He was still attending the Round Table at Lutter and Wegner’s on Charlottenstrasse, where the rising young poets were having heated debates on literary topics. Every one of them had his shoulders in readiness for the mantle of the Prophet of Weimar to fall upon him and every one thought everybody else a mere pretender. And when they were most animated, stimulated by drink and smoke, Albert sat in a corner, neither drinking nor smoking, a strange gleam in his narrowed eyes, and from time to time sent a shaft of irony or an arrow of wit through their web of fancy phrases. When he did argue his colleagues scented arrogance in his statements. He had an unfortunate manner of belittling his opponents’ assertions and brushing them aside with a scoffing jest. They were talking of romanticism as if the period was only beginning while he was speaking of it as if it had ended. They persuaded themselves that dreams were realities while he only wished to clothe the sordidness of life in the garb of romance. When he persisted they could not see the difference. He was also at variance with them on political issues. They spoke of the radical democracy of Ludwig Börne while he believed in a democracy of Government based on justice, with an aristocracy of achievement in all walks of life. When Krebsfleisch accused Albert of aristocratic tendencies he retorted that he had more respect for an industrious aristocrat than for a coarse, drunken, lazy plebian poet who abused the nobility at Lutter and Wegner’s and then went to his lodgings to write a cringing, begging letter to a son of the nobility. Krebsfleisch was silenced but had become Albert’s mortal enemy. Without direct accusation Albert had revealed Krebsfleisch to himself. When people told him that Krebsfleisch was slandering him he only smiled and said Krebsfleisch was a genius and geniuses never had any sense of gratitude. He again found himself almost alone, strolling along _Unter den Linden_, visiting cafés, reading, thinking suffering from headaches, and when in the throes of pain writing love songs. He wrote love songs because he craved love and had it not. When he had no one to love he was dreaming of love. MIRIAM. I. At the end of that semester he was seized with a passion for work and decided to stay in Berlin the following summer vacation and devote all his time to the execution of his literary plans. His head was full of literary schemes. He again applied himself to another revision of his poetic drama; dashed off a tragedy; penned more _Lieder_; and also sketched a weird romance with Venice as a background. He had just read Hoffmann’s “Die Elixiere des Teufels”, and was so influenced by its mystic charm that he was revolving in his brain the plot of a tale with witches and spirits. He meant to take the world by storm and attack it from many angles.