a strong interest in science. Frederick's mother was a well-read woman,
passionately fond of the theatre and an enthusiastic lover of Goethe and
the poets of the romantic school. Her father, who had been prime minister
of Wittenberg, as a student and even later in his career, composed
poetry, which her adoring love for him had caused her to publish and
several times revise and reprint.

Though Frederick had never been ill, there were times when he showed
symptoms of a peculiar passionateness. His friends knew that when all
went well, he was a dormant volcano; that when things did not go so well,
he was a volcano spitting fire and smoke. To all appearances equally
removed from effeminateness and brutality, he was subject, nevertheless,
to accesses of both. Now and then a dithyrambic rapture came over him,
especially when there was wine in his blood. He would pace about, and if
it was daytime, might address a pathetic, sonorous invocation to the sun,
or at night, to the constellations, particularly to the chaste
Cassiopeia.

Since she had known him, Mara felt that his proximity was by no means
lacking in danger; but being what she was, it piqued her to play with
fire.

"I don't like people that think themselves better than others," she said.

"Being a Pharisee, I do," Frederick drily rejoined, and went on cruelly:
"I think for your years you are extremely forward and cock-sure. Your
dance pleases me better than your conversation." He felt much like a man
berating his sister.

Mara silently studied him for a moment, a suggestive smile on her lips.