Just then the nurse awoke, and sprang from his chair in terror, for his patient was not in bed, but standing before his long dressing-glass, looking into it and talking to his reflected image in the greatest excitement. It was with the utmost difficulty that he would allow himself to be led away from the mirror and put to bed. His delirium had reached its height, and showed him the true state of his own soul in the form of an allegory. That which his reason had never been able to solve was depicted before him in bodily form, by the divining power of the instincts of feverish hallucinations; and thus this vision was the true picture of his life, and the separation he had witnessed only the symbol of his own secret struggles. * * * After three months of great suffering, Ottmar at last recovered, but so slowly that the physician forbade him to resume his studies, and advised him to seek health and diversion for his thoughts in travel. As he heard that Madame d'Anneaud was still living in Paris, he hastened thither to resume his former relations with her. But here, for the first time, the signs of his twofold nature became apparent. The glittering, alluring form in which materialism clothes itself on the one hand, intellectual suggestions on the other hand, and French frivolity, did not fail to produce their effect. The man of reason and sensuality developed such rude contrasts of character that he became what he had beheld in his dream, "_Heinrich_" the cold thinker, and "_Henri_" the careless _bon vivant_ in one person, changing as often and as suddenly as if they were two separate individuals forced to inhabit the same body. He was proud of this transformation, for he could now enjoy and obtain everything: but happy he was not. The same thing befell Ottmar that has happened to so many others in whom the strange wonder of a secret rupture has taken place. Where intellect reigned it required only cold knowledge and understanding; where feeling ruled it degenerated into a burning fire, which, when the moment of extinction arrived, left nothing but emptiness and indifference. Thus by turns both extremes took possession of the pliant body, and his beautiful features, gradually moulding themselves according to the division in the soul, now bore the impress of the astute thinker, and anon the winning charm of the lover. He possessed one of those temperaments at which one gazes as a "marvel of genius," which exert an alluring charm over women, who perceive in them a "demoniac spell," a tempting enigma which irresistibly occupies their thoughts, but in whose solution many a woman's heart has slowly bled to death.