Yet when students together they had loved each other dearly, and more than once they had sworn eternal friendship.  This was at a period which, though not very remote, we seem to have left far behind us—­a time when young men still believed in eternal friendship, and could feel enthusiasm for great deeds or great ideas.  Youth in the present day is, or thinks itself, more rational.  Hermann and Warren in those days were simple-minded and ingenuous; and not only in the moment of elation, when they had sworn to be friends for ever, but even the next day, and the day after that, in sober earnestness, they had vowed that nothing should separate them, and that they would remain united through life.  The delusion had not lasted long.  The pitiless machinery of life had caught up the young men as soon as they left the university, and had thrown one to the right, the other to the left.  For a few months they had exchanged long and frequent letters; then they had met once, and finally they had parted, each going his way.  Their letters had become more scarce, more brief, and at last had ceased altogether.  It would really seem that the fact of having interests in common is the one thing sufficiently powerful to prolong and keep up the life of epistolary relations.  A man may feel great affection for an absent friend, and yet not find time to write him ten lines, while he will willingly expend daily many hours on a stranger from whom he expects something.  None the less he may be a true and honest friend.  Man is naturally selfish; the instinct of self-preservation requires it of him.  Provided he be not wicked, and that he show himself ready to serve his neighbor—­after himself—­no one has a right to complain, or to accuse him of hard-heartedness.

At the time this story begins, Hermann had even forgotten whether he had written to Warren last, or whether he had left his friend’s last letter unanswered.  In a word, the correspondence which began so enthusiastically had entirely ceased.  Hermann inhabited a large town, and had acquired some reputation as a writer.  From time to time, in the course of his walks, he would meet a young student with brown hair, and mild, honest-looking blue eyes, whose countenance, with its frank and youthful smile, inspired confidence and invited the sympathy of the passer-by.  Whenever Hermann met this young man he would say to himself, “How like Henry at twenty!” and for a few minutes memory would travel back to the already distant days of youth, and he would long to see his dear old Warren again.  More than once, on the spur of the moment, he had resolved to try and find out what had become of his old university comrade.  But these good intentions were never followed up.  On reaching home he would find his table covered with books and pamphlets to be reviewed, and letters from publishers or newspaper editors asking for “copy”—­to say nothing of invitations to dinner, which must be accepted or refused; in a word, he found so much urgent business to despatch that the evening would go by, and weariness would overtake him, before he could make time for inquiring about his old friend.