A sense of security such as he had not experienced in years came over Frederick.  He had always felt drawn to artists.  Their conversation, their camaraderie never failed to exercise a charm over him.  Now was added the fact that here, where he had counted upon a chilly foreignness and complete isolation, he had been ardently expected, had been welcomed with open arms by such a circle.  In the midst of their merry toasting and informal dining, informal despite their evening dress, Frederick every now and then asked himself whether the awful experiences he had gone through had really occurred.  Was he actually in New York, three thousand miles away from old Europe?  Was not this his home?  Within the past ten years in his own country had he ever felt even nearly so comfortable and at home as here?  How life came surging toward him!  Each minute a new wave rolling to his feet—­to him who had undeservedly escaped with his bare existence from almost universal perdition.

“I thank you from the depths of my heart, gentlemen and countrymen,” he said, “for the hospitality you show me.  I don’t deserve it.”  He raised his glass, and they all touched glasses with him.  Suddenly, to his own surprise Frederick expanded in a wave of frankness, calling himself a shipwrecked man in two senses of the word.  “I have gone through much in my past; and were not the sinking of the Roland so fearfully tragic, I should feel inclined to look upon it as a symbol of my former life.  The Old World, the New World.  I have taken the step across the great pond, and already feel something like new life within me.

“I don’t know just what I shall do.”  He did not realise he was contradicting himself.  “I shall certainly not practise medicine or take up my profession as a bacteriologist.  Possibly I shall write books.  What sort of books I don’t know.  One of the things I think of a great deal is the restoration of the Venus of Milo’s body.  I have already completed in my mind a work on Peter Vischer and Adam Krafft.  But for all I know, I may merely write on the use of artificial manure.  For I am thinking of buying some land, felling trees, and living a retired life, farming and raising cattle.  Then again, I may write nothing but a sort of romance, the romance of a whole life, which may turn out to be something like a modern philosophy.  In that case, I should begin where Schopenhauer left off.  I mean the sentence that is always going around in my head from Welt als Wille und Vorstellung:  ’Something lurks behind our existence which is inaccessible to us until we shake off the world.’”

The discourse of the young scholar, passing through his belated period of storm and stress, was listened to respectfully.  His reference to artificial manure produced a burst of merriment, and when he ended, his audience applauded.

“Shaking off the world, that’s something for Franck, Doctor von Kammacher.  Tell him, Franck, how you came to America,” said Willy.