“I do not feel well,” he wrote, “and am often so weary that I stay at home all day.  I have made no new acquaintances, and, most likely, will make none.  I am alone.  Your society would give me great pleasure.  Come; your room is ready, and will be, I trust, to your liking.  There is a large writing table and tolerably well-filled book-shelves; you can write there quite at your ease, without fear of disturbance.  Come as soon as possible, my dear friend.  I am expecting you impatiently.”

Hermann happened to be at leisure, and was able to comply with his friend’s wish, and to go to him in the first week of December.  He found Warren looking worn and depressed.  It was in vain he sought to induce him to consult a physician.  Warren would reply: 

“Doctors can do nothing for my complaint.  I know where the shoe pinches.  A physician would order me probably to seek relaxation and amusement, just as he would advise a poor devil whose blood is impoverished by bad food to strengthen himself with a generous diet and good wine.  The poor man could not afford to get the good living, and I do not know what could enliven or divert me.  Travel?  I like nothing so well as sitting quietly in my arm-chair.  New faces?  They would not interest me—­yours is the only company I prefer to solitude.  Books?  I am too old to take pleasure in learning new things, and what I have learned has ceased to interest me.  It is not always easy to get what might do one good, and we must take things as they are.”

Hermann noticed, as before, that his friend ate little, but that, on the other hand, he drank a great deal.  The sincere friendship he felt for him emboldened him to make a remark on the subject.

“It is true,” said Warren, “I drink too much; but what can I do?  Food is distasteful to me, and I must keep up my strength somehow.  I am in a wretched state; my health is ruined.”

One evening, as the two friends were seated together in Warren’s room, while the wind and sleet were beating against the window-panes, the invalid began of his own accord to speak about Ellen.

“We now correspond regularly,” he said.  “She tells me in her last letter that she hopes soon to see me.  Do you know, Hermann, that she is becoming an enigma for me?  It is very evident that she does not treat me like other people, and I often wonder and ask myself what I am in her eyes?  What does she feel towards me?  Love?  That is inadmissible.  Pity, perhaps?  This then, is the end of my grand dreams—­to be an object of pity?  I have just answered her letter to say that I am settled here with the fixed intention of ending my useless existence in quiet and idleness.  Do you remember a scene in Henry Heine’s ‘Reisebilder,’ when a young student kisses a pretty girl, who lets him have his own way and makes no great resistance, because he has told her, ’I will be gone to-morrow at dawn, and I will never see you again’?  The certainty of never seeing a person again gives