known to myself alone; by day all this was forgotten, unless--and how
rarely this happened--some conversation recalled it.

From my first step out of doors I belonged to life, to the corps, to
pleasure. What was individual existence, mortality, or the eternal life
of the soul! Minerva's bird is an owl. Like it, these learned questions
belonged to the night. They should cast no shadow on the brightness of
my day. When I met the first friend in the blue cap no one need have
sung our corps song, "Away with cares and crotchets!"

At no time had the exuberant joy in mere existence stirred more strongly
within me. My whole nature was filled with the longing to utilize and
enjoy this brief earthly life which Feuerbach had proved was to end with
death.

Better an hour's mad revel,
E'en a kiss from a Moenad's lip,
Than a year of timid doubting,
Daring only to taste and sip,

were the closing lines of a song which I composed at this time.

So my old wantonness unfolded its wings, but it was not to remain always
unpunished.

My mother had gone to Holland with Paula just before Advent, and as I
could not spend my next vacation at home, she promised to furnish me with
means to take a trip through the great German Hanse cities.

In Bremen I was most cordially received in the family of Mohr, a member