"Ah, now I know life! Were not man even in his desires and wishes so _systematic_,--did he not in all things aim at roundings-off as well of his Arcadias as of the kingdom of truth,--then he might be happy and brave enough for wisdom. But a looking-glass wall of his _system_, a living hedge of his _paradise_, neither of which lets him _sally_ or _see_ into the infinite, fling him back forthwith to the opposite side, which receives him with new railings and throws in his way new limits.... Now, when I have gone through such various states, passionate, wise, foolish, æsthetic, stoic; now that I see that the most perfect of them crooks and cripples either my earthly roots in the earth, or my twigs in the ether, and that, even if it did not do that, still it could not last over an hour, to say nothing of a life;--as, therefore, I clearly see that we are a fraction only and not a unit, and that all reckoning and reduction of the fraction is only an approximation between numerator and denominator, a change of the 1000/1001 into 10000/10001, I say: 'Well, for all me--be it so! Let wisdom, then, be for me the _finding out_ and _enduring_ of merely the _least_ gaps in our knowing, enjoying, and doing.' Accordingly, I no longer let myself be led astray, nor my neighbor either, by that most common illusion, that man regards every change in himself--every improvement at all events, but also even every deterioration--as greater than it afterward proves. "--Enough! but since this observation--and still more since high destiny has given me joys, _in order that_ I might deserve them--new morning-light has fallen on my shady path, and I have new courage to improve myself. The clear stream of time runs over a sloping flower-bed of fair hours, on which I once stood, and upon which I can distinctly look down.--O when this Eden-lawn once comes up again, and I can take thy hand and walk upon it, and kneel down beside thee and look gratefully now to the morning-sky and now over the waving flower-fields of this life; then will I fall back upon thee speechless, and gratefully embrace thy breast, and say: 'O my Emanuel! only through thee do I indeed deserve it all.' Nay, I say it to-day, beloved teacher, and do thou stay a good long while by the side of thy scholar on the earth, even until he is worthy to accompany thee out of it."-- * * * * * Long as this letter was, still Victor after all loved his teacher too much,--and hated too much the princely rudeness of making men tools,--not to have told him outright, that this letter owed--not so much its origin as--its birthday to the letter to his beloved. Here is the one to Clotilda, into which with the following words he brings his request to see her:--