"I don't know yet; but there is no need to worry about such a fellow as I am; it is true that I have no money, but here (he pointed at his forehead) I have got something that is worth more than money," and after this introduction he started to picture his future. "To begin with," he said, "it is undoubtedly a great misfortune to be born in the country. Think of the vast possibilities that are open to you in town. There are the well-managed schools, the places of historic importance, the innumerable means of earning a living, and the very air of culture and refinement that envelopes everybody. There is no real work in the country, and there never will be. It is true that the people get up in the mornings and try to do what there is to be done; but where is, I ask you, that race of all the different brain and bodily powers that is so characteristic of life in town, where the clever man is superseded by the cleverest man, and everybody tries to reach the top in consequence?... If I were silly enough to stay at a little country-place, what would become of me? Nothing but a mere loafer, who drags about quite uselessly the great gift of intelligence that fortune (my dear, I am above that nonsense of God and Church) has bestowed upon his cradle or rather upon his brain. I have therefore decided to throw in my lot with the quickest and cleverest of my age, and it must be hell itself playing against me if I do not succeed in getting enough money to enable me to buy a few hundreds of such dens"--he looked round the room contemptuously--"in a couple of years." With my hands folded almost devoutly I sat silent during the whole of this speech, and did not quite know what to make of it. I greatly admired the graceful flow of his words, as well as his thoughts which were entirely new to me. Nevertheless there was something within me that warned me not to surrender the views and ideas I had so far held. "I hope you will have good luck," I said at last when he made a little pause; "but I should like to know what you are going to be." "Alas!" he replied, "I can see for myself now that you are not much better than these folks"--he pointed with his thumb at my parents--"and that you have never, not even in the least, raised yourself above the level of your birth. Your way of thinking is the way these folks think"--he pointed at my parents again--"and they think as their grandparents did. Progress is to all of you as foreign as China. How can you be so silly," he continued, somewhat more gently, "to ask me what I am going to be? How can I tell to-day? At the present I have not the faintest notion of the conditions and circumstances of Vienna, and how am I to know which of my capacities is likely to be the most eminent? Let me have the choice of a profession, the possibility of a trial, and I will tell you what I am made of." Greatly ashamed of my ignorance, I was silent again.