CHAPTER XVIII.

The time of effervescence, and my school mates.

Although the events of my school-days at Kottbus long since blended together in my, memory, my life there is divided into two sharply defined portions.  The latter commences with Professor Tzschirner’s appointment and the reform in the school.

From the first day of the latter’s government I can recall what was taught us in the class and how it influenced me, while I have entirely forgotten what occurred during the interim.  This seems strange; for, while Langethal’s, Middendorf’s, and Barop’s instruction, which I received when so much younger, remains vividly impressed on my memory, and it is the same with Tzschirner’s lessons, the knowledge I acquired between my fifteenth and seventeenth year is effaced as completely as though I had passed a sponge over the slate of my memory.  A chasm yawns between these periods of instruction, and I cannot ascribe this circumstance entirely to the amusements which withdrew my thoughts from study; for they continued under Tzschirner’s rule, though with some restrictions.  I wish I could believe that everything which befel me then had remained entirely without influence on my inner life.

A demon—­I can find no other name—­urged me to all sorts of follies, many of which I still remember with pleasure, and, thank Heaven, not a single one which a strict teacher—­supposing that he had not forgotten how to put himself into the place of a youth—­would seriously censure.  The effervescing spirits which did not find vent in such pranks obtained expression in a different form.

I had begun to write, and every strong emotion was uttered in verses, which I showed to the companions from whom I could expect sympathy.  My school-mates were very unlike.  Among the young gentlemen who paid a high price to attend the school not a single one had been really industrious and accomplished anything.  But neither did any one of the few lads whose fathers were peasants, or who belonged to the lower ranks, stand at the head of his class.  They were very diligent, but success rarely corresponded with the amount of labour employed.  The well-educated but by no means wealthy middle class supplied the school with its best material.

The evolution of the human soul is a strange thing.  The period during which, in my overflowing mirth, I played all sorts of wild pranks, and at school worked earnestly for one teacher only, often found me toiling late at night for hours with burning head over a profound creation—­I called it The Poem of the World—­in which I tried to represent the origin of cosmic and human life.