With a bursting heart, the worthy Bendel prepared to obey this last command of his master; for I was deaf to all his arguments and blind to his tears. My horse was brought--I pressed my weeping friend to my bosom--threw myself into the saddle, and, under the friendly shades of night, quitted this sepulchre of my existence, indifferent which road my horse should take; for now on this side the grave I had neither wishes, hopes, or fears. * * * * * After a short time I was joined by a traveller on foot, who, after walking for a while by the side of my horse, observed, that as we both seemed to be travelling the same road, he should beg my permission to lay his cloak on the horse's back behind me, to which I silently assented. He thanked me with easy politeness for this trifling favour, praised my horse, and then took occasion to extol the happiness and the power of the rich, and fell, I scarcely know how, into a sort of conversation with himself, in which I merely acted the part of listener. He unfolded his views of human life and of the world, and touching on metaphysics, demanded an answer from that cloudy science to the question of questions--the answer that should solve all mysteries. He deduced one problem from another in a very lucid manner, and then proceeded to their solution. You may remember, my dear friend, that after having run through the school-philosophy, I became sensible of my unfitness for metaphysical speculations, and therefore totally abstained from engaging in them. Since, then, I have acquiesced in some things, and abandoned all hope of comprehending others; trusting, as you advised me, to my own plain sense and the voice of conscience to direct and, if possible, maintain me in the right path. Now this skilful rhetorician seemed to me to expend great skill in rearing a firmly-constructed edifice, towering aloft on its own self-supported basis, but resting on, and upheld by, some internal principle of necessity. I regretted in it the total absence of what I desired to find; and thus it seemed a mere work of art, serving only by its elegance and exquisite finish to captivate the eye. Nevertheless I listened with pleasure to this eloquently gifted man, who diverted my attention from my own sorrows to the speaker; and he would have secured my entire acquiescence, if he had appealed to my heart as well as to my judgment.