forced the charming girls ever more and more imperatively to come to some decision as to their future, and a wealthy bourgeois, though not exactly in trade himself, but in possession of ample means, seemed to the anxious mother, at all events, a good adviser.  Without either showing or feeling any malice in the matter, I expressed my pleasure at the sight of the strange confusion caused by Theodor’s introduction into the family by the merriest and wildest jests:  for my only intercourse with the ladies consisted purely of jokes and friendly chaff.  They could not understand how it was that I had altered so strangely.  There was no longer any of that love of wrangling, that rage for instructing, and that zeal in converting in me which formerly they had found so irritating.  But at the same time not a sensible word could I be made to utter, and they who were now wanting to talk over many things seriously could get nothing out of me save the wildest tomfoolery.  As on this occasion, in my character of an uncaged bird, I boldly allowed myself many a liberty against which they felt themselves powerless, my exuberant spirits were excited all the more when my friend, who was led away by my example, tried to imitate me—­a thing they took in very bad part from him.

Only once was there any attempt at seriousness between us:  I was sitting at the piano, and was listening to my companion, who was telling the ladies that in a conversation at the hotel I had found occasion to express myself most warmly to some one who appeared to be surprised on hearing of the domestic and industrious qualities of my lady friends.  I was deeply moved when, as the outcome of my companion’s remarks, I gathered what unpleasant experiences the poor things had already been through:  for what seemed to me a very natural action on my part, appeared to fill them with unexpected pleasure.  Jenny, for instance, came up to me and hugged me with great warmth.  By general consent I was now granted the right of behaving with almost studied rudeness, and I replied even to Jenny’s warm outburst only with my usual banter.

In our hotel, the ‘Black Horse,’ which was so famous in those days, I found the playground in which I was able to carry the mischievous spirit not exhausted at the Pachta’s house to the point of recklessness.  Out of the most accidental material in table and travelling guests we succeeded in gathering a company around us which allowed us, until far into the night, to lead it into the most inconceivable follies.  To all this I was incited more particularly by the personality of a very timid and undersized business man from Frankfort on the Oder, who longed to seem of a daring disposition; and his presence stimulated me, if only owing to the remarkable chance it gave me of coming into contact with some one who was at home in Frankfort ‘on the Oder.’  Any one who knows how things then stood in Austria can form some idea of my recklessness when I say that I once went so far as to cause our symposium in the public room to bellow the Marseillaise out loud into the night.  Therefore, when after this heroic exploit was over, and while I was undressing, I clambered on the outer ledges of the windows from one room to the other on the second floor, I naturally horrified those who did not know of the love of acrobatic feats which I had cultivated in my earliest boyhood.