"Thanks! many thanks!" said the latter, taking the note. "The acquaintance with such a man may become very useful to me." "Most assuredly. Speak quite candidly with him, without any reserve whatever, and then you may feel assured that he will not conceal from you anything that is in his heart. Perhaps he will advise you to go at once to a larger University, as, for instance, that at the capital. You must follow his advice." "_Nous verrons! nous verrons!_" said Mr. Bemperlein. "But here we are at the park gate. Won't you come in?" "No, no," replied Oswald, hastily. "I must get back to Grenwitz." "Well, then, farewell! As soon as I have installed Julius in Grunwald, and as soon as I have obtained all the information I want from Berger, I shall be back again to take formal leave. In the mean time, farewell, my dear sir." "Good-by, good-by!" said Oswald, pressing Bemperlein's hand, and then Julius', and taking Bruno back with him into the forest, as if an angel with a flaming sword was keeping watch at the park-gates of Berkow. CHAPTER XIX. The boy and he walked for a time in silence through the wood. Bruno was too proud to begin a conversation with one who seemed to have forgotten him entirely, and Oswald was too busy with his own thoughts.... Every person with whom we happen to come in contact is a mirror which reflects our own image, and Oswald had beheld his own face in the crystal clear mirror of that man's pure, childlike soul--but how beheld? torn by passion, darkened by doubt, so that he was startled. "And this man," he said to himself, "comes to you for advice! the seeing to the blind, the healthy to the sick! He discovers an error in the account of his life, and he sits down and counts and counts till the sum is right, and all is smooth and as it ought to be again, while you, you rush through life like a reckless merchant, adding debt to debt, rushing from one speculation into another, unconcerned about the day of reckoning. That man would sooner cut off his right hand than use it to seize anything which he has not earned in the sweat of his face--you accept the gifts of the golden Aphrodite, and whatever else kind fate offers you, as if it were due to you, and grumble to find it not more than it is. Now you are already dissatisfied with Melitta's love, for which you ought to thank her on your knees; now you want her to have loved you before she knew you, or at least to drown all recollection of this man. 'If I could kill memory,' she said. Well, what is indifferent to us we forget easily enough, and what we do not and cannot forget--that is not indifferent to us. Then she hates this man? But hatred is the brother of sweet love! Perhaps she loves him still?--And where did he come from just now? From her! No doubt--Bruno, does this byroad lead anywhere else, except to Berkow?"