ways the same song!" Linden impatiently exclaimed. "Must I renounce
love?"

"Yes," replied Thiel firmly.

"I must voluntarily renounce happiness?"

"In your case love is not always synonymous with happiness," said Thiel
with a significant smile.

"You are particularly agreeable to-day," remarked Linden sullenly.

"I owe you the truth. It is a professional and, at the same time, a
friendly duty," said Thiel, rising to go. Linden parted from him with a
silent clasp of the hand.

"Renounce love! No. That he really could not do. Love was the sole
purpose of his life which, without it, would seem as cold and gloomy as a
grave."

He was a chosen vessel of pleasure, and apparently destined by nature to
be borne through life in women's arms, handsome, captivating, a flash of
passion in his tender eyes, his lips yearning for kisses, regarded by the
men with wrath and envy, by the women with glowing cheeks and bewildered
hearts. When barely a youth, a page of the Grand Duchess, his attractive
person and winning grace turned the heads of all the ladies of the court,
and it was rumoured that a princess had been his first teacher in the
arts of love and, even after decades had passed, still grieved over their
memory. As the Hereditary Grand Duke's adjutant, he had scarcely
anything to do except to continue to compose his long love-poem, and add
verse after verse. At thirty he resigned from active service, which had
never been active for him, and became manager of the court stage. His
brief love-conflicts and easy victories now had another scene for
display. After the society of the court the dramatic arts: dancing,
singing, acting without choice, or rather with the choice indued by the
desire for beauty, and--change. The years elapsed like a series of
pictures from the fairy-tale of Prince Charming. They formed a frieze of
bewitching groups in all the attitudes which express wooing and granting,
languishing and triumphing. Each year was a Decameron, each month a
sensuous Florentine tale, with a woman's name for title and contents.
What a retrospect! His past life resembled a dream whose details blended
indistinctly with one another, leaving only a confused recollection of
sighs, kisses, and tears, melting eyes, half-parted lips, and loosened
tresses, a memory as deliciously soft as a warm, perfumed bath, in whose
caressing waters, in a chamber lit by a rose-hued lamp, one almost
dissolves, and yields with thou