me and made me quiver.

We and Courvoisier entered the large room at the same time. While
Adelaide was languidly making its circuit, von Francius and I sat upon
the ottoman in the middle of the room. I watched Eugen, even if he took
no notice of me--watched him till every feeling of rest, every hard-won
conviction of indifference to him and feeling of regard conquered came
tumbling down in ignominious ruins. I knew he had had a fiery trial. His
child, for whom I used to watch his adoration with a dull kind of envy,
had left him. There was some mystery about it, and much pain. Frau
Lutzler had begun to tell me a long story culled from one told her by
Frau Schmidt, and I had stopped her, but knew that "Herr Courvoisier was
not like the same man any more."

That trouble was visible in firmly marked lines, even now; he looked
subdued, older, and his face was thin and worn. Yet never had I noticed
so plainly before the bright light of intellect in his eye; the noble
stamp of mind upon his brow. There was more than the grace of a kindly
nature in the pleasant curve of the lips--there was thought, power,
intellectual strength. I compared him with the young men who were at
this moment dangling round my sister. Not one among them could approach
him--not merely in stature and breadth and the natural grace and dignity
of carriage, but in far better things--in the mind that dominates sense;
the will that holds back passion with a hand as strong and firm as that
of a master over the dog whom he chooses to obey him. This man--I write
from knowledge--had the capacity to appreciate and enjoy life--to taste
its pleasures--never to excess, but with no ascetic's lips. But the
natural prompting--the moral "eat, drink, and be merry," was held back
with a ruthless hand, with chain of iron, and biting thong to chastise
pitilessly each restive movement. He dreed out his weird most
thoroughly, and drank the cup presented to him to the last dregs.

When the weird is very long and hard--when the flavor of the cup is
exceeding bitter, this process leaves its effects in the form of sobered
mien, gathering wrinkles, and a permanent shadow on the brow, and in the
eyes. So it was with him.

He went round the room, looking at a picture here and there with the eye
of a connoisseur--then pausing before the one which von Francius had
brought me to look at on Christmas-day, Courvoisier, folding his arms,
stood before it and surveyed it, straightly, and