sses mingle easily; that the lack of a
proletariat brings with it the lack of a rich and powerful intellectual
aristocracy--all such political and social speculations never entered
our friend's head, in spite of the fact that his travels about the
world had given him a keen insight into the civilization of different
countries. In a spirit of quiet defiance, he took delight in doing here
the very things which would have been most severely frowned on in that
native town from which he had fled. He visited the dingiest restaurants
and the most modest beer-gardens, ate from an uncovered table, and
drank from the mug which he had himself washed under the water-pipe;
and it seemed as if the only thing wanting to make his happiness
complete was, that the highly aristocratic society with which he had
quarreled should happen by and see, in silent horror, how happy the
fugitive was in his self-imposed exile.

And yet, since everything inspired by pique carries with it a secret
feeling of dissatisfaction, he was after all not quite contented. Jolly
as it looked to wander about again at his own sweet will, it was, after
all, very different from what it had been years before when he first
spread his wings. In short, in his moments of reflection, when he
neither cared to forget nor to deceive himself, he was forced to admit,
with a kind of shame, that he was no longer young enough to goon
looking upon life as a brilliant adventure amid shifting scenes, and
that, in riper years, more depended upon the piece and the _role_ which
one played in it than upon the scenes and the spectators who sit before
the footlights.

True, he had from the first devoted himself zealously to his new
apprenticeship. But his conscience was too delicate to forget what
Jansen had said in regard to his fitness for art. Had his friend
congratulated him upon his decision, who knows but what, in spite of
all that was wanting to his happiness, he might have felt as contented
as it is possible for any man to feel in this imperfect world? But his
proud heart told him that the people who were now to be his associates
did not, in their hearts, consider him quite genuine, but looked upon
him as a singular being, who, from mere whim, had taken up with art
instead of with some other noble passion more suitable to his rank.

This unfortunate feeling was still further heightened by the fact that
his relation to the only old friend he had here, for whose society he
had pa