All these youths have loved and perpetuated their love.  Some of them have succeeded in engraving it on the tablets of history, like Henry IV; others, like Petrarch, have made literary preserves of it; some have availed themselves for that purpose of the newspapers, wherein the happenings of the day are recorded, and where they figured among those who had strangled themselves, shot themselves, or who had been shot by others; still others, the happiest and most modest of all, perpetuated their love by entering it in the birth records—­by creating posterity.

The love of N+1 was as strong as death, as a certain writer put it; as strong as life, he thought.

Max was firmly convinced that he was the first to have discovered the method of loving so intensely, so unrestrainedly, so passionately, and he regarded with contempt all who had loved before him.  Still more, he was convinced that even after him no one would love as he did, and he felt sorry that with his death the secret of true love would be lost to mankind.  But, being a modest young man, he attributed part of his achievement to her—­to his beloved.  Not that she was perfection itself, but she came very close to it, as close as an ideal can come to reality.

There were prettier women than she, there were wiser women, but was there ever a better woman?  Did there ever exist a woman on whose face was so clearly and distinctly written that she alone was worthy of love—­of infinite, pure, and devoted love?  Max knew that there never were, and that there never would be such women.  In this respect, he had no special peculiarities, just as Adam did not have them, just as you, my reader, do not have them.  Beginning with Grandmother Eve and ending with the woman upon whom your eyes were directed—­before you read these lines—­the same inscription is to be clearly and distinctly read on the face of every woman at a certain time.  The difference is only in the quality of the ink.

A very nasty day set in—­it was Monday or Tuesday—­when Max noticed with a feeling of great terror that the inscription upon the dear face was fading.  Max rubbed his eyes, looked first from a distance, then from all sides; but the fact was undeniable—­the inscription was fading.  Soon the last letter also disappeared—­the face was white like the recently whitewashed wall of a new house.  But he was convinced that the inscription had disappeared not of itself, but that some one had wiped it off.  Who?

Max went to his friend, John N. He knew and he felt sure that such a true, disinterested, and honest friend there never was and never would be.  And in this respect, too, as you see, Max had no special peculiarities.  He went to his friend for the purpose of taking his advice concerning the mysterious disappearance of the inscription, and found John N. exactly at the moment when he was wiping away that inscription by his kisses.  It was then that the records of the local occurrences were enriched by another unfortunate incident, entitled “An Attempt at Suicide.”