I endeavored to conceal it--without hypocrisy and by a natural
movement--under the usual pile of manuscript on my table devoted
to Progressive Geography. But the baron had spied his name on the
address: "How is that? You were writing to me? There, I will spare you
the trouble of posting."

He read my sentences, turning at the end of each period to look out
at the snow, which was heavily settling in large damp flakes. He
said nothing at first about the discrepancy, but only looked forth
alternately with his reading, which was pointed enough. I said long
ago that the beauty of Hohenfels' character, like that of the precious
opal, was owing to a defect in his organization. The baron retains his
girlish expression, his blue eye, and his light hair of the kind that
never turns gray: he is still slender, but much bent. He went over to
the fireplace and crouched before the coals that were flickering there
still. Then he said, with that gentle, half-laughing voice, "Take
care, Paul, old boy! Children who show sense too early never grow,
they say: by parity of argument, men who are poetical too late in life
never get their senses."

"I have given up poetry," said I, "and you cannot scan that
communication in your hand."

"But it is something worse than poetry! It is prose inflated and
puffed and bubbled. You are falling into your old moony ways again,
and sonneteering in plain English. Are you not ashamed, at your age?"

"What age do you mean? I feel no infirmities of age. If my hair is
gray, 'tis not with years, as By--"