"And now, setting aside these inner and moral motives, which bind you to answer to your friend's summons with an obedient Here! the actual circumstances also are more in favor of the step than against it. I know very well what motives you had for your refusal, but--pardon me, Franz, if I speak candidly--have you not perhaps underrated my strength, even if you did not overestimate your own? I am what the world calls a candidate for death; death has marked me already as his own, in order to hit me all the more certainly the next time, but the next time need not come so very soon. If you do not object to it peremptorily, I estimate my probable life yet some four or five years, perhaps even longer. During that time I shall hold my lectures and visit my patients as before, and if I cannot do it all by myself I shall choose an assistant, who will not be so dangerous a rival as my excellent son-in-law whom they already begin to prefer to myself. Seriously Franz we are here in each other's way. And when the question is, after all, how to make money, why then it is better you go to the east and shear your sheep there, and I do my shearing in the west." Franz was not quite convinced by these arguments, but he felt that the privy councillor could not well act differently as a man of honor. So he went to his betrothed and told her he had received an offer to go to the capital. What did she say to that? "Whether you ought to accept the call," replied Sophie, after a short reflection, "that I must leave of course to you and to papa to decide; for I do not understand that. But if it must be done, I shall certainly not say No! When do we leave?" "I must be there at least at Christmas, but I have to go at once for a few days, in order to reconnoitre." "Then I will go with you. You shall see that I am not so unpractical as you think."