He had bound himself to appear in N---- as an enemy of progress,--to aid in oppressing an impoverished nation. He must persuade his conscience that all his ideas of right and freedom were dead, and not worth the sacrifice of a whole life of honor and influence,--that the philanthropy which, in the guise of an earnest sense of duty, had lived his cold intellect, was an eccentricity of his youth, and must yield to his own advantage; in truth, it could not be otherwise. Only the emotional nature makes all ideas so living that we weep, suffer, and bleed for them as if they were real sentient beings, and gives us, for men whom we cannot draw within the circle visible to our senses, that warm feeling of sympathy which we call philanthropy. But he had lost this power, and with it a true sense of honor, yet to-night he found no repose. He was formed by nature for noble ends, and although he no longer felt as he had done in former days, he knew what his emotions were once. He knew the difference between right and wrong, and that he was choosing the latter, and looked back with shame upon the preceding day. Both _Heinrich_ and _Henri_ had fallen equally low. If _Heinrich_ had crushed his sense of right and yielded to ambition, _Henri_ had gone so far in his pursuit of pleasure that he had sought to destroy a young, trusting heart, and angrily driven away the old man who had opposed his design. _Egotism had completed his victory over both natures_. Haunted by these and similar thoughts, he at last fell asleep just before dawn. It was late in the forenoon when he awoke. The rays of the winter sun were shining upon the bright, blooming landscapes on his window curtains; a few freezing, starving birds were twittering loudly; everything bore a delusive semblance of spring, which had as little existence in the outside world as in his own breast. He opened his eyes, looked around him, and with a deep sigh murmured those words of painful disappointment: "Thank God, you have only been dreaming!" He sank back upon his pillows for a moment; it seemed as if his soul had not yet opened its eyes and was still slumbering, while he watched the bright colors upon his curtains. It seemed to him as if the door would open and old Anton come in to wake him. "Yes!" he called aloud, and started up. But he found himself alone. He rubbed his eyes and remembered that for the first time in his life Anton had failed to rouse him at the right hour. He had sent him away that very night! It was no dream: he had really done and experienced everything! "What has been begun must be finished," he said, with gloomy resolution, and rose to enter upon his sinful new career. VI. THE PRISON FAIRY.