ver him. They did not
recognize him, but Louise Hauser exclaimed: "It is Ulrich, mother." And
her mother declared that it was Ulrich, although his hair was white.

He allowed them to go up to him, and to touch him, but he did not reply
to any of their questions, and they were obliged to take him to Loeche,
where the doctors found that he was mad. Nobody ever knew what had
become of his companion.

Little Louise Hauser nearly died that summer of decline, which the
medical men attributed to the cold air of the mountains.

A FAMILY

I was going to see my friend Simon Radevin once more, for I had not
seen him for fifteen years. Formerly he was my most intimate friend,
and I used to spend long, quiet, and happy evenings with him. He was
one of those men to whom one tells the most intimate affairs of the
heart, and in whom one finds, when quietly talking, rare, clever,
ingenious, and refined thoughts--thoughts which stimulate and capture
the mind.

For years we had scarcely been separated: we had lived, traveled,
thought, and dreamed together; had liked the same things with the same
liking, admired the same books, comprehended the same works, shivered
with the same sensations, and very often laughed at the same
individuals, whom we understood completely, by merely exchanging a
glance.

Then he married--quite unexpectedly married a little girl from the
provinces, who had come to Paris in search of a husband. How ever could
that little, thin, insipidly fair girl, with her weak hands, her light,
vacant eyes, and her clear, silly voice, who was exactly like a hundred
thousand marriageable dolls, have picked up that intelligent, clever
young fellow? Can anyone understand these things? No doubt he had hoped
for happiness, simple, quiet, and long-enduring happiness, in the arms
of a good, tender, and faithful woman; he had seen all that in the
transparent looks of that schoolgirl with light hair.

He had not dreamed of the fact that an active, living, and vibrating
man grows tired as soon as he has comprehended the stupid reality of a
common-place life, unless indeed, he becomes so brutalized as to be
callous to externals.

What would he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty,
light-hearted, and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor through
provincial life? A man can change a great deal in the course of fifteen
years!

The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage,
a stout,