for eleven years.  With reference to this affair he wrote:  “I can imagine that from your point of view my behaviour may seem hard and unfair.  That is a mere illusion which disappears as soon as you reflect that all I want is merely not to have taken from me what is most rightly and incontestably mine, what, moreover, my whole happiness, my freedom, my learned leisure depend upon;—­a blessing which in this world people like me enjoy so rarely that it would be almost as unconscientious as cowardly not to defend it to the uttermost and maintain it by every exertion.  You say, perhaps, that if all your creditors were of this way of thinking, I too should come badly off.  But if all men thought as I do, there would be much more thinking done, and in that case probably there would be neither bankruptcies, nor wars, nor gaming tables."[4]

In July 1819, when he was at Heidelberg, the idea occurred to him of turning university lecturer, and took practical shape the following summer, when he delivered a course of lectures on philosophy at the Berlin University.  But the experiment was not a success; the course was not completed through the want of attendance, while Hegel at the same time and place was lecturing to a crowded and enthusiastic audience.  This failure embittered him, and during the next few years there is little of any moment in his life to record.  There was one incident, however, to which his detractors would seem to have attached more importance than it was worth, but which must have been sufficiently disturbing to Schopenhauer—­we refer to the Marquet affair.  It appears on his returning home one day he found three women gossiping outside his door, one of whom was a seamstress who occupied another room in the house.  Their presence irritated Schopenhauer (whose sensitiveness in such matters may be estimated from his essay “On Noise"), who, finding them occupying the same position on another occasion, requested them to go away, but the seamstress replied that she was an honest person and refused to move.  Schopenhauer disappeared into his apartments and returned with a stick.  According to his own account, he offered his arm to the woman in order to take her out; but she would not accept it, and remained where she was.  He then threatened to put her out, and carried his threat into execution by seizing her round the waist and putting her out.  She screamed, and attempted to return.  Schopenhauer now pushed her out; the woman fell, and raised the whole house.  This woman, Caroline Luise Marquet, brought an action against him for damages, alleging that he had kicked and beaten her.  Schopenhauer defended his own case, with the result that the action was dismissed.  The woman appealed, and Schopenhauer, who was contemplating going to Switzerland, did not alter his plans, so that the appeal was heard during his absence, the judgment reversed, and he was mulcted in a fine of twenty thalers.  But the unfortunate business did not end here.