an as if impelled by some irresistible
power, cast himself sobbing on the ground, a paroxysm seized him, and
he was for many days quite unfit for work."

"Poor unfortunate man!" exclaimed I, "how did the hand of the devil
take such a deadly hold of thy life?"

"Oh!" cried the professor, "the hand as well as the arm grew in his own
body: he was his own demon, his own Lucifer, flashing the infernal
torch upon his own life. That is plain enough to those who know his
biography."

I entreated the professor at once to tell me all that he knew about the
life of the unfortunate painter.

"That would be much too prolix, and cost too much breath," replied the
professor. "Do not let us spoil the cheerful day by such gloomy stuff.
We will take breakfast and then go to the mill, where an excellent
dinner awaits us."

I did not desist from my requests to the professor, and after much talk
on both sides, it came out that, immediately after Berthold's arrival,
a youth who was studying at the college, devotedly attached himself to
him, and that Berthold, by degrees, communicated the particulars of his
life to this youth, who had carefully written them down, and had given
the manuscript to the professor.

"He was," said the professor, "much such an enthusiast as--pardon
me--you are! But this work of writing down the strange events in the
painter's life served him as a capital exercise for style."

With much trouble I obtained from the professor a promise that he would
lend me the manuscript after the close of our pleasure-party. Whether
it proceeded from my own violent curiosity, or whether it was the
professor's fault, I never felt more uneasy than during this day. The
icy coldness of the professor when speaking of Berthold had been
repulsive to me, but his conversation with his colleagues who
participated in the repast, convinced me, that in spite of all his
learning, and all his knowledge of the world, he had no sense for the
sublime, and was as gross a materialist as possible. The system of
consuming and being consumed, as Berthold called it, he had actually
adopted. All mental endeavours, all the powers of creation and
invention, he deduced from certain states of the stomach and the
entrails, uttering on this subject all sorts of monstrous conceits.
Thus, for instance, he very seriously maintained that every thought
proceeded from the marriage of two fibres in the human brain. I
perceived how the professor, with all