can
never love anyone else, and I look upon myself as his bride."

Philip blushed again, but he put on quite the expression of a rejected
lover.

"I hope you'll be very happy," he said.

XXIV

Professor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made out a list of
books which Philip was to read till he was ready for the final achievement
of Faust, and meanwhile, ingeniously enough, started him on a German
translation of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip had studied at
school. It was the period in Germany of Goethe's highest fame.
Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards patriotism he
had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy
to be one of the most significant glories of national unity. The
enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht to hear the
rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer's greatness is
that different minds can find in him different inspirations; and Professor
Erlin, who hated the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe
because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only refuge for a sane
mind against the onslaughts of the present generation. There was a
dramatist whose name of late had been much heard at Heidelberg, and the
winter before one of his plays had been given at the theatre amid the
cheers of adherents and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard
discussions about it at the Frau Professor's long table, and at these
Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he beat the table with his fist, and
drowned all opposition with the roar of his fine deep voice. It was
nonsense and obscene nonsense. He forced himself to sit the play out, but
he did not know whether he was more bored or nauseated. If that was what
the theatre was coming to, then it was high time the police stepped in and
closed the playhouses. He was no prude and could laugh as well as anyone
at the witty immorality of a farce at the Palais Royal, but here was
nothing but filth. With an emphatic gesture he held his nose and whistled
through his teeth. It was the ruin of the family, the uprooting of morals,
the destruction of Germany.

"Aber, Adolf," said the Frau Professor from the other end of the table.
"Calm yourself."

He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures and ventured
upon no action of his life without consulting her.

"No, Helene, I tell you this," he shouted. "I would sooner my daughters
were l