I myself was entirely out of funds. Two and a half years of this wandering life had devoured my savings, I could scarcely be seen in my shabby clothes, and, though protected from any anxiety about food, had not even the small amount of pocket money required for trifling wants, so that I was sometimes seized by a mood of despairing melancholy, and should undoubtedly have been up and away some day had I not known how indispensable I had become. If I left the company, everything must go to ruin. I could tell myself, without vanity, that the breach of my--unwritten--contract would be equivalent to fracturing an axle in the car of Thespis.

Moreover, was I not bound body and soul to this woman, considering myself transcendently rewarded if she held out her large, firm hand to me in the evening and said, "Good-night, dear friend!"

Still, these miserable circumstances oppressed me more and more, and one day, when I met in the street a college friend who meanwhile had had a prosperous career, and while on a business journey had come to our Pomeranian coast, I bore his look of compassionate surprise with a bitter laugh, and willingly accepted his invitation to share a bottle of wine with him that evening at his hotel and make a general confession.

I had made no confession for years, and it was months since a drop of wine had moistened my lips. So only a single glass was needed to lure from me an unreserved acknowledgment of my wretched plight.

There was but one thing I carefully concealed--the strongest chain that bound me to this miserable existence, my mad, hopeless love for this woman. Yet, had the hand of a god suddenly aided me to tear myself free, what could I have done with my liberty? To what occupation in civil life should I have found the door open, I, a runaway Candidate of theology, who had not disdained to play the part of factotum to a company of traveling actors for two years and a half.

So when, toward eleven o'clock, I took leave of my former comrade, we were no wiser concerning my future, and what I had to hope and fear from it, than in the beginning.

He had told me, with a shake of the head, that there must be some love affair in the matter, and correctly understood my shrug of the shoulders. But, as he had been to the theater the night before, he seemed undecided between Victorine and the young ingénue.

"Let me sleep over the affair," he said at last, as he went out into the hall with me--we had had our wine in his chamber, as there was much noise and confusion in the public room below--"I sha'n't see you to-morrow, because I must leave very early, but I will write as soon as a good idea occurs to me."

I pressed his hand and thoughtfully descended the stairs. In going up, two hours before, I had seen in the public room below Luise's husband and several actors, among them Daniel, who was inseparable from the manager. Meantime, eleven o'clock had come, but they had not yet separated, and I wished at any cost to avoid meeting them. But, just as I was stealing softly past the door, it was thrown open, and my friend, tall Herr Laban, staggered out, supported by one of the younger actors. Both were in the gayest humor. "Look there, look there, Timotheus!" he shouted, laughing. "Where the deuce hast thou been hiding"--he always used 'thou' to me--"while we have been seeing the most capital farce played here? You have missed a great deal, I can tell you, Doctor; and, in not saying good-night to your traveling friend over our heads, you have stood very much in your own light. Isn't that so, Juvenil?"

The young man laughingly agreed that it had been a splendid joke--no comedy of errors had ever amused him so much.