ousand times too good for this century of banks and
bourses, my dear enthusiast!" cried Rossel, with a sigh of honest
admiration. "But, even though you despise the golden fruit on the tree
of life, still all sorts of other things flourish there, which even the
best of men need not be ashamed to find beautiful and desireable: for
instance, fame or love, upon which you also turn your back with sublime
contempt. Your life is quite as earnest as your art, and yet you know
what Schiller says. If you go on in this way a few years longer, your
flame of life will have consumed all its wick; and the magic-lantern
pictures which the light has thrown on the dark background of your
existence will go down with you into eternal night."

"No!" cried the other, and his yellow face lit up with a red flush. "I
do not feel this fear! _Non omnis moriar!_ Something of me will be left
behind; and though you may be right that no glory will come to me
during my life, a soft shimmer of posthumous fame will warm my bones
under the ground, of that I am certain. For better times are coming, or
else may God take pity on this wretched world, and dash it to pieces
before it becomes one vast dung-heap from which no living flower will
spring. Many a day when I have begun to lose faith, amid the
wretchedness of the present, I have repeated to myself those comforting
verses of Hoelderlin's about the future of mankind."

"Now don't bring in your Hoelderlin as a bondsman for yourself," cried
Rossel. "To be sure, he was just as unpractical and as little suited to
the times as you; and, moreover, one of those erratic fellows who have
strayed out of the grand Greek and heathen worlds, and lost themselves
in our shallow present--an artist for art's sake, a dreamer and
ghost-seer in broad daylight. But for all that, he knew very well what
makes life worth living; and though he despised gold, and did not run
after fame very eagerly, he took love so seriously that he even lost
his reason over it. But you, my dear Philip Emanuel--"

"Are you so certain that I am not on the straight road to it?" Kohle
interrupted, with a peculiar, half-shy, half-bashful smile. "It is
true, neither this nor that particular beautiful woman has caused me to
tremble for the little sense I possess. But the woman and the beauty
which I, being what I am--"

He broke off, and turned round in his chair, so as to present only his
profile to his friend.

"I don't understand you, godfathe