My request was granted without hesitation, and that very afternoon I found myself, with a light knapsack on my back, but my heart doubly burdened by two hopeless love-affairs, on the sunny highway that led to the Pomeranian frontier. * * * * * I might have reached my destination that night. But, swiftly as I had commenced my walk, after the first hour it became difficult for me to put one foot before the other. I constantly repeated to myself: "How will you find her? And how will she look when you suddenly take her by surprise without having previously inquired whether your visit would be agreeable or not? Quite probably she will shrink from you, as if you were a ghost recalling a time she would prefer to have buried, and you can be off home again. "What then? And what is to be done about the other, whom you really never ought to see again, if you desire to be an honest man." Under the influence of such thoughts I stopped, at the end of a few hours, at a respectable village tavern, the last in the territory of the Mark, and spent the sultry night uncomfortably enough in the thick feather-bed. The next morning I continued my snail's pace. Never in my life had I felt more plainly, and with deeper shame, how pitiful a thing is our much-lauded free-will. For in fact I was nothing more than a puppet which a child pulls by a string, and it made the matter none the better because the boy whose plaything I was had gay wings on his shoulders and wrote his name Cupid. It was about ten o'clock when I reached the little city--a place as ugly, dreary, and lifeless as any other Pomeranian town on an August morning. But, as I walked over the rough pavement of the main street, my heart throbbed as if I were entering some enchanted city, where in a crystal castle I should find the princess in a giant's power, and, after perilous adventures, secure her release. I first inquired at the hotel, fully expecting that I should find the "renowned" traveling company had lodgings there. But, when I had thrown my knapsack into one chair in the public-room of the "Black Eagle" and myself into another, and the waiter had brought me half a bottle of Moselle, I was better informed at once. The actors had spent only one night with them, and the very next day hired the back of the commandant's house for a month. Until six years ago a regiment of infantry had been stationed here, and the colonel had occupied Count X----'s old house facing the Goose-Market. When the regiment was ordered to another garrison, the house was not rented again. Now the manager had hired the back building, formerly used for the offices and adjutant's residence, at a very low price. The performances were given at the Schuetzenhaus near the Stettin Gate. The actors were splendid and drew large crowds. "Does the manager's wife play too?" I asked, and, as I spoke, my hand trembled so violently that part of the wine was spilled from my glass.