These two years had been outwardly uneventful for Wilhelm.  In the mornings he worked in the Physical Institute, in the afternoons he worked at home, in the evenings he gossiped with Schrotter—­a journey to Hamburg and a fortnight’s visit to the house on the Friesenmoor had given him change.  Paul came pretty often to Berlin, and found in the society of his old friends the enjoyment of his early years renewed, and Wilhelm with his girlish face, his enthusiastic eyes, and his unworldly manner did not seem a year older.  The professor of physics, who had frequently been invited to go abroad to direct the teaching in other European and foreign schools, asked Wilhelm to go with him to Turkey, Japan, and Chili—­ as professor.  He had the highest opinion of Wilhelm, and deeply regretted that his misadventure with Herr von Pechlar made an appointment in Germany impossible.  Wilhelm, however, declined, on the ground that he did not feel an aptitude for teaching, only for learning.

He had scarcely any intercourse now with Barinskoi, whose immoral views at last became unbearable; he rarely saw him except when he came to borrow money.  Of late a new acquaintance had come into his limited social circle.  This was a man of about thirty-five, called Dorfling, an overgrown thin creature, with long, straight gray hair, and deep intellectual eyes in his thin face.  He came from the Rhine, and was the son of a rich merchant, into whose business he should have gone.  However, when he was twenty-six he boldly told his father that the world outside was of deeper and wider interest to him than account books.  The father died, and Dorfling hastened to put the business into liquidation, and devote himself to philosophical studies.  For a year he drifted from one school to another, sitting at the feet of the most celebrated teachers and plunging himself into their systems.  In the autumn of 1872 he appeared suddenly in Berlin, and renewed his old acquaintance with Wilhelm.  Since then he had become a frequent guest at Dr. Schrotter’s dinner table, and a companion to Wilhelm, in his afternoon walks.

Dorfling was the most wonderful listener that any one could wish to have, though he himself was rather silent.  If the talk turned on great questions of knowledge, morality, the object of life, Dorfling’s share in the conversation consisted in the following half-audible remark:  “Yes, it is a powerful and interesting subject.  I have just been working at it, and you will find my opinions in my book.”  If he were asked to give his opinions now, or at least to indicate them, he shook his head and gently said, “I am not good at extempore speaking.  My thoughts only come out clearly when I have a pen in my hand.”  Not a day passed by without an allusion to “the book,” to which he devoted his nights, and of which he always spoke, with emotion in his voice, as the work of his life.