nd to go, and the trunk
he had brought down from the attic remained unpacked. Old Lore saw him
wandering about his room late at night; his lamp was not extinguished
until after midnight.

When Marquard called the following morning, he was not at all surprised
to hear that the Herr Doctor had not yet gone. "He has a disease of the
nerves called absence of will," he said to the shoe maker, "it's hard
to reach, but I think if we can once get him on the way--"

At the door of the room he started violently. He heard Edwin's voice
talking in a very strange tone on all sorts of matters. When he
entered, he found his friend sitting on the bed with dilated eyes,
holding the little bottle of violet perfume and Leah's plate, and
striking them together like a tambourine and a drum stick. He did not
recognize the new comer, and continued his discordant music, which he
accompanied with confused, delirious words, and verses of Italian
poetry--apparently from Dante. On the little table beside him lay a
small copy of the Divina Comedia, and beside it Toinette's letter. The
back of this was covered with writing in Edwin's small hand, which had
probably been done just before the fever set in, and his friend in
amazement read a singular improvisation in the style of the Inferno,
whose echo must have excited the sick man. Although Balder had said
that his brother was a poet, he had not been caught in such sins for
years, and in his days of health, certainly would not have fallen into
this fever for versifying. But as it sometimes happens in dreams or a
state of somnambulism, that we suddenly practise with wonderful skill
an art whose rudiments we have scarcely mastered, these lines had been
written without an erasure, as if dictated by some other, and as even
the worst verses were far superior to what Edwin usually acknowledged,
and the cynical, over-excited tone of the whole was utterly foreign to
his nature, Marquard looked upon them as a record of words uttered by a
man possessed with a devil, and forced to repeat what the demon
suggests. The verses ran as follows:

Methought that all my tasks were duly learned,
And I prepared to turn my back on school.
Must I examined be, to show what rank I've earned?

Then pray begin to ask your questions o'er,
For I am almost tempted to display
Before you all my wisdom's scanty store.

Our life--whence comes it?