ew weeks. As good things, like evil ones, rarely come singly, this
morning also brought all sorts of unexpected pleasures. First came a
letter containing money to discharge a debt long since given up as
hopeless, the fee for a private lecture on Hegel's philosophy, which
Edwin had given a sceptical Russian. The auditor had suddenly
disappeared, and Edwin supposed him to be either in Paris or Siberia.
But he had preferred to make his peace with the Lord, and had now
obtained a position in St. Petersburg, from whence he sent double the
fee. Edwin was just forbidding Balder (who in his delight suddenly
broke his vow of silence and insisted that the money must be devoted to
buying back the books that had been sold) to meddle with the financial
department of the tun, which now, since Balder by his secret earnings
had basely betrayed the confidence reposed in him, was to be
exclusively in Edwin's hands, when Marquard came in, and after
carefully examining the patient, declared him out of danger for this
time. He cautioned him however, against any excitement or bodily
exertion, which would again open the scarcely healed wounds Then he
turned to Edwin: "I wish I could be as well satisfied with you," he
said, looking sharply into his face, "but I must confess that your
appearance, your pulse, your whole condition, don't suit me at all. A
few more days of this stooping, drudging, and brooding, and we shall be
just where we were the evening of the ballet. Deuce take it! I'd rather
prescribe for a whole cholera hospital, than a single thinking patient,
who's always opposing Mother Nature, and by his pondering and
cogitations during the day, tears into lint the repairs she makes in
his nerves at night. Or is--you have no secrets from Balder--your crazy
abstract love affair at the bottom of it? That was all that was
wanting! How far have you progressed with the little princess in
Jaegerstrasse? Still the 'fir and the palm' longing and yearning in
anxious pain?"

"If the matter is of scientific interest to you," replied Edwin with a
totally unembarrassed face, "you may as well know that the story ended
before it had fairly begun. I should be strongly inclined to put the
apparition in the category of delusions of the senses, if it were not
for the perplexing circumstance that the phantom which so mysteriously
appeared and vanished, was visible to you also."

Marquard looked at him with a sly twinkle in his bright blue eyes. "May
I fe