languages I know? No, no! With such views a man may become a Turk and establish a harem, but he is too bad in all conscience for marriage in the highest and purest sense, which is a wonderful alchemy changing two into one." "And yet," said Oswald, "genuine love has a purifying, hallowing power, which scatters all doubts as the rays of the sun scatter fogs and mists. True love, like true hatred, wipes 'all foolish stories from the tablets of memory,' and changes us in an instant from wild barbarians into Hellenes of delicate feelings. Rude strength, which before simply asserted itself in destruction or in production, now assumes a pleasing shape, and where before it created a Siva, whose fiery glance destroyed all creatures, it now creates an Olympic Zeus, who blesses all creation with his paternal eyes." "Well said," replied the baron; "will you try this hock, a wine of some merit,--very well said and also perhaps true,--only not for Problematic Characters." "What do you call Problematic Characters?" "It is an expression which Goethe uses in a place that has ever given me much trouble of mind. There are problematic characters, says Goethe,--I believe in his Fact and Fiction,--who are not equal to any position in which they may happen to be, and who are not satisfied with any. This, he adds, produces a violent contradiction, and leads to the consumption of life without enjoyment.--It is a fearful word of his, for it is a sentence of death pronounced with Olympic calmness on a numerous class of men, of whom we have but too many in our day, who are very good men and very bad musicians.--There is Czika!" "Where?" "Behind you!" Oswald turned round. Within the open door which led out on the balcony stood the pretty child, surrounded by the red light of the setting sun. Her luxuriant bluish black hair fell in long ringlets on both sides of her face upon her shoulders, which rose from a blue Turkish blouse, while a light shawl of red silk was tied around her slender waist Turkish trousers reached down to her feet. When she had seen that there was a stranger in the room, she had been about to slip away again as stealthily as she had come, till the baron's words had arrested her and Oswald had turned around. At seeing him a joyous smile passed over her dark, solemn face, and her brown gazelle eyes looked almost tenderly up at him, as he now was standing before her, holding one of her hands in his own, and parting with the other her luxuriant hair. "Czika knows you," she said. "You are very kind. You love the poor; the poor love you." "A declaration of love!" said Oldenburg, who had remained seated at the table; "how many have you had, doctor, this week? Doctor, you are a dangerous man, and I shall see myself compelled to forbid you the house?"