ur three years' acquaintance, it is true, there had not been much
opportunity for any striking display on his part of good or bad
qualities; but certainly ample opportunity of testing whether he were,
taken all in all, superior, even with, or inferior to the average man
of our average acquaintance. And, briefly speaking, to me he had become
a standing model of a superior man.

I had by this time learned to know that when there were many ways of
looking at a question, that one, if there were such an one, which was
less earthily practical, more ideal and less common than the others,
would most inevitably be the view taken by Eugen Courvoisier, and
advocated by him with warmth, energy, and eloquence to the very last.
The point from which he surveyed the things and the doings of life was,
taken all in all, a higher one than that of other men, and was illumined
with something of the purple splendor of that "light that never was on
sea or land." A less practical conduct, a more ideal view of right and
wrong--sometimes a little fantastic even--always imbued with something
of the knightliness which sat upon him as a natural attribute.
_Ritterlich_, Karl Linders called him, half in jest, half in earnest;
and _ritterlich_ he was.

In his outward demeanor to the world with which he came in contact, he
was courteous to men; to a friend or intimate, as myself, an ever-new
delight and joy; to all people, truthful to fantasy; and to women, on
the rare occasions on which I ever saw him in their company, he was
polite and deferential--but rather overwhelmingly so; it was a
politeness which raised a barrier, and there was a glacial surface to
the manner. I remarked this, and speculated about it. He seemed to have
one manner to every woman with whom he had anything to do; the
maid-servant who, at her leisure or pleasure, was supposed to answer our
behests (though he would often do a thing himself, alleging that he
preferred doing so to "seeing that poor creature's apron"), old Frau
Henschel who sold the programmes at the kasse at the concerts, to the
young ladies who presided behind a counter, to every woman to whom he
spoke a chance word, up to Frau Sybel, the wife of the great painter,
who came to negotiate about lessons for the lovely Fraeulein, her
daughter, who wished to play a different instrument from that affected
by every one else. The same inimitable courtesy, the same unruffled,
unrufflable quiet indifference, and the same utt