About this time my cousin William went to the Leipsic university, and became the fellow-student and companion of Franz. From him I learned most of these details. William was by no means a model of select virtue—in fact, was what, in the jargon of the day, is called “rather a fast man;” and he led Franz into many a debauch which would have driven Schoenlein wild, had he known it; but he could not persuade him to go to the theatre. Franz was ready enough at a duel, and had spoiled the beauty of some half-dozen faces by the dexterous sword-cut which draws a line over the nose, and lays open the cheek. He was ready enough, too, with his beer—few youths of his age had more promising talents that way: and as to patriotic songs, energetically demanding of the universe where the German’s fatherland might be, or the probability of tyrants long crushing free hearts beneath their heels, together with frantic calls upon the sword, responded to by the clatter of beer-jugs—in these Franz was distinguished. At last he did brush away his scruples, and accompanied William to the theatre. They played Schiller’s _Don Carlos_. Conceive his rapture at this first taste of the long-coveted forbidden fruit! He thought the Marquis of Posa a demigod. But words cannot express his adoration of the Princess Eboli, that night played by Madame Clara Kritisch. She was to him the “vision of loveliness and light,” which an actress always is to an impassioned youth, the first time he sees one. Her large voluptuous eyes, her open brow, her delicate nostrils, her full and not ungraceful figure, together with the dazzling beauty of her (theatrical) complexion, made a powerful impression on him. Her acting seemed to him the acting of an angel. He left the theatre madly in love with her. We all know what it is to be in love with an actress. We have all of us, in the halcyon days of boyhood, offered up the incense of our young hearts to some painted, plain, conventional, and perfectly stupid actress, round whose head we have thrown the halo and the splendour of our imaginations. We have had our Juliets, our Desdemonas, our Imogens, our Rosalinds, our Violas, our Cordelias, who, though in the flesh-and-blood reality they were good, honest, middle-aged women, mothers of families or disreputable demireps, to us were impersonations of the ideal—fairy visions, to whom we have written verses, whose portraits have hung over our beds! Therefore, having known a touch of this “exquisite fooling,” we can sympathise with Franz. Never having seen an actress before, any hag painted for the heroine of the night would have charmed him. But Clara was by no means a hag: in fact, his passion was excusable, for on the stage she was charming.