* * * * * As I read again the words I have just written--“perfect seriousness”--another scene suddenly comes into my mind, the most impressive experience I lived through with Max Demian in those still half-childlike times. Our confirmation classes were drawing to an end, and the closing lessons were devoted to the Last Supper. The clergyman thought this very important, and he took pains to make us feel something of the inspiration and sacred character of his teaching. However, precisely in those last few lessons, thoughts were diverted to another object, to the person of my friend. Looking forward to my confirmation, which was explained to us as being our solemn admission into the community of the Church, the thought presented itself imperatively to me that the value of this half-year’s religious instruction did not lie for me in what I had learned in class, but rather in Demian’s presence and influence. It was not into the Church that I was ready to be received, but into something else, into an order of ideas and of personalities which surely existed somewhere or other on earth, and of which I felt my friend was the representative or messenger. I tried to repress this thought. In spite of everything, I earnestly intended to go through the ceremony of confirmation with a certain dignity, and the new notions I was forming seemed scarcely compatible with this. Yet do what I would, the idea was there, and gradually identified itself with the approaching religious ceremony. I was ready to celebrate it in a different fashion from the other confirmation candidates. For me it would mean admission into a world of ideas, with which I had become acquainted through Demian. In those days it happened that I had another discussion with him; it was just before a lesson. My friend was wrapped up in himself and took little pleasure in my talk, which was perhaps rather precocious and bombastic. “We talk too much,” he said with unwonted gravity. “Wise speeches have no value at all, absolutely none. You only escape from yourself. To escape from yourself is a sin. You should be able to creep right into yourself, like a tortoise.” We entered the schoolroom immediately after. The lesson began. I took pains to listen, and Demian did not disturb me in my effort. After a while I began to feel something peculiar at my side where his place was, a sort of emptiness or coolness or something like that, as if his seat had suddenly become vacant. The feeling became oppressive and I turned round.