One day, instead of Helene, the old schoolmistress received him alone. She curtseyed and grinned as usual, and assured him, a hundred times at least, that she was his humblest servant; but what she proceeded to unfold seemed to Boleslav the last straw. Her dear nephew, the _Herr Pastor_, she stuttered, thought it best that the intimacy between his daughter and the young nobleman should terminate, and in order that there should be no further temptation to continue it, had decided to remove her instantly from the town of Königsberg. A note sealed with blue sealing-wax contained Helene's farewell:-- "Dear, Dear Boleslav,--My father commands me to give up my friendship with you. I must obey him. Good-bye. I shall always be fond of you----always. I swear it. Your "Helene." Six hastily scribbled lines! Were these to be his food and drink through a life of longing and renunciation? Yet had he any right to expect more? Had she not promised to be true, and to hold to him though everyone else had cast him off? From that time forward she became for him transfigured and a saint. Her face became more than ever identified in his imagination with that of the Madonna he had seen in the Cathedral, and whenever he pictured her he beheld her adorned with an aureole, and surrounded by lilies and roses. Had it not been for his extreme youth, energy and self-reliance might possibly have helped him over the abyss of enervating grief; but a habit of childlike respect, a latent instinct of veneration, put the idea of asking his father to explain what had happened, much less of calling him to account for it, out of the question. It was his unexpected appearance on the scene that at last roused in him a spirit of revolt. He was now seventeen, and would have been ready to pass into the university, even if the authorities of the gymnasium had not repeatedly hinted that his withdrawal would be in every way desirable. Even his kindly aunt, who had carefully avoided referring to the rumour through which she herself suffered keenly, had, as mercifully as she knew how, spoken to him about the advisability of his going somewhere else to finish his studies. Under other circumstances, his pride, his zeal for fair play and his own honour, would have rebelled against this unjust dismissal. But now, in his unspeakable bitterness, he cherished only one wish, and that was to hide away somewhere with his disgrace, and be seen by no human eye. And in this mood he stood one day face to face with his father. The baron had come to town, to call in the aid of the law in dealing with his rebellious peasants, but had found every door shut in his face. His fury knew no bounds; he appeared to have lost all control over himself, and his demeanour was one of desperate defiance.