"For there you met with one towards whom you must have felt yourself drawn by an irresistible attraction, as his nature in many points had a wonderful resemblance to your own; one whose ruin had been mainly due to the wretchedness of our social relations, and who had made a wilderness around; him in which he could move in accordance with his unfettered will, which he called liberty. A wilderness in the moral as well as the literal sense; for as I learn from what you have told me of his discourses, and as the result has shown, in throwing away prejudice he also cast overboard judgment, with precaution, discretion, with scrupulousness, consideration, with the faults of the German character the virtues of all; and all that at last remained to him were his adventurous spirit and a kind of fantastic magnanimity which at times, as you have yourself experienced, could be more fantastic than magnanimous. "But be that as it may, he was a man with whom you were at once struck, because he was the exact opposite of all men whom you had hitherto met, and who still possessed chivalrous qualities enough for a youth so inexperienced to see in him his ideal. And then the free life upon the broad heaths, the lofty cliffs, the far-reaching shore--how could this do other than intoxicate and confuse a brain yet clouded with the dust of the school-room? "But this freedom, this independence, this energetic life, were all but a glittering reflection, the Fata-Morgana of a Hesperian shore, which was destined to vanish, leaving behind a guard-house and a penitentiary. "To make this prison a Hesperian garden to you, is not in my power, my friend; nor would I do it if it were. But one thing I hope to effect, and that is, that here, where the errors that warped your early training can no longer reach you, you may come to yourself, learn to know yourself, your aims, and the measure of your powers--that in a workhouse you may learn how to work." CHAPTER VIII. I will not maintain that the excellent man said all that I have put into his mouth in the last chapter, in these identical words, or upon this particular morning. It is probable that I have thrown into connection his remarks upon more than a single occasion, and perhaps have added a phrase or a figure of my own. But hardly more than this; for I too deeply absorbed his philosophy, which descended upon my thirsting soul like the fruitful shower upon a parched field; and while I attempt to repeat his thoughts, his image stands so lively in my memory, that I fancy I hear the words issuing from his lips. And at this time I enjoyed the happiness of his converse every day and often for hours at a time. It was not in my power to keep the promise I had made to Paula, for her father did not wait for me to put the question to him. I had told him our conversation, however, at which he smiled.