asking her to care for the poor frightened children. She
was a kind, sensible woman, and though she at first exclaimed over their
heedlessness, she addressed them with maternal tenderness and showed them
to the room they were to occupy.

They came down again at supper reassured, and we ate the rustic meal
together very merrily. One of them wrote a letter to her father, saying
that they had been detained by the snow at the house of an acquaintance,
and a messenger set off with it at sunrise, but we were told that the
road would not be passable before noon.

Yet, gay as our companions were at breakfast, the thought of entertaining
them longer seemed irksome, and as the church bells were ringing some one
proposed that we should go.

A path had been shovelled, and we were soon seated in the country church.
The pastor, a fine-looking man of middle age, entered, and though I no
longer remember his text, I recollect perfectly that he spoke of the
temptations which threaten to lure us from the right paths and the means
of resisting them.

One of the most effectual, he said, was the remembrance of those to whom
we owe love and respect. I thought of my mother and blind old Langethal,
of Tzschirner, and of Herbert Pernice, and, dissatisfied with myself,
resolved to do in the future not only what was seemly, but what the duty
of entering more deeply into the science which I had chosen required.

The childish faith which Feuerbach's teachings had threatened to destroy
seemed to gaze loyally at me with my mother's eyes. I felt that Pernice
was right--it was the warm heart, not the cool head, which should deal
with these matters, and I left the church, which I had entered merely to
shorten an hour, feeling as if released from a burden.

Our return home was pleasant, and I began to attend the law lectures at
Gottingen with tolerable regularity.

I was as full of life, and, when occasion offered, as reckless, as ever,
though a strange symptom began to make itself unpleasantly felt. It
appeared only after severe exertion in walking, fencing, or dancing, and
consisted of a peculiar, tender feeling in the soles of my feet, which I
attributed to some fault of the shoemaker, and troubled myself the less
about it because it vanished soon after I came in.

But the family of Professor Baum, the famous surgeon, where I was very
intimate, had thought ever since my return from the Christmas vacation
that I did not look well.

With Maria