The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

Transcriber's Notes:
Page scans are from Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA2&dq=editions:UCALB4287293&id=ZYQFAQ AAIAAJ&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
The ever-fluctuating vicissitudes of human life had once more scattered our little group of friends asunder. Sylvester had gone back to his country home; Ottmar had travelled away on business, and so had Cyprian; Vincent was still in the town, but (after his accustomed fashion) he had disappeared in the turmoil, and was nowhere to be seen; Lothair was nursing Theodore, who had been laid on a bed of sickness by a malady long struggled against, which was destined to keep him there for a considerable time.
Indeed, several months had gone by, when Ottmar (whose sudden and unlooked-for departure had been the chief cause of the breaking up of the Club ) came back, to find, in place of the full-fledged Serapion Brotherhood, one friend, barely convalescent, and bearing the traces of a severe illness in his pale face, abandoned by the Brethren, with the exception of one, who was tasking him severely by constant outbreaks of a grim and capricious humour.
For Lothair was once more finding himself in one of those strange and peculiar moods of mind in which all life seemed to him to have become weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, by reason of the everlasting mockery ( chaff might be the modern expression of this idea) of the inimical daemonic power which, like a pedantic tutor, ignores and contemns the nature of men; giving man (as a tutor of the sort would do) bitter drugs and nauseous medicines, instead of sweet and delicious macaroons, to the end that his said pupil, man, may take a distaste at his own nature, enjoy it no more, and thus keep his digestion in good order.
What an unfortunate idea it was, Lothair cried out, in the gloomiest ill-humour, when Ottmar came in and found him sitting with Theodore-- what an unfortunate idea it was of ours to insist on binding ourselves together again so closely, jumping over all the clefts which time had split between us! It is Cyprian whom we have to thank for laying the foundation-stone of Saint Serapion, on which we built an edifice which seemed destined to last a lifetime, and tumbled down into ruin in a few moons. One ought not to hang one's heart on to anything, or give one's mind over to the impressions of excitements from without; and I was a fool to do so, for I must confess to you that the way in which we came together on those Serapion evenings took such a hold on my whole being that, when the brethren so suddenly dispersed themselves over the world, my life felt to me as weary, stale, flat and unprofitable as the melancholy Prince Hamlet's did to him.