“After all, I have become engaged to-day,” he said to himself, with a certain quiet humor, and yet impressed by a feeling that he had really given himself to the unknown.

II.

Six years had passed, and Fritz Bagger had made his mark, although not as a lover.  He had become Counsellor, and was particularly distinguished for the skill and energy with which he brought criminals to confession.  It is thus that a man of fine and poetic feelings can satisfy himself in such a business, for a time at least:  with the half of his soul he can lead a life which to himself and others seems entire only because it is busy, because it keeps him at work, and fills him with a consciousness of accomplishing something practical and good.  There is a youthful working power, which needs not to look sharply out into the future for a particular aim of feeling or desire.  This power itself, by the mere effort to keep in a given place, is for such an organization, every day, an aim, a relish; and one can for a number of years drive business so energetically, that he, too, slips over that difficult time which in every twenty-four hours threatens to meet him, the time between work and sleep, twilight, when the other half of the soul strives to awaken.

Be it because his professional duties gave him no time or opportunity for courtship, or for some other reason, Fritz Bagger remained a bachelor; and a bachelor with the income of his profession is looked upon as a rich man.  Counsellor Bagger would, when business allowed, enter into social life, treating it in that elegant, independent, almost poetic manner, which in most cases is denied to married men, and which is one reason why they press the hand of a bachelor with a sigh, a mixture of envy, admiration, and compassion.  If we add here that a bachelor with such a professional income is the possible stepping-stone to an advantageous marriage, it is easily seen that Fritz Bagger was much sought for in company.  He went, too, into it as often as allowed by his legal duties, from which he would hasten in the black “swallow-tail” to a dinner or soiree, and often amused himself where most others were weary; because conversation about anything whatever with the cultivated was to him a refreshment, and because he brought with him a good appetite and good humor, resting upon conscientious work.  He could show interest in divers trifles, because in their nothingness (quite contrary to the trifles in which half an hour previous, with painful interest, he had ferreted out crime), they appeared to him as belonging to an innocent, childish world; and if conversation approached more earnest things, he spoke freely, and evidently gave himself quite up to the subject, letting the whole surface of his soul flow out.  And this procured him friendship and reputation.