"We were sent to Cologne to continue our studies. We seemed to have been transported to a new world, for we were now freed from the limited existence to which school tyranny had confined us, and began to taste the sweetness of freedom. Perhaps, indeed, I should have misused it, had not the good sense of my companion withheld me from every kind of dissipation. We were boarded in the house of a professor, whose wife, though somewhat in years, was of a cheerful disposition, and whose two daughters, as lively as they were beautiful, united these two qualities with a very prudent demeanour. After the evening meal, we generally amused ourselves with games or walked in a garden which belonged to the family, and which lay near the city gate. This agreeable mode of life had lasted for about two years, when it was disturbed by the arrival of the Count von M——, whom his father had placed in the same house in which we lodged. He had a tutor, who was a native of Cologne, a man who had for many years had private haunts of his own, not perhaps of the most reputable kind, to which he was so addicted that he neglected his pupil. As we saw that the young Count's time frequently hung heavy on his hands, we were the first to make a proposal to him to join our little society—an offer which he accepted with pleasure. "Theodore had always occupied a seat between the two sisters, and I one between the younger and her mother. It was now necessary to make another arrangement, and out of respect for the Count's rank, we yielded to him the place hitherto occupied by the Baron von Neuhoff. I had often observed that my companion looked with favour on the elder sister, and that when their eyes chanced to meet, the fair one would change colour. She was a noble-looking girl, with black eyes and an uncommonly fair complexion. The count soon fell desperately in love with her, and as the eyes of a lover are much keener than those of anybody else, Theodore soon became conscious that he was doing all he could to ingratiate himself with Mariana—such was the attractive maiden's name—and thereupon he fell into deep and anxious reflection. "'What is the matter with you, my dear friend?' I asked one evening when we had retired. 'I have found you for some days quite wrapt up in your own thoughts; you have no longer that vivacity which made your conversation so agreeable; you must surely be the victim of some great anxiety.' 'Ah, my dearest friend!' he replied, 'I was born under an unlucky star; I have never known my father, and there is no one but you to lighten the burden of my life, which, without you, would be still more miserable than it is.'