Paul showed himself throughout as a man of feeling and character.  When his patent of nobility was signed, and he came to Berlin to be admitted to the emperor, to thank him for the honor accorded to him, he went to Schrotter, and begged him, as a personal favor, to accept his invitation to the festivity which should take place on his estate on the first of May.  “I look upon you as Wilhelm’s substitute here on earth,” he said, “and our friend must not be absent from my side on this joyful occasion.  I owe everything to him.  He laid the foundation of my prosperity, and preserved my heir to me, for whom alone I am working and striving.  If Wilhelm were with us now, he would not refuse my request, and with that thought before you, Herr Doctor, you will not pain me by refusing.”  The words came from Paul’s heart, and showed that he felt keenly the desire to do homage, in his way, to Wilhelm’s memory.  Schrotter could not but accept.

To all outward appearances he had recovered from the terrible shock of his friend’s death, in reality, however, he was all the less likely to have got over his loss, owing to the circumstance that he was often busied with the management of Wilhelm’s affairs, and thus the wound was inevitably kept open.

Wilhelm left no will.  After much inquiry, it was discovered that he had a very distant relative living at Lowenhagen, near Konigsberg, married to a poor village smith, and lavishly endowed with children.  The house in the Kochstrasse went to her—­a very windfall, for which the honest wife and mother was too thankful to be able to simulate grief at the death of the relative she had never known.  She generously handed over all Wilhelm’s papers to Schrotter, after having assured herself by inquiries in various quarters that they would only fetch the value of their weight.  Schrotter gave them to the young man whom he and Wilhelm had supported in his studies out of the Dorfling legacy.  The recipient was clever and shrewd, and justified the confidences his patrons had placed in his future.  He found that the first volume of the “History of Human Ignorance,” testing of the early ideas of mankind and their psychological reasons, was completely ready for the press; and all the notes and literary sources for the two following volumes only needed putting together to bring the work up to the end of the eighteenth century, and the experiments of Lavoisier, from which the indestructibility of matter was deduced.

The first volume appeared in the autumn.  On the title page he gave his own name as the author, but did not omit, as a man of honor, to mention in the preface that in compiling the work he had availed himself of “the preparatory notes of the late Dr. Wilhelm Eynhardt, an eminent scholar, lost all too early to the scientific word by a tragic death.”  In the ensuing editions which followed rapidly upon the first, the book meeting with great success, this preface was omitted as unnecessary.  The second