ed of travelling; she shuddered at the thought of
moving. The separation from Friedrich seemed intolerable to her; and in
his flight from the Fatherland she saw a final and premature
renunciation of all the opportunities that might in the end present
themselves to him at home.

She was convinced that the men who had done him injustice would in time
come to see the error of their ways and make amends for their
miscalculations. She was particularly anxious that he be patient until
satisfaction had been done him. Moreover, she knew his plans, and
trembled at the risks to which he was voluntarily exposing himself: she
felt that he was undertaking a task for which he had not had the
practical experience.

But his decision was irrevocable. That he had never said a word about it
to Daniel, had not even insinuated that he was thinking of making a
change, was due to the peculiar onesideness of their present relation to
each other.

Laughing heartily, Daniel told of his meeting with little Dorothea. "She
looks to me as though she will give old Doederlein a good deal to think
about in the days to come," said Daniel.

"You played him a pretty scurvy trick, the old Doederlein," replied
Benda. "The night after the public rehearsal I heard him walking up and
down for hours right under my bedroom."

"You feel sorry for him, do you?"

"If I were you, I would go to him and beg his pardon."

"Do you really mean it?" exclaimed Daniel. Benda said nothing. Daniel
continued: "To tell the truth, I should be grateful to him. It is due to
his efforts that I have come to see, more quickly than I otherwise would
have done, that those were two impossible imitations to which I wanted
to assure a place in the sun. They may throw me down if they wish; I'll
get up again, depend upon it, if, and even if, I have in the meantime
gulped down the whole earth."

Benda smiled a gracious smile. "Yes, you die at each fall, and at each
come-back you appear a new-made man," he said. "That is fine. But a
Doederlein cannot come back, once his contemporaries have thrown him
over. The very thing that means a new idea to you spells his ruin; what
gives you pleasure, voluptuous pleasure, is death to him."

"Y-e-s," mumbled Daniel, "and yet, what good is he?"

"The spirit of nature, the spirit of God, is a total stranger to such
conceptions as harmfulness and usefulness," replied Benda in a tone of
serious reflection. "He lives, and that is about all you can