"Yes, and that is remarkable enough," replied the baron; "especially in our day, when most people are not afraid any more even of Hamlet-dreams that might trouble us in our eternal sleep." "Might not that be a proof that, after all, the much talked of unhappiness of such people is not so very great?" "Perhaps so; but perhaps, also, it only proves that man is very reluctant to abandon his last hope. Why does the wanderer who has lost his way drag himself forward through the deep snow? Why does the poor shipwrecked mariner strain his eyes for half a century gazing over the wild waste of waters? Why does the criminal condemned for life not dash his brains out against his prison walls? Why does the poor fellow who is to be hanged on the morrow not hang himself the night before? Before their unhappiness is not so very great? Pshaw! You do not believe that. Simply because a faint glimmer of hope still shines through the hell of their suffering, like the pale streak there in the east. If that faint gleam too should fade away, then, yes, then old Mother Night would have to take back her poor lost child, the mild, good, loving Night of Death." After a short pause, during which the baron had been puffing great clouds of smoke from his cigar, he continued in a somewhat calmer tone:-- "I am several years older than you, and Fate has allowed me to see in a short time more of life than is commonly given to man. I have that, of which Goethe's friend in gray wished him the greatest possible amount: Experience. I might have learnt, and I ought to have learnt, therefore, that there is no hope in life for me and people like me; but, although I say: I have no more hope! I still go on hoping in secret that some happiness will come, as the consumptive ever hopes to be cured. Take for instance a party like that which we have just left. I know how hollow the joys of these people are; how many care-worn faces, how many guilty blushes are hid behind the smiling company-masks; I know that this pretty girl will be, ten years hence, an unhappy wife, if she is not an idiot; that this handsome fellow, who carries his head so high, and looks as if he could perform the twelve labors of Hercules in a single day, will be a coarse country bumpkin, who ill-treats his tenants and strikes his wife; I know that, and I know more than that, and I have seen it a thousand and ten thousand times in life, and yet I am not blasé for all that. This treacherous Fata Morgana has yet charms for me; every budding girl-flower awakens the hope in me, I might really for once love and be loved; every fine manly fellow makes me believe once more in friendship. Would you have believed me such a fool?" "I should not have thought you could think and feel thus." "And you were perfectly right," said the baron. "I only think and feel so when I am dead drunk, as now.--What was that?"