mate with a singular fellow who
was some two years older than I, but like myself doomed to spend nearly
another year as upper-class student. He did not attend the same
gymnasium, nor were his relations, who lived out of Berlin, at all
known to mine. I am really puzzled how to explain the fact that in
spite of these obstacles we two became so friendly, that scarcely a day
passed without his coming up the steep stairs that led to my rooms.
Indeed even then a third party seeing us together might have found it
hard to say what made us so essential to each other. He was in the
habit of entering with a mere nod, walking up and down the room, now
and then opening a book, or looking at a picture on the walls, and
finally throwing himself into my grandfather's armchair--my substitute
for a sofa--where, legs crossed, he would sit for hours, speaking not a
word, until I had finished my Latin essay. Often when I looked up from
the book before me I met his quiet, dreamy, brown eyes resting on me
with a gentle brotherly expression, which made me nod to him in return;
and it was a pleasure to me just to feel him there. If he chanced to
find me idle, or in a communicative mood, he would let me run on by the
hour without interruption, and his silent attention seemed to encourage
and comfort me. It was only when we got upon the subject of music that
he ever grew excited, and then we both lost ourselves in passionate
debate. He had a splendid deep bass voice, that harmonized well with
his manly aspect, dark eyes, and brown satin-smooth skin. And as he was
also zealously studying the theory of music, it was easy for him to get
the better of my superficial lay-talk by weighty arguments; yet
whenever he thus drove me into a corner he always seemed pained at my
defeat. I remember him, on one occasion, ringing me out of bed,
formally to apologise for having, in the ardour of controversy, spoken
of Rossini's _Barbiere_ which I had been strenuously upholding, as a
wretched shaver whose melodies, compared with those of Mozart, were of
little more account than the soap-bubbles in his barber's basin.

In addition too to the extreme placidity that characterized him, he was
always ready to do me a number of small services, such as the younger
student usually renders to his senior, and there were two other things
that helped to rivet our friendship: he had initiated me in the art of
smoking, and set my first songs to music. There was one, I remember,