myself; she is a girl that it would be impossible not to admire. If we were to drive away every one who was guilty of admiring her, we should be compelled at last to live as hermits.'

'What the devil, nephew! Do you say all this--you, who are to be her future husband?'

'One must be somewhat liberal, uncle--one must seem not to observe everything. Suspicion does a great deal of harm, and jealousy would only encourage the evil. Jettè shall find me as gentle as a lamb. Besides, you have assured me that she cannot endure him.'

'Well!... Perhaps she does not exactly hate him ... she has no particular fault to find with him ... but he embarrasses her ... he embarrasses her ... and when a person embarrasses one ...' The good man had got into a dilemma, and he was not able to get out of it; so he stopped short.

'Oh! that will pass off when she accustoms herself to see him. It is a great misfortune to let oneself be embarrassed by the presence of others; really, after a time this would lead one to become a misanthrope--a hater of one's species.'

The Justitsraad looked at me with astonishment, while he replied:

'I wish you had not gone on your travels; I fear your morality has suffered not a little in consequence. I hardly knew you again, you are so much changed. You are not like the same being who, eleven years ago, was such a quiet, bashful boy. And your father, who constantly wrote that you were not the least altered, he must scarcely recognize you himself.'

'That is very probable, uncle, for I hardly know myself again. But travelling abroad is sure always to make some little change in people.'

'It must have been Berlin that has done the mischief, and made such a transformation in you; for the letters your father sent me, which you had written from Vienna, did not in the slightest degree lead me to imagine that you had become such a hair-brained, thoughtless fellow.'

'True enough it is that I am thoughtless and hair-brained, but, believe me, I have never been guilty of any deliberate wrong. I know I am too often carried away by the impulse of the moment, and too often forget what may be the consequences.'

'One must make some allowance for youth,' replied the old gentleman. 'So it was at Berlin you studied folly in all its branches--Berlin, which I had always believed to be a most correct and exemplary city, whither one might send a young man without the least risk! Well, well! let us consign to oblivion all the pranks you must have played to have been metamorphosed from a milksop to a madcap. We must all sow our wild oats some time or other, and I hope you have sown yours, and are done with them.'