"We lived in a small house built against and upon the city wall. The solitary small window from which my room received its light was pierced in the thick wall, so that the whole looked very much more like a prison than anything else; and yet, what marvellously blessed hours I have spent in that room! From my window I had an unlimited view over the wall and the ramparts of the city--upon smooth ponds, lined with beautiful copses of trees--upon rich meadows, with willows scattered over them here and there, far out to the sea, which glittered like a dark-blue ribbon through the green woods.
"Here, at this window, I used to sit on summer evenings, when the sun was setting in brilliant splendor, my heart full to overflowing of chaotic sentiments, and my head weaving thoughts as fair and bright, and, alas! as perishable as soap bubbles! I remember I often wrote verses in bright summer days and in dark autumn evenings, afterwards, while I was sitting in deep meditation over my books, to remind me of the happy days then, which had dropped one by one from the cup of time, bright and brilliant, into the ocean of eternity.
"But why should I any longer attempt to describe to you these relations to my father, which appear only the more enigmatical to me the more clearly I desire to present them to you. If I ever had felt, as a child, true, hearty love for my father, it grew less and less as I became older and more independent. I had to hide in my heart all the feelings, all the tenderness, which we ordinarily lavish upon our mother and brothers and sisters and friends, for I could not feel any confidence in him who, as matters happened to stand, ought to have stood me in place of all of them. The constant intercourse with a mind so sombre and sceptical gave to my mind a coloring which was little in harmony with my sanguine and passionate disposition. I was an Epicurean sitting at the feet of a Stoic, a Sybarite on terms of intimacy with a Cynic philosopher. My exuberant fancy dreamed of the most magnificent worlds, which my cool judgment destroyed pitilessly; I exhausted myself in subtle devices, while my hot blood was filling my heart to overflowing; I sat in my cell and studied dusty old parchments, while my adventurous mind was longing for the marvels of the East and for lofty deeds of chivalry.
"Thus matters continued till I went to the University, when I was nineteen years old. I parted without grief from my father. What he felt at the parting I cannot tell. He spoke to me, when I said good-by, like a philosopher who dismisses his pupil, and recalled to my mind once more all the great principles of his harsh worldly wisdom. The letters which he wrote to me at regular intervals were in the same tone. There were not many of them; for about six months after I had left him I received a letter from the authorities of my native place, in which they dryly informed me of the death of my father. He had left me a little property, the fruit of his long and painful saving; it was just enough to support me in a modest way during my university course, and perhaps some little time beyond that. No will had been found; nor had there been any papers, letters, diaries, or anything which might have possibly given me a clue to the former history of my parents.
"Thus I was standing alone in the world--a young man in years, with the weary mind of an old man. I was far too old for my fellow-students, who looked to me like children at play; and yet I was far too young and inexperienced myself to resist the temptations of a large city, or to wander about in such a Babel without ever and anon losing my way. How could a young man, in whom the current of full youthful life had been so long artificially dammed up, avoid going astray? I became the hero of many an intrigue, of which I was in my heart thoroughly ashamed, as I ought to have been. I was spoilt by the women, and became the innocent victim of many a heartless coquette. I gathered much experience without growing any wiser--the worst thing that can befall a man. And the most remarkable of it all was that I loathed in my heart the enjoyments to which I gave myself up; that my heart yearned after true love at the very times when I wasted it upon women unworthy of such a gift; and that I cherished the most extraordinary plans for the future, while I squandered my strength in senseless amusements.
"A friend, who in those days had some influence over me, rescued me from the whirlpool in which I would have perished sooner or later. He advised me to go to Grunwald. I followed his advice.
"From that moment you know my life, at least in its outlines. You know that I became there acquainted with the unfortunate man whom we are about to visit. You will now also be able to understand why it was utterly impossible for me to resist the charm of Berger's extraordinary character, and how I entangled myself by my intercourse with him only more and more deeply in the thorns and briars of internal conflicts, which finally made my heart bleed to death.
"Berger wished me to go to Grenwitz and to take there a position in a noble family, which suited me about as well as a dove-cote suits a hawk. You have followed me through the great periods of my life there with an observant eye, and at the same time as a philosopher and as a friend. I do not know--and I do not want to know--how much you have seen, how much you have understood, and what may have remained an unexplained mystery for you. A part of these events I dare not touch upon; another part I am in duty bound to leave untouched. When the catastrophe came which you had anticipated, and the frivolous world in which I was living, crushed me--then you stood by me as a friend; you snatched me out of the confusion, and you laid upon yourself a burden which has no doubt made you sigh more than once since. But no! that cannot be! You are as clever as you are wise, and as wise as you are kind. Tell me, Franz, what Odysseus was your father, what Penelope bore you, that Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom, should always so manifestly have held you under her gracious protection?"
"I believe everything in my life has happened in the most ordinary way," said Franz, laughing. "I pray you will not think I escaped altogether from either Scylla or Charybdis! I have been, like yourself, on the point of despair. What has saved me is the conviction that the world is, after all, but a Cosmos, in which everybody, be he what he may, has to fill his modest place--a conviction which came to me first very dimly, then more and more clearly and distinctly, and finally filled my heart with triumphant certainty. This idea has given me that cheerful calmness without which life would in the end become unbearable. I said to myself: This world, of which you know after all but very little, is such an old, solid, and well-finished edifice that you need not give up the plan on which it was built, even if you should not comprehend it in all its details. This race of ours, which maybe is intended for as many millions of years as we now know thousands, is such a marvellous and unfathomable problem of creative power that you will never come to an end studying it, if you were to live ever so long. Goethe tells us that no man ever possessed art, and I add, no one ever possessed philosophy.
"Starting from this conviction, I determined to find a sense and a meaning in life, and I cannot help saying that my efforts have been crowned with some success. Mistrusting even as a school-boy the results to be obtained from mere speculation, I chose a science which reveals the processes of our soul, as it were, ad oculos--Medicine. I chose it, moreover, because in its practice it brings us advantageously into intimate contact with other men, from whom we hold but too generally aloof--whatever may be said in praise of solitude. He who has once understood the solidarity of all human interests--that fundamental principle of all moral and political wisdom--knows also that his individual existence is but a drop in the vast stream, and that such a drop has no right to claim absolute independence. It would be different if men fell like ripe fruit from the trees. But we are brought into this world through the agony of a mother, in order to be the most helpless of all created beings, entirely dependent on the faithful care of parents; we are then allowed to grow up, if fate favors us, amid brothers and sisters, in order not only to share with them all the joys of life, but also to obtain them by their assistance; and, even later, we cannot enjoy any true pleasure, any delight of our heart, except through others and with others. All this teaches us that we are true children of men, the offspring of this earth, with the right and the duty to work out our life here below upon our inheritance side by side with other children of men, our brethren, who have the same rights, and of course also the same duties, as we ourselves.