ut his parents--well, was there anything
peculiar about them?--and then they exchanged glances among themselves
and looked at him so curiously. What was so funny about him? Lehmann
was the most curious--and so cheeky. Quite lately he had blinked at him
sideways so slyly, and puffed up his cheeks as though they must burst
with laughter when he made the specially witty remark: "I'll be hanged
if I can see any likeness between you and your governor!" Was he really
not like his father or his mother? Not like either of them?

When Wolfgang undressed that evening, he stood a long time in front
of the looking-glass that hung over his washstand, with a light in his
hand, holding it first to the right, then to the left, then higher,
then lower. A bright light fell on his face. The glass was good, and
reflected every feature faithfully on its clear surface--but there was
no resemblance whatever between his big nose and his mother's fine one.
His father's nose was also quite different. And neither of his parents
had such a broad forehead with hair growing far down on it, and such
brows that almost met. His father had certainly dark eyes, but they did
not resemble those he saw in the glass, that were so black that even
the light from the candle, which he held quite close, could not make
them any lighter.

At last the boy turned away with a look full of doubt. And still
there was something that resembled a slight feeling of relief in the
sigh he now uttered. If he were so little like them externally, need he
wonder then that his thoughts and feelings were often so quite, quite
different from theirs?

It was strange how the boys at school were an exact copy of their
parents; and how the big boys were still tied to their mothers'
apron-strings. There was Kullrich, for example; he had been away for a
fortnight because his mother had died, and when he came to school again
for the first time--with a black band round his coat-sleeve--the whole
form went almost crazy. They treated him as though he were a raw egg,
and spoke quite low, and nobody made a joke. And when the passage,
_When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me
up_, happened to occur in the Bible-lessons, in which Kullrich also
took part, they all looked at him as though at the word of command, and
Kullrich laid his head down on his Bible, and did not raise it again
during the whole lesson. Afterwards the master went up to him and spoke
a long time to