"Well, how am I to tell you? D'you know how I feel? As if I were standing in front of a great, closed garden ... and I know that all Paradise is inside ... and occasionally a strain of music floats out ... and occasionally a white garment glitters ... and I'd like to get in and I can't. That's life, you see. And I've got to stand miserably outside?" "Well, you don't impress me as such a miserable creature?" "No, no, in a way, not. On the coarser side, so to speak, I have a good deal of fun. Out there around _Philippstrasse_ and _Marienstrasse_ there are women enough--stylish and fine-looking and everything you want. And my friends are great fellows, too. Every one can stand his fifteen glasses ... I suppose I am an ass, and perhaps it's only moral _katzenjammer_ on account of this past week. But when I walk the streets and see the tall, distinguished houses and think of all those people and their lives, yonder a millionaire, here a minister of state, and think that, once upon a time, they were all crude boys like myself--well, then I have the feeling as if I'd never attain anything, but always remain what I am." "Well, my dear Fritz, the only remedy for that lies in that 'book-worm business' as you call it. Sit down on your breeches and work!" "No, Herr von Niebeldingk, it isn't that either ... let me tell you. Day before yesterday I was at the opera.... They sang the _Goetterddmmerung_.... You know, of course. There is _Siegfried_, a fellow like myself, ... not more than twenty ... I sat upstairs in the third row with two seamstresses. I'd picked them up in the _Chausseestrasse_--cute little beasts, too.... But when _Brunhilde_ stretched out her wonderful, white arms to him and sang: 'On to new deeds, O hero!' why I felt like taking the two girls by the scruff of the neck and pitching them down into the pit, I was so ashamed. Because, you see, _Siegfried_ had his _Brunhilde_ who inspired him to do great deeds. And what have I? ... A couple of hard cases picked up in the street." "Afterwards, I suppose, you felt more reconciled?" "That shows how little you know me. I'd promised the girls supper. So I had to eat with them. But when that was over I let 'em slide. I ran about in the streets and just--howled!" "Very well, but what exactly are you after?" "That's what I don't know, Herr von Niebeldingk. Oh, if I knew! But it's something quite indefinite--hard to think, hard to comprehend. I'd like to howl with laughter and I don't know why ... to shriek, and I don't know what about." "Blessed youth!" Niebeldingk thought, and looked at the enthusiastic boy full of emotion. ... John, who was serving, announced that the florist's girl had come with the Indian lilies. "Indian lilies, what sort of lilies are they?" asked Fritz overcome by a hesitant admiration. "You'll see," Niebeldingk answered and ordered the girl to be admitted.