During the remainder of Florian's stay at the seminary, his thoughts continually reverted to his lost friend, who had, he feared, from a mysterious expression of the presiding Jesuit, met with some terrible calamity. During confession, he had once expressed his grief for the sudden deprivation of his friend, when, to his great surprise, the venerable priest, placing his hand solemnly upon the fair and innocent brow of Florian, exclaimed with fervent emphasis, "Thank God, my son, that it has so happened!" Florian often pondered upon these remarkable words, which, until some years after his departure from school, he could never satisfactorily interpret. For a long period he fondly cherished the memory of Bartholdy, and this feeling was prolonged by the knife, which, from habit, he continued to carry about him, even when the lapse of time had reconciled him to the loss of his early friend, and his riper judgment told him that that friend had unworthily imposed upon his credulity, and that the consequences of their exclusive intimacy still exercised a pernicious influence upon his character and his happiness. About three years after the disappearance of Bartholdy, the guardians of Florian, who had been an orphan from infancy, removed him from the seminary, and placed him as a law-student at the University of D.; but here again, although advantageously introduced and recommended, he found himself a stranger, unheeded, and desolate. His timid and now invincible reserve, which prevented all advances on his part towards a frank and social communion with his fellow-students, chilled that disposition to cultivate his acquaintance, which his graceful person and intelligent physiognomy had excited; while his hesitating indecision, at every trivial and commonplace incident, made him ridiculous to the few who had been won, by his prepossessing exterior, to occasional intercourse. Thus, amidst numbers of his own age and pursuit, and in the dense population of a city, the timid Florian continued as deficient as a child in all practical acquaintance with society. Without a single friend or associate, he acquired the habits of a solitary recluse; and, yielding supinely to what now appeared to him his destiny, he became anxious, disconsolate, and misanthropic. Conscious, however, that in France a sound and comprehensive knowledge of jurisprudence was a frequent avenue to honourable civic appointments, and yet overlooking his own incompetency to make any degree of legal knowledge available for this purpose, he pursued his studies for some years with indefatigable assiduity; and during the last year of his stay at D. his endeavours to insure himself, by accumulated knowledge, an honourable support, were stimulated by a growing attachment to the lovely daughter of a merchant, through whose agency he drew occasional supplies of money from his guardians.