It was not that he had absorbed himself too deeply in the physiological question, but rather that it shone through everything he wrote. It went with him according to the Biblical saying of the many who run in vain, while the children of Heaven are given it in their sleep. He never racked his brains about it, and with advancing years the gift naturally forsook him also, and when he thought over it in order to make a motive, as with the religious insanity of Ursula, or the hereditary madness of Leu, there was naturally not much scope left for individuality. Yet if he did but glance at a real live woman with thoughtful and contented eyes, all her physical and intellectual endowments seemed to shine through her. We have only to think of Judith and little Meret, both of whom we have already mentioned, but especially of the woman in the _Seven Legends_. The natural impulses, the instinct which makes a woman of her, the plus or minus of the sensitive faculty and of individual feeling, the marked nobility or peculiar perverseness, each resting on its own physiological foundation, are clearly discernible in every one of Keller’s women; let us recall, for instance, the gentle approach of old-maid-dom in the intellectual and cultivated Lux (_An Epigram_), the missionary zeal of the anæmic Afra Zigonia in the story of Herr Zwiehahn (_Green Henry_), Frau Litumlei’s indolent obsequiousness, and good Frau Amrain’s suppression of sexual feeling after her unhappy marriage, etc. III Keller preferred to describe women, and he did it with the greatest ease. We can tell by the construction of his sentences how smoothly the work developed under his touch, and how easily everything found its way into its proper place without exertion on his part or any need for serious thought; whereas with his male characters, or those of them at least who were not of a purely superficial nature, it was by no means such an easy task. The thread knotted and broke where one least expected it, and the texture became unequal and lost its freshness as though it had been woven by hot and trembling fingers. They were a trouble to him, not a pleasure, and when we see Keller turning a sudden somersault in the middle of one of his most serious passages, we may feel assured that he did it, not out of arrogance, but in order to make good his escape. He had one characteristic which must have been as common in ancient times as it is at present, although it may have sprung from a too individual refinement to find room for expression, it was a characteristic which is common enough among young lyric poets whom it generally leads to their downfall, while Keller, because he had just missed being a lyric poet, was able to provide it with a warm and sheltered corner where it might grow in secret. It consisted in that species of love for women which produces great erotic geniuses, where human longing is mingled with a capacity for spiritual affection,