"There is no _or_," cried Franz. "Really, when I hear you talk so, Oswald, I have a great mind to let you starve and thirst till you come again to your senses, or consent to do honor to reason. You are an enigmatical man, a thoroughly problematic character. There are incongruities in your character which I have not yet learnt to explain, in spite of our long intimacy. Natural disposition and education, which jointly make the man, must in your case have been most strangely intermingled. I have so far always avoided speaking of your early youth, because I felt a natural reluctance to inquire after what you evidently did not care to reveal. But my friendship for you is greater than such considerations, which are after all of little account between such intimate friends as we are. What do you say, Oswald, while the sun is gloriously setting behind those mountains, and our poor horses are painfully dragging themselves up the hill, you might tell me something about your early years--much or little, as you are disposed. Will you do it?" "Willingly," replied Oswald. "I also have been thinking much of my youth in these last days. If one is engaged in settling his affairs, as I am now doing, at a certain epoch of one's life, it is almost indispensable to trace that life back to the beginning. It is true you are the first man, and perhaps the only one, whom I could permit to look into those dark portions of my existence; but I will do it." "I shall be all the more attentive," replied Doctor Braun. CHAPTER II. "To begin at the beginning," said Oswald, after a pause, during which he seemed to have collected his thoughts, "I was born in the capital. My father was a teacher of languages, my mother the daughter of a mechanic. You see, therefore, that I have no claims to nobility, and that my hatred against the nobles is the very natural and legitimate hatred of the plebeian against the patrician, of the Pariah against the Brahmin. "I have never learnt why my father left the capital, and shortly after my birth--I was, and remained, the only child of my parents--he went to live in the little Pomeranian port W----. It is true I never knew much of the history of my parents and of all that happened before my birth. I do not even know whether I have any relations on the father's or the mother's side. If there are any, I have never made their acquaintance. "My mother also I only recollect dimly, after the manner of a person whom we have seen in a dream. But even now I sometimes dream of a fair young lady, with great, sweet blue eyes. She says in a soft tone some words which I do not understand, but which sound like the music of heaven, and always move me to tears even in my sleep. I know that this lovely creature of my dreams is my mother, for she never changes. She died before I had ended my fourth year.