as to
devote myself to art and literature altogether.'

"Indeed, Alexander was obliged to go away within a very few days. Soon
after that, the war broke out again, and Marzell had to rejoin the
army. So that the three friends were once more separated, almost before
they could be said to have met, in the proper sense of the word.

"Two years afterwards, when Whit Monday came round in due course,
Marzell, who had come back a second time from field service, was
standing leaning over the old balustrade, in the Webersche Zelt, and
revolving many things in his mind. Somebody tapped him on the shoulder,
and when he looked round, lo! Alexander and Severin were both there.

"'See how one comes across one's friends!' cried Alexander, joyfully.
'I was strolling along to keep an engagement, thinking of anything
rather than of seeing either of you here. Close past me goes a figure;
I couldn't believe my eyes, but it was Severin. I called to him; he
turned round, and was just as glad to see me as I was to meet him. I
asked him to come to my house, but he said he had an irresistible
desire to come here, so I gave up my engagement, and came here too. His
presentiment was right, you see; we have found you here!'

"'The truth is,' said Severin, 'that I felt quite certain I should find
_you_ here, and I hardly knew how to keep my patience till you came.'

"'Don't you think Severin looks remarkably well?' said Marzell; 'he has
quite got rid of that sickly pallor he used to have, and there are none
of those nasty cloud shadows which used to be upon his brow.'

"'I may say just the same of you, dear Marzell,' said Severin; 'for,
though you didn't look so seedy as I did--and I really was very far
from nourishing, either in body or mind--still, the strange depression
and perturbation of spirit you were in had so completely got the upper
hand with you, that it had turned your bright young face into the
likeness of a crabbed old gentleman's. I suspect both of us have passed
through a good deal of purifying purgatorial fire; and Alexander looks
as if he had done the same, for he had lost all his good-spirits
towards the end, and put on a damned medicine face, where one might
read, "a tablespoonful every hour." Whether it was the aunt that was at
the bottom of it, or, as I shrewdly suspect, something else, I don't
know; at all events, he seems to be a new man now, as well as we.'

"'You're quite right,' said Marzell; 'and, the more I look