Are the wise men of the East right when they say that the whole life of man is but one great mistake? Are we all of us lost sons, who have forsaken our good old father's house to feed upon the husks? And is it true that we may return to him at any time, if we only wish to do so with all our heart? Who of us has still a whole heart for living or for dying? Not you! Not you! Self-confidence is like the cloud sent by the gods, which surrounds us, and then we are enabled to walk unhurt through all the troubles of life, and when we fall to fall like heroes, with the death-wound on our brow or in our brave hearts. Doubt of ourselves is like a sudden vertigo, which seizes us on a steep height, which chills our blood, loosens the strength of our sinews, and at last hurls us irretrievably into the abyss. In such painful moments man is apt to join any one who wanders merrily along the path of life, defying the perils of the road, as a lost child in the woods runs up to the first one it meets. Such a bold wanderer Oswald thought his new acquaintance, and thus it came about that he sought in these evil days most industriously the company of Albert Timm, who was ever ready to laugh and to joke and to play tricks. This readiness surprised him all the more, as he was generally most fastidious in the choice of his friends. Albert needed as little time to make himself perfectly at home in a new place as the Arab needs to pitch his tent. Arrangements he had none to make. He left it to his things, which were not many in number, to seek their place in his room. If one boot preferred standing bolt upright on top of a chair, and the other liked to lie on the floor, heel upwards--he did not object. If his dress-coat, the only really respectable garment he owned, preferred to forget its existence, rolled up in a little ball and put away between sorted linen in a corner of his melancholy little portmanteau, he did not disturb its enjoyment. And he himself, the happy owner of all these treasures, was standing there in his shirt-sleeves, in spite of the cool weather, bending over his drawing-board, whistling, drawing, singing, and laughing at Oswald, who came to visit him on account of what he called his mute's look.