young Baron for all it was worth.

"What is this I hear about you and the women?" asked Herr Carovius one
day. "What about a little adventure?" He had noticed that the Baron had
a secret; and it enraged him to think that he could not get at the
bottom of this amorous mystery.

He made this discovery one day as Eberhard was packing his trunk. "Where
are you going, my dear friend?" he crowed in exclamatory dismay.
Eberhard replied that he was going to Switzerland. "To Switzerland? What
are you going to do there? I am not going to let you go," said Herr
Carovius. Eberhard gave him one cold stare. Herr Carovius tried
beseeching, begging, pleading. It was in vain; Eberhard left for
Switzerland. He wanted to be alone; he became tired of being alone, and
returned; he went off again; he came back again, and had the
conversation with Eleanore that robbed him of his last hope. Then he
went to Munich, and took up with the spiritists.

Spiritual and mental ennui left him without a vestige of the power of
resistance. An inborn tendency to scepticism did not prevent him from
yielding to an influence which originally was farther removed from the
inclinations of his soul than the vulgar bustle of everyday life.
Benumbed as his critical judgment now was, he went prospecting for the
fountain of life in a zone where dreams flourish and superficial
enchantment predominates.

Herr Carovius hired a spy who never allowed Eberhard to get out of his
sight. He reported regularly to his employer on the movements of the
unique scion of the Auffenberg line. If Eberhard needed money, he was
forced to go to Carovius, who would stand on the platform for an hour
waiting for the Baron's train to come in; and once Eberhard had got out
of his carriage, Herr Carovius excited the laughter of the railroad
officials by his affectionate care for his protege. Delighted to see him
again, he would talk the sheerest nonsense, and trip around about his
young friend in groundless glee.

It seemed after all this that Herr Carovius really loved the Baron; and
he did.

He loved him as a gambler loves his cards, or as the fire loves the
coals. He idealised him; he dreamt about him; he liked to breathe the
air that Eberhard breathed; he saw a chosen being in him; he imputed all
manner of heroic deeds to him, and was immeasurably pleased at his
aristocratic offishness.

He loved him with hatred, with the joy of annihilation. This hate-love
became in time the cen