"I cannot explain why it should be so; but a melancholy foreboding comes upon me that we are going to part for a long time, and may, perhaps, never meet again. But surely the remembrance of those Serapion evenings will long live in our minds. We have given free play to the capricious promptings of our fancy. Each of us has spoken out what he saw in his mind's eye, without supposing his ideas to be anything extraordinary, or giving them forth as being so, knowing well that the first essential of all effective composition is that kindly unpretendingness which is the thing that has the power to warm the heart and please the mind. If Fate is about to part us, then let us always faithfully follow the rule of Saint Serapion, and vowing this to each other, drink this last glass of our wine."
What Theodore suggested was accordingly done.