of Vienna for
his place of abode; it is possible that his _quasi_ elective affinity
with it will save him from the danger of falling a victim to the Moloch
of the metropolis. In the year 1911 he wrote in an autobiographical
sketch.

For ten years I have lived in the neighborhood of Vienna. There are
German critics who cannot forgive me this choice of a domicile. But I
still ask them to approve it. On my part I promise them never to give
in to the Capuan lassitude which, I might add, is nothing but a legend
among the superficial. True, the productive man is here more isolated,
the man resolved to reach a goal is here left more to his own
resources, than elsewhere; but many stormy winds blow, and if the post
which one has taken is rendered dangerous, one's vigilance is enhanced.
I am thirty-eight years old and have a feeling that I am standing at
the beginning of my career. But to reach the end one would need to
be--immortal.

The virtuosity of the narrator Wassermann may have served as a model
for his younger fellow-townsman Bernhard Kellermann (born at Fuerth in
1879). He too is a seeker after new forms of expression for psychical
reactions; but he presents himself to us from the very first as a purer
nature of greater delicacy and lucidity. He introduces himself as a
troubadour of narrative art in his first two novels _Yester and Li, a
Story of Longing_ (1904) and _Ingeborg_ (1905). With unutterable
tenderness and richness of tone he depicts in each of these two novels
the love-longing of a solitary nature, the substance of which is
trembling yearning, and the fulfilment of which is a fading dream. A
solitary figure is the hero of the third novel, _The Fool_ (1909), as
well. It is a young clergyman who settles in a small Franconian town
with the sole purpose of doing good. He visits those who are weary and
heavy-laden; with pathetic faith in the goodness of humanity he sees in
every man a brother, and finally he suffers the Saviour's fate of
pining away and dying unrecognized for what he was. This is
Kellermann's profoundest and best work, and it would deservedly be
reproduced here if considerations of space did not compel the selection
of a shorter narrative. As such a narrative _God's Beloved_ (1911)
suggested itself, the work of a later period. For about the year 1910 a
clearly recognizable change takes place in Kellermann's work; he goes
forth into the world, and sojourn abroad causes the gentle dreamer to
awak