objects not essential as tools for his work creep stealthily into the
dusty corner, or to the inaccessible top shelf of the bookcase,--or if
he is very poor, to the second-hand bookshop. He cannot afford to be
hampered by any dead weight.

Now Dr. Claudius had gone through many changes of thought and habit
since he came to Heidelberg ten years ago. But he had never changed his
quarters; for he loved the garret window and the isolation from visits
and companions that he gained by his three flights of stairs. The
camp-bed in the corner was the same whereon he had lain after his first
duel, with a bag of ice on his head and his bosom friend by his side,
with a long pipe. At that very table he had drawn his first caricature
of Herr Professor Winkelnase, which had been framed and hung up in the
"Kneipe"--the drinking-hall of his corps; at the same board he had
written his thesis for his doctorate, and here again he had penned the
notes for his first lecture. Professor Winkelnase was dead; not one of
his old corps-brothers remained in Heidelberg, but still he clung to the
old room. The learned doctors with whom he drank his wine or his beer of
an evening, when he sallied forth from his solitude, wondered at his way
of living; for Dr. Claudius was not poor, as incomes go in South
Germany. He had a modest competence of his own to begin with, and his
lectures brought him in something, so that he might have had a couple of
rooms "_parterre_"--as the Germans call the _rez-de-chaussée_--and could
have been as comfortable as he pleased. But no one ever attempted to
account for Dr. Claudius at all. He was a credit to the University,
where first-rate men are scarce,--for Heidelberg is not a seat of very
great learning; and no one troubled to inquire why he did not return to
his native country when he had obtained his "Phil.D." Only, if he meant
to spend the rest of his life in Heidelberg, it was high time he married
and settled down to genuine "Philisterleben"--at least so Dr. Wiener had