be in time for tea and supper.

The enjoyment of his society had already become such a necessity, that
this piece of information made us helpless and ill at ease.

The conversation turned naturally on our absent friend and his
striking, brilliant apparition among us. It was strange, but I could
not get it out of my head that I had already met with him in my walk
through life, but in a different shape; and, absurd as the idea was,
it still forced itself irresistibly on my mind once and again. I
called to mind, from years long gone by, the recollection of a man who
in his whole demeanour, but more especially in his glance, had the
greatest resemblance to him. The one of whom I now speak was a foreign
physician, who occasionally visited my native town, and there lived at
first in great retirement, though he soon found a crowd of worshippers
collected around him. The thought of this man was always a melancholy
one, for it was asserted that some serious misfortune always followed
his visits; still I could not shake off the idea that Natas resembled
him strikingly, in fact that he was one and the same person.

I mentioned to my next neighbour at table the idea that incessantly
haunted me, and how unpleasant it was to identify so horrible a being
as the stranger who had so afflicted my native city, with our mutual
friend who had so fully gained my esteem and affection; but it will
seem still more incredible when I assure my readers that all my
neighbours were full of precisely the same idea, and that all fancied
they had seen our agreeable companion in some entirely different
shape.

"You are enough to make one downright melancholy," said Baroness von
Thingen, who sat near me; "you make our friend Natas out to be the
Wandering Jew, or God knows what more!"

A little old man, a professor in Tibsingen, who had joined our circle
some days before, and passed his time in quiet, silent enjoyment,
enlivened by an occasional deep conference with the Rhine wine, had
kept smiling to himself during what he called our "comparative
anatomy," and twirling his huge snuff-box between his fingers with
such skilful rapidity, that it revolved like a coach-wheel.

"I cannot longer refrain from a remark I wished to make," exclaimed he
at last. "Under your favour, gracious lady, I do not look upon him as
being precisely the Wandering Jew, but still as being a very strange
mortal. As long as he was present, the thought would, it is true, now