He uttered all this with a frank eagerness which increased as he talked, and there was a singular contrast between the meagre experience he described and a certain radiant intelligence which I seemed to perceive in his glance and tone.  Evidently he was a clever fellow, and his natural faculties were excellent.  I imagined he had read a great deal, and recovered, in some degree, in restless intellectual conjecture, the freedom he was condemned to ignore in practice.  Opportunity was now offering a meaning to the empty forms with which his imagination was stored, but it appeared to him dimly, through the veil of his personal diffidence.

“I have not sailed round the world, as you suppose,” I said, “but I confess I envy you the novelties you are going to behold.  Coming to Homburg you have plunged in medias res.”

He glanced at me to see if my remark contained an allusion, and hesitated a moment.  “Yes, I know it.  I came to Bremen in the steamer with a very friendly German, who undertook to initiate me into the glories and mysteries of the Fatherland.  At this season, he said, I must begin with Homburg.  I landed but a fortnight ago, and here I am.”  Again he hesitated, as if he were going to add something about the scene at the Kursaal but suddenly, nervously, he took up the letter which was lying beside him, looked hard at the seal with a troubled frown, and then flung it back on the grass with a sigh.

“How long do you expect to be in Europe?” I asked.

“Six months I supposed when I came.  But not so long—­now!” And he let his eyes wander to the letter again.

“And where shall you go—­what shall you do?”

“Everywhere, everything, I should have said yesterday.  But now it is different.”

I glanced at the letter—­interrogatively, and he gravely picked it up and put it into his pocket.  We talked for a while longer, but I saw that he had suddenly become preoccupied; that he was apparently weighing an impulse to break some last barrier of reserve.  At last he suddenly laid his hand on my arm, looked at me a moment appealingly, and cried, “Upon my word, I should like to tell you everything!”

“Tell me everything, by all means,” I answered, smiling.  “I desire nothing better than to lie here in the shade and hear everything.”

“Ah, but the question is, will you understand it?  No matter; you think me a queer fellow already.  It’s not easy, either, to tell you what I feel—­not easy for so queer a fellow as I to tell you in how many ways he is queer!” He got up and walked away a moment, passing his hand over his eyes, then came back rapidly and flung himself on the grass again.  “I said just now I always supposed I was happy; it’s true; but now that my eyes are open, I see I was only stultified.  I was like a poodle-dog that is led about by a blue ribbon, and scoured and combed and fed on slops.  It was not life; life is learning to know one’s self, and in that sense