m as a pupil, and there was only one of them--the last--who said the
boy was a poet: at which his papa was very much distressed, thinking
that the boy had inherited his mother's temperament, and she had always
had the most terrible headaches whenever she went to a party or
any social function. However, the papa's most intimate friend, a
smooth-spoken young chamberlain, assured him that the schoolmaster in
question was an ass to say what he did, and utterly mistaken, seeing
that the blood in the veins of young Euchar was noble, so that, being
by birth an aristocrat, he never could be in any danger of being
capable of poetry. And this was very consoling to the old gentleman.
How the lad developed with those dispositions may be readily inferred.
Nature had imprinted on his face the unmistakable signet with which she
stamps her prime favourites. But Mother Nature's favourites are those
who have the power of completely realising the illimitable love of
their kind mother, and of understanding the depths of her being: and
they are only understood by those who are favourites themselves.
Consequently Euchar was not understood by the general crowd--was
considered unimpressionable, cold, incapable of the due degree of
ecstasy on the subject of the newest tragedy at the theatre--and was
stigmatized as a prosaic creature. Above all, a whole coterie of ladies
of the most refined intellectual development and culture, who might
well be credited with the power of insight on this particular subject,
could by no means understand how it was possible that that Apollo's
brow, those sharply curving, masterful eyebrows, those eyes which
darted such a darksome fire, those softly pouting lips, should belong
to a mere lifeless image. And yet all this seemed to be the case. For
Euchar did not know in the least degree how to say nothing, about
nothing, in words which meant nothing, to pretty ladies, and look,
whilst so-doing, like a Rinaldo in bonds.

Matters were quite different with Ludwig. He belonged to the race of
those wild, uncontrollable boys of whom people are in the habit of
predicting that the world will not be wide enough for them. It was he
who always invented the maddest and most adventurous features of all
games. It was naturally to be expected that he would be the one of all
others to "come to grief" on those occasions: but he was always the one
who came out of them safe and sound, because he had the knack of
keeping himself in a sa