"Pardon me, my dear friend, that I did not ask your special permission before I took the decisive step which brought me here. I have heretofore followed your higher wisdom with implicit obedience, and so you had a right to expect that I should have consulted you first. But I had determined to take this step. I knew you would refuse your consent, and therefore I preferred to meet your full-armed reasons with an equally full-armed _fait accompli_, so as not to deprive your good advice of its old privilege--to come too late. Besides, the whole thing came so suddenly, and I had to decide so quickly, that I had but just time to inform you of the fact. Finally, Professor Berger is the only cause of the whole proceeding; he has to bear the blame of it, if blame there must be, and him alone I make herewith solemnly responsible for all the consequences. "We have corresponded but rarely and very briefly, you know, since we parted about a year ago in the capital. Thus I have probably hardly ever mentioned Professor Berger to you, and it is high time to make you acquainted with this original, who has of late played so important a part in my life, and to whom alone I owe it if I did not miserably fail in that principal scene of the tragi-comedy, my examination. "When I left B-----for Grunwald, in the vague hope of being able to find the necessary repose in this quiet seat of the Muses, with the grass growing in the streets, which I could not obtain amid the literary circles, the æsthetic teas, and musical suppers of the great city, I found here, among the terrible judges who could make me happy or condemn me forever, Professor Berger as the most terrible of all. My poor fellow-sufferers, whose acquaintance I could not avoid making in spite of all my objections, told me really fearful things of his amazing erudition, and much that disquieted me about his eccentricities and droll whimsicalities. They had numerous stories about his great influence over the other members of the Board of Examiners, who were completely overawed by his learning, and still more so by his caustic wit, which spared no one, from the lowest to the highest. I had never yet met the terrible man in person. He had one of his hypochondriac attacks, during which, I was told, he kept himself locked up in his room during the day, and wandered about all night in the woods of the neighborhood.