‘Without doubt,’ replied Walstein. ‘I have preconceived for myself a character which I have never achieved.’ ‘Yet, if you have never met a heroine nearer your ideal than your hero, why should you complain?’ rejoined Schulembourg. ‘There are moments when my vanity completes my own portrait,’ said Walstein. ‘And there are moments when our imagination completes the portrait of our mistress,’ rejoined Schulembourg. ‘You reason,’ said Walstein. ‘I was myself once fond of reasoning, but the greater my experience, the more I have become convinced that man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from passion.’ ‘Passion is the ship, and reason is the rudder,’ observed Schulembourg. ‘And thus we pass the ocean of life,’ said Walstein. ‘Would that I could discover a new continent of sensation!’ ‘Do you mix much in society?’ said the physician. ‘By fits and starts,’ said Walstein. ‘A great deal when I first returned: of late little.’ ‘And your distemper has increased in proportion with your solitude?’ ‘It would superficially appear so,’ observed Walstein; ‘but I consider my present distemper as not so much the result of solitude, as the reaction of much converse with society. I am gloomy at present from a sense of disappointment of the past.’ ‘You are disappointed,’ observed Schulembourg. ‘What, then, did you expect?’ ‘I do not know,’ replied Walstein; ‘that is the very thing I wish to discover.’ ‘How do you in general pass your time?’ inquired the physician. ‘When I reply _in doing nothing_, my dear Doctor,’ said Walstein, ‘you will think that you have discovered the cause of my disorder. But perhaps you will only mistake an effect for a cause.’ ‘Do you read?’ ‘I have lost the faculty of reading: early in life I was a student, but books become insipid when one is rich with the wisdom of a wandering life.’ ‘Do you write?’ ‘I have tried, but mediocrity disgusts me. In literature a second-rate reputation is no recompense for the evils that authors are heirs to.’ ‘Yet, without making your compositions public, you might relieve your own feelings in expressing them. There is a charm in creation.’ ‘My sympathies are strong,’ replied Walstein. ‘In an evil hour I might descend from my pedestal; I should compromise my dignity with the herd; I should sink before the first shaft of ridicule.’ ‘You did not suffer from this melancholy when travelling?’ ‘Occasionally: but the fits were never so profound, and were very evanescent.’ ‘Travel is action,’ replied Schulembourg. ‘Believe me, that in action you alone can find a cure.’ ‘What is action?’ inquired Walstein. ‘Travel I have exhausted. The world is quiet. There are no wars now, no revolutions. Where can I find a career?’