to your head?"

"Because, although I never answered your letters, I remember them all
very well. Is it possible that you too do not remember what you wrote
me three years ago, under the seal of the deepest--"

"So I did do it then!" cried the young man with a short, abrupt laugh.
"So I did chatter, did I? I assure you, my dear Hans, I was myself
doubtful how far I had initiated you--you, the only one before whom I
ever lifted even a corner of the veil from this veiled picture. After
awhile--as you sent no congratulations--I began to persuade myself that
I had kept a quiet tongue in my head, even with you; and, in truth,
that would have been the best thing to do. Then I should have escaped
the full confession that it is hard enough for me to make--and after
all, it is perfectly superfluous. For how shall I--who am no poet, and
who am besides an interested party in the transaction--how shall I
describe the persons concerned so that you will understand how it all
came about--how it was partly the fault of both--and yet how both are
innocent, after all?

"But if you must have it, let it be so--as briefly as possible.

"I came back, then, to my native town, to pay the last honors to my
good old father. You know what an unhomelike home I had always found
it. The capital of a third-class Duodezstaat--thank your good star that
you have no idea what it means. My father before me had suffered under
the absurd despotism of this court-etiquette, this endlessly-branching,
complicated, spun-out primeval jungle of dry genealogical trees--under
these ridiculous traditions of a worm-eaten bureaucracy. He was a man
of quite another type--a sturdy, stately country noble, of the most
exclusive and most independent spirit; and since the death of my
mother--who could not of course withdraw herself so entirely from her
family connections--he had lived on our own estate, altogether apart
from 'society.' Then came his death; and I--looked upon askance even as
a boy because of my likeness to my father, and almost given up as far
as a career at court or in politics was concerned--I believe no cock
would have crowed at it, if I had once for all acknowledged that I was
my father's true heir in this respect also, and had forever turned my
back on the spot where I was cradled. But, much as I felt inclined to
do so, it fell out otherwise."

He put his hand into his pocket and took out a little memorandum-book.

"You shall have the romance in an