The only ones whose spirits remained unaffected were Kohle and Schnetz; the latter, because his Thersites disposition had struck its roots too deeply into his nature for him to be either elated or depressed by anything he experienced; Kohle, on the other hand, because, like the happy genii of his Hoelderlin, he "soared in the celestial light above," and was incapable of giving his heart to the fate of mortals, no matter how closely he might be bound to them by ties of friendship, for more than a few hours at a time. During these misanthropical November days, Schnetz, when not engaged in the service of his little highness, sat in his den of _silhouettes_, cut out bitter satires, smoked, read Rabelais at Rossel's suggestion, and, for whole days at a time, spoke to no one except his pale little wife; while Kohle, in a far more wretched, unheated room, passed his days making new designs which, with fingers stiff with cold, but with a heart all aglow with happiness, he sketched on the back of a large fire-screen instead of on paper, which he had not the money to buy. Under these circumstances it was not to be wondered at that the two meetings of the Paradise Club, which took place before the end of the year, were not attended by that festal flow of spirits that had characterized most of their predecessors. Old Schoepf stayed away altogether; Rossel did not speak a word; Jansen did not make his appearance until nearly midnight, and sat brooding with a dark look in his bright eyes, while he emptied glass after glass without being warmed by his potations. Elfinger, whose relations to his pious sweetheart grew every day more hopeless, and had begun to seriously tell upon his spirits, was scarcely more talkative, and the jokes with which Rosenbusch favored the company had, in Rossel's opinion, a biting flavor, like preserved fruit that has begun to ferment. The younger and less prominent members felt the weight that rested on the whole circle, but were either too modest or too poorly supplied with brains to succeed in enlivening matters at all; and an uncomfortable feeling began to creep over first one and then the other, that perhaps in the life of their society, as in that of every human alliance, the moment had arrived when a sudden decline succeeds to a period of highest prosperity, and when a swift dissolution appears more dignified and more welcome than a long era of gradual decline and decay.