“It is absurd,” said Claudius to himself, argumentatively.  “I am barely thirty years old, as strong as an ox, and I have just inherited more money than I know what to do with, and I feel like an old cripple of ninety, who has nothing left to live for.  It must be morbid imagination or liver complaint, or something.”

But it was neither liver nor imagination, for it was perfectly genuine.  Tired of writing, tired of reading, of seeing, of hearing, and speaking; and yet blessed with a constitution that bid fair to carry him through another sixty years of life.  He tried to argue about it.  Was it possible that it came of living in a foreign country with whose people he had but a fancied sympathy?  There are no folk like our own folk, after all; and there is truly a great gulf between Scandinavians and every other kind of people.  But it seemed to Claudius that he loved the Germans and their ways—­and indeed he did; but does not everyday experience show that the people we admire, and even love, the most are not necessarily those with whom we are most in sympathy or with whom it is best for us to live?  He would have been better among his own Northern people; but that did not strike him, and he determined he would go to the Engadine to-morrow or next day.

The Doctor, having made up his mind, shifted his position and sat up, pulling a pipe from his pocket, which he proceeded to fill and to light.  The flame of the match was white and transparent in the mid-day glare, and the smoke hung lazily about as he puffed at the ungainly instrument of enjoyment.

Before he had half finished his pipe he heard footsteps on the path.  He looked up idly and saw a lady—­two ladies—­coming leisurely towards him.  Beyond the fact that it was an unusual hour for strangers to visit the Schloss—­and they evidently were strangers—­there was nothing unusual in the apparition; and Claudius merely rose to his feet and moved slowly on, not from any desire to get out of the way, but merely because he was too well bred to remain seated by the path while a lady passed, and having risen, he could not very well stand still.  So he moved on till he stood by the broken tower, and seeing that by climbing down he could reach a more secure resting-place, with the advantage of a view, he let himself drop easily on to a projecting ledge of masonry and resumed his pipe with philosophic indifference.  Before long he heard voices above him, or more properly a voice, for one of the parties confined her conversation strictly to yea and nay, while the other spoke enthusiastically, and almost as if soliloquising, about the scene.