All this she related in a quiet, old-fashioned way, which excited his respectful admiration, casting smiling side-long glances at him as she talked. Of his father she could not tell him much; the last time she had met him he had looked very fierce. It was some time since she had had any news from home, because the French were quartered there; but Felix Merckel was in Königsberg, and she saw him now and then. He was apprenticed to a corn merchant, and thought himself quite the fine gentleman. He wasn't likely to come to any good though, for he smoked cigars and wore loud Turkish neckties. She ended by giving him leave to call on her at her aunt's on Friday--Friday being the day for visitors at the institution. Then she tripped lightly away, swaying her slender limbs from side to side, and as he watched her, he felt as if the Virgin in the altar-piece had graciously condescended to appear to him in the flesh, and was now returning to her lilies and crimson roses. On Friday he pulled the bell of the institution and was admitted. He did not find her, it is true, among lilies and roses, but there were some plants of fuchsia and geranium in the room, whose faded, dusty leaves made a pretty background to the girlish figure. The glow of the winter sunset came through the diamond-pane windows, and spread a rosy veil over her face. Perhaps, too, the pleasure of meeting an old friend made her blush a little. The aunt, a toothless, antique spinster, with patches and a powdered toupee, exhausted herself with curtseying and compliments, and after regaling the distinguished visitor with chocolate, in a bowl of superb old English china, vanished as noiselessly as if the earth had swallowed her up. That was the first of a succession of blissful, beatific Fridays. Troops went forth to battle and returned, but he did not even notice them. The thunder of cannons at Eylau reverberated through the town, but he was deaf, and heard nothing. It often seemed to him, as he looked up at the sky, that he must be lying far down in the depths of the blue sea, and that the world in which he had lived before was somewhere a long way off on the other side of the azure empyrean. But that he still in reality belonged to that world, he was forcibly reminded one Sunday afternoon, when the door of his attic-chamber, where he was dreaming over his books, was boisterously flung open, and his heaven invaded. "Hurrah! my boy!" cried the intruder, with outstretched arms. "I've been looking for you everywhere for a year past, and it's been as difficult as searching for a needle in a bottle of hay. Even now I mightn't have tracked you out if that pious little girl Helene had not given me a hint of your whereabouts." It was the harum-scarum Felix, and the Turkish necktie of which the beloved had spoken, flapped over either shoulder in aggressive fly-away ends.