleverly woven intrigue to lure him into a marriage with a princess
who, though neither especially beautiful nor wealthy, was yet very
pretty, and this so roused his distrust that henceforth he saw in the
favour of matrons and in the smiles of young ladies only speculations
upon his revenue of two millions and his title of prince, and acquired
a positive abhorrence of the circles in which people marry.

Once he had a meeting which narrowly escaped making a deeper
impression. On a journey from the Black Forest to Norderney the
prince, who cared nothing for aristocratic isolation, occupied the same
compartment with a young girl from Mayence, who was going to the same
place. She was remarkabl