om one another--drove over in the afternoon
to Ronneburg by way of Harburg, but Wilhelm could not be prevailed upon
to accompany them. Paul took him severely to task; Malvine represented
to him, with an eloquence unusual to her, the horrors of a lonely
New-Year's Eve; Frau Brohl pointed out the advantages of celebrating
the festive occasion in a company composed entirely of rich people; and
even Willy entreated, "Do come, Onkelchen, you can take care of me on
the road." All their persuasion proving fruitless, they finally left
him to his fate, and he remained behind alone.

Night found him at the writing-table in Paul's study, his head in his
hand, lost in thought. At last he shook himself out of his deep
brooding and wrote the following letter to Schrotter:

"My Revered Friend, I will not now break the habit of eight years, but
will spend my New Years' Eve with you, the person who stands nearest to
me in all the world. I am alone in this grand villa, the servants seem
to be enjoying themselves downstairs over their roast goose and punch,
Paul has taken his family and gone into the country to the castle of a
neighboring estate owner by whom he is evidently very much impressed,
and I can chat with you undisturbed.

"I wish you could live for a time in close contact with Paul, as I am
doing, you would be surprised and pleased. His development has been
wonderfully logical, and he now affords the spectacle, so intensely
interesting to the observant eye, of a person whose every capacity,
under the influence of the most favorable combination of circumstances
imaginable, has attained to the utmost limit of growth which is
possible to it. Paul has become the ideal type of our North German
landed proprietor. He is ultra conservative, and considers the
Socialist Act too mild. He loathes parliamentarianism, but would wish
that the Landrath had not the power to appoint even a police constable
without the consent of the estate owners of the district, and raves
about local police prerogative. His only newspaper, beside the little
local one, is the Kreuzzentung, he is learned in the Army List, and the
writing-table at which I am sitting is strewed with volumes of the
Almanac de Gotha. He looks after his subjects--for I think he calls his
workmen his subjects--in a truly fatherly or feudal manner, but I do
not doubt that he would drive the best of them off the estate with
dogs, if, even in the depth of winter, they did not stand ha