"No; I assure you I judge quite impartially, although I must admit that such spiritual beauty seems to belong more to the realm of dreams than to stern reality."
The doctor had taken a seat in Oswald's arm-chair, and blew the smoke of his cigar, which he had just lighted, in blue clouds through the open window.
"Hers is a beauty," he said, "that would drive a painter to despair, because her most delicate bloom cannot be expressed by lines and colors; music alone can translate it. I wish Beethoven had seen her, or Robert Schumann, and then you ought to hear the ghost-like, demoniac composition which she would have inspired!"
"But which of us is now the enthusiast?" asked Oswald, smiling; "you or I?"
"You!" said the doctor, "for the highest grade of ecstasy is silence. He who still finds words for his enthusiasm has the reins still in his hands. And then I can see a beautiful girl and admire her, without enjoying, as you see, my cigar any the less. But you are capable of forgetting eating and drinking and everything else, of throwing yourself head over heels into the Charybdis of your enthusiasm, without bestowing a thought upon the way out!"
"Are you quite sure of that?"
"Quite sure; I have studied you of late thoroughly, and I have found that you are one of the finest specimens of a species of our race, which is quite common in our day--descendants of the departed Doctor Faust, faustuli posthumi, so to say, who have cut off their long doctors' beards and exchanged the romantic costume of the Middle Ages for the modern dress coat, without, however, losing their relish for all kinds of enjoyment, and, like Faust, starving in the midst of enjoyment."
"Problematic characters, Baron Oldenburg calls them," said Oswald.
"A capital definition," answered the doctor. "To be sure, the baron ought to know, for he belongs to the brotherhood, and I dare say he ranks high among them. At least I judge so from what I hear, for I have never spoken to him, and seen him only once."
"The baron is an enigmatic character, whom it is very difficult to judge fairly."